Computer Economics: “The leading vote-getter [in our survey] was ‘reduced dependence on software vendors’ at 44%, followed by ‘lower total cost of ownership’ at 22%. Although these were the top two vote-getters, it is enlightening that respondents valued reduced dependence on software vendors by a two-to-one margin over lower cost.”

I guess this is a mixed bag for Red Hat: On the upside, they can continue to charge top dollar for open source software updates; on the downside, the market is fed up with the tired old strategy of achieving and preserving the ability to do this through vendor lock-in (although, in Red Hat’s defense, they’re certainly more clever about it than their predecessors have been).