A few days ago Matt Asay wrote a piece on Linux's use on Wall Street in his "Open Road" blog. He recounted how one of the MDs from Bank of New York Mellon saw "open source as the foundation of choice for their innovation". He goes on to say that this runs counter to prevailing opinion, which positions Linux (and open-source software technology in general) as a commoditising force.

It's not as straightforward as he makes out, though: in truth, Linux is BOTH a platform for innovation, and a commoditising force. It's always, in fact, been this way: there's one community that is most attracted to the fact that Linux code can be tweaked and reconfigured in extreme ways (you just have to look to Google's widely-cited work here to see what I mean). And there's another community, less vocal but much larger in number, which is much more attracted to the fact that open-source software tends to be "free" (of charge) than it is to the ability to mess with the source code.

So Linux (like many other open-source software technologies) has two markets and two demand curves associated with it: one is populated by companies with leading edge technology use requirements; and the other is populated by companies who want to align their technology expenditure much more with the business value they receive from it, and see the lack of an up-front license fee associated with open-source software as a perfect route to do this.

When looking at technologies like this and commenting on their role in industry, we need to be careful which market we're really referring to.