I originally thought the article from Silicon.com, "Naked CIO: Open source ain't cheap" was written by a troll. Most IT authors realize that the quickest way to get a rise out of readers is to say something negative about one of two topics, Apple computers or open source. This author decided to write about the latter.

Increasing number of software applications are going the free/open-source way these days. Looks like more and more software companies and developers have seen the barriers of closed-source programs and have now fully realized the significance of freedom.

So what happened to open source as a business? There was a wave of “commercial open source” companies that were going to change the world, including SugarCRM, Alfresco, Jasper, Pentaho, and ActiveGrid, a company I started in 2003 to bring open source software into businesses.

Over the last couple of years a number of different open source business strategies have evolved. According to the 451 Group, it's an evolution that includes the broader adoption and usage of open source overall by both open source and proprietary software vendors.

More and more organizations are relying on open source software to build, test, deploy, and run mission critical IT applications. From small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, organizations worldwide are continuing to find open source as a cost effective means to deliver quality business applications.

As businesses look to become less dependent on software vendors to solve their integration issues there is a groundswell of support for open source solutions. For companies already using open source, a survey of IT decision makers by Forrester earlier this year found that 51% were using it in mission-critical applications.

Open source will start to dominate software infrastructure for providers of SAAS within three years. For them it's almost a no-brainer, according to Gartner analyst Yefim Natis. ... Lower cost and better flexibility, compared to what's available from closed source, or proprietary software, are key factors for the growing popularity of open source in this segment of the market.

I’ve talked in the past about a number of “open source” business models. There’s the MySQL “dual license” model, where all the software is available under an open license but a proprietary license can be purchased.

Deishin Lee of Harvard Business School, and Professor Haim Mendelson of Stanford's Graduate School of Business, eloquently lay out a strategy in a recent paper for squashing open source competition. Ironically, it's also a road map for open source companies to use to defeat their entrenched and expensive rivals.