Ian Howells: With Open Source you can't be half-pregnant

My colleague, Ian Howells Chief Marketing Officer at Alfresco, has posted a blog on how Geoffrey Moore's marketing models describe what is happening with the commoditization of the ECM space and how the network effects of open source are accelerating the pace of commoditization of enterprise software. He quotes Geoff:

"Enabling technologies commoditize extremely well, allowing them to proliferate into markets far afield from the original starting points and generate a high degree of network effects. These in turn put pressure on the overall marketplace to standardize exclusively on a single set of components driving market shares to extraordinary levels …”

Ian sites Alfresco move to GPL as embracing this network effect and that companies should embrace open source whole heartedly. Ian says:

"You can’t be 'half-pregnant' and similarly you can’t be half open source and half proprietary. It is open source, not hybrid models that will drive true disruption, commoditization and benefit most from the network effect. The GNU General Public License (GPL) is the ideal license to drive forward this industry disruption and accelerate the network effect. That is what drove us to move to GPL."