A part of the conversation I have been having with my colleague included the development of a graphic below, which was originally written on a napkin. The point of this graphic is that there are two market segments that will readily adopt Open Source software for their projects and contribute back to the Open Source community. Those two segments represent the two ends of a bell curve. At the low end of the bell curve are independent or small businesses that cannot afford enterprise solutions due to cost. At the high end of the bell curve are organizations that find enterprise solutions too restrictive and have significant funding available to produce highly customized solutions on their own. The middle of the bell curve represents the enterprise market. The reason the enterprise market is reluctant to adopt Open Source software and solutions are that these solutions require expertise to maintain that they are not willing to keep on staff, namely more people with specialized skills. The majority of the enterprise market does not see technology as being a core competency.
(Click on image to see a larger version.)
This diagram will not change until the "trusted technology advisors" (a term which I despise) can put Open Source in business terms, namely operational cost savings. What do you think?
