It’s long been common sense that economic downturns aid some businesses, even while harming most others. Beneficiaries tend to include discount retailers, as shoppers shift downmarket, as well as similar cost-conscious products and services that can replace more expensive alternatives.

Because of its price benefits, open source is now benefiting in this way, writes Eweek, in Why Recession Is Causing Enterprises to Rethink Open-Source Strategy.

Author Chris Preimesberger writes:

Budget limitations and continued improvement in software and associated services are making open-source software alternatives such as MySQL, SUSE Linux, OpenOffice.org and plenty of others look mighty good to IT managers and CFOs.

Interviewing Matt Asay from Alfresco, the article asserts that open source is starting to be seen as the safe, default option that will save a manager’s job, whereas in the past it was often considered new, untested and risky.

Is this evidence of an arriving tipping point?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 10:57 am and is filed under GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.