Heads up: This post is 17 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
Just read Dries Buytaert’s write up on the OSBC - Open Source Business Conference. Here’s an excerpt:
The general consensus was that, for a variety of reasons, the down turn in the economy will have a positive impact on Open Source. The consensus was also that, as the “Open Source disruption” continues to move up the stack, the traditional web content management space will get shaken up in the next couple of years. I think that the Drupal project, with its larger ecosystem, will be there at the right time, at the right place. It is clear that Drupal will have an important role to play in this.
As I read this, I was thinking… although Microsoft is being beaten on all fronts and is super uncool these days, probably nobody thinks they will go away. However, if you really think about it, though MS is still pretty safe with all the big dinosaur businesses forced to continue supporting it, with the current economic downturn, we see a whole bunch of dinosaurs dying. New companies are not gonna use Microsoft products anymore, a lot of them are perfectly happy with Mac / Linux + Google + open source softwares. Now imagine a few of these cycles… more and more of the dinosaurs will die, and eventually, so will Microsoft. Hope I’ll live to see that day.