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   8 <meta name="twitter:description" content="The Harvard Business School's &quot;Working Knowledge&quot; site has an
   9 article arguing that it can pay for companies to allow their developers
  10 to contribute back to the projects whose software they use.
  11 &quot;And that presents an interesting dilemma for firms that rely heavily
  12 on open source. Should they allow employees on company time to make updates
  13 and edits to the software for community use that could be used by
  14 competitors? New research by Assistant Professor Frank Nagle, a member of
  15 the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, shows that paying employees
  16 to contribute to such software boosts the company’s productivity from using
  17 the software by as much as 100 percent, when compared with free-riding
  18 competitors.&quot;" />
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  97 <div class="PageHeadline">
  98 <h1>The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software (Working Knowledge)</h1>
  99 <div class="Byline">[Posted September 6, 2018 by corbet]
 100                <p>
 101                </div>
 102 </div>
 103 <div class="ArticleText">
 104 The Harvard Business School's "Working Knowledge" site has <a
 105 href="https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-hidden-benefit-of-giving-back-to-open-source-software">an
 106 article</a> arguing that it can pay for companies to allow their developers
 107 to contribute back to the projects whose software they use.
 108 "<span>And that presents an interesting dilemma for firms that rely heavily
 109 on open source. Should they allow employees on company time to make updates
 110 and edits to the software for community use that could be used by
 111 competitors? New research by Assistant Professor Frank Nagle, a member of
 112 the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, shows that paying employees
 113 to contribute to such software boosts the company’s productivity from using
 114 the software by as much as 100 percent, when compared with free-riding
 115 competitors.</span>"<hr width="60%" align="left">
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 124   <p class="CommentTitle">The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software (Working Knowledge)</p>
 125   <div class="CommentBody">
 126     <p class="CommentPoster">Posted Sep 6, 2018 18:43 UTC (Thu) by <b>sjfriedl</b> (subscriber, #10111)
 127        [<a href="/Articles/764326/">Link</a>]
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 129     <div class="FormattedComment">
 130 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.<br>
 131 <p>
 132 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.<br>
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 147   <p class="CommentTitle">The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software (Working Knowledge)</p>
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 149     <p class="CommentPoster">Posted Sep 6, 2018 21:42 UTC (Thu) by <b>k8to</b> (subscriber, #15413)
 150        [<a href="/Articles/764334/">Link</a>]
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 152     <div class="FormattedComment">
 153 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.<br>
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 169   <p class="CommentTitle">The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software (Working Knowledge)</p>
 170   <div class="CommentBody">
 171     <p class="CommentPoster">Posted Sep 6, 2018 21:56 UTC (Thu) by <b>k8to</b> (subscriber, #15413)
 172        [<a href="/Articles/764337/">Link</a>]
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 175 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.<br>
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