Chris Grams

HI Mark--

Sounds like you are looking at US-only data? In my view, one clear benefit of the open source movement is it makes these sort of watching & learning opportunities available to people who live in countries that don't even have commercial software development, wouldn't ever get the sorts of opportunities you describe.

I don't have quantitative data to support this, but my experience at Red Hat was that we saw people participating (and we sometimes later hired them) from all over the world who might not otherwise have access to a commercial software project if not for open source.

Would love yours (or others') perspectives on whether open source provides greater opportunity for those without easy access to commercial technology companies and the learning opportunities they provide.

Fantastic comments so far, wow! Thanks everyone... Think I might recruit some of you to write followup articles on this subject. In the meantime, keep the ideas coming, folks!