How Open Source Failures Equal Success
At Newassignment.net this Clay Shirky thought on open-source failures:
The world’s largest open source site, Sourceforge, hosts more than 100,000 projects, and its most popular software is downloaded tens of thousands of times daily. But most projects have never broken a hundred downloads, and more than half are simply inactive: A project was proposed, but nothing happened.
If the vast majority of open source projects are failures, has the press been wrong to emphasize the movement’s few successes? The answer is-obviously and measurably-yes. So can businesses that face seemingly formidable competition from existing or future open systems breathe easy? Absolutely not. Open systems are a profound threat not only because they outsucceed commercial firms but also because they outfail them. They grow not in spite of failure but because of it.
