The concept of open source certainly isn't new. Open source is software that the vendor has published the source code, guides and tools to allow the development community to make modifications or enhancements to the software.
Open source has been around since probably the beginning of the personal computer, so this is hardly a mind-blowing development.
There's an article on PC World today where Microsoft has adopted an open source approach to their mapping software and this has helped them to capture some of the market from Google Maps. As I read this article, it dawned on me that the concept of open source can also be a very strategic one. In a lot of respects, open source essentially adds thousands, if not tens of thousands "free developers" for the application - at least in terms of it being more desirable.
Mind you, I guess that the downside is that the company relinquishes a certain amount of control over the direction that the application takes, but I guess it's like everything else that they've carefully weighed the advantages and the disadvantages.
No comments:
Post a Comment