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Users as Innovators - Why Open Source Works
eaglemoon writes "Many people still have difficulty understanding why open source software projects are successfull. The Boston Globe has an interview with Eric von Hippel, a Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, on users as innovators. In his new book, von Hippel, discusses how open source projects draw on the creativity of ''lead users," who are often ahead of the curve on technology and marketplace trends. Von Hippel shows the trend already is more advanced than is generally known, and users often freely reveal their innovations for the common good. The social efficiency of a system in which individual innovations are developed by individual users is increased if users somehow diffuse what they have developed to others.....he also notes that the transition to user-centered innovation is hard for some companies to swallow.
The online version of the book is available under a Creative Commons license."
The online version of the book is available under a Creative Commons license."
That Open Source is successful in markets abandonned by other companies. Firefox took over where IE 3.0 had left. Open Office might be doing something similar. Users will only be milked for so long...
I think this may have to do with companies' "top-down" corporate education. They believe they're "the best", they spend MILLIONS on hiring "the best". They spend millions on maintaining this structure, hiring even more people, buying the competition (*cough* Microsoft *cough*), etc etc.
What can a simple user teach them? What can one single guy do? He's got no budget, doesn't have the resources to get "the best of the best", and can't possibly manage dealing with copyright issues. 'You think a bunch of hobbyists can do better than us?'
Bottom-up, gentlemen, bottom-up.
My question is even though Open Source can create massive amounts of ground work, why is it still generally incapable of shipping fully polished products? Take a look at the Mac, they went the extra mile, they took all the innovation of the open source world and did all the work hobbiest don't do. What does open source need to make linux or something else fully polished? What makes open source projects like Firefox beat the curse?
There are a lot of OS projects. Just look at sourceforge. The when there is something interesting, people are ABLE to join. If you do not think it is interesting, you leave it alone.
A lot of FOSS projects never reach version 0.2
Also every normal maner is able (or at least should be able) to tell you that if you have a project and you give some of it out to those who need to work with that project, they will be your best advertisers and your cheapest ideatank of that project.
So instead of saying we are going to be a more secure company ask everybody How can we become a more secure company and we would like you to lead this with our help. The difficult part is to listen to those who do not have the functions but do have the idea.
Everybody who ever went to some basic teambuilding session or weekend will be able to tell you why and how.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Look at the UI. Look at the applications. The basic look and feel hasn't changed significantly since 1995. Almost every new technology "innovation" has been either bought or copied (poorly) by Microsoft.
OSS' growth has been more viral, more grassroots, more innovative than the top-down "we know better than you" approach that Microsoft has successfully imposed on its users in the last 5 years. It is with this suppression of innovation that Microsoft has directly spawned and contributed to the open-source revolution!
On another note, after 10 years on Wintel, I switched to Macintosh recently. After 5 minutes inside of OSX, I experienced more innovation and creativity than I had on Windows for as long as I can recall.
Thank-you Microsoft for helping me switch to truly useable applications.
I RTFA, but I did not RTFB.
The article doesn't appear to anything more then talk of user feedback. Which really isn't open or closed source specific.
For example FTFA:
Boeing Co., for example, solicits feedback from its airline customers on new jumbo jet configurations and is heavily involved with its machine tool suppliers on the design of new production equipment. ''What you see is economic activity shifting to the side of use," von Hippel said.
The medical example is similar. Passengers aren't using Boeing's Open Source Jet to modify their own. Instead, Boeing is *gasp* taking into account passenger feedback. Likewise, suppliers for Boeing are, *gasp*, listening to Boeing.
The one part that gets into the area at least is:
"The social efficiency of a system in which individual innovations are developed by individual users is increased if users somehow diffuse what they have developed to others,"
Which I agree with. But the examples given weren't up that alley. Furthermore, I think a vast majority of organizations leverage software that is open source because it's free, not because they care for the source. I know we have pieces of OSS no one is *allowed* to touch. Ever. We didn't get it to modify, we got it because it worked. If we had to modify it we would'nt have used it. Of course, not everyone is in this situation. And not all OSS I have is like that. And that does leave us the choice, which is good even if now we don't touch it. But I think a vast majority of developer OSS use is Free Software they won't ever touch. I think the true use of the Source in Open Source is the exception, not the norm.
The book might be more "Open Sourcey". I'll wait for the movie.
"Half the secret of encouraging innovation is just to stay out of the way. That's a lot easier with open source than with proprietary products."
The other half is telling them "write it yourself" when they complain about the software. That too is easier with open source, compared to proprietary products.
Positive example: OpenQuartz. They made a Free replacement for Quake I's content.
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Suppose microsoft for example maintains tight control of their development environment for windows, they can fall victim of their own success and soon, the OS is so bloated and buggy, no one can maintain it and eventually, you have the soggy mess that is XP. I don't know how many developers maintain it, but it might be only in the thousands.
Linux for example is fully open source and no one has the remotest monopoly on it. Anyone can add/edit/modify as they see fit, although a select group of individuals maintain the official and primary source. Given that in any reasonably large population of users, the number of competent developers looking at the code are able to find and report/fix those bugs. It should not be an unfair assumption to estimate that figure to be in the hundreds of thousands.
As far as the OS is concerned, I strongly believe that open source is essential. No one has strict control of it and thus the product improves because it is freely available to be modified for the greater good, not the whim of some evil empire out to control, dominate and maintain a monopoly.
To me, that is where the line should stop. I have no problem with closed source software maintained and sold by a corporate entity and for the most part, is necessary as developers like me have to eat like everyone else. While open source software can be beneficial, trying to sell the whole world on the greater benefit of open source as oposed to closed source is like the double edged sword and can cut both ways.
While I also prefer open source software for things like media players, utilties, etc, not everything need be. Games and special purpose applications for example, while possibly maintaining open standards, to me are better off as closed source projects. If the platform it runs on is an open standard and the files created by it are open standard, then a potential competitor can come along and make a better product on their own that works as good if not better than the original, and to me, that's where true innovation comes from.
Suppose windows was free open sourced and everyone could contribute to making it more stable/secure, there would be no special advantage of one company v.s. another to make an office suite that runs on it and the one that is truly less buggy and more feature rich and more secure is the one that ultimately wins. While the grand notion of developers working on an open source project for the sake of the art will either turn them into a 'starving artist', eventually making them feel jaded or unappreciated or they'll not do it at all become a corporate whore doing something else for pay. Either way, after a while, the gains of such a project may not be as great as one that generates revenue.
All I'm saying is that while OSS may very well work, I advise caution in its widespread adoption.
Eric is a great teacher - I took a graduate course with him on Innovation Management (15.356) a few years ago. The course was recently renamed "How to Develop Breakthrough Products and Services" and is available via MIT's OpenCourseWare at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Manageme nt/15-356Spring2004/CourseHome/index.htm. The course home page also gives a very brief overview of Eric's lead user concept. It's one of his pet ideas, and although it isn't the sole focus on the course, it certainly is one of the foundations.
The actual class was wonderful: a mix of working scientists and R&D executives, Sloanies and other MIT grad students, and a couple of undergrads sitting in. Lots of student interaction and learning from your peers. The individual project was a good experience as well - I wrote a paper analyzing why Lockheed's X-33 space plane project failed, and what could have been done so that the the technologies developed (autonomous navigation and landing, composite materials, linear aerospike engines, metallic thermal protection system) didn't die with the project. Eric gave lots of guidance and advise on the analysis.
It's not limited to linux. I've seen several Mac and Windows programs that don't appear to have a lot of polish. Hell, my own company, who happens to have the largest market share of software sales within its niche isn't nearly as polished as some competitors.
So many developers are either simply not experienced in proper structure, or proper GUI design, or they are under pressure by execs or marketing departments to get the project out the door. The important part of the software is does it do what it's supposed to do? Yes? Then ship it.
The type of polish tends to differ. There are plenty of windows and mac apps with bad GUI, but it happens more in the Linux community because the body of developers don't have a deep background in coding GUI interfaces as to Mac or Windows developers. Windows programs tend to have more bugs but the windows environment provides a stable interface usually. Mac apps probably have the best of both worlds (as long as you agree the OS X interface is as good as the OS 9 interface).
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Major corporations not "normal" people. Mozilla was pushed by AOL/Netscape. Open Office Sun. Linux has Red Hat, IBM, and many more. Frankly I worry more about the "grass roots" nature of OSS disappearing. As it gains popularity the ratio of leeches to developers gets smaller and smaller. Just look at the number of people that do nothing but complain about this OSS project lacks this or that feature vs people that say "this is cool and if I add this feature it will be even cooler". ./configure; make; make install much less ever look at the source.
For the fast amount of people even those that claim otherwise only care about free as in beer. How many people here have ever
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I found the most interesting part of this article to be the idea of companies using toolkits to sow & gather innovation, deploying innovation-enabling toolkits and then drawing the resulting innovation back to you.
Interesting because that's a method we're trying to develop here at BRINQ for use in the Base of the Pyramid, the designation for 4+ billion of the so-called "poor" living in the base of the global economic pyramid.
The heart of our work is the belief that different cultures, different perspectives, lead to novel and unique innovations. So our focus is less on innovation in technology and more on what we were calling "innovation in utility", or the novel and unexpected ways in which people use technology. It takes very different capabilities than discovering innovation in a lab, aka it's the opposite of the Segway approach.
Any ways, more or less the same idea as von Hippel's user centered innovation (or "market pull"), but focusing on the poor as a source of innovation. Definitely lots of challenges, but we believe the opportunities could be huge. Our primary focus is on toys too!
hmm, didn't they pretty much replace single edged swords?:-)
there would be no special advantage of one company v.s. another to make an office suite that runs on it and the one that is truly less buggy and more feature rich and more secure is the one that ultimately wins.
But that isn't how has to work, instead corps that use the software hire programmers to work on the software to keep making it better. Since the corp's business model is in using the software not in making the sofware, it's in the corp's advantage to keep improving it: then corps compete on the strength of their actual products while the software that enables their business model keeps getting more secure, more feature rich, etc. See Google's investment in Firefox, IBM's investment in PHP, etc. for example.
More corp. IT $$ can then be freed from continually patching buggy software products and chasing down the damage they cause to improving the software and helping users learn to use it more effectively.
There need be no net loss of programming jobs, in fact since we would all be involved in making better software (instead of just good enough for marketing to sell), most programmers would probably see a net improvement in their worth to their employers and their self worth.
"One major problem with open-source is the lack of artists willing to work under such a license. For an example ot what results, see the "new" FreeCIV."
I see your point, but I'm not sure the problem is the licensing. I think it's the lack of incentive.
To get a job as an artist, you have to do some stand-out work and/or have project experience. Sadly, this creates a nasty problem: How does one get a job as an artist if they haven't had a job as an artist? The answer? Do some cool stuff on your own. Many artists do this. (Check out www.cgtalk.com to see what I mean.) However, it can be difficult for a self-starter to complete some ambitious work. I know I had that problem. If I couldn't get something done in an evening, I wouldn't do it. So what'd I do? Simple: I took on some pro-bono work.
I did some artwork for a game called Ferion. (Now some of you will understand why it's in my sig.) There was no paycheck. Instead, the agreement was that I'd do the work provided I could take the time I needed to expand on my artform. The result? The work I did for Ferion almost single-handedly got me my dream job. There's absolutely no way I would have produced anything like that without somebody needing me to do it. I'm too lazy.
So, how's this relate to OSS? I think really all it needs is the right presentation. There are LOTS of people who want to make artwork for a living. So long as they know that they're gaining valuable experience, you'll be able to find people willing to get the job done. If the project can offer some visibility, even better!
"Derp de derp."
"The reason is that artists don't have a culture of sharing like coders do (way before FSF or GNU), because that model doesn't really work with art - at least traditional art for obvious reasons."
You'd be surprised. Head on over to www.scifi-meshes.com. There are models of a bunch of starships there that anybody can download. Then you can post your artwork with those models. It's been around for years.
You've got a point that traditional artwork isn't so easy to share. However, communities can share in more ways than one. Technique is just as valuable as sharing code. At least with the communities I hang out with, most people are quite happy to share how they achieved a certain effect. Quite a few even take the time to post how-to's.
I realize we're not talking about precisely the same thing here, but I hope you get my point. Quite a bit of time is spent between artists helping each other out.
"Derp de derp."
I often think about this very topic...if someone or someones would come along and put the pedal to the medal on polishing those things off, Linux would become one hell of a competitor.
Redhat had enough money to do what apple did for BSD.. In a way, apple is the perfect company to put that polish on - it's what they do. I'm not sure there's a place anymore for a polished desktop UNIX the way there was a place for it in, say, 1997.
It certainly is what Linux needs to smash onto the x86 desktop. People seem to get too caught up on Holy Wars (tm) to make this one happen though. Maybe I'm wrong - but I'm writing this on a powerbook, too, and in 1997 I was one of those point-and-laugh at mac types.
..don't panic
There are artists out there who do embrace the FOSS method in the production of their work. They just don't make graphics for video games. (As far as I know). There is a population of contemporary "fine" artists (I really hate that term) who are attempting to do this. You are not going to see there work in conventional venues that often however. Simon Yuill and Chad McCail are working on such a project [http://www.spring-alpha.org]. [http://www.agile-process.com/] and [http://www.machinista.org/] are other examples of artists looking at this. There are others, I just mentioned these to make a point. In a lot of ways, artists and programmers operate in similar ways.
Actually, I am one of them. I recently started a PhD candidacy on this very topic. While my research is still very much in the early stages, I am beginning to realise that in order for the FOSS way of doing things to be more widely adapted, the methodologies need to be reworked. I don't think that actually economics are the determining factor here. Very few of the artists I know (and I know a lot) make much money from the direct production of there artwork. They need to supplement their income either by doing something like teaching or constantly chasing down grants, endowments and the like. It wouldn't be too hard to make the argument that "opening" your practise would actually help you secure more of this type of income. For the most part, Creative Commons [www.creativecommons.org] is sorting out the availability of licenses that are appropriate for artwork, so thats not that big of a deal. I think the biggest reason that artists are reluctant to embrace this kind of working is that we are still too hung up on the "original". It is deeply ingrained in the collective culture of the the arts. Originality of the idea and the art object itself is of the highest value when artists are assessing art. The FOSS way of doing things is perceived as encouraging copying and unoriginality. This is a big no-no for your average contemporary artist. If artists were just to look their history, they would realise that this obsession with the original is a relatively new thing, and that all creative works are built on top of the creative output that has already happened.
While all that i just mentioned is within the framework of art as in Tate Modern / Guggenheim kind of art, the artists that do more commercial work most likely went through some sort of art education that the "fine" artists went to. They all more or less leaned the same values, and regard their work in a similar way.I think it will be a while before you see this happening more commonly in areas like Graphic Design and CG stuff.
Actually, as an artist, an animator, and a graphic designer, I *do* care. However, some people seem to think we're cold-hearted, unapproachable jerks, so perhaps it's because we never get asked. It might be perception, or a difference in personality, but I seriously doubt its for a lack of generosity or interest.
If you don't advertise adequately, how are artists supposed to know? Many graphic designers look at OSS software and say, "Um, yeah...there are some things that could be fixed." However, programmers have a bad reputation for being cantankerous and hard to work with, so many artists might be afraid to approach them. Turn about is fair play, I suppose.
Here's the "give'em what they want in action:
"I want a car with tail fins!"
http://www.openvms.org/ Vintage design, looks a bit strange, but still classy in its own way.
"No I want a car with a bright pink paint job!"
http://www.linspire.com/ It's a real Linux and seems to do the job, but it may be a bit soft compared to the trad distros. Looks a little like one of those "strange" OSs
"I want a car that flies through the air, and swims underwater!"
http://www.knoppix.com/ Frisbeed it at the cat. Dunked it in the sink. Dropped it into the CD drive and it still booted into Debian. Nice.
"Foo to the others. I just want a basic car that goes from point A to Point B!"
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/ This is one quick little puppy. Not much to it, but it goes like a train.
"Nuts to the above. I want a car with a hot tub, and a wet bar, and plenty of space for all the women I'm going to get by driving this pimpmobile!".
http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/en-us/ This sucker's big and fluffy. Has everything and the kitchen sink, and it'll look after you while you install it.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."