Difference between revisions of "The innovation excitement versus maintenance work"

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Revision as of 18:31, 16 November 2010

A recent survey shows more and more large companies committing to open source in the USA. [1] "This is one of the huge changes in open source over the last decade -- the move from mostly volunteer developers to corporate participation"

"Open source development provides an increasingly efficient and cost effective way to deal with growing technology needs, while enabling customers to avoid being locked into one vendor or being forced to use its approved partners when they need service or support. Over the next decade, Herbsleb predicts such forces will drive the market for open-source software to 'increase dramatically.'"

Contributions in Open Source Infrastructure is not as exciting

While contributing to Innovations in Open source maybe quite exciting, contributions to infrastructure aren't as exciting. Large part of contributions to infrastructure are sponsored. E.g. Canonical sponsoring Ubuntu research. Companies sponsor contributions to maitenance because it helps maintain the infrastructure. Also its easier than funding innovation.


Consolidation of Internet services is more significant than Open Sourcing the service

While open sourcing a service such as a mail service will allow users to host their own mail service easily, replicating the infrastructure needed for a service is a still a challenge. Also consolidation of a service over the Internet ensures that there is one compliant centralized system than several deviating distributed services. Also a consolidated service is likely to have a large user base. A large number of users justifies that the service tend to be free, even if not open source. An open source service, servicing a very small user group is as good as closed for its sustenance costs, as of now, can render the service unpredictable.

Opening up - Upside and Downside ("Irrelavent discussions")

While the philosophy of open source communities drives quality, because of contributors reviewing, modifying and patching up code. Some big corporations while they support "freeware" are still largely averse to open sourcing. It is likely that they believe - opening up their code, may lead to several irrelevant discussions that may become a hindrance in a typical corporate discipline of execution.