Open source has won.  Period.  Symbian’s issue is how it deasl with free. I’m Matt Asay, Global Vice President of Business Development, Alfresco, the open source enterprise content management people.

I’ll be talking on open source business models on the 27th @ SEE ‘09 (13.45 pm).

Gartner projects that by 2012 80 percent of all software will include open source, and enterprise adoption is nearing 100 percent.  As shown in the graphic at right, the number of open-source projects is exploding, with adoption keeping pace.

As impressive as open source has been in enterprise IT, however, its biggest imprint may yet be felt in mobile.  Juniper Research is projecting 223 million open-source handsets by 2014, 180 million of which will be Symbian-based handsets.  With its dominant market share and existing developer ecosystem, Symbian can be even more potent as an open-source foundation.

Even so, Symbian has a fair amount of work to do to capture and harness the imagination of a global open-source developer community, but it is well-positioned to do just that.  After all, Symbian has “free” working for it.

• Free as in foundation: Symbian’s non-profit status positions it to be the Mozilla of mobile computing, something that Microsoft, Apple, and even Google can’t match.

• Free as in no development tolls: Apple charges developers 30-percent commissions to participate in its community.  Symbian, as an open-source project led by a non-profit foundation, can afford to enrich developers that enrich its users’ experience.

I think Symbian has a massive opportunity in front of it, but must grasp the power of ‘free’ to realize it. I’m looking forward to addressing the “how” in my session.