well, knowing the reactions that the open source idea ALWAYS gets from (non-tech) corporate audiences, we need to include a few points directly addressing the usual criticisms:
- you can’t make money with it
- it’s just a hobby
- people need to be rewarded for their hard work and innovation, so… PATENTS.
I still need to formulate this better, but the points I want to make from a business perspective are:
1. Of course people are sceptical! - 30 years ago when most CEOs learned ‘how the world works’, there was no way to collaborate effectively with unknown others, no way to ensure trust, no tools for distributed collaboration, no population of networked, engaged individuals and organizations, no open source business models.
But the world has changed, the old rules are no longer relevant.:example, example, example, example.
2. Open source knocks out incumbents, breaks monopolies and gives new or smaller entrants a leg up.
Eg. Everyone using Linux to take down Microsoft in the server market and dominate the mobile market, Facebook’s Open Compute in data centers, Tesla’s ‘open patents’ approach to electric vehicles. If your industry is locked in the embrace of a dominant company, chances are that a shared open source infrastructure can open it up and make more companies competitive and innovative. if you currently have a monopoly, you can’t sit on your laurels for too long, the Linux of your industry will be hard to stop. If you get in early, you may learn to diversify your business model and use your existing capital and economies of scale to stay agile and relevant even in an environment where many other companies can more effectively challenge you.
3. For best results, release early, & design for collaboration. We’re not just talking about putting new licenses on the same old products - in order to get the best out of open source development, projects should be designed with collaboration in mind from the start, with others brought in early in order to effectively mutualize costs, while allowing each company and individual to use the common project for their unique needs or business model.
I will re-write a summary of our mission statement to go with this (before the business part, I guess?)
and then finish with a paragraph saying ‘and by the way if you’re curious or you want to get involved, there’s this OSCEdays thing, here’s the link’. There will be all sorts of cool people there - startups! makers! innovation! green tech! industry 4.0! blockchain! internet of other people’s things! buzzwords!
It should only be about 1200 words though.
For participant quotes I think we can leave that for a second article - the days themselves won’t be too much a part of this initial piece, as it’s meant to be more about the theory.
