We've got a couple of gorillas holding back innovation. Microsoft is a big intellectual roach motel. All the big minds go in and they don't come out.

Of course Saffo doesn't address the question of what alternatives the big minds have. If they want to work at a software products company and have a reasonable chance of getting their creation into the hands of customers, the choices pretty much boil down to Microsoft or some company that is likely to be put out of business soon by Microsoft.

All of the open source communities (and yes, there is more than one) collectively can provide the chance to get good ideas into a bunch of products that have the potential to be as good as what Microsoft is doing now. The problem is the community isn't co-ordinated, and has limited resources (at least as far as big minds are concerned). It seems to me that the question that the open source movement needs answer is: What does it take for open source to become an intellectual roach motel? How can we make it compelling for "big minds" to come in, and never want to go back out?