First timer to OSCON, Jonathan Schwartz discusses how competition is good for the industry while backing up his talk with proof. Arguing against former practices, we hear how General Motors, Yahoo! and the cell phone industry, among others, benefit using the opens source concept.

Discussing diversity and choice, Jonathan knows his topic well and is forthcoming about mistakes that have been made in the past. Pushing politics aside helps drive innovation. Solaris, Apache and Linux can compete and work together while distribution costs dwindle. He explains that the future of Sun is seven to eight thousand software developers providing open source on all their available products. Working together, many benefits are achieved including protection from more dominant companies. Jonathan believes an open community can and does work using examples of big name companies as proof. He strongly advocates that freedom of choice adds to the growth of business and that software patents have stifled progress.

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Jonathan Schwartz is the President and COO of Sun Microsystems, Inc. In this role he is responsible for operations and execution of Sun's day-to-day business including Systems, Software, Global Sales Operations, worldwide manufacturing and purchasing, customer advocacy and worldwide marketing. Prior to this position, he served as EVP of Sun's software group where he was responsible for the company's software technologies and business. He is also one of the most high profile corporate bloggers around.

Resources:

• Jonathan's Blog

This program is from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention held in Portland, Oregon August 1-5, 2005.

For Team ITC:

• Description editor: Mark Kelso
• Post-production audio engineer: Stuart Hunter
• Series producer: Darusha Wehm