So you’re thinking of open sourcing your code and wondering what it will mean for your business. Besides the benefit of becoming a technology leader and gaining some street-cred, you’re going to have the opportunity to benefit in another way. For example, let’s check out what CIO.com says on the matter:

“For years open source has been dismissed as pie-in-the-sky, a toy for geeks. But today open source is undergoing a business revolution.

In a November 2002 CIO survey of 375 information executives, 54 percent said that within five years open source would be their dominant server platform. Today, major enterprises are running mission-critical functions on open source, big vendors have lined up to support it, and reliable applications have emerged.

And CIOs who have implemented it report huge total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) reductions.” – CIO.com (read more…)

“Huge TCO reductions” says a lot. Think about it, all that old software you’re trying to keep afloat. What if someone else just fixed all that out of date code for free because they wanted to fix their system and then pushed out the updates so you got them too. And what do they get in return? They get  a like minded individual that is writing code and updates to the same open sourced code they’re using.

It’s a sharing community that is working together to support each other and speed development time to get new and refined technologies into the hands of your business, giving you a one-up on your competitors.