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1 | THE HIDDEN BENEFIT OF GIVING BACK TO OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE \r |
2 | (WORKING KNOWLEDGE) \r | |
3 | \r | |
4 | [Briefs] Sep 6, 2018 16:56 UTC (Thu) (corbet)\r | |
5 | \r | |
c715ea02 | 6 | o Reference: 0000764321\r |
1aaa6ba3 NR |
7 | o News link: https://lwn.net/Articles/764321/\r |
8 | o Source link: \r | |
9 | \r | |
10 | \r | |
11 | The Harvard Business School's "Working Knowledge" site has\r | |
12 | [1]an article arguing that it can pay for companies to allow\r | |
13 | their developers to contribute back to the projects whose\r | |
14 | software they use. " And that presents an interesting dilemma\r | |
15 | for firms that rely heavily on open source. Should they allow\r | |
16 | employees on company time to make updates and edits to the\r | |
17 | software for community use that could be used by competitors?\r | |
18 | New research by Assistant Professor Frank Nagle, a member of\r | |
19 | the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, shows that\r | |
20 | paying employees to contribute to such software boosts the\r | |
21 | company’s productivity from using the software by as much as\r | |
22 | 100 percent, when compared with free-riding competitors. "\r | |
23 | \r | |
24 | \r | |
25 | \r | |
26 | [1] https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-hidden-benefit-of-giving-ba-\r | |
27 | ck-to-open-source-software\r | |
28 | \r | |
29 | \r | |
30 | ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software\r | |
31 | (Working Knowledge)\r | |
32 | \r | |
33 | This is no surprise to me. Most of the open source software\r | |
34 | improvements that might help a competitor are too general in\r | |
35 | nature to really be giving the other guys a competitive\r | |
36 | advantage.\r | |
37 | \r | |
38 | For instance, if Lyft contributed Linux kernel or PHP or Apache\r | |
39 | or whatever fixes, the benefit to Lyft of having that improved\r | |
40 | expertise far exceeds the general benefit to competitor Uber.\r | |
41 | \r | |
42 | \r | |
43 | ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software\r | |
44 | (Working Knowledge)\r | |
45 | \r | |
46 | This is no surprise to me. Most of the open source software\r | |
47 | improvements that might help a competitor are too general in\r | |
48 | nature to really be giving the other guys a competitive\r | |
49 | advantage.\r | |
50 | \r | |
51 | For instance, if Lyft contributed Linux kernel or PHP or\r | |
52 | Apache or whatever fixes, the benefit to Lyft of having that\r | |
53 | improved expertise far exceeds the general benefit to\r | |
54 | competitor Uber.\r | |
55 | \r | |
56 | \r | |
57 | \r | |
58 | ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software\r | |
59 | (Working Knowledge)\r | |
60 | \r | |
61 | Even having to debate it seems so farcical. If you're worried\r | |
62 | about people who "do the same thing", the software they use\r | |
63 | is not the main differentiator. How your company is\r | |
64 | organized, how you treat your people and your customers, how\r | |
65 | you organized projects etc are huge, and software is\r | |
66 | ultimately minor. Fixes and changes to software? Incredibly\r | |
67 | minor.\r | |
68 | \r | |
69 | \r | |
70 | \r | |
71 | ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software\r | |
72 | (Working Knowledge)\r | |
73 | \r | |
74 | Perhaps this is too dismissive, as there is the part about\r | |
75 | letting your programmers do their job to the best of their\r | |
76 | ability. That seems pretty big.\r | |
77 | \r | |
78 | \r | |
79 | ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software\r | |
80 | (Working Knowledge)\r | |
81 | \r | |
82 | Perhaps this is too dismissive, as there is the part about\r | |
83 | letting your programmers do their job to the best of their\r | |
84 | ability. That seems pretty big.\r | |
85 | \r | |
86 | \r | |
87 | \r | |
88 | \r | |
89 | \r |