IDG

As I was trolling through the endless email feeds from the various IDG publications, including an article from InfoWorld on the 12 year anniversary of the birth of open source, and the ongoing push and pull between "free" software and monetized software, it occurred to me that IDG itself is a great symbol of the equivalent of open source in the publishing world. One gets all this "source" (information) for free, but the delivery is wrapped in a multitude of revenue streams, from the preponderance of ads that overwhelm their publications, to the ability to push the advertiser's products to a quantized subscriber base via email feeds. Much like Gartner, you have one company that publishes news, product reviews, and industry trends while at the same time charging clients for a multitude of pay-for services in the same arena. InfoWorld and ComputerWorld between them are consumed in one shape or another by I would guess 95% of the "decision-makers" with "purchase power" in the IT world. IDG is a $3.2 billion dollar corporation employing 13,000 people, including many "industry experts". Talk about a lack of a Chinese wall.