SQLFusion blogs

...does Open Source really kill innovation?

If there is one key theme most people debate when considering Open Source as a threat, this is most likely regarding innovation.

Read for instance the very good article in the Economist published this past week - Open but not usual - which quotes Steven Weber, a political scientist at the University of California Berkely and author of "The success of Open Source" stating that "Linux is good at doing what other things already have done, but more cheaply - but can it do anything new? Wikipedia is an assembly of already-known knowldege."

The underlying idea behind such scepticism on the ability of an open source model - some sort of communal method of software development - to generate innovation, comes from the belief that innovation has value and if you have an innovative idea, you would rather pursue it for your own profit, than share it with the community and have no take in the resulting benefit. Afterall Bernard Mandeville told us centuries ago that it is better for society as a whole if we are acting as bees looking for our own profit blindlessly, didn't he?

Steven Weber is probably partly true. However it doesn't take into account the indirect impact Open Source can have on the industry as a whole. Take Firefox web browser for instance. That is true that it mostly reuses existing concepts. But the indirect - and positive effect - it has on innovation, is in pressuring Microsoft to move faster in developing and releasing a new, somewhat innovative Internet explorer 7 fearing for its rapidly eroding market share in the web browser market. Additionally, I think we can see all the extension modules being developed on top of Firefox as true example of innovation.

Another good example of how Open Source can push vendors innovation can be found in the article "Oracle: Open source keeps vendors on their toes" in Infoworld. Oracle purchased a few companies involved in producing Open Source software - Sleepycat and InnoDB - and is starting to feel some pressure from an Open Source database vendor, MySQL. It seems clear that Open Source by commoditising what already exists, push vendors to innovate so that they can keep charging businesses that are ready to pay a premium for getting the latest technology.

In conclusion, I would argue that Open Source contributes tremendously to innovation. If only in one way, that is by pushing software vendors to move away from offering "plain vanilla" type of software and bring in new features, new technologies faster and better. The on-going catching-up game between what Open Source can develop and what a professional vendor develops is key to innovation for the overall software industry, including the growing software as a service industry.

I believe that Open Source can innovate itself as well. I mentioned earlier the example of extensions in Firefox, which I haven't seen matched in any other browser. But I would also like to come back to the idea that Open Source is a some sort of a "communal method of developement". That reminds me very much of Kibbutz in Israel, those communes where anybody can come and stay as long as they work for the Kibbutz, no matter what are their skills. Kibbutz 40 years ago where solely farms. Today, many Kibbutz have become places where many new technology are sprouting. I wouldn't be surprised if in the same way, Open Source could become a crucible for software innovation.

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Tag: Innovation | Software | Open Source | Open Source Fusion | SQLFusion | Saas

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One of the most exciting thing in life - in my opinion - is to learn everyday. I asked a few times Philippe about the origins of the Open Source and what drawn him towards it and I was startled by his answer.

He explained to me that Open Source is about Open Knowledge. Years ago, to deal with a server, you needed to be certified in using UNIX. UNIX stations where expensive and rare to find. The documentation was expensive as well: in short knowledge was shared only by a few priviledged people. Then Linux came up and other open source projects, allowing anybody willing to learn about how to use a computer, a server and be programming to do so. Knowledge was finally easily accessible in the programming world.

I heard about another initiave yesterday while meeting with my former teacher in Operation management and learnt about another great initiative to democratize knowledge. The MIT is making available its courses online for free. For French not to be jealous, there is also access to audio record of university courses on the web. Now, those who are curious enough to learn and grow, are no longer blocked by entrance exam they pass or fail, their national origin, or their ability to fund their education: all they need is an access to the web and loads of curiosity.

We are witnessing that knowledge is shared by more and more people. Knowledge becomes accessible to whoever has the desire to learn. That's quite an exciting perspective that knowledge is no longer the priviledge of a few, isn't it?

I was reading a few articles lately which gave me some inspiration for this post. They all come to a conclusion which seems to be pure common sense, but which is way more difficult to apply than we might think.

Whatever we create a software, a painting, a book,etc. this is aimed at one thing: satisfy somebody else. With that said, the best would be to listen the person who will enjoy our product and try to match all this person says she wants to read, see or do.

But if you are the creator and you try to bring novelty, most of the time you first need to come up with something and only after that can you ask "how can I improve my work?". Where it is feasible for a book - that's why writers love their editors don't they ;) - and eventually possible for a painter - see how many versions of a painting exists behind "chefs d'oeuvre" when you look at it with X-rays - the task looks much more difficult with a software. See for instance this excerpt of Marc Benioff interview by Phil Wainewright of ZDnet:

"Once we had the API really working well, then customers really started to hammer me on customization. They would say, 'Why can't I change this tab name, why can't I change this field name, I want to be able to do this, and I want to be able to that.' Well, [we would say] the problem is that the tab name is through the whole documentation. It's in the singular, it's in the plural. It's not just in one language, it's in twelve. And then customers would say, 'Yeah. So what?'

Indeed, "yeah, so what". People who use our software are king and always right. This is what we found out while developing Drag drop site creator, and now Open Source Fusion. We might have some good guesses while developing our software at first, but most of the improvements we bring are results of our customers and software user feedback. We make a rule not only to listen to them but implement systematically their suggestions. And the most exciting is that it works. Ultimately all the hard work spent listening to advises, suggestions and feedback of any kind pays off. Support costs go down, customer satisfaction goes up and you build up the quality of your software.

In conclusion, because this process is at the core of any Open Source project, I believe that Open Source has the key element for delivering higher quality software in the long run.

So who would dare to say that Open Source cannot bring the best quality software in those conditions? :)

For those of you who follow the same blogs as I do, this map will come as no surprise. But if you are not a consistent reader of Dan Grossman, John Batelle or Tim O'Reilly's blogs, then you may be interested in this chart, which tries to summarize how the Web has evolved as a platform.

You can see the map here.

Here are some of the points that I particularly like in this graph. These are what come out of having the Web as a platform (i.e. moving applications from the desktop to the Web):

"You control your own data", "Architecture of participation", "Harnessing collective intelligence", "The right to remix", "Trust your users", "Rich user experience" and "User behavior not determined".

Even then, this graph seems too complex. Do any of you have a more synthesized version of what the Web as a platform will become?