Red Hat is drawing some scrutiny because it chose to use the proprietary blogging software (Movable Type) for Red Hat Blogs. This prompted the Netcraft blog to ask: Should companies built around open source use only open source?

Red Hat’s choice of Movable Type to power its Red Hat Blogs has drawn criticism in light of the company’s Open Source Now initiative, in which Red Hat touts its “unwavering commitment to the open source community.” … Conversely, Six Apart has recently shifted its corporate web site for Movable Type and and TypePad blog hosting service from Red Hat to Fedora.

This is a tough one, because I can see sort of see both sides. Generally speaking, I don’t think the programs/tools/utilities a site, company or individual uses should be indication of what type of software movement they support. In our company we run computers or devices with all different types of configurations: various flavors of Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Palm, Pocket PC and the Tablet PC, etc. Our phone system is VoIP Vonage, but I still use Skype, we have Microsoft TV with Comcast, but up until recently were long time TiVO customers. I drive a car with OnStar, but use Verizon with it …. I don’t think any of this says anything about a specific preference for any specific technology or open source vs. proprietary.

Let’s be realistic about free software: somebody, somewhere is paying for it with the most valuable resource any human being has: time. We all have a limited amount of that on this earth and as you are reading this (thank you) some more of the sand is slipping from the hour glass. I talked a lot more in depth about comparing free vs. commercial software last October with: Is it reasonable comparing free vs. commercial software?

Some people made a big deal out of Microsoft buying a bunch of Apple computers but doh! they produce Apple versions of some software (Office).

Many programmers use open source and/or buy proprietary programs that they could create themselves. I happen to be one of them. For me, it’s all about conserving my most valuable resource: time. If I can use somebody else’s program and save that time for another more important project than I probably will. If I can’t find the type of tool/utility/program then I’ll write the program myself. I have written lots of programs over the years, many of which are only used by our company.

In fact, I started a small project this morning that has to do with RSS, and the genesis was something to help save me more time in the 350+ feeds I’m currently reading. I couldn’t find anything else out there quite like what I was looking for, so I’m going to create it myself, so that hopefully I can save a little more sand in that cosmic hour glass. If it’s something that I can share with others without a huge time or financial resources committment on my part, then I will be happy to do so.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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