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Steve and I are heading back to our respective homes in a just a bit. Thanks to jetBlue's free WiFi in JFK, we've got some net access. As I kid with Brandon all the time, free WiFi would be a winning platform in Austin: along with free parking downtown. Guaranteed land-side for mayor.

Quick Take on IBM & Open Source

I enjoyed the IBM Open Source Analyst Briefing: it was great getting to meet several people face-to-face and talk one-on-one with them. I'll have to write up a much longer post once I get back -- or on the plane back. But the instant reaction and take-away for me is: IBM gets what's going on with this whole open source thing.

By "get" I don't mean that the open source world does or is going to love them (see below): but, putting on my dev hat, as it were, they're certainly appealing and seem to be walking the walk. I'll admit: I didn't really know how deep open source thinking was running in Big Blue. They're certainly coming at it from a different angle than SAP.

Sure, it may not be your version of open source -- as came up time and time again -- but that applies to any group of people (or individuals) who try to move into the open source world.

More will have to wait for later. But, to put it in the most abstract way possible, the biggest question I have after the goodness of the above is "can IBM translate all that into something even better, both for their own financial benefit and for the software world in general?" Another way of putting it is a distinction between embracing open source and being in open source. Which gets into all sorts of semantic distraction-pits if you care more about definitions than usage.

Like I said, I'll have more to post later ;> Steve posted a good write-up of yesterday's events.

Disclaimer: IBM is a client...and they gave me a fancy pen with their name on it.