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By Jeff Gould (Peerstone Research)
Is it possible for software to be both commercially viable and truly open source?
Obviously your answer to this question will depend on what you mean by those notoriously slippery words "open source." If you mean "anything covered by the GPL" then the question is easy. Red Hat is GPL'd, and no one can doubt that it's making money hand over fist, therefore we can answer with a resounding "yes" since at least one famous example meets the condition.
But paradoxically, Linux is not a typical example of open source. Why not? Because it owes its existence to huge subsidies – both financial and technical – from big IT vendors who have a stake in seeing Microsoft taken down a notch.
So let's rephrase the question to ask, how many software packages are out there other than Linux that are both commercially viable and truly open source?


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