In Open Source Flying, Matthew Langham contends that the way the air travel industry has changed over the years may be a good model for the way the IT industry is changing.

In the old days, if you wanted to fly, you went to your national carrier and payed whatever they demanded, and that was that. Just as now, 99% of businesses go to one of the big vendors (Microsoft, IBM, Sun, etc.) for their software.

These days, there are a number of low cost carriers fighting over you. The national carriers are still there, offering high price, high standard, high convenience travel, but they no longer own the skies.

Will the big vendors lose out? I can't say I see any sign of it yet, but it would be nice if he were correct. ;-)

Via Daily Python-URL.