OSS:Impact

Some of the questions that we want to look at and include in our project depending on the depth and the resources available on these subjects are:

As a new company, which path a company should choose?

Lin Huang

I am interested in join the group. Let me know. I have sent mail to you --> let me know, that will help my decision making.

I would study the pros and cons of both, and a case study of using different license model (open source vs using MS platform) and help a new company to choose a business model.

Alexis -- I am not sure that we are planning to go down the licensing road with our project.

Are we becoming dependant on it?

Many projects are using these open source projects as tools within their project either to help prototype a system quickly, part of their build process, or a tool to be used within their system.

Is it helping to drive technology advances?

The startup costs for programming projects, startups, mainstream projects are reduced because of these open source projects. Allowing researchers, students, home hobbiest, etc. to develop projects and programs that are powerful and useful without redesigning the wheel.

Who pays for this technology?

Eclipse a popular Java IDE which is open source was originally driven and developed by IBM. Their goal was to eventually stop driving the development of the product allowing the open source community to continue development. Has eclipse and other project reached this critical mass? Are these really being funded and maintained by people? or is it really being driven by Companies?

Start of Brief Summary

Ted -- Here is my contributions to the one page policy brief. Tell me if this sounds good, and if I should change any of it for my section.

The typical model for R&D is slowly dying out. No longer are big companies like Xerox, IBM, and others be able to drive innovation without the help of others. With less and less money being able to be spent on research, innovations are going to come on a smaller scale and with the driving force of users. Looking at how open source can contribute to this innovation and the benefits, and risks of this model, along with what the world loses with innovation of this kind. Some sources which will be used as starting blocks are:

von Hippel, Eric and Ralph Katz (2002), „Shifting Innovation to Users Via Toolkits,“ MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper, Management Science, forthcoming

Eric von Hippel. 2002. Customers as innovators: A new way to create value. Harvard Bus. Rev. 80(4) 74–81.

Schrage, Michael. 2000. Serious Play: How The World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate, Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge, MA. 38.

Stefan Thomke,“Enlightened Experimentation: The New Imperative for Innovation,” HBR February 2001.