GNUBiz / experiences

[Jeremiah Foster]

Diogo Miguel Constantino dos Santos wrote:

>Qui, 2005-05-26 às 13:49 +0200, João Miguel Neves escreveu:
>  
>
>> Eventually we had 2/3
>>highly motivated people that tried to push it forward, but these
>>discussions turned all work impossible and didn't allow us to reply
>>quickly to inquiries. Obviously the problems weren't formal ones, but
>>related to people.
>>    
>>
>
>The lack of hability of most people to commit fully to the goal (for
>economic reasons) was also a problem.
>
>
>With this experience I became convinced that there as to a clear and
>formal structure to define who will do what and when, as well as who
>will benefict from what, that works for every business, without the need
>for the people to think on that every time.
>  
>
These issues are typical business issues, not exclusive to the Open 
Source world.

I think the goal ought to be the creation of enterprises. Then unite 
these enterprises with a network. The goal is not to create single 
entity rather a network of entities that co-operate. Capitalism has 
forged a set of best practices which Open Source vendors can follow to 
increase their profitablity and market share. This allows the spread of 
Open Source software and an income to those who would work exclusively 
with Open Source.

The point is to create an ordinary business, with its hiearchy so that 
reponsiblity is clearly defined and rewarded, but to work with Open 
Source software. Compete on price and quality, let the customer decide, 
provide usable services  and tools - then we can compete on even-footing 
with proprietary software vendors. But we will have the GPL to ensure 
vendor neutrality and we will co-operate across industries and borders, 
we will share ideas.

The idea is not to replace capitalism with distributed software 
development techniques and flat organizational policies, but to 
_exploit_ capitalism to serve Open Source software.

Jeremiah