OPEN SOURCE - COMING OF AGE

Open source is at a crossroads: nurtured on the Internet by engineers, its now ready for primetime. But is the process that has brought us this far ready to meet the demands of commercial customers?

More and more end users are becoming interested in open source products, but some have doubts about the security, support, risk of infringement and completeness of open source software. What are the stumbling blocks between here and broad adoption, and how can they be cleared away? Three industry experts give their views.

All standards run the risk of running afoul of patent rights. Open source has the added risk of copyright infringement, and a reputation for a more distributed process. Recent events illustrate how addressing infringement fears is essential to convincing end users that investing in open source software is a safe, as well as a smart, bet.

We're used to thinking about standards that specify all manner of measurable attributes - size, wavelength, voltage, and so on. But what happens when a standard must take time into account, especially when it's a whole lot of time?