Continuing our series of interviews with Desktop Summit keynote speakers, William Carlson spoke to Dirk Hohndel, Intel’s Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, about the relationship between business and Open Source. Interesting insights from a hacker-turned-businessman with a track record in the Linux kernel and XFree86.
On whether Open Source is a selling point for consumers:
Consumers shouldn’t need to know or care whether the product they are using is based on open source software or not […] I believe that consumers should feel the consequence of more open source software – in the sense that they see more innovation, better software, better ability to upgrade and modify software if they so choose. Those are qualities that are meaningful to consumers. The license used to create the software IMHO isn’t.