Open Source. Open Standards. Open minds?

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Fellow Smith On VoIP reader Tshai Levent-Levi has minted a new piece concerning the abuse of the term open source.

You should go read it. It speaks to how marketers are representing open standards as open source. This is something that the open source VoIP community has been talking about for years.

But I don’t think the problem is that the industry doesn’t know what these terms mean.

The problem is that buyers haven’t fully opened their minds to the idea of open source. It’s no secret that open source is still not openly embraced by all. Especially in the enterprise where the big guys play.

When open standards (what’s safe) is representated as open source (what’s fashionable) the big guys are delivering a message that resonates with their target customers.

Today saving money is important – but so to is saving your ass. Open standards won’t save you the same as using open source. However there’s no percieved risk.

And this won’t change until more in the enterprise open their mind to open source.