Closed source vendors are increasingly removing their proprietary tags for the open source platform. The software giant Microsoft pushed three of its drivers for Linux. Following suit Adobe, rich internet application (RIA) provider, opened a major portion of its Flash rich media application, as it witnesses threat from Microsoft’s RIA Silverlight.

The increased competition among the closed source vendors and the new General Public License (GPL) has opened more opportunities for open source. The new GPL emphasized that vendors make all drivers developed for Linux, open source. After a short-term violation of the GPL license, Microsoft’s open source step is seen by analysts to be a driver for other vendors to take the line. The open source step of Microsoft, however, comes as a major threat to the virtualization leader VMware. The three drivers empowers Linux based Hyper-V virtualization platform, which at a later stage may snatch some of VMware’s shares of the virtualization market. So, some of the vendors including chipmakers Nvidia and Broadcom however, are reluctant to make their Linux code open source as it would imply inclusion of the code in the Linux kernel, leading to an easy installation of the softwares.

Hardware vendors, however, have witnessed the importance of open source applications due to the ease in the maintenance of any tool and application without the proprietary tag. Vendors like Dell, HP and Lenovo vowed to encourage open source drivers for the Linux kernel. An open source strategy also proves to be a cost-waiver for these firms, with 87 percent of the companies accepting to it during a Forrester research, so, the companies’ pitch for it is well laid.

The increased drive towards open source is more beneficial for Linux, among other open source vendors, which may bring its market share at par with its closed source counterparts.