Open Software Trends

With hundreds of content management systems available, why did I decide to build this site on Drupal? The reasons include both the technical software engineering aspects of Drupal, as well as the community and businesses that have grown up around this open source platform.

Open source, open software, open systems. Similar, but far from identical. Of course, the word "open" conveys a meaning that makes "open software trends" quite different from "software trends". The latter covers a vast range of topics, from the offerings of large vendors of proprietary software, such as Microsoft or Oracle, to the emergence and acceptance (or rejection) of various business and technical issues around software definition, design, development, and distribution, not to mention startups and the entire global software industry.

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about "open software trends", the name for this site. Even though I don't think of myself as a "trendy" person, when it comes to software, I'm always trying to figure out what's likely to happen next. Of course, it's extremely rare for new technologies to be quickly and widely adopted. Instead, we see the initial and ongoing reactions and then see it gain (or possibly lose) followers over time. The Mac went up, then down, and is now moving sharply up.

Welcome to Open Software Trends! Some people have said that 2009 will be the year of open source, but many of those people have been saying that for several years now. To me, it's not a sudden event, but rather a constantly growing acceptance and use of open source software. Here are just a few examples:

• As of December, 2008, Firefox had more than a 20% share among browser users. Quite impressive, especially considering that Firefox is only preinstalled on Linux desktops and that everyone else has to download and install it themselves.