Tuesday June 21, 2005 Open Sourcing Coke and Ketchup
It's been a week now since the open sourcing of Solaris, and the comments I have seen posted are pretty favourable. The "it's vapourware" merchants have become vapourware themselves. The "they will never do it" merchants have been proved wrong, spectacularly. It's a good week to be a Solaris advocate.In my early days at Sun, the internal workings of Solaris were commonly referred to as our "secret sauce", the things that made Solaris different from, and better than, other software platform (i.e. OS) offerings out there. Solaris was, and is, our differentiator.
Yet, now we are giving away our recipe for all to try.
It is interesting to compare the attitude towards making source code available against other "closed source" trade secrets. The ingredients list for Coca-Cola is very tightly guarded. Heinz do not tell anyone how they make their tomato ketchup. However, I don't see a movement out there for "open sourcing" Coca-Cola or Heinz Ketchup.
I'm sure that there are many people out there who would be interested in these other recipes. I see plenty of rival Colas and Ketchups on the shelves in the supermarket, and I am sure that the manufacturers of these rival products would love to have the recipes of the brand leaders and to be able to distribute their own "OpenCoke" or "OpenKetchup" recipes. Those who were so inclined could make their own implementations at home (just as with OpenSolaris).
Perhaps I'm on to something here... 
( Jun 21 2005, 11:04:32 AM BST )
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