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Harvard Adds Open Source to its MBA Curriculum
mjasay writes to tell us that Harvard has started teaching open source to its aspiring MBA candidates. In the latest issue of Harvard Business Review, Harvard presents business managers with a tough decision: To open source a successful (but increasingly vulnerable) product or guard its intellectual property zealously? As the case study's open source proponent suggests, "Open source is like a rising tide. You either float with it or drown."
Maybe I'm just bitter because then it seems like a game of "monkey in the middle" and they're tossing the code around and won't let me have it. Jerks.
I have to say I disagree. If you look at how Zimbra (open-source Microsoft® Exchange slaughterer) works, it really is a miracle that you get a first-grade email server with CalDav, Jabber, Wiki, self-updating and indexing search, with a MySQL-based message store connected by an OpenLDAP implementation (with capabilities of integrating with other directories) in an interface of commercial quality and usability, you will find that this is open-source wedded with commercial enterprise done right.
And I don't disagree with their business model. I think it is perfectly acceptable for them to ensure that commercial releases are tested thoroughly for QA, and that connectors integrating with commercial technologies such as Outlook or iSync stay commercial. I have no qualms about paying for an Outlook connector or an iSync connector. If you don't pay for the commercial edition, you're on your own like any open-source software. But at the very least, you get to run a mail server that is not crippled and probably a very formidable competitor to Exchange (which sadly can't run in Opera, Safari, or Firefox).
I don't see why you guys don't think this can work. These companies deserve to be rewarded for their hard work, and they are making money by adding value to a product, not crippling it. If you're an all open-source user any way, why would you need an iSync or an Outlook connector? Perhaps the only thing they could do better is change their license to GPL instead of MPL.
Oh, and I hope Microsoft doesn't buy Yahoo. Because your next upgrade path is Exchange, if Zimbra isn't released from a Microsoft merger or forked to a new project.
"It's a prime example of a business trying to get the advantages of the open source development model without giving back to the community."
So everyone who downloads gives back to OSS? Glad to see no one's talking out both sides of their mouth.
The title here is pretty misleading. It reads as if an entire course was dedicated to the issues of Open Source, which would be a good thing. As it is, this is just one case study. If used in a course, it would be read and used in one class session.
These case studies are used in lots of MBA courses, and they are just little stories used to describe a business situation. They often have interesting business problems but they're also often filled with fluff ("Jane showed up at the factory with her DK shoes and her Gucci handbag... can't figure out why the client doesn't take her seriously") and tons of information that is irrelevant to the "problem". I'm sure part of the "training" from these case studies is learning to weed out useless information.
For example, we had one about Eli Lilly and whether they should build a line dedicated to a particular product or use a general purpose/configurable line. The dedicated line had a higher throughput and lower cost but the configurable line could be used for something else if the market didn't develop for the drug. But it would be quite a stretch to say that because we read and discussed a 10 page case study that "Pharmaceuticals" had been added to our curriculum.
The type of course that would have this case study on the syllabus would also have cases on motorcycle parts manufacturing, consultancy woes, and HR problems where people don't work well together. But this is hardly a serious curriculum about Open Source.
The best way to ensure a future for Zimbra, in light of those threats, would then be to re-release it under the GPLv3. Right now, a buyout would be at best disruptive for the project. If the buyout is by MS or Murdock or any other from that anti-business, centralized, command economy crowd, then odds are that Zimbra would be sidelined like Foxpro -- unless it gets GPLv3 coverage first.
Also, it forgets about *using* the software and instead focuses on that fantasy vision about 'selling' software. The vast majority is developed only for in-house use.
That's a great sound bite, but in reality, the big money-making technology is closed. Google, while being a great OSS advocate, will never open source what truly makes them money - their search algorithm. Apple, Adobe, SAP, Symantech, MS, etc, are not going to open their cash cows any time soon and are floating just fine.
OSS is not going away, but to say you have to open or drown is hyperbole. There is room, and reason, for both.
Well, maybe Bill Gates will now finish his degree at Harvard. The question is, will he pass the course?
This is just another indication that, if they can't kill us or piss on us, they're going to try to own us.
I've had occasional dealings with Harvard MBAs. Their arrogance and sense of entitlement, coupled with the hypercompetitive shallowness that characterizes a certain kind of A student, is typical of an especially odious segment of the American ruling elite. I would rather they knew nothing about open source, so that they would be on the losing side and find themselves marginalized and irrelevant, rather than letting them force themselves into leadership positions through their highly refined self-promotion and ass-kissing skills.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
The real point is not to open source ones product. The point is to open source all the commodity overhead programming. If everyone is doing bookkeeping and payroll and inventory, then sharing the maintenance of the software keeps everyone's costs down.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
The first line, in fact:
It's about time that United States elite academic institutions finally got around to not only using open-source software, but also teaching it.
United States elite academic institutions have been teaching open source for quite some time: computer science departments at good schools teach their students to compile their programs using GCC, statistics departments at good schools teach their students to program in R, etc. If business schools are finally starting to hear about this miraculous new idea called "open source" as something other than a Commie plot, that's great, but the phrases "elite academic" and "business school" really don't go together all that well.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.