The open letter, in the form of a blog entry from Red Hat VP Mark Bohannon, contains thinly veiled criticism of Microsoft and other companies that are launching their own public clouds.

"With the introduction of HTML5 and its implementation in all major web browsers, it's becoming clear that Adobe is now in a place where a lack of innovation from the company could cause not only a loss of profit for Adobe, but also the eventual abandonment and deprecation of the product "Adobe Flash" by every product and service that currently supports it."

Bashing Microsoft for being closed and proprietary has been a popular pastime in the media and the IT industry for many years, and there is no doubt that much of this has been well deserved...Apple’s business is evolving and see a lot of similar traits to those that were apparent as Microsoft was gaining power.

Your good name. Trademark it. Protect your Web site registration. You can’t protect your code, but if someone wants to fork it they can do it under another name. (Image from BrandChannel.)

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.

"If an OSS company is focusing on its OSS competitors, it will likely fail as a venture. Common sense dictates you follow the money, and in most markets, “the money” is in the pockets of the proprietary players."