What Business Can Learn from Open Source
http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html
by Paul Graham
good stuff... reminds me again why I like working from home.
I recommend reading the whole thing, but here are a few quotes.
[...]
> Like open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for
> free, because they enjoy it. Like open source hackers, bloggers
> compete with people working for money, and often win. The method
> of ensuring quality is also the same: Darwinian. Companies ensure
> quality through rules to prevent employees from screwing up. But
> you don't need that when the audience can communicate with one
> another. People just produce whatever they want; the good stuff
> spreads, and the bad gets ignored. And in both cases, feedback
> from the audience improves the best work.
[...]
> Open source and blogging both work bottom-up: people make what
> they want, and the best stuff prevails.
>
> Does this sound familiar? It's the principle of a market economy.
[...]
> So these, I think, are the 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.
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/