Beyond the black & white: Why Open Source Single Vendor projects matter!
Projects that disrupt markets create different community dynamics than non-differentiating software: that’s where the flexibility of Open Source shines. Bruce Perens described the role of Open Source as a commodity in the 2005 article The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source. When an Open Sourced project is a game-changer or a disruptor the situation changes.
Open Source development is widely regarded as a collaborative model where software is created and distributed under OSI-approved licenses, allowing anyone to access, modify, and share the code freely,
This approach is often adopted to share the costs of development, maintenance, and enhancement, particularly for software that is not a core differentiator for a company. Linux and thousands of other projects are excellent examples.
Foundations or similar organizations enable members to save financially and obtain what they need more quickly, while also handling intellectual property (IP) and coordination.
Unlike classic Club theory, foundations don’t compete for members, as each club specializes in specific technological areas and benefits from positive externalities. They do not suffer from member spillover to other organizations and avoid the free-riding problem, as members who do not participate forfeit any influence over the project (e.g., Nvidia recent change in Linux kernel coding participation).
That said, co-developing non-differentiating software is not the only reason why individuals and organizations release their code as Open Source software.
Read the rest of the article on Open Source Initiative blog.
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