Open source in corporate research
Executive Summary
Large technology corporations keep abreast of new trends and invest in research to ensure their future relevance in the marketplace. This research process often involves the creation of prototype systems, the authoring of academic and industrial papers, and the transfer of technology to product divisions.
Open-source software is software for which the source code is available to users and which can be modified by users. This type of software has, in the past decade, gained steadily in both influence and prevalence. Open-source applications and operating systems are in wide use, both individually and as components in larger systems. Examples include the Linux operating system and the Apache web server. This publicly-available open-source code offers many advantages over proprietary closed-source software.
Throughout industry, many managers and executives have a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to open-source software: ‘if the code is freely available, how can it make money?’
For a typical research project in a company which has hardware as a primary or secondary focus, the selective and strategic release of open-source code can have a net benefit on the success of the project. Specifically, releasing open-source code can help promote a new field and establish the corporation as a market leader. This advantage is especially favourable in situations which exhibit network effects. Potential drawbacks, such as disclosure of intellectual property and loss of competitive advantage, can be mitigated by a careful and strategically-timed release of open-source code.
At Sun Microsystems Laboratories, a project in which the author participated released an open-source software package that was successful in large part because of its open-source nature. The techniques used in the management of the project were quite similar to those described herein.
Note: This report won the Faculty of Mathematics Alumni Work Report Award in Fall 2002.
