Virtual Decentralized Networks: Linux's Organization

barries writes: "Here is an interesting take on the Linux Project which tries to put it in a historical perspective and explain why traditional structures and theory don't fully apply to it. It overlooks a few things but gets most of the basics right." You might want to skip ahead a bit in the paper to get to the Linux-specific sections.

Comments

Appendix I is interesting

[Christopher Whitt]

It's entitled Microsoft: The Cathedral.

Some interesting snippets:

On MS Culture and Management

MS's culture is anti-bureaucratic and developers are been given large amounts of freedom

MS is a company where titles often don't mean as much as credibility, and thus, being blunt is a way to establish dominance. The company is rife with pecking-order gamesmanship, such as not answering e-mail or chronically arriving late to meetings" and in all, politics reign (at software development) in MS. [...] Survival of the fittest is systemic -internecine backstabbing did not evaporate in the presence of great intelligence and wealth, it became more brutal". Insiders argue that Gates himself is responsible for this culture of conflict in two ways: by being arrogant ("Gates is famous for ridiculing someone's idea just to see how he or she defends a position") and by employing the brightest people and inducing them to grow arrogant and assertive

On learning:
Fresh employees do not go through a formal training programme but they learn on the job. [...] MS takes advantage of the knowledge it has accumulated by exploiting emerging mass markets and establishing its products as standards. But at an organisational level, learning is restricted. "Communication frequently suffers as a result of the inner corporate politics and even privileged employees have trouble getting information from inside Microsoft, a reflection of the long-standing schism between the company's marketing staff and its legion of programmers". MS even blocks widespread sharing (of their own source code) within the company (Valloppillil, 1998; Nadeau, 1999a, 1999b, 1999c).

Learning from customers is also limited since there is not effective two-way communication between developers and customers. Lots of people who have used MS' 'help/support services' found it problematic and of limited help.

And on innovation:

Analysts claim that MS finds it difficult to balance being technology-driven with being consumer-driven and this results to great difficulty to move from incremental innovation to truly radical innovation or invention.

After all, MS's competitive strategy is to design products for mass markets and then improve them incrementally by enhancing existing features or adding new ones. Perhaps it this 'incremental evolution' product approach that impedes radical innovation: "The company has a very dramatic focus on its profitable business. I'm not saying that's bad. But it does preclude you from doing any dramatic thinking, doing any dramatic innovation" ... "to the extent that several employees manipulate their inferiors to be given a chance to create something really novel".

There's also a neat diagram of MS's corporate partnerships.

Christopher

(Just karma-whoring today - math assignment prevents me from engaging brain).