Why do customers agree to open-source work I do? In the past, we have discussed the benefits of open-sourcing your own software: Reputation Recruiting Contributions Recently, I had the pleasure of walking half an hour from a Tokyo train station with Matthew Garrett, who does some impressive work on core operating systems (pun intended; Mathew works at CoreOS). One of the thing I asked him is why a company open-sources its entire stack?

Sometimes I am amazed by open source software... even as I contribute to it. The largest repository of public open-source projects, GitHub, has over 35MM repositories in it. Granted, some large percentage of those are private, and therefore closed-source, but even if only half of those are public, and by all accounts it is much more heavily weighted towards open, the numbers are in the tens of millions. Add in other source hosting locations like BitBucket and sourceforge, as well as privately hosted sites like GNU Labs' git.

Where will VMWare be in 5 years? For many years, VMWare was practically synonymous with virtualization. It provided multiple virtual servers on a single physical server, with a great feature set, good (for its time) management interface, and enterprise customer support. Lately, VMWare has been under threat, primarily due to 2 factors: Public Cloud: When deploying to the public cloud, customers don't just wash their hands of managing compute hardware, storage and network.

In the cellar of Westminster Abbey in London, lies a lovely little café called the Cellarium, with all of the architectural design and feel of the Abbey. Of course, as it is in the heart of London, it has good tea as well. Earlier this week I was privileged to have a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion with Adrian Colyer, which led to 2 provocative questions: Will Microsoft open-source Windows?

Two weeks ago, we argued that, in the face of competition (and there is always competition), "Premium Pricing Just Doesn't Last." At the same time, there always will be premium priced products - Tesla and BMW, Apple Watch Edition, Oracle - but the question is how long these can maintain significant market share? A smart commenter, amelius, raised a fascinating point. Amelius compares premium pricing for substitutable products to restrictive licensing for software.