Openness Always Wins
Recently, Joel Selanikio the man behind DataDyne and EpiSurveyor and an early innovator in the mobile space, wrote a blog post on why open source “fails” at innovation. In it, he repeats the somewhat tired argument that open source fails at innovation because it lacks a clear business model. Why support something when you have it for free, right? He cites projects like Thunderbird, with a patron like Mozilla, as an example of a market inefficiency that hurts innovation when compared to products or services where people “vote” with their wallets.
The problem with this argument is that it forgets a few basic things.
- Open source does not equal free. Increasingly, we pay for services not code. Redhat who recently clocked over $1B in revenues seems to have found a revenue model around open source that works.
- People’s times, ideas and creativity represent perhaps the valuable things we can give. For many, ideas that spread and reused code represent our legacies.
- Innovation is simply a good idea is executed. Innovation happens both in the open and in private. Ideas or code that create value find a way to exist. If the requirement of innovation is a mail client with paying customers then I give you Exhibit A: Lotus Notes.
That being said, Frank Frankovsky the creator of OpenStack points out that open promotes innovation by marshaling efficient energy resources. Instead of wasting resources reengineering the wheel, it allows us to move “up the stack”, to collaboratively work on new problems where innovation is needed most. That’s why he believes openness will always win in the end. I tend to agree.
P.S.
If you want to be inspired though, I’d check out the most popular projects on Github. I can think of no better example of the staggering awesomeness of open innovation. Talk about value creation!
