THE HIDDEN BENEFIT OF GIVING BACK TO OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE    
                         (WORKING KNOWLEDGE)                       

  [Briefs] Sep 6, 2018 16:56 UTC (Thu) (corbet)

  o Reference: 0000764321
  o News link: https://lwn.net/Articles/764321/
  o Source link: 


    The  Harvard  Business  School's  "Working  Knowledge" site has
    [1]an  article  arguing  that it can pay for companies to allow
    their  developers  to  contribute  back  to  the projects whose
    software  they  use. " And that presents an interesting dilemma
    for  firms  that rely heavily on open source. Should they allow
    employees  on  company  time  to  make updates and edits to the
    software  for  community use that could be used by competitors?
    New  research  by  Assistant Professor Frank Nagle, a member of
    the  Strategy  Unit  at  Harvard  Business  School,  shows that
    paying  employees  to  contribute  to  such software boosts the
    company’s  productivity  from  using the software by as much as
    100 percent, when compared with free-riding competitors. "
    
    
    
    [1] https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-hidden-benefit-of-giving-ba-
    ck-to-open-source-software


  ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software
     (Working Knowledge)
     
     This is no surprise to me. Most of the open source software
     improvements that might help a competitor are too general in
     nature to really be giving the other guys a competitive
     advantage.
     
     For instance, if Lyft contributed Linux kernel or PHP or Apache
     or whatever fixes, the benefit to Lyft of having that improved
     expertise far exceeds the general benefit to competitor Uber.
     

     ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software
        (Working Knowledge)
        
        This is no surprise to me. Most of the open source software
        improvements that might help a competitor are too general in
        nature to really be giving the other guys a competitive
        advantage.
        
        For instance, if Lyft contributed Linux kernel or PHP or
        Apache or whatever fixes, the benefit to Lyft of having that
        improved expertise far exceeds the general benefit to
        competitor Uber.
        


     ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software
        (Working Knowledge)
        
        Even having to debate it seems so farcical. If you're worried
        about people who "do the same thing", the software they use
        is not the main differentiator. How your company is
        organized, how you treat your people and your customers, how
        you organized projects etc are huge, and software is
        ultimately minor. Fixes and changes to software? Incredibly
        minor.
        


     ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software
        (Working Knowledge)
        
        Perhaps this is too dismissive, as there is the part about
        letting your programmers do their job to the best of their
        ability. That seems pretty big.
        

        ** The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software
           (Working Knowledge)
           
           Perhaps this is too dismissive, as there is the part about
           letting your programmers do their job to the best of their
           ability. That seems pretty big.