More than anything, “good” people with good hearts give time and money to help in this growing process. Priceless!

Bruce Perens feels that colaboration (even between competitors) on ‘non-differentiating’ software is a positive thing. The use of Open Source software as your ‘non-differenting’ software makes this easy/possible. If the wave of consolidation does take place, companies like Red Hat, IBM, or Novell might see the advantage to the aforementioned collaboration. A GNU/Linux desktop on which to run their individual services, middleware, or whatever fits the bill as ‘non-differentiating’ software. As such, a group of open standards may very well emerge. Other distributions with corporate aspirations (Ubuntu and Mandriva come to mind) would most likely adopt these standards. Others, like Slackware, would probably obstain from the standards (at least at first).

I think standards adoption in Linux will have to be a conscious decision once they see how they contribute to the greater good. Standards will precipitate from above, as the opportunity for profit will drive some of the stalwarts of the GNU/Linux community to be early adopters. As others see the long-term benefits the standards have provided Red Hat, Novell, etc., others will follow suit (well, that’s my theory at least).