Today is the
continuance of the last day's "Open, but not as usual".
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944
Traditional profit-seeking firms cannot usually rely on their customers to play an active role in theirproduct development. In fact, they often strongly resist any such interference. For decades softwarewas “proprietary”, because secret code could not be copied or used without payment. Moreover, theclosed approach is seen as a way to prevent exposing possible security flaws. By contrast, opensource encourages sharing, and its greater scrutiny may translate into cleaner code. As a cherishedopen-source adage has it: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
There are 500,000 people who download test version codes, and one-fifth of them report plobrems. Proprietary company can't do that.
“These are not anarchistic things when you look at successful open-source projects—there is realstructure, real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place,” explains Josh Lerner, aprofessor at Harvard Business School.
Succeccful open source projects always have structure, checks and balances, and real leadership.
For example, making the code open encourages a group of users (who may one day become payingcustomers) to become familiar with it. This creates a talent pool that the firm can draw upon forfuture employees. Companies developing software products that work with MySQL are potentialacquisitions.
Free riders are also worthful for MySQL. They may become future employees or customers.
As problems of vandalism, prejudice and inaccuracy ensued, Mr Wales was reluctant to clamp down. In the end, he had to. The site has set down policies to mediate debates; it has banishedunco-operative contributors; it locked down entries that were frequently vandalised (such as one onGeorge Bush)—changes come only from contributors who are designated as leaders on the strength oftheir work. A blunt new policy was promulgated: “Don't be a dick.” And after the furore over thebiographical entry last year, Wikipedia changed its rules so that only registered users can editexisting entries, and new contributors must wait a few days before they can start new ones.
As the second example, Wikipedia is introduced. The number of articles and contributers in Wikipedia is growing up. But many problems have occured, and rules have changed.
There are two doubts about its staying power. The first is how innovative it can remain in the long run. Indeed, open source might already have reached a self-limiting state,
Forms in open source projects are hierarchical than ordinary company. It's like Darwinian meritocracy not like a democracy. There're 2 doubts.
“Linux is good at doing what other things already have done, but more cheaply—but can it doanything new? Wikipedia is an assembly of already-known knowledge,” he says.
Can open source do anything new?
The second doubt is whether the motivation of contributors can be sustained.
But the benefit of open-source approaches is that they can tap into a far larger pool of resourcesessentially at no cost. Once the early successes are established, it is not clear that the projects canmaintain their momentum,
After successes, what maintains their motivation? It's interesting question.
For example, Toyota has organised its teams in ways that stress the same sort of decentralisation, flexibility and autonomy that exist in the Linux community, according to Philip Evans and Bob Wolf ofthe Boston Consulting Group in an article in the Harvard Business Review last July. As such, conventional companies would do well to embrace the work-style, the authors note, such as sharingknowledge widely, establishing reputation systems, and creating a community in which people workfor peer recognition as much as remuneration.
Toyota adopted open-source like process. I read the article about a fire in Aishin-Seiki. But is it like open-source?
But it's sure that many company should adopt the process to battle with open projects.
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