Open Source

In my last post I had written about how innovators and entrepreneurs can work with lead customers to develop innovative products and services. Lead customers are like "early innovators" and are looking at substantial profit from using products.

Developers in open source software are more often than not lead customers. They are using these projects as inputs to their work and are actively fixing bugs and making modifications. They are adding back to the pool of common knowledge sometimes for altruistic reasons but more often than not because it makes economical sense to do so. The cost of bug fixing and maintenance is driven down by releasing code to the common pool. Companies relying on software to drive innovation should seriously learn about open source.

The other reason why open source is important because it redefines the software value proposition: the value of software lies in using it and not in owning it. This has also be the central tenet of the SaaS models which I have followed for a year.
I have read and summarized the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S Raymond here:

http://www.slideshare.net/sanjoysanyal/open-source-software/

The book is an important book to read in the Open Source literature – a little too high pitched to my taste and I have tried to take the emotion out and focus on the business learning.