Business community advocates free markets. But these free marketers fail to understand the meaning of free in “free markets”. If they had understood the meaning in that case, they would have understood the meaning of free in open source too. Business community, talking about the “cost value” in open source and ignoring the “freedom” aspect of it is shocking. That too, when you find a post advocating something like that in the Wikinomics blog, it makes it doubly shocking. Wikinomics is a book about “collaborative value” in the current day world and how it transforms the business world into a win-win situation for both business community and consumers. The blog associated with the book has a post with the following statement
This got me thinking about open source evangelists. These are the folks (you probably have a few in your organization) that for one reason or another believe that open source is always the way to go – that it’s simply better, no matter what. This is the group that doesn’t understand that open source is simply another licensing model, not a religion.
Unlike what the author tries to portray, the problem doesn’t lie with the advocates of open source. Rather, it lies with people like the author of the post and others in the business community and tech media. He calls open source as religion. It just shows his lack of understanding of the word freedom. Can I call all those who clamor for democracy (including, maybe, the author of the blog) as members of a religious group? Can democracy be termed as religion? Let me take up a term that is close to the hearts of the people in business community. The term is “free markets”. Instead of defining the free in the free markets as freedom for buyers and sellers to transact without regulations, if I define it as a market place where all products are free of cost, will the business community accept my argument? When they try to argue that the term means freedom and if I call them as religious preachers, will the business community be willing to accept it? If the business community finds this argument ridiculous, now they will understand how open source advocates feel about those people who try to twist the true nature of open source to their narrow advantage. The freedom offered by open source is the biggest long term advantage the enterprise can get. In fact, cost savings are secondary. The freedom to break open their business from the shackles of any single vendor and the associated flexibility is going to be more important than any cost savings they will have. If the business community cannot understand the importance of the freedom, they are the ones who are going to lose out. Communist empire, USSR, failed because of the lack of freedom not due to the lack of freebies. It is the same freedom that is going to make or break businesses. A smart company that adopts the freedom offered by the open source platform will be successful in the long run. All others will eventually vanish against the onslaught of freedom. In fact, open source movement was formed with the idea to help business take advantage of this freedom. If the business community fails to take advantage of this platform, it is their own funeral. Probably, the author should put his fellow community members on notice rather than the open source advocates. It will be even better if the author tries to understand the idea conveyed in the book “Wikinomics”.
For more articles on the related topic, check out the articles here.
PS: I just bought the book yesterday. After reading the introduction, I get a feeling that the authors of Wikinomics are trying to advocate a philosophy that freedom to collaborate and share will transform the markets in the future. If this is their thesis, the blog author will be better off reading the book deeply.
