O'Reilly on Open Source ... in 1999

It is more than a little disturbing that both the myths and the explanations in this nearly-10-year-old article have remained so constant. Here are the myths:

• It’s all about Linux versus Windows, with Red Hat as yet another challenger to Microsoft.
• Open Source Software Isn’t Reliable or Supported.
• Big companies don’t use open source software.
• Open Source is hostile to intellectual property.
• Open Source is all about licenses.
• If I give away my software to the open source community, thousands of developers will suddenly start working for me for nothing.
• Open source only matters to programmers, since most users never look under the hood anyway.
• There’s No Money to be Made on Free Software.
• The Open Source movement isn’t sustainable, since people will stop developing free software once they see others making lots of money from their efforts.
• Open Source is playing catch up to Microsoft and the commercial world.