A common question you hear from proprietary vendors when dismissing open source alternatives is “how many customers actually want access to the code anyway?” It is a question I put to an open source software vendor myself earlier this week while playing devil’s advocate.

The response - that the right to modify the source code is more important than actually doing it - is well known, but it is worth repeating in the light of recent events surrounding the Mindquarry open source collaboration project.

“It is strategically important for the customer that the source code is available, even if they don’t want to modify it,” was the response from the open source vendor I was talking to. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Open source adopters understand that it the open source model creates, at least in theory, a contestable model for support and services, freeing them from lock-in.
• They also …