Bruce Perens: Innovation has gone public

From an interesting assessment of the state of the free and open source software movement, by Bruce Perens, author of the Open Source Definition on Feburary 9,1998.

Bruce tackles the question: where are we ten years on.

Here’s an excerpt dealing with commercialization:

Our most pervasive penetration has been in business servers and embedded systems. These days there are, for the most part, two sorts of businesses regarding Open Source use: ones whose management is aware of how much they depend on Open Source, and the ones where the boss doesn’t know yet.

In contrast, we have not yet achieved the penetration that we might have desired on user desktop systems, at least if you don’t count the fact that Free Software provides a large part of Apple’s MacOS today, and critical elements of Microsoft Windows as well. Both companies have been forced to develop strategies to live with us, some of them less comfortable than others. Today we are seeing much of the value of software move from the desktop to the network, an area in which we are already entrenched. This can only lead to the expansion of Open Source on the systems in individual user’s hands.

There been a phenomenon of wealth creation by Open Source companies, starting with Red Hat’s IPO and leading most recently to the purchase of MySQL for 1.1 Billion dollars seven years after the company’s creation. But I would warn those of you who consider Open Source by its companies: you’re missing the biggest part of the phenomenon. Most Open Source today is software being produced by its users, for its users. The largest part of the payment for Open Source development today comes from cost-center budgets of IT users, be they companies, institutions, or individuals, rather than profit-centers based on Open Source like that of MySQL. By participating in Open Source development, users distribute the cost and risk of the development of enabling technology and infrastructure for their businesses. Their profit centers are not tied to software sales, but to some other business. To find them, look to the communities rather than the companies.

One recent phenomenon has been the appearance of government officials openly on the stage at conferences concerning Free Software. Of late, it’s my turn to speak when the minister has finished his greeting, and they are always announcing some national government initiative concerning Open Source. OK, I speak outside of the U.S. a lot, but even in the U.S. we are seeing Linux (and presumably the GNU system) in a USD$200 Billion defense project with Boeing as the prime contractor. Nobody’s apologizing to the proprietary software industry for doing this any longer. Indeed, we have become such an accepted part of the software industry that most proprietary software vendors make use of Open Source in development or to inter-operate with their products, and many include Open Source components in their products. Only a few remaining bad apples feel a need to fight us.

We have actually changed the way that innovation happens. Innovation has gone public. Many companies, institutions, and individuals share innovation on a daily basis, entirely in the open, through Free Software development communities. The products they produce are the leaders in their field. Public innovation eliminates the high transaction costs of lawyers, lawsuits and licensing. It focuses on building a fertile community across the market for idea creation and utilization rather than dividing the market for the direct monetization of ideas as property. This is the economically most efficient approach for most companies. “

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