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Open Source Software - Corporate Involvement... the next stage?

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Calum:

quote:by By Brian Elliott Finley of Bald Guy Software

Here's an example

Oil and Gas, Inc. needs a Linux cluster to assist in seismic exploration. They want to purchase a cluster from Intel Boxen, Inc., but they need certain software in order to make the cluster useful, so they shift the weight of their pain based need to the hardware company. Intel Boxen, Inc. takes on Oil and Gas, Inc.'s pain based need in order to win the deal and tasks their developers with modifying existing or creating new Open Source software to meet the customers' needs. The pain based need of the developers isn't to make a cluster work, it's eating.

As you can see there are a couple of levels of indirection here. So allow me to postulate, for a minute, on what the result is. Perhaps, because the developers aren't experiencing the pain based need for the software directly, the software they create won't meet the pain based need as accurately as it would if they had that pain themselves. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that if they weren't paid to create the software, that it wouldn't get created at all. And if the created software doesn't completely meet the customer's needs, then they still have pain. If that pain is bad enough, it will result in further modifications to the software via proxy. So, at least in this case, we can't conclude that corporate involvement in Open Source development is a bad thing.

--- End quote ---

hm_murdock:
the corporate world is a self-perpetuating dream. They've convinced themselves that if they didn't exist, then nothing would get done... when in fact it's the other way around. Without lower-level employees, the world would grind to a halt.

Corporate-level needs mean nothing to the people that turn the cogs of business. All they care about is putting food on the table and living comfortably.

If you're on the board of directors, all that's given to you by the company... almost like your job description is "skim off the top".

Open-source and the corporate world really have nothing in common. Open-source seeks to perpetuate free exchange of information. The extreme private sector seeks to perpetuate their little private heaven. Unfortunately, coexistance is difficult (but possible... it just requires that each one ignores the other).

All the talk about "pain based needs" is so stupid. No company has a "pain based" need. It is an intangible construct that exists on paper and in the minds of those who operate it.

Microsoft Corp. doesn't really exist... it's only in the minds of people and in ledger books.

So let's put it into perspective...

A corporation... a concept that logically leads to itself

vs

Open source... a concept that ends in something usable for everyone

They don't match up...

And that has to be the most cryptic thing I've ever said in my entire life.

Doctor V:
Hmmmm, sounds good.

In fact, most people I know agree that the majority of work that goes on in a corporation actually accomplishes nothing at all.  Rather than creating something useful for the world, labor is used for mostly brearucratic tasks.  The most important decisions are being made by the least qualified people.  I think that if there was no business, and everybody worked openly (as in sharing ideas rather than keeping everything proprietary) under a much smaller organizing structure, the working week would be much shorter and production would be twice what it is now.

Oops, starting to sound like a commie again.

V

hm_murdock:
Marx was a genius

Lenin was clueless

Stalin was a monster

In the upper levels of corporateville, they seem to have forgotten who it is that keeps them in business... customers and employees. They keep moving toward these mindsets that all customers are "consumers" and will pay any price for whatever thing they're marketing this week, and that these consumers are also the enemy somehow, and constantly trying to rip them off and keep them from making as much profit as they did last week.

Consumers are so much of a threat to the corporate world, that they have to band together and lobby the government for protection from the consumers of America!

Employees are also seen as the lowest form of life. An employee is nothing more than one of those evil consumers that happens to be on your payroll, which somehow makes them even worse than those dreaded consumers.

Innovation for most firms has come down to who has the better marketing team (marketing is about as low as the law profession these days). There are a few examples of firms that still produce quality and original products, but for the most part... they don't.

edit: is it this way in the EU? every example of European companies in the States I see gives me the impression of a company that makes quality products and stand behind them, supporting their customers.

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: The Jimmy James / Bob ]

[ October 14, 2002: Message edited by: The Jimmy James / Bob ]

Fett101:
Viva Le Revolution!

(Yeah, I added nothing worthwile, but that needed to be said)

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