Heard at software conference

What follows are some comments and/or ideas I heard at the Goldman software conference I attended the last 2 days. It’s not complete or exhaustive, just what I wrote down and thought interesting:

• “Peer review” of open source is less personal, than that which happens within proprietary software companies – it’s generally people you don’t know commenting on your code, and not other developers whom you work with and whose code you also review, commenting on your code. This is one reason that open source code is generally better than proprietary code. -Andre Boisvert – Pentaho, Chairman & Co-founder

• Haven't seen that the hybrid model of a company offering open source and proprietary products is proven. - Paul Cormier - Red Hat, EVP Engineering

• Their is a fundamental difference in open source companies that own the trademarks to their code (MySQL) versus those that don't (Red Hat). Important in ERP business to own the copyright to your code. - Several presenters

• Oracle Linux is not the same as Red Hat Linux. There will be a different ecosystem; uses a different operating environment. Impossible for Oracle to recreate Red Hat Linux product. It's unclear if Oracle will even be able to patch Red Hat versions. - Paul Cormier

• Oracle can't promise to fix things better (in Red Hat Linux) and stay the same. - Mark Shuttleworth - Ubuntu, President

• In response to a question from Rick Sherlund about "what was up" with the Oracle/Ubuntu rumors prior to Open World: "smoke screen that came from Oracle." - Mark Shuttleworth

• Microsoft / Novell deal is a tax on open source software. It's base for innovation and for customers. - Paul Cormier

• We want to be a big database on the internet. - Marc Benioff - Salesforce.com, CEO

• Salesforce.com is going to become the Killer App that becomes a platfrom, like Lotus Notes. - Marc Benioff

• Strategy is to use platform to expand within a customer. - Marc Benioff