Yearly Archives: 2005

Open Source: Tree Museums

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SUV among the Redwoods2005 was a great year for open source developers and solutions, with a dramatic boost in credibility, tools and respect.  As part of this, there are an increasing number of companies commercializing open source: adding value through installers, packaging, coordinated releases, technical support, management utilities and formal product planning.

This has the feeling, though, of domesticating the wild spirit of open source and turning it into another IPO-driven, VC-backed, competitively focused economic model.  I’m reminded of Joni Mitchell’s verse from “Big Yellow Taxi”:

“They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
And they charge the people
A dollar and a half just to see ‘em” Continue reading →

Defensive Processes

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New ventures begin with an entirely empty slate: no products, no customers, no desks, no organization charts, no established procedures for creating value.  Only blank pages and empty office space.  This is part of the exhilaration, the chance to do things better and more simply than the last time. Of course, your founding team has lots of experience: ideas about how things get done.  As the product champion, you’ll almost immediately be defining what your startup makes and how it gets delivered. Generically, “processes”. Continue reading →