The non-technical public will care very little about access to the source, not realising what degree of freedom this guarantees to them, even if they never look at the source themselves. Same with open data standards. Why change or even care if all the world seems to use the same 'standard' of some proprietary software package, right?

Proprietary code powers the world banks, networks, voting machines and other critical applications that we regularly interact with. But the real question is where mission critical applications like this can be done with open source code, as many open source advocates would like to see happen.

As businesses look to become less dependent on software vendors to solve their integration issues there is a groundswell of support for open source solutions. For companies already using open source, a survey of IT decision makers by Forrester earlier this year found that 51% were using it in mission-critical applications.

There are a number of ventures run by ex-Microsofties who are seeing success. Maybe the the question real question is, “How far does the apple fall from the tree?”

Without Red Hat there is still Linux. The code still lives and the Linux Foundation says it is worth $10.8 billion.
All of which leads to a profound and interesting question, namely are vendors vital to open source?

So my question is simple: Who is the open source big dog? The answer to the question as stated is likely IBM. You're welcome Savio. :-) IBM, of course, benefits nicely from its investments in Apache and Eclipse and has done a lot to make Linux what it is today. But IBM is not betting the farm on open source, so let me tweak my question to be: Who is the open source [as a business] big dog?

IT managers often assume that open source software is more secure than proprietary commercial software. Anyone who uses open source can examine the original code to spot any lurking vulnerabilities, and potentially even fix the vulnerabilities themselves. With proprietary software, you have to trust the vendor to do it all for you.

Maybe it’s a coincidence but this week has seen evidence of tension between commercial open source vendors and elements of the open source user community. Matt Asay stirred up something of a hornet’s nest with his post questioning how open source vendors can find ways of encouraging users to contribute either code of cash in return for free software

Voiceroute, a software PBX vendor, originally started as a proprietary software company but went (at least partly) open source earlier this year. In this video, CEO Ming Guang Yong says the company should have moved toward open source "a lot sooner," and explains why.