Once we were an IT consultancy specialising in the use of Microsoft tools. Over the past 3 years we have completely shifted our technology base to Open Source and look forward to another 11 years in business.

Using Microsoft and other proprietary 'closed source' software only when the end client demands it. We reached breaking point with the convoluted, heavy weight bloatware, high pricing and unfathomable licensing practises imposed on us – a big overhead for an agile micro company like ourselves.

We are a technology company so Open Source provided a challenge, but the more we delved the more we liked. The community help for these products is generally excellent and not an issue for technical companies like ourselves. And our clients like what we do.

Big players are increasingly making their Software Open Souce so that developers like us adopt them :

Adobe – Flex
IBM – Eclipse
Sun – MySQL, Open Office
Mozilla – Firefox – as of this month it holds the software download record of over 8 million in 1 day for Firefox 3.0
Google- Android (mobile phone operating system)
Nokia – bought the Symbian operating system for $400M and then made it Open Source – probably in response to Android. They have been described as a company morphing themselves from the inside.

The is also the element of freedom with using Open Source, being able to contribute to a project and give something back to the community. It drives new business models – go and see 37signals website for a good example.

The web doesn't care what technology you use as long as that technology presents its interfaces in the standards used to build the web. It demands open standards – the internet is built on Open Source.

Generally clients don't care what you write their web applications in as long as they work. If software licensing issues go away and they also save money versus the 'Closed Source' option then this is a bonus.

In conclusion both developers and end users should seriously consider adopting Open Source technologies – they are at the forefront of innovation and there are too many Open Source adopters now for it to disappear.