We recently covered Geoffrey Moore's view on The Future Of IT. Ross Mayfield covers, Geoffrey Moore's speech titled The Role of Open Source Computing at the OSBC meet held recently. Excerpts with edits and comments added:
Open source is a non-proprietary product model, a value added services model (contributed,compensated), a community (self-organizing collaborative, repository of knowledge,forum for sharing best practices - these dynamics simply work). Where is open source in the category adoption lifecycle (where the technology adoption lifecycle is an early subset, the innovator/early adopter part). Early main street to mature mainstreet (indefinitely elastic middle period), declining main street to end of life. Linux is out of the chasm because Solaris is being marginalized, which had fought off NT, but can't fight both. Linux Server OS is passing through tornado.
• Linux Client OS is in early adopter phase
• Embedded Linux is in Early market
• Firefox is in the chasm (this is progress, it means you have achieved a constituency in the early market and you need to appeal to new constituencies, some don't want to go there [e.g. plugin madness])
• MySQL is in the Bowling Alley -- a persistent economic entity, which allows people to build out infrastructure on top if it
• JBoss - late market
• Apache - late market
• Enterprise Consulting - main street
• Support Services - main street
The Economic Significance: the Internet was a critical enabler to allow the collaborative behavior to happen.Developed company economies face competition, driving efficiency to sustain the unsustainable lifestyle.
• Strategy 101: Competitive advantage is how you create returns above others.
• Core: any process that contributes directly to sustainable differentiation leading to competitive advantage to target markets.
• Context : All other processes required to fulfill commitments to one or more stakeholders.
Commoditization takes all the earnings of the industry down. Managing core and context is center stage. Core is what you choose to be different about.If you are Dominos, the Pizza is context, 30 minutes is core. What ever you have that is core, however, becomes context over time. We are horrible at managing less differentiated goods. Scarce resources get tied up in context. Context build-up: what once made them great now leads to weakened competitive performance and lower returns on invested capital. Need more healthy processes to extract resources from the context to the core. Open source's most important role is to commodities context processes so people can extract them and re-purpose them for the core.
How Open Source succeeds: As a community - drives competition culture nuts, can't find the enemy. A Collaborative - you give before you receive (all Prisoner Dilemma games have this as the winning strategy).Collaboration cultures go sour when they become self-serving, clubby and self-indulgent. As a Cooperative - have to be disciplined with your scarce resources. Notion that everyone has a veto is a hard way to work in practice. Seek alignment,with patience.
How Open Source fails: Slips into a Control Culture; bureaucracy of standards organizations (we have seen this movie before, but this is now a collaborative exercises that is entrepreneurial - but this is the thing that got us last time), majoring in minors, co-opted by vested interests. Slips into Cultivation Culture: ego inflation and demagoguery, tyranny of political correctness. Geoffrey's style is inimitable, content deeply insightful. Must read for all
Category : Opensource
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