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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."
One thing that businesses can learn from open source is that properly motivated employees can produce great things. Here we have a group of technical professionals working for free to produce great software. Employers on the other hand, have a difficult time motivating people who they pay. Motivation == productivity.
Well, as this may be true for you, I just like my job. I can wake up in the morning before my wakeup alarm starts, and jump out of bed, thinking "wow I wish I already was at my desk, so I can continue what I was doing yesterday". Yes I have flexible hours and can start whenever I want. Yes I work too much each and every day. No I don't get paid more because of this. But most important: No I don't mind doing this, I even like it. But I must be an exception...
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This guy is really insulting. He says that failing your own business "won't hurt as much." as having a real job? To say that investing every dime you own in a business, and spending every day for several years (most businesses fold in the 1-3 year range), only to see it fail "won't hurt as much" as working as a job that may not be 100% rewarding is pure bullshit.
Actually, I'd say it's this cavalier attitude about business that causes many startups to fail.
It sounds like he's suggesting that developers work at home, develop open source, and pay their rent with what? fairy dust? good will?
Another thing that keeps people away from starting startups is the risk. Someone with kids and a mortgage should think twice before doing it. But most young hackers have neither.
And as the example of open source and blogging suggests, you'll enjoy it more, even if you fail. You'll be working on your own thing, instead of going to some office and doing what you're told. There may be more pain in your own company, but it won't hurt as much.
I don't respond to AC's.
I think the important part of OSS is that teams are built on individuals' technical ability rather than race, creed, colour or indeed paymaster.
rd
His opinion, while interesting, is incredibly naive. It's great that there was recently a posting about the spread between "good" programmers and "average" programmers. Much of what the author talks about represents an incredibly small portion of the overall developer community. While there may be some people that would flourish being given freedom to work from home on a project that they found interesting, the fact is, those types of projects are fairly uncommon (the real challenge is to take the "mundane" project and make it interesting) as is the person who would actually benefit from this. Let's face it, the majority of developers would not see a similar leap in productivity. They might enjoy their lives more, but it certainly would not relate to higher productivity.
The author mentions that M$ can't motivate its IE programming staff to come out with a "better" browser than FireFox. Well, discounting things like dealing with the codebase you have inherited, lets face it, M$ operates by putting their A Team resources where they perceive they are needed the most. Right now, they kick butt in the browser wars (even against "better" competition), so there isn't a perceived need to "have to come out with something significantly better". OTOH, the FireFox team does nothing but produce a browser (kinda), so of course they HAVE to be better. Would a new browser that was only "just as good", or even "not quite as good" been acceptable for the FF team, obviously not. So to assume that the quality of software coming from both sides has more to do with amateur developers vs non motivated professional developers is simply not looking at the bigger picture.
Distinction between work and personal life is a very fresh concept, connected with capitalism and work for hire. As someone already mentioned it does not exist if you run a restaurant. It doesn't exist if you are a farmer. Hell, it probably doesn't exist if you run any kind of private small-scale businness.
It didn't exist in pre-capitalism era: families worked together, dined together. Even if you were hired, quite often your brother/sister worked at the same place. Women were taking their babies to work or were gathering together to spin wool or linen, to sew and so on.
So it seems that this distinction was artificial and caused by a fact that if some people have to be in the same physical location to work and they have to commute - it is more efficient to separate their work time and leisure time. But with introduction of modern communication methods more and more jobs take different trend: work at home, feel comfortable, manage your time yourself, your employer is only interested in results, not means. And this means switch from time based work to task based work - which in fact is a return to natural state.
Wouldn't you like to spend your day at home, with your family, just retreating to your home office if you need to focus a bit more on work, have a lunch at home with your wife and kids than to commute everyday, order a pizza for lunch, and then spend an hour and a half driving back home? Do you like explaining to your boss that you have to take a day-off because of some reconstruction in your house or something?
With a laptop I can do my work while laying on my sofa and listening to my favourite music on my home stereo - and that is when I am really productive.
Cheers
Raf