I have many colleagues across the country working with information technology. Many of them are strong believers in the "Open Source" movement. I refer to this as a "movement" more than just a product because many believe that working with and developing open source technologies will create better products, even if the product isn't as good as commercial products today - its not just about money.

I found the article, Oracle to offer free database, an interesting result of some success in the development of open source database systems. The fact that IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are all developing free versions of their database systems - to compete with Open Source. But will it really make an impact? I'm not sure, but I believe it is a strong first step and maybe a good marketing strategy. Perhaps it will become the first step to transitioning well know commercial products to a "service-based" business model.

I found this article by Lawrence Lessig, Why Your Broadband Sucks, to present a good perspective of the role of government and industry in providing general good.

Although this principle is true enough in most cases, it is obviously not true in all. The government should certainly not do what private enterprise can do better (e.g., make computers). And the government should not prohibit private enterprise from competing against it (e.g., FedEx). But the government also should not act as the cat's paw for one of the most powerful industries in the nation by making competition against that industry illegal, whether from government or not. This is true, at least, when it is unclear just what kind of "good" such competition might produce.