“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
J.R.R. Tolkien.
As reported last week, my latest publication (The Changing Landscape of OSS) was launched.
When approached about writing a report about next generation OSS concepts many months ago, I was excited by the idea for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the product brief that was sent me almost perfectly aligned with something I’d already been creating. And secondly, from the research done it meant that there was a gap in the market waiting for this type of content.
Then came the time consuming part – creating the content. Luckily enough though, being passionate about OSS, it is an easy topic to be inspired by and the long, long hours flew by (normally into the wee hours of the morning). As usual, I really enjoyed getting out to speak with vendors and experts in our field to find out about what they’re working on and what they see as being the technologies that will shape OSS into the future. Interestingly, a couple of vendors are already in the early stages of implementing many of the technologies on the hit list, which goes some way to vindicating initial predictions.
There are certain sectors of the industry that are working on some really innovative concepts that I can’t wait to see in their working form. The OSS inflection point is clearly already well underway and the future landscape is going to look very different to today’s appearance.
The resultant report is nearly 100 pages and close to 20,000 words in length. But more importantly it will hopefully provide an over-the-horizon view of OSS for the diverse array of experts that are as passionate about OSS as I am.