I've been ranting a lot around the office lately about our IT decision not to support mysql server and their failure to explore, encourage, and support the use of open source software applications in the classroom and office. The essay "What Business Can Learn from Open Source" nicely touches on some of my concerns.

Lately companies have been paying more attention to open source.

Ten years ago there seemed a real danger Microsoft would extend its monopoly to servers. It seems safe to say now that open source has prevented that. A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers.

More significant, I think, is which 52% they are. At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't.

But the biggest thing business has to learn from open source is not about Linux or Firefox, but about the forces that produced them. Ultimately these will affect a lot more than what software you use.

We may be able to get a fix on these underlying forces by triangulating from open source and blogging. As you've probably noticed, they have a lot in common.

The author goes on to highlight three "big lessons open source and blogging have to teach business":

(1) that people work harder on stuff they like,
(2) that the standard office environment is very unproductive, and
(3) that bottom-up often works better than top-down.

I would agree with all three. My own recent frustrations are played out in this last point.

Many employees would like to build great things for the companies they work for, but more often than not management won't let them. How many of us have heard stories of employees going to management and saying, please let us build this thing to make money for you-- and the company saying no? The most famous example is probably Steve Wozniak, who originally wanted to build microcomputers for his then-employer, HP. And they turned him down. On the blunderometer, this episode ranks with IBM accepting a non-exclusive license for DOS. But I think this happens all the time.

Why does it happen all the time? My observation has been that our IT unit, like many we find in universities around the countrry, is so carefully geared to handle potential threats, that it is ill-prepared to capitalize on new opportunities. At its worst, opportunties are even portrayed as no more than new points of vulnerability. Surely, there must be a careful balance between resistance to threat and openness to opportunity. Yet, probably with the best of intentions, strategic planning and investment usually favors the former. Productivity, progress, and quality suffer as a result.

What Business Can Learn from Open Source

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