“Free and open source from the roots up. “Open source” can be much more than a development methodology. For me, it also constitutes a world view that upends institutionalized notions of competitive advantage that saw their apex in the twentieth century.”
Excerpt from Paul Kim’s “Why I Joined Automattic” published September 9, 2009.
Freedom by Abnel Gonzalez, CC by, Flickr Hosted
I’ve come to think of the people who build open source and free culture into their businesses as not only having the creativity and resolve to put their values at the core of their businesses, but also the foresight and humility to know that the future is always built on the past, that the future is outside of their control, but possibly not their contribution.
This is one of the main reasons I so enjoy working with Matt Mullenweg, Toni Schneider, the rest of the Automattic crew, and the WordPress.com VIPs and WordPress businesses I get to so regularly interact with. I’m ecstatic that Paul has joined us!
But Automattic maintains a number of closed-source, proprietary projects that give it a 20th-century style “competitive advantage” and prevent others from building on them: Akismet, Gravatars, and Intense Debate, for instance. Why is that?
Jared, that is a really good question, and one that I reflect on regularly. Matt (and me as well, but I don’t have the same effect) are always pushing for more to be open sourced, though there are real costs to supporting open source well. It’s tricky to get the peanut butter just right, but I agree a little thin is better than none.
It’s an ongoing process. WordPress, BuddyPress, the P2 theme, numerous plugins, and the projects at http://code.trac.wordpress.org/ all continue to demonstrate awesome progress. I’m also super excited that Raphael Mudge said
After the Deadline will be open sourced as part of the announcement that he and it were joining our team.
Is there one of those particularly that you would participate in if it was open source?
Oh, I don’t think “competitive advantage” has reached its peak. The “people who build open source and free culture into their businesses” are doing so to gain a competitive advantage. You guys work hard on WordPress and your other products to gain a competitive advantage. Don’t tell me you’re not proud to be running at the head of the pack. I use open source for two reasons: it’s free and it’s often better than commercially available alternatives. For me it’s not a religion.
Carson, your interpretation of the quoted text is different than mine, though the conclusion is the same. Open source and free culture definitely be a competitive advantage, and it definitely is for us.
The most fundamental of the “institutionalized notions” that this is contrary to is you have to keep your cards to your chest; proprietary solutions with their secret sauces are essential to being able to compete.
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