He shoots, he scores! – open source, “entersource” & hockey

As a proud citizen of the reigning Olympic hockey country, hockey is a topic that is close to my heart. So you should not be surprised that today’s Dana Blankenhorn Accenture hands open source a hockey stick post on ZDNet’s Linux and Open Source blog immediately grabbed my attention.

While I was happy to see a real Wikipedia-sourced hockey stick and puck in his post, I was initially disappointed that Dana was actually writing about “hockey stick graphs”. But any disappointment quickly disappeared when I read that it was a “hockey stick for open source” based on an Accenture “survey of 300 organizations, 69% of which say they’re going to increase open source investment this year and 38% of which say they’re moving mission critical applications to it in the next 12 months.” According to Dana (and the Accenture press release),  “quality and improved reliability [were] cited as key benefits”.

While Dana does go on to point out a legitimate concern about the low level of sharing highlighted in the study [“less than a third (29 percent) are willing to contribute their own solutions back to the community”], I believe that the survey is great news for open source software, “entersource”, and commons sourcing.  In particular, I believe that it bodes very well for the CommonsKnowledge™ service that I will be launching this fall.  This n2one inc. subscription based legal information service [profiled in my April Bringing open source software legal information to the masses post and related news article] will have an initial focus on open source software. I believe that this service will be uniquely positioned to address the developer training and senior management support challenges highlighted in the Accenture study.

While it is early in the game, I  have a clear shot on net.  I will shoot {and hopefully score!) very soon.  I really look forward to having you in the stands (cheering me on?)  and I am definitely open to any coaching and coaching offers!