What Business Can Learn from Open Source

dtolton writes "Paul Graham has written a fantastic article on what businesses can learn from Open Source. He covers why Amateurs can outperform Professionals, why the home is a better work environment than the office, and how bottom up ideas are better than top down. Finally he ties these lessons into the business relationship." Derived from a talk at Oscon 2005. From the article: "...the biggest thing business has to learn from open source is not about Linux or Firefox, but about the forces that produced them. Ultimately these will affect a lot more than what software you use. We may be able to get a fix on these underlying forces by triangulating from open source and blogging. As you've probably noticed, they have a lot in common."

Comments

Re:Home ! Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you heard of the work schedule of people who own and operate resturants? Their personal life and work also are very intermixed.

How Business benefits from Open Source.

[mikegi]

At Debconf 5 there was a good talk by Bdale Garbee about how Hewlett Packard benefits from Open Source.

Slides and Video.

Re:Home ! Office

[shmlco]

"Which is precisely why labor unions need a stronger presence in the United States."

Or not. GM just closed a plant in NJ and laid off 8,000 workers who were "suprised" at the move. Officials, however, were quoted as saying, "It was not a suprise. We told the union reps again and again that the plant wasn't competitive, that it was losing money, and that they could not keep demanding wage increases and more benefits for less work. Due to competition, we can't charge more money for these parts, and no company can continually operate a business at a loss."

Somehow people think that dollars just magically appear, and that they're entitled to more and more of them.