test/expected/LWN/0000764321

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