Maybe it was just a matter of time. Yesterday Reddit went open source, but it’s not alone: Facebook, eBay, Google, and other web companies have increasingly opened their platforms in various ways to achieve competitive advantage.
I’ve been one of the most vociferous opponents of the internet companies “free-riding” on the backs of “open-source 1.0 projects,” but it’s increasingly clear that this phenomenon was a moment in time. A brief one.
The packaged software industry took decades to determine that open source is a winning strategy. (No, Savio Rodrigues, I’m not suggesting that it has settled on a 100 percent open-source strategy.) The internet? Maybe three or four years.
Are we rapidly getting to the point where everything, including the internet, will be flavored with open source to greater and lesser degrees? I think the answer is an unequivocal “Yes.”
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