Ostatic.com raise the interesting question: Should more employers subsidize open source development?

Using comments from Matt Asay (of Alfresco a the leading open source alternative for enterprise content management), Sam Ramji (Microsoft’s open source chief) and Olivier Cochard-Labbe (founder of FreeNAS) they argue that companies can do more for Open Source and that in turn helps the companies.

Today companies like IBM, Intel, SGI, MIPS, Freescale, HP, etc. are all working to ensure that Linux runs well on their hardware. That, in turn, makes their offerings more attractive to Linux users, resulting in increased sales.

Google have what is know as a 80/20 rule, which allows its employees to spend 20 percent of their time on projects not directly related to their work at Google.

I used to work for Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) who invented the VAX, VMS, main stream 64 bit computing with the Alpha chi and of course Ethernet, to name a few. Like Google there was an unwritten rule that you could spend 10% of your time working on other things. Why? Because it broadened your horizons and increased your knowledge. This in turn had a positive effect on the project you where working on.

What do you think?

Read more here: Should More Employers Subsidize Open Source Development?