Open source: corporate playground?

One of the basic tenets of open source is the ability to modify the code to your own purposes. A lot of the most interesting developments in open source are often the result of the “scratch an itch” approach to innovation - having a specific need, finding an open source project that is “close enough” and then modifying it to meet your need.

Many hardware drivers are developed in this fashion for the Linux operating system. When I needed support for a new digital camera, for example, I found it had a chipset similar to the one in an older model. By modifying the code, I was able to get the new model to work (thus “scratching my itch”) and then I released the modification so that other users with the new camera were able to use it.

This dynamic of selfish cooperation - the “gift economy” as it is called - achieves a whole new level when the contributors are enterprises and the “itches” are enterprise-scale problems.  I was speaking recently with an enterprise architect from a large insurance firm who had recently adopted an open source portal. Portals are visualization and integration points in an enterprise; they allow companies to pull in information from different sources and display it all in a single, consolidated view. 

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One of the basic tenets of open source is the ability to modify the code to your own purposes. A lot of the most interesting developments in open source are often the result of the “scratch an itch” approach to innovation - having a specific need, finding an open source project that is “close enough” and then modifying it to meet your need.

Many hardware drivers are developed in this fashion for the Linux operating system. When I needed support for a new digital camera, for example, I found it had a chipset similar to the one in an older model. By modifying the code, I was able to get the new model to work (thus “scratching my itch”) and then I released the modification so that other users with the new camera were able to use it.

This dynamic of selfish cooperation - the “gift economy” as it is called - achieves a whole new level when the contributors are enterprises and the “itches” are enterprise-scale problems.  I was speaking recently with an enterprise architect from a large insurance firm who had recently adopted an open source portal. Portals are visualization and integration points in an enterprise; they allow companies to pull in information from different sources and display it all in a single, consolidated view. 

This particular portal is Liferay and is licensed under the MIT license, which is very similar to the Apache license and provides substantial freedoms for commercial use and modification. Liferay can display interactive “portlets” (embedded mini-portals) which support the JSR-168 and WSRP standards.

The enterprise architect who brought this open source project into his company was surprised to find that many of the contributors to the project were other large corporations: “Other companies had invested resources into the project and contributed a lot of code.” This made the open source project a lot more than just another IT “product.” The open source community that emerges around such projects is a focal point for collaboration between companies pursuing similar goals.

Each contributing company may have a different itch that they are scratching, but they all focus on the enterprise features - scalability, portability, interoperability, security and so forth. The end result is customer-focused design and software development on a level not possible with proprietary projects. Since each participating company is an end user and a developer at the same time, the resulting code reflects both their needs and their unique expertise in enterprise systems. 

Of course, Liferay is one of many open source projects that are experiencing broader enterprise adoption.  Some other projects include Apache, JBoss, MySQL, Postgress, Asterisk, and Snort. All of these projects can boast features that are comparable to established commercial offerings. They can also boast comparable (if not better) total cost of ownership and security. But for IT executives, the ability to influence the project means that such projects can be sources of highly focused and rapid innovation.