Full Article: http://opensource.com/business/10/3/open-source-renaissance
By Brian Gentile, Jaspersoft CEO
It occurred to me recently that the open source movement is
really nothing less than a renaissance.
Perhaps that sounds grandiose, but stay with me.
Take, for example, U.S. patent and copyright protection laws
and policies. They reinforce
proprietary, “closed source” rights and policies. As a result of this system, many substantial
U.S. companies have formed around breakthrough ideas, but incentives are in
place for those companies to guard and protect their intellectual property,
even if others outside the company could extend or advance it more rapidly.
Now, to be clear, patent and copyright protection is
necessary because it properly encourages the origination of ideas through the
notion of ownership. But, too few people
consider the upside of allowing others to share in the use of their patents and
copyrights, because they think such distribution will dilute their value —
when, in fact, sharing can substantially enhance the value. Fundamentally, "open source" is
about the sharing of ideas big and small and the modern renaissance represents
newfound understanding that sharing creates new value.
In many areas of science, the sharing of ideas (even patents
and copyrights) has long been commonplace.
The world's best and brightest physicists, astronomers, geologists, and
medical researchers share their discoveries every day. Without that sharing, the advancement of
their ideas would be limited to just what they themselves could conjure. By sharing their ideas through published
papers, symposiums, and so on, they open up many possibilities for improvements
and applications that the originator would have never considered. Of course, the internet has provided an
incredible communication platform for all those who wish to collaborate freely
and avidly and is, arguably, the foundation for this renaissance.
That’s why it’s ironic that one of the laggard scientific
disciplines to embrace open source is computer science. For the past 40 years, for example,
incentives have been strong for a company to originate an idea for great
software, immediately file a patent and/or register to copyright it, and then
guard it religiously. No one would have
thought that exposing the inner-workings of a complex and valuable software
system so that others might both understand and extend it would be
beneficial. Today, however, there are
countless examples where openness pays off in many ways. So, why has computer science and software
lagged in the open source renaissance?
That computer science is an open source laggard is ironic because
the barriers to entry in the software industry are relatively low, compared to
other sciences. One might think that low
entry barriers would reduce the risk to and promote the sharing of ideas. But,
instead, software developers (and companies) have spent most of the last 40
years erecting other barriers, based on intellectual capital and copyright
ownership — which is perplexing because it so limits the advancement of the
software product. But, such behavior
does fit within the historical understanding of business building (i.e.,
protecting land, labor and capital).
Another relative laggard area — and an interesting
comparison — is pharmaceuticals and drug discovery. When I talk with colleagues about this
barrier-irony phenomenon, this is the most common other science cited (i.e.,
another science discipline that has preferred not to share). But, in drug discovery the incentives not to
share are substantial because the need to recover the enormous research costs
through the ownership of blockbuster drugs is extremely high. In fact, because the barriers to enter the pharmaceuticals
industry are quite high, one might think that would promote openness and the
sharing of ideas, given that few others would genuinely be able to exploit
them. But, once again, the drive to
create a business using historically consistent methods has limited the
pharmaceuticals industry to closed practices.
So, returning to computer science and software, maybe the
reasons for not sharing are based on the complexity of collaboration? That is,
it’s hard to figure out someone else’s software code, unless it’s been written
with sharing fundamentally in mind. Or
maybe there’s a sense that software is art, and I want to protect my creative
work — more like poetry than DNA mapping.
Either way, the renaissance is coming for the software
industry. Software will advance and solve new problems more quickly through
openness and sharing. In this sense,
computer science has much to learn from the other areas of science where open
collaboration has been so successful for so long.
Fortunately, the world of software is agile and adept.
According to research by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle at SAP Research Labs,
during the past five years the number of open source software projects and the
number of lines of open source software code have increased exponentially. The principles that this new breed of open
source software have forged are already leaving an indelible mark on the
industry. Soon, its proponents believe,
all software companies will embrace these fundamental open source
principles: collaboration, transparency
and participation. The course of this
renaissance will be our guide.
I would be interested in your feedback on these ideas
because the open source renaissance is well underway and I plan to be a model
historian.
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