Stanford and Harvard b-school profs vs. free/open source software
Over on Slashdot, a vigorous discussion of a new paper by business-school profs from Harvard and Stanford called "Divide and Conquer: Competing with Free Technology Under Network Effects," that takes it as read that businesspeople should want to clobber free and open source technology and replace it with proprietary lockware.
As if the proprietary software world needed any help, two business professors from Harvard and Stanford have combined to publish 'Divide and Conquer: Competing with Free Technology Under Network Effects,' a research paper dedicated to helping business executives fight the onslaught of open source software. The professors advise 'the commercial vendor ... to bring its product to market first, to judiciously improve its product features, to keep its product "closed" so the open source product cannot tap into the network already built by the commercial product, and to segment the market so it can take advantage of a divide-and-conquer strategy.' The professors also suggest that 'embrace and extend' is a great model for when the open source product gets to market first. Glad to see that $48,921 that Stanford MBAs pay being put to good use. Having said that, such research is perhaps a great, market-driven indication that open source is having a serious effect on proprietary technology vendors.Stanford Teaching MBAs How To Fight Open Source
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Meanwhile, companies like IBM are making a good business of working _with_ the free and open-source software communities.
Remember, Stallman's original Gnu Manefesto presented the idea that software should be free BUT support should be charged for. If you want the free version and self-support, great. If you want the ability to submit requests for support to someone else and have them addressed on a better than "when I've got some spare time" basis, you buy the productized version or hire consultants who will provide that support (or both). And if you outgrow the open-source version, then as long as you stick with standards you can consider stepping up to closed-source versions.
It's not one versus the other -- it's a matter of picking tools for tasks.
Yes IBM is big into open source and Microsoft hates it. Nothing wrong with a business school doing this though. While it may feel like some moral judgement to prefer open source, one size never fits all.
The lesson to be taken from the open software movement is that if something as horrendously complex as software can be open sourced, then it should be possible to open source just about anything including governments, corporations, and even printers and printing ink. I personally can't wait until humanity makes this cognitive leap.
Hey they forgot:
- innovate
- create something someone might need
- think
Their advice as presented is a perfect formula for increasing the demand for openware.
BigCorp, Inc. can bitch and whine all they want about needing lockware, but here at my company, my staff is replacing lockware with freeware:
PC Anywhere - UltraVNC
WS_FTP PRO - FileZilla
wIntegrate - IVT (telnet; terminal)
Nero - CDBurnerXP
MS Office - OpenOffice
TrendMicro - Avast (not free, but...)
These are a few, but we're moving from paying to use to using for pay.
@#3:
thnk y'v bn tkng Rshkff's blthrngs bt t srsly.
Dn't frgt tht mst f hmnty s cmprsd f dts wh hv n cl wht pn src s nd wll nvr cr.