Informative Quote on Using Open Source

<blockquote>“A lot of people have laughed at me. They
say that they buy their software only
from very large companies and that
these companies will be around forever.
For these customers, I explain that I have
seen and often worked for very large
companies that no longer exist or are no
longer in the same line of business as
when I was acquainted with them, such
as Apollo, Wang, Data General, Digital
Equipment Corporation. Although it is
true that some of these companies were
bought by other companies (e.g., the recent
acquisition by Oracle of Sun Microsystems),
whether products and entire
product lines survived was the decision
of the purchasing company, not the customers
using the products.

By purchasing closed-source technologies,
these customers lost control of their
software. In this day and age, that means
the customers have lost control of their
business or government.”</blockquote>

-Jon “Maddog” Hall

From:
http://www.linux-magazine.com/w3/issue/107/091-091_maddog.pdf