Open source and Digital Asset Management

Will we ever see an open source DAM system that can go head to head with EMC, IBM, Oracle and the rest? Tony Byrne says in his blog that he thinks it will not happen soon if ever. Joseph Bachana disagrees and says that it \"may take the harnessed fervor of the open source community to bring all these threads and more together in the marketplace.\" I think the CEO of MarkLogic would agree with Bachana. In his blog, Dave Kellogg conjectures that, in the future, the \"high-end of the [Enterprise Content Management (ECM)] market will split between Documentum and Alfresco,\" an open source ECM system. Though it is an ECM and not a DAM solution, if Kellogg is correct that about half of the big ECM customers will use Alfresco, many will also require it to support some DAM-related features as their needs won't stop at information processing.  Many will also need a secure repository that facilitates the management and distribution of media files, thus crossing over into the realm of the digital asset management systems.  As a result, this OSS project may be augmented to include DAM-like capabilities proving Bachana right and giving us a free (as in beer) DAM alternative.