"Sun is doing more and more with being a provider of open source in this enterprise infrastructure space, " says Raven Zachary, an open-source analyst at 451 Group.

FORBES: Magazine Article

To create a custom wireless system, the group had to agree to use proprietary, non-open-source software.

FORBES: Can a network build a potentially huge new product?

The change came as Itron's research group in Paris realized it could exploit inexpensive new wireless chips and open-source software to create a so-called mesh network of electric meters that passed information among themselves, like firemen in a bucket brigade, instead of relying on expensive and less reliable individual connections to the Internet.

FORBES: Magazine Article

This echoes arguments made by drug firms against makers of generic drugs. (Never mind that innovation in software tends to occur in universities and start-ups, not big firms.) Microsoft is advancing it through a lobby group, the Initiative for Software Choice, hoping to dissuade governments from using open-source software.

ECONOMIST: Software