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As a strong believer in open source I might be a bit biased here, but there’s one thing that puzzles me. Why aren’t companies more eager to have people innovate on top of their products?
Look for example at Intel. Back in 1990 they published complete instructions how to program the 80386 processor and accompanying chipset. The result? A young Finish student started to play with his new system and started a little project that went on to change the world of computing – Linux. Today Intel is still the most open and active supporter of open source out there (and yes, I might be even less objective here, given that I work for Intel – on the other hand it means that I know exactly what I am talking about when I say this).
Understanding the huge success that was caused by this openness, I am completely stunned to see other companies go out of their way to prevent people from innovating on their platform. Take Motorola. The Ming is a great phone, but there is no working SDK. Or even worse the iPhone. Where Apple is actively trying to prevent people from running third party software on the phone, to the extend of bricking phones that had non-Apple software installed on them.
That has two consequences. First, many innovators (and, btw, potential customers) are scared away and will simply not buy the product. That seems dumb. And second, the most enthusiastic people who aren’t scared off by these tactics are now wasting their time hacking the firmware over and over again (and they are succeeding, mind you… regardless how many smart people are working for a company, there will always be more smart people outside that company). These smart, enthusiastic people could instead be spending their time on creating the next killer application – which likely would even more increase the market for the product.
As I said, I don’t get it.
