Getting Fortune 500 companies to adopt open source would be a lot easier if open-source advocates put their business hats on.
That was the message from some Sun Microsystems and MySQL executives at the MySQL users conference here. Swedish company MySQL develops open-source database software and is making inroads into markets primarily dominated by companies such as Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.

During a keynote speech Friday, Rick Cattell, deputy chief technology officer of software at Sun, said that offering great software doesn't guarantee success in the big-business market.

Chief information officers at companies are "going to be really conservative," Cattell said, adding that businesses aren't going to adopt the latest open-source technology until they see major vendors support and endorse it. The open-source companies also have to make sure that applications are available, he said.

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