[tlug] Enterprises and Open Source

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Mauro D. Sauco writes:

 > Can someone point me to an essay that explains how Enterprises can
 > benefit from contributing to the Open Source? I am not looking after a
 > doc that explain how software development departments get benefited but
 > how *Enterprises* can gain from this approach.
 > 
 > I tried to google a bit but found no good paper that I can use. 

Eric Raymond has pushed this a lot.  CatB, Homesteading, and Cauldron
each spends several pages on this, although their main focus is on how
open source benefits the development process.  It basically comes down
to 90% focus and 10% PR.  If you need more than that to get people
interested, you're trying to change the wrong company.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/

Hiroo Yamagata has translated all of them into Japanese.  You should
also look into Eric's talks and interviews there.  We gave a joint
talk at the ACM in Tokyo several years ago, I think TLUG cosponsored
anyway we monopolized his drinking time (now there's a monopoly I
won't apologize for!), and he focused on why open source makes better
companies as much as on why it makes better cheaper software.

There's also some stuff on http://www.opensource.org/, but it's
surprising how thin it is.

Larry Lessig's books may be relevant, but you'll have to dig.

For the general idea about focus (you know, corporate mission and all
that) Tom Peter's *In Search of Excellence* is, well, excellent.
Nothing about free software in there, of course. :-)