Slashdot Mirror
Innovation Happens Elsewhere
Nochiel writes "What is open source and why should businesses care? Why is innovation important and why isn't our company innovative? Why does it seem like everyone else is innovating while we aren't? How can we leverage Open Source? How can we implement an Open Source business strategy?" Read on for Nochiel's review.
Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Stratgy
author
Ron Goldman and Richard P. Gabriel
pages
377
publisher
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
rating
8
reviewer
Nicholas Ochiel
ISBN
1558608893
summary
How to introduce open source into the enterprise as a viable and valuable business strategy.
This is a book about open source in the enterprise. It seeks to answer those questions and more. Finally, the Open Source Process has been codified in a manner that gives management the business perspective they have been yearning for.
Too often, Open Source come across as a religion. Ron Goldman and Richard Gabriel, through their sober treatment of the topic, successfully detail all the pragmatic aspects that a business should consider.
This book, to paraphrase the authors: ..is for anyone interested in a better understanding of open source--its larger history, its philosophy--, and its future prospects.
It is licensed under a Creative Commons License and is available at this link.
Chapter 1 presents the problem that the modern enterprise faces, namely: how to ensure high levels of innovation and productivity.
The reader is then introduced to the "innovation happens elsewhere" problem: High productivity requires doing less in order to produce more. This, in turn, necessitates being able to leverage other individuals'/companies' efforts. A company, therefore, has to recognize that there are more innovative forces outside the company than in it. By using these forces, a company can maintain a competitive edge. Open source is then presented as a solution to the problem.
The rest of the chapter opens the readers mind to the "new" new way of doing business., illustrates why open source is a viable business strategy and introduces the most important aspect of open source: community.
Chapter 2 discusses the "innovation happens elsewhere" dilemma in even more depth. The authors have a keen understanding on the power of the Commons and how it can make a difference.
In order to illustrate how the Commons can make a difference, the authors use the history of the Web as an example. They highlight the fact that it was built as a volunteer effort with no central planning and a small set of simple protocols. The growth of the internet then came primarily from volunteer efforts.
In this chapter, the authors successfully illustrate that a modern business can succeed only by leveraging the creativity of the Commons and engaging in conversations with a broad and dynamic set of participants in the given problem space.
Chapter 3 then tackles the most important question that managers ask: What is Open Source?
This chapter details the philosophical tenets of open source, the root of the zealotism as well as the history of open source. Many readers will find it interesting that, in the past, open source was the default methodology for leading software and scientific work!
Common myths and misconceptions are also addressed. The authors also provide an interesting comparison of the open source and agile methodologies showing how open source borrows from the strengths of the latter.
The secret sauce in open source is revealed and the various sections along the open source continuum are discussed. In particular, the authors address the value of gated communities and internal open source, a valuable discussion for those managers who wish to introduce open source into their company slowly or even extract value from only a subsection of the open source value chain.
This chapter is a complete description of the open source phenomena. As such, it can easily stand on it's own if one is looking for a quick primer.
Chapter 4 concerns itself with the business reason for adopting open source, how to develop an open source business strategy and how to create a business model that supports the open source strategy. Sun's NetBeans platform is used as a case study to illustrate the various aspects of an open source business.
This section gives possible reasons why you should open source your product as well as why you should use open source. This chapter is directed at the business strategist who wishes to understand how to implement an open source strategy and measure it's success.
Chapter 5 provides a discussion of the legal aspects of open source. It details the nature of a license, the structure of copyright, patents and types of licenses. It also covers multi-licensing, contributor agreements and licenses for documentation.
Chapter 6 concerns itself with the workings of the open source development process. An open source product is not so different from a proprietary one. It has versions, minor and major releases as well as a typical product life cycle.
The differences, where they do arise, are in the new infrastructure (and management of the same) as well as the additional responsibilities that developers are expected to take as they engage the community.
The authors also discuss joining an open source project. In particular, they emphasize that it is valuable to join an existing project if that project is already targeting the niche/functionality you wish to address with your project. This is important because it generates goodwill within the community.
Finally, open source within the company is discussed with case studies from IBM, HP and Sun.
Chapter 7 makes note of the fact that open source initiatives generally begin with middle management. As a result, middle managers encounter a number of challenges: The need to convince upper level management, get approval, acquire resources and set up the infrastructure.
This chapter provides valuable advice and strategies for individuals in this situation. (I wish I had read this chapter while at my previous employment. It would have saved me a tonne of grief.)
Chapter 8 assumes that the project is up and running. The mailing lists are functional and the public repositories are bursting with bleeding edge code. How, then, do we harvest the innovation that is happening elsewhere and build momentum?
After reading this chapter, the reader understands the value of marketing and community outreach. This is particularly valuable especially because it comes from two prominent members of the Sun community. (Sun, is the king of marketing. Their marketing efforts have made Java a household name and tool.)
Chapter 9 provides a summary of the gotcha's at various stages in the open source journey. At first, this chapter seemed superfluous as it repeats much of what has been said in previous chapters.
Upon review, however, the chapter becomes useful as a reference guide for managers as they tackle the problems that arise during implementation. The section on "recovering from mistakes" is particularly useful because a proprietary closed source company is typically used to hiding it's mistakes from customers and the world at large. The authors emphasize that it is important and valuable to fail in public especially if this failure is accompanied by an effective solution.
In Summary the title of this book is deceptive. I would have been better titled: Professional Open Source: A Manger's Guide. It is a lucid and accurate treatment of the topic.
The authors' concept of the commons is very interesting. It is one composed of things whose basic value is not diminished by making a copy. This, in my mind, is amazing! Does this mean that all projects should be open sourced? After all, software increases in value proportionally to the number of people to whom it's distributed.
The book also manages to dispel the myth of first mover advantage. In fact, first mover products rarely have the required quality to dominate the market. Perhaps this explains why open source products are rapidly eroding the market share of established applications. The proprietary stuff was a first mover relative to open source. It's quality was so bad that open source now presents a mature solution that actually works! (I can't help thinking about Zimbra in that regard)
Perhaps the most important message of the book is that there are smarter people in the world and they don't work for you! To paraphrase the authors:
This book should be at the bedside of any manager who is either delving into the open source world, wishes to understand what open source has to offer or seeks to clarify why open source as a business strategy will erode the market share of proprietary companies."
This is a book about open source in the enterprise. It seeks to answer those questions and more. Finally, the Open Source Process has been codified in a manner that gives management the business perspective they have been yearning for.
Too often, Open Source come across as a religion. Ron Goldman and Richard Gabriel, through their sober treatment of the topic, successfully detail all the pragmatic aspects that a business should consider.
This book, to paraphrase the authors: ..is for anyone interested in a better understanding of open source--its larger history, its philosophy--, and its future prospects.
It is licensed under a Creative Commons License and is available at this link.
Chapter 1 presents the problem that the modern enterprise faces, namely: how to ensure high levels of innovation and productivity.
The reader is then introduced to the "innovation happens elsewhere" problem: High productivity requires doing less in order to produce more. This, in turn, necessitates being able to leverage other individuals'/companies' efforts. A company, therefore, has to recognize that there are more innovative forces outside the company than in it. By using these forces, a company can maintain a competitive edge. Open source is then presented as a solution to the problem.
The rest of the chapter opens the readers mind to the "new" new way of doing business., illustrates why open source is a viable business strategy and introduces the most important aspect of open source: community.
Chapter 2 discusses the "innovation happens elsewhere" dilemma in even more depth. The authors have a keen understanding on the power of the Commons and how it can make a difference.
In order to illustrate how the Commons can make a difference, the authors use the history of the Web as an example. They highlight the fact that it was built as a volunteer effort with no central planning and a small set of simple protocols. The growth of the internet then came primarily from volunteer efforts.
In this chapter, the authors successfully illustrate that a modern business can succeed only by leveraging the creativity of the Commons and engaging in conversations with a broad and dynamic set of participants in the given problem space.
Chapter 3 then tackles the most important question that managers ask: What is Open Source?
This chapter details the philosophical tenets of open source, the root of the zealotism as well as the history of open source. Many readers will find it interesting that, in the past, open source was the default methodology for leading software and scientific work!
Common myths and misconceptions are also addressed. The authors also provide an interesting comparison of the open source and agile methodologies showing how open source borrows from the strengths of the latter.
The secret sauce in open source is revealed and the various sections along the open source continuum are discussed. In particular, the authors address the value of gated communities and internal open source, a valuable discussion for those managers who wish to introduce open source into their company slowly or even extract value from only a subsection of the open source value chain.
This chapter is a complete description of the open source phenomena. As such, it can easily stand on it's own if one is looking for a quick primer.
Chapter 4 concerns itself with the business reason for adopting open source, how to develop an open source business strategy and how to create a business model that supports the open source strategy. Sun's NetBeans platform is used as a case study to illustrate the various aspects of an open source business.
This section gives possible reasons why you should open source your product as well as why you should use open source. This chapter is directed at the business strategist who wishes to understand how to implement an open source strategy and measure it's success.
Chapter 5 provides a discussion of the legal aspects of open source. It details the nature of a license, the structure of copyright, patents and types of licenses. It also covers multi-licensing, contributor agreements and licenses for documentation.
Chapter 6 concerns itself with the workings of the open source development process. An open source product is not so different from a proprietary one. It has versions, minor and major releases as well as a typical product life cycle.
The differences, where they do arise, are in the new infrastructure (and management of the same) as well as the additional responsibilities that developers are expected to take as they engage the community.
The authors also discuss joining an open source project. In particular, they emphasize that it is valuable to join an existing project if that project is already targeting the niche/functionality you wish to address with your project. This is important because it generates goodwill within the community.
Finally, open source within the company is discussed with case studies from IBM, HP and Sun.
Chapter 7 makes note of the fact that open source initiatives generally begin with middle management. As a result, middle managers encounter a number of challenges: The need to convince upper level management, get approval, acquire resources and set up the infrastructure.
This chapter provides valuable advice and strategies for individuals in this situation. (I wish I had read this chapter while at my previous employment. It would have saved me a tonne of grief.)
Chapter 8 assumes that the project is up and running. The mailing lists are functional and the public repositories are bursting with bleeding edge code. How, then, do we harvest the innovation that is happening elsewhere and build momentum?
After reading this chapter, the reader understands the value of marketing and community outreach. This is particularly valuable especially because it comes from two prominent members of the Sun community. (Sun, is the king of marketing. Their marketing efforts have made Java a household name and tool.)
Chapter 9 provides a summary of the gotcha's at various stages in the open source journey. At first, this chapter seemed superfluous as it repeats much of what has been said in previous chapters.
Upon review, however, the chapter becomes useful as a reference guide for managers as they tackle the problems that arise during implementation. The section on "recovering from mistakes" is particularly useful because a proprietary closed source company is typically used to hiding it's mistakes from customers and the world at large. The authors emphasize that it is important and valuable to fail in public especially if this failure is accompanied by an effective solution.
In Summary the title of this book is deceptive. I would have been better titled: Professional Open Source: A Manger's Guide. It is a lucid and accurate treatment of the topic.
The authors' concept of the commons is very interesting. It is one composed of things whose basic value is not diminished by making a copy. This, in my mind, is amazing! Does this mean that all projects should be open sourced? After all, software increases in value proportionally to the number of people to whom it's distributed.
The book also manages to dispel the myth of first mover advantage. In fact, first mover products rarely have the required quality to dominate the market. Perhaps this explains why open source products are rapidly eroding the market share of established applications. The proprietary stuff was a first mover relative to open source. It's quality was so bad that open source now presents a mature solution that actually works! (I can't help thinking about Zimbra in that regard)
Perhaps the most important message of the book is that there are smarter people in the world and they don't work for you! To paraphrase the authors:
Regardless of how smart, creative and innovative you believe your organization is, there are more smart, creative and innovative people outside your organization than inside. In addition, the majority of elsewhere doesn't particularly care to make products in your space.
This book should be at the bedside of any manager who is either delving into the open source world, wishes to understand what open source has to offer or seeks to clarify why open source as a business strategy will erode the market share of proprietary companies."
Yo, Slashdot editor, you forgot to add "Book Review: " to the title!
Is slashdot going to innovate like Digg is doing?
what are some examples of innovation in Open Source software? My coworker maintains that Open Source software only copies already existing ideas and makes the software/source code free. What would be some good examples of software/concepts that were born in Open Source software?
It's really great to see business going open source with projects these days. It's creating more of an awareness amongst freelance developers of what commercial businesses are doing codewise in applicationd evelopment and hopefully it will become more of a norm.
www.osbc2004.com/ Does an open source conference, 2004 being last years. It encourages the development open source for projects in larger scale companies.
A lever is a simple tools consisting of a load, force, moment arm, and pivot or fulcrum. It multiplies force through a reduction in distance. So how then, is open source leveraging a given company, and what's the fulcrum in the metaphor? Or does this term continue to get used time and time again just because levers sound like something smart people use?
Why is the parent modded troll? He asked an honest question that a coworked posed and he hadn't been able to answer. Frankly, most open source applications do copy or imitate existing proprietary software. Or is someone going to suggest that Open Office is something completely new and exciting? I know there's some original open source applications out there, but I personally can't think of any off the top of my head.
"Let's talk about the question of why people are wealthy. There is a myth that it's a function of enormous personal attributes... the individual wealth which is generated in this economy is, in my judgment, and I doubt that there is much that anyone could disagree with about this, is a function of the innovative businesses which are created as a result of federal research. But you understand that the people who benefit from that research get it free... It starts from this incredible research activity which is going on with federal money."
-- Bill Gates Sr., 2003
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Personally, I think that innovation is overrated in the tech world. Sure, it's important, but how many of the products that you use on a daily basis are truly innovative in their own rights? And how many are simply other people's innovations put together in a nice package that works well? For every 1 innovative product, there are 100 others that aren't. And the 100 others will on the whole work better than the 1 innovative one.
For example, how many people want to drive an innovative car? I prefer my car to use time tested technology. Not the latest "innovative" breaking system that may or may not work all the time.
Now, don't take this to mean I don't like innovation. I do. But that shouldn't be the deciding factor for any product. Saying something is innovative says that it's new and untested. That may be great for some things, but for most things it's not. I like my non-innovative TCP/IP and non-innovative bash shell, thank you very much (to pick two things that haven't changed all that much over the years). And frankly, I like having consistency in the other applications I use, like word processors and web browsers.
So I agree with the book, innovatition is not as important as a good overall product.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
In Summary the title of this book is deceptive. I would have been better titled: Professional Open Source: A Manger's Guide.
I guess the barn animals can read this to find an open source of food.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I thought the web mostly started as a text only protocol developed at CERN. Then the open source NCSA webserver and browser came along adding graphics. Apache was patches to NCSA.
The Internet, as a practical matter, was developed as OSS. TCP, UDP, IP, and DNS were essentially OSS efforts. The World Wide Web was as well -- in particular, most servers have been OSS since its data's been available. "Rsync" is a clever way to keep files synchronized, widely used, and is OSS. Tcl, Perl, Python, and PHP essentially created the web "scripting languages" domain, all OSS. As with any story, it's all complicated; some of the early efforts were BSD-licensed, so proprietary versions started appearing later (obscuring the OSS origins). But anyone who thinks that OSS only copies pre-existing work is ignoring the evidence.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I'm just sayin'.
Most organizations I have been a part of have broken pieces of their anatomy striving for innovation - either physical prdouct or business process innovation. Whereas if they had just worked hard to improve what they were already doing by, say, 20%, so much additional money would have flowed in that eventually it would have created enough serendipity for an actual innovation to break out (read the Thorn/EMI CAT scanner case from HBS).
But digging in and doing the hard, dirty work of improving actual operations 20% (without the use of million-dollar miricle consultants) is a lot less fun than chasing the next Google or transistor, so in my experience it rarely gets done.
sPh
"Leveraging innovation". C'mon. I'm a business person, and even I have no clue as to what "leveraging innovation" is supposed to mean. The only reason that I'd choose Open Source is if it improved my bottom line, in some way. I can't pay my bills with "innovation". I can't sell "innovation".
This book sounds like a salesman trying to convince you that you really, really do need this product. If it's not blatently obvious why I need that product, then I generally don't need it. This sounds like a solution looking for a problem. Explain to me in a sentence or two what the problem is that I'm apparently missing (we don't use any open source software other than VNC, and even that's being replaced soon). I shouldn't need an entire fucking book (that I have to buy) trying to sell my on something that I really doubt that I need.
I don't respond to AC's.
er, Freedom, my friend.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
What I want to know is how do organizations make money in the open source world? A service model seems the most obvious, but then again development services seem best suited for areas with cheap labour (i.e. China & India).
Eventually, I could see IP and code as a sort of currently... perhaps that is where things are going. Even computer geeks need to eat and buy stuff from time to time though.
Microsoft has abused this term to the point it is utterly meaningless.
lets find a new word to describe what this USED to describe.
oh, thanks billg
Why toss this guy some referral cash and encourage his post-the-same-link-in-every-single-book-review -so-I-can-get-a-few-cents behavior? Truly sad.
Harvesting the innovation of others via open source is hardly beneficial innovative. This does not distinguish a company from anyone else. By the very definition of open source, everyone gets to benefit from this sort of "innovation", including my competitors. Where is the value added?
The problem is not lack of innovation, but lack of innovation that is exclusive to my business. I can leverage open source. Fine. But innovation must then come from another quarter.
I read
Is it just me or does every book reviewed on slashdot seem to receive a rating of "8"?
Bradley Holt
"Why is innovation important and why isn't our company innovative? Why does it seem like everyone else is innovating while we aren't?"
Slightly off topic, but comments like these from businesses drive me nuts. This is coming as I recently had to attend an "innovation" seminar that was "voluntary" but still mandated that I attend. While there, the majority of the people saw it as a waste of time, while management saw it as "encouraging" innovation in the company. I understand that as a business, a company wants to know of possible ideas stuck somewhere within it's interior that might not normally be shown. However, I feel that trying to force innovation, or leadership, or any of those other intangibles is doing nothing more than lining the pockets of those BS business management companies and motivational speakers. Innovation isn't taught, it's cultivated. You can't send people to workshops and all of a sudden have an influx of new innovative ideas. I believe you have to run your company in an atmosphere that caters to that. It doesn't help if you're in a stagnant industry that is resistant to change, either. And I don't believe that rampant innovation can happen anywhere, in any industry.
The same goes to all the BS leadership training that is everywhere. You can't teach leadership - you either possess the skills or you don't. It's a personality thing. Trying to force morons to lead who aren't good at it winds you up with all of the PHB horror stories. Let's just face it, we can't all be great leaders in anything. Some of us are destined to only be cogs in the greater machine, and the sooner we all realize that and management stops trying to shove crap down my throat, the sooner we can go back to work and actually *do something productive*.
Heh, there's my rant for the day....
I know I haven't RTFB but from above it sounds like "here is a buzzword. other companies have buzzword which is helping them succeed. how can we use buzzword to profit?" Buzzword might as well be anything, just the latest popular scheme amongst management.
> Apache is a patch on some closed source product?
Kinda. It originally was based on the public-domain EMWCACS Web server, from the University of Edinburgh.
And the Viola Web browser was not open source.
Why does it seem like everyone else is innovating while we aren't? How can we leverage Open Source? How can we implement an Open Source business strategy?"
Yeah, I've got a jargon generator that can write that stuff too.
"Leverage" is a dead giveaway on its own, but put "innovating" and "strategy" next to it and there's no way this piece of text passes the Turing Test!!
...destagnate? It's a perfectly cromulent word.
I realize that this post came off sounding harsh... I didn't intend for it to be argumentative. I just *hate* this kind of meaningless terminology. I don't have time for it. I guess the assumption by the author is that every business owner is just sitting around in an office, thinking about "innovation" and "leverage" (that one actually is useful, but in a completely different context), and "synergy" and other such nonsense. I own a business, and a sample of what I'm concerned about right now is: getting through the rest of the holiday season with my sanity intact (short term), and paying down debt (long term), employee retention (long term), whether I need to get a toilet replaced (short term) and possibly whether my front door is going to break again any time soon (short term). I'm not sitting back in a Herman Miller chair talking with my board in a $50/sq ft. office thinking about "innovation". I'm busting my ass. I know a lot of other business owners that are in similar situations, and I don't know a single one that would care about "innovation" or "freedom", or any other such nonsense.
Now, back to hauling dog food...
I don't respond to AC's.
Breakfast served all day!
The book's introduction alone outlines the entire idea behind open source. Even though the book is focused as a buisness strategy, it spreads into other aspects of open source.
You know, it's kinda hard to be "innovative" when you get exactly bupkis out of it other than having your job outsourced to some country you can't even pronouce. It's also disheartening to do something that it is good for your employer only to discover that your staff gets cut so that that some honcho can get a 6 figure bonus for "saving money" by firing your guys. Worse yet, you have companies like TWA where the rank and file has not had a raise in 10 years. During that 10 year period, the employees have been asked to take 3 pay cuts. They're currently having a sick-out because they're being asked to take a 4th pay cut. To make everything really rosy, they just found out that one the executives that got let go has a $4 million dollar a year golden parachute for the next 5 years. They get pay cuts and he gets $20 million. In that kind of atmosphere, who even wants to "innovate" or do much of anything else for their employer?
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
I'd argue that big companies don't innovate. Individuals and small groups innovate - sometimes they release source code, others not. PKzip and Flight Simulator also come to mind. Autocad started as a very small team that formed a startup. I suspect there are lots of major commercial apps that are copies of something done outside the company, or started small and just grew. Please name one real innovation from MicroSoft - the largest software company in the world. And please do your homework before naming it so people don't have to show you the prior art.
I'm not saying innovation is in open source here, just that it's generally not coming from big companies. Sometimes the little guy tries to make a buck instead of giving away new stuff.
(This is not meant as an endorsement of this book, as I haven't read it, but come on, dude. If you don't RTFA at least RTF summary!)
Breakfast served all day!
I wonder how the authors would have analyzed the current state of affairs with Nessus, a popular security scanner tool. So many Nessus frontends are being sold as products by their competitors that they have gone the other way and closed their source. They even took the time to poison the codebase in the last free version to make their competitors look like fools for simply repacking their software.
I'm not trying to troll, but I'm just wondering about the cases where there are a multitude of other companies interested in selling products in your space.
I don't think that's a fair statement...
"...how many of the products that you use on a daily basis are truly innovative in their own rights?"
It's not so much how many *ARE* innovative, it's how many *WERE* innovative at the time they were introduced.
There's a big long adoption curve between the Innovators and Technology enthusiats through the early adopters, before you get to everyday use by pragmatists (and longer, before you get through to the conservative back end).
Pretty much *everything* you use on a daily basis was, at one point or another in its adoption cycle, innovative for its time.
If you don't see this, I'd probably have to class you as a late adopter conservative, or even a skeptic/laggard: the reason you're not seeing everyday use of things that are innovative is that by the time you choose to use them, they are no longer innovative, they're established products and technology.
What you're actually talking about - and the book is talking about - is Theodore Levitt's "Whole Product" idea... which, while it has some merit if you're trying to take a product to market, is not really related to innovation, at least in the sense of Geoffrey Moore's "The Innovator's Dilemma".
-- Terry
It still is the default methodology in science.
Seriously.
And I am going anonymously here so I am not trying to stoke my karma either.
What happened was that I made an actual innovation for my company. To save bonus money I normally would have gotten they decided my job was not needed in the new organisation. I am not the only person this has happened to, the moral seems to be: don't innovate for others. Quit your job, wait it out and start up for yourself.
Businessoids seem to think that the tech crew is there to be conned.
The above is no comment on the book nor open source. Just saying the verbiage of the article could have been whacked in half and still have said more.
I know about bart's CD, and it's great for what it is.
But I don't know of anything like Knoppix in Windows-world.
Could it be that open source is forcing business to innovate ??
Because if the business product isn't innovative
people could be using open source product instead.
No, I do not thing that open source don't innovate
but I do thing that a business have more resources
to promote there inventions.
Let's just ask the official web economy bullshit generator about this, shall we?:
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
Ok, so first we have to scale real-time metrics in order to benchmark next-generation initiatives and architect synergistic platforms. If we then evolve B2B synergies and synergize vertical models together with our partners, we should be able to cultivate 24/7 channels. And, voila, we have achieved open source innovation leverage.
Easy, isn't it?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Bill? Is that you?
it doesn't mean using a lever means less effort for a given task, the effort is the same, the way the effort is implemented changes: the effort becomes distributed over a longer distance, resulting in the same amount of work being done by working for a longer time at a lower resistance than trying the task without the lever. The entire accumulated sum of work done is the "effort".
Here's my take, based on my experience, working for firms ranging from small (5 employees) to big (>500,000).
1. Small firms have few resources. In the US, estimates are that more than half new small businesses fail in the first 2 years.
2. Successful small businesses innovate, but because of #1, lack the resources to fund say, a full-time development staff, or spend substantially on an open-source project.
3. Successful small businesses grow ever larger, adding layers of management and bureaucracy, because more people and more business means more communication and coordination required. Also, once a firm 'hits the wall' and goes public, if they do, they gain huge amounts of cash but suffer from huge reporting requirements and are instant slaves to the 'hit quarterly numbers' idiocy of public equity markets. Plus, at this point, the early employees/founders quit in disgust because their equity stake is worth $BANK and the B.S. is starting to slop over the edges of the ship. When you have to hire a full-time Human Resources department and publish an employee handbook larger than one typed page, you are pretty well dead in the water from a 'gee, this is a wonderful, innovative, challenging but rewarding place to work' standpoint. Note: My current employer, a large, multinational bak, can barely fit their dress code on one typed page. Their latest 'innovation', announced in a memo 12/20/05, is 'sell more retirement investment vehicles'. The memo classified this as an innovation, so I guess it must be.
4. Successful small business has now become slightly less-fast-growing medium sized business. They have also suffered the corporate equivalent of a lobotomy. It no longer employs leaders, it hires managers and administrators. Employees no longer know, or can know, all the other employees. Teams do not form in the lunchroom over discussions of what is possible, they are engineered by managers who are looking at an org chart populated with job descriptions. Sitting in the lunchroom for two hours with pencils and napkins is a productivity problem, rather than something to be regarded with wonder, hope and respect. The creatives are kept in the advertising department if they are lucky. 'Creative' CS/IT/IS people get paid way too much and have little to no measurable output (these are managers with MBAs, mind you, doing the measurement, in other words, people least likely to 'get' what a solid, disciplined creative process is all about - if you doubt this, ask yourself how many Harvard MBAs run successful small businesses and how many toil for $MEGACORP. You can get an MBA with a focus on entrepreneurship, but many of those I know who did so never opened their own firm, but used the experience to go out and 're-engineer' part of a large firm - not really inovation or leadership in the pure sense) and so are let go.
5. Heat death. 'Real' creatives (innovators) recycle into a new, small firm, where they tell the new, up-and-coming innovators about how they got their start. Newbie's don't listen, but that's ok.
They call it the bleeding edge for a reason. :)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Call me odd, but I still prefer reality. Producing reports that are 'pleasing' to the client but at variance with the facts is IMHO simply not acceptable. There are more honest ways to make a living that don't involve being worried about inserting enough vagueness to survive possible audits.
When consulting and politics collide or even collude, it's time to find another job, I prefer to sleep at night.
MS started by Bill gates doing what? Hey and Paul Allen (well, to be honest, it was about 3% Bill and and 97% Paul and another guy) built an open BASIC interpeter. In fact, I think that you can still find the code on line somewhere.
IIRC, MS borrowed from an open basic compiler to get their own compiler working.
Now, do you use MS's toy database? That is a derivitive of Foxbase, which was a clone of DBase, which WAS a DB from DOD or NSCA or somewhere. It was total public domain when DBase claimed it for their own, and latter Foxbase brought it to the attention of the courts when DBase tried to claim that they innovated it (sound familiar).
Speaking of DBs, do you use Sql Server? It is legal stolen code from Sybase (idiots), which was a modified copy of Ingress. I am not talking about Ingress the company. Ingress was an OSS DB that was created in UC(Berkley|Davis). In fact, Ingress, the company, was some of the original creators of the OSS product taking it on the road in response to Sysbase (and I think DB2).
Of course, I see that it was outlined about the internet, and our browsers.
No, Gates owes a great deal of his success to OSS. Of course, he is just going to bushwhack you for a bit and continue to distort the facts or flat out lie.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
if you look harder, you will find that apace is a straight derivitive of NCSA server. I remember of that well. But don't trust me. Google for the history, or better yet, simply look at the config file for NCSA's server. You will find that the core key values in the file (as well as the context), is ID.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)