Ostranenie Reads the Tea Leaves for '06

Gavin Clarke left Computerwire earlier this year to launch a news and analysis business called Ostranenie Media. He's just issued "Five Big Bets for 2006," which makes for a fun read. Gavin tracks the open source space pretty closely, as do we, so we'll be watching how predictions 3 and 4 shake out.

3. First IP actions brought against open source: patent trolls snapped up more IP during 2005 while a growing number of open source middleware and applications start-ups joined the market. A showdown is inevitable, as litigants finally turn their attention to this increasingly lucrative market.

4. Closed source database vendor buys open source rival: an incumbent will be forced to launch a low-end open source product and pricing to drive customers to its own platform, or buy a rival to contain the competition and ride open source.

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Now if, like me, you'd never heard this ostranenie word, here's a definition: Enstranged is a neologism that approximates the Russian word "ostranenie," which means "making it strange," or to defamiliarize something that has been smothered by habit.