Whatever happened to this, that, and the other thing? The closest thing to Open Source in storage is Samba, which is purely bridging software. Combining physical storage and the necessary software to manage a large array is, by its very nature, a proprietary act. The truth is that there is no such thing at Open Source when it comes to storage. Could this change? Only if someone compiled a do it yourself storage array blueprint which, in the end, would end up being proprietary. A storage array is very much like a car. Can you build your own? Sure. Do the majority of the people who own cars build their own? No. Why? Cost, complexity, and skills.

posted: 1:47:45 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Rangachari Anand dropped by and left an interesting comment about vendor adoption of Open Source. This deserves its own graphic. Vendors adopt Open Source for different reasons, but commonly as a springboard for getting a product to market. Once in the marketplace, the vendor continues to innovate and deliver customer driven features which take them away from their Open Source origins. Very few vendors feed their features back into the Open Source community from whence they came, which is a shame. Technology is about customer driven innovation. This is one reason why companies can innovate much faster, efficiently, and in a focused manner than communities.

posted: 9:29:49 AM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()