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