Open source is driving innovation and the information economy

The information age is finally evolving into the information economy because of the standardization enabled by Linux and open source — but it’s still a battle, Red Hat’s CEO said.

The computer was invented roughly 60 years ago but only now are we seeing dramatic innovations, particularly in the cloud, mobile, and big data sectors — which are run largely next generation open source architectures, he said.

“Open source has gone mainstream … open source is the default choice of the next generation IT architecture,” he said, adding that if proprietary companies were able to patent nuts and bolts or own the copyrights to a screwdriver, jet engines might never have existed.