As I spoke with a few attendees at OSCON, it occurred to me that no one has every really defined the intrinsic value of Open Source. Many people have lauded Open Source in general and listed its virtues, but what, precisely would make an open source piece of software necessarily better than a proprietary cousin or competitor. To put it in an ugly VC term that makes me cringe whenever I hear it, what is Open Source's "value proposition." Or to put it more bluntly, does it actually have one?

"Partners such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel have been actively working with alternative Linux-based operating systems," Microsoft wrote, providing no additional detail.