The debate over whether the dynamics of open source is actually more effective than those of proprietary software, over the long haul, is one that continues to rage today. On one side of the spectrum there are the hardcore zealots from the open source community shouting that open source = freedom (from outrageous costs, proprietary standards, etc.). On the other end you have the fad-busters who are adept at serving out the same out-dated arguments: no reliable support, not ready for the enterprise, etc. In essence both extremes have valid points, but each seems to miss the reason that open source is on the verge of changing the face of IT: The complete lack of artificial barriers to participation.
The proprietary software development model is closed by intention and necessity. In order to maintain a competitive advantage over rivals, only select groups of persons can be involved with the creation of a software asset. This is neither a bad nor a good thing, it is simply the nature of the beast. Open source software, on the other hand, depends on drawing participation from qualified individuals from all over the globe. In essence, the more talented individuals who are willing to contribute, results in the growth of the community as a whole. In order to attract such persons the environment surrounding a project/product must remain sufficiently open. After all, very few persons are going to be motivated to fight to freely contribute.
Open policies regarding membership, contribution and hierarchy also tend to mesh well within the groups of distributed, technically oriented people who have an interest in the software development process. While there are still some barriers to participation, they tend to be knowledge & experience based (i.e. programming skills) as opposed to ones of abstract association (i.e. employment by particular company).
Closed software development draws strength from the vested interest of teams of individuals who are being paid to work on a product. However, membership for these teams is severely limited by whichever process is put into place to select its members (hiring practices, internal bureaucracy, etc.). This has the potential to grow into a substantial competitive disadvantage, based on the recent growth of IT-related skills all over the world. Also, because most of this growth is taking place in more than one place across the world, it is difficult for proprietary software companies to centrally tap its potential. Additionally, because the only reward for participating within closed software development is financial, generating volunteer-based contribution is out of reach.
This fact can be demonstrated in a number of ways, with the easiest being to investigate the process involved with becoming involved with the development of an open source and a proprietary product. The extreme differences between both worlds start with the intended purpose of both open source communities and proprietary software companies. The concept of open source communities is constructed around the needs of people (members of a community, users, adopters), whereas proprietary efforts are meant to return stakeholder value. This is a dyed in wool fact that has less to do with blatant intention than it does with the nature of each entity. This isn't to say proprietary companies can't be people-focused or open source communities can't return stakeholder value, only at their core that is not their primary purpose.
Lacking the artificial barriers to entry also gives open source the ability to establish robust, self-sustaining ecosystems. Look at a company like MySQL, it never had to reach considerably high revenue numbers in order to create a global community of quality practitioners, partners and community members. Ditto for JBOSS. If there is another current, similarly sized database or middleware software vendor who has done the same I'm not aware of them and would love to hear about it.
These open sandboxes aren't only attractive to lone wolf programmers but are also profitable for customers. Most customers want more transparency for software products anyway, and open source provides a great deal of this. Companies are able to identify projects of interest and take a hands-on approach to contributing to its overall direction and progress, not only by having access to the code but by being able to fit into the community without a great deal of risk. Granted, there are proprietary software vendors who take comparable approaches to involving customers/partners/user communities, but they are still unable to match the value proposition that inherent transparency offers.
Still, at the end of the day, the ultimate test for the value of open sandboxes will be how well they translate into sustained growth and inevitably profits. Pundits contend that they're great in practice but have yet to prove how well they play out within the reality of a competitive marketplace. While this link between profits and open environments that tend to work against barriers to participation has yet to be established in stone, the momentum towards doing so is steadily gathering.
Debating over this issue would not help, it will only worsen the situation. I think that the better solution is to talk and not debate.
Posted by: peoria medical marijuana | July 13, 2011 at 06:00 AM