The State of Open Source: Startup, Growth, Maturity or Decline?
Stephen O'Grady
To judge by the vigorousness of the defense of its brand in recent
weeks, it seems reasonably safe to conclude that open source can be
evaluated as an institution in certain contexts. Granted, it’s a
problematic approach generally given the fact that open source is not a
single organization, but rather a loose federation of many individual
institutions each with its own goals, principles and philosophies.
And yet for comparative purposes it occasionally is useful to look at
the performance of open source as a whole relative to the commercial,
closed source marketplace: itself a massive collection of independent
entities, notably.
The occasion of OSCON is, in many respects, an entirely arbitrary
endpoint for a check on the health of the phenomenon it is ostensibly
organized around. At the same time, as Tim puts it, OSCON is a
relatively unique gathering of the tribes, which perhaps makes such a
system-wide evaluation entirely appropriate.
Depending on which particular business school text you pick up, you
might have seen the organizational lifecycle stages described as some
approximation of the following:
1. Startup
2. Growth
3. Maturity
4. Decline
We must of course acknowledge the glaring impedance mismatch between
mixed motive movements such as open source and profit-centric
enterprises. Undoubtedly, open source will occasionally, even
frequently, follow a different trajectory than will closed source
alternatives.
Still, if we may see differences between open and closed source
businesses in how they experience those respective stages, it is
nonetheless useful to ask the question: if open source did progress
through a normal organizational lifecycle, where would it be today?
[...]
Continua qui: http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/07/27/open-source-oscon/