Wow, what a coincidence — I just came across a great doc reviewing where Open Source will be in five years. And provides a great juxatapostion to the information/panel in Austria.

Here is more information with a link to the report:

The Future of Commercial Open Source Think Tank Summary Report” offers rich insight into the challenges and opportunities faced by the industry. During this six-hour event the level of consensus reached by this very diverse group of expert participants was unexpected, said Andrew Aitken, Managing Partner at Olliance Group. Most notably, the participants recognized and acknowledged that while open source may come to represent a dominant commodity-computing model over the next several years, today it is still considered a disruptive force. Participants also agreed that by 2010:

• Service revenue will be a much higher component of today’s large ISVs
• Open source will not be a business model in and of itself
• Open source will not be viewed as a software, but as an efficient means to develop and distribute software
• Open source standardization and commoditization will bring a shift in focus whereby function will become the single most important factor in software development

While there were few overall significant disagreements among participants there was strong contention in several key areas, especially in determining when changes were coming to the software industry. Participants agreed that changes were occurring and that they would be momentous, but as to when — 2010 or before or beyond, they could not agree. And the participants were conflicted as to where the resources to drive this community-based development would come from — would developers become free agents, would users become a much larger percentage of the community or would large ISVs step in?

The questions raised by these key industry leaders also helped determine several obstacles that need to be addressed if open source is to thrive:

• Over funding by the venture community will result in non-differentiated and flooded markets
• There are not enough developers to participate in all the open source communities. With too many projects and not enough focus on key projects — there is simply not enough talent to mature open source fast enough
• Fear that businesses will be driven out — economic recession puts pressure on support for non-positive cash flow open source projects

“For more than 20 years SDForum has been committed to setting the
technology industry’s agenda while continuing to be a driving force in the technology community,” said Laura Merling, Executive Director of SDForum.

“The Future of Commercial Open Source, was an event that not only gave SDForum an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to the technology community, but it was a landmark gathering that has provided leaders in the open source industry with insight into the future.”

“The Future of Commercial Open Source Think Tank Summary Report” is available for download at http://www.designs4nuke.com/downloads (Basic Membership Required for Download)