Like a lightbulb. Really. Open source makes so much sense to me as a method of enlightment but now I finally understand how it can also lead to financial enrichment. Really. And at the same time, be a catalyst for change.

Wow. Better the world and profit from it. What could be better?

There are some open source tools that are simply amazing. For example, I created over the course of three days a system that initially took me and a team of highly skilled engineers (many) months to develop. And I had to learn the development language and framework in addition to create the system. Of course, it doesn’t have the functionality of a mature system, but at three days old… holy cow!

But profit? Why not give it away for free? And in doing so, solicit feedback and improvements. And keep doing so until it becomes wothy of being a competitor. And then…still give it away for free. Why not? At some point, it becomes eligible to be labeled an enterprise app. And all because I gave it away. For free. And solicited feedback and even improvements.

An enterprise app. In some industries there are enterprise apps that are just evolutionary. With no catalyst for change. Enter the open source app. Used by thousands of solo practitioners. And improved upon as a result of feedback from those thousands of users. It becomes a compelling choice for the enterprise. Why not? Why be locked into an evolutionary product controlled by a sole provider? I’ve seen many “best in class” enterprise apps fail due to bad management decisions. Empower the user by giving them the control. And there is the opportunity for profit. Consulting opportunities to enlighten the user. Just so the user can control their destiny. Who wouldn’t want to pay for that?

We have been witnessing a progression in what we manage, first due to the falling cost of computing power, next storage, and now due to the growing capacities of software functionality and flexibility.

As the cost of computing power began to fall, we were able to manage data, taking the information, practically verbatim from paper forms and tossing it in a database. Far from the ideal of paperless offices we all dreamed about, but a start. And very difficult to retrieve the information in a form other than how it was entered. So we managed the details of the information on the form and its layout. It wasn’t until the software developers gained a better understanding of relational databases and report development did that data begin to morph into information that could be managed. And as the cost of storage fell, the amount of data that could be turned into information grew exponentially. We are now caught in the age of information overload, but we have been developing technologies aimed at making sense of all that information. And the industry is moving along, although predictably and linearly.

It has been over 20 years of being data-centric and information-centric without real, disruptive technological advances. Certainly, Internet technology is disruptive, but it actually aggravated the problem of information overload, not helped it.

The world is shrinking, largely due to the Internet, the falling cost of storage and the associated rise in bandwidth. And as the world shrinks, its information paths grow more complex: information density increases and transmission time decreases thus creating massive amounts of data that are more difficult to comprehend in shrinking time.

Is the solution to improve our existing tools by making them faster and more cost effective? Or maybe to tweak the methodologies about how we approach the problem? These will help manage the problem, but cannot ultimately yield a solution.

As more information becomes readily available more quickly, we need to seek out means to manage our processes, otherwise we will be swamped. No longer can we massage the information to suite our needs, instead we must manage our processes to accommodate the information. If we fail to do so, others will easily pick up where we were left behind.

And because so much information is so freely and widely available, it is no longer our circle of competitors whom we must be weary. Change will come from the unknown or unseen, find and quickly fill an opening, and expand from there. And before it is realized, the spark will become a dominating force because the flexibility in process due to their small size permitted innovate thinking and execution.

We must allow some vulnerability in thinking these days. It is time to stop thinking and acting incrementally (at least in whole). We must yield our methods, although tried and true, to new business processes; processes that are generated from the advances in software development largely due to greater adoption of Open Source Software (see previous blog entry).

As our core competencies morph from managed information to their processes, we need tools to manage those processes. The processes now become tangible assets and must be managed or our managed information will grow less valuable.

Managing business processes as assets will revitalize software growth and become a catalyst for innovative breakthroughs that yield disruptive growth curves.

I’ve often wondered why Moore’s Law for Software does not exist – the evolution of software has failed at keeping pace with the vast changes in hardware.

Could Open Source Software be the panacea for this dilemma?

Truly, even though OSS has been around for years (having participated in it myself in the late 80′s, early 90′s), it’s been only recently that it has been gaining traction.

Are applications the end-result for OSS? As the pool of OS applications have matured and have gained the attention of executives all over, certainly it’s cool, cost-effective and productive to bring OS applications in house.

But the same facts that make these applications serious alternatives at a business level seem to have a deeper meaning.

Software is getting better. And it is getting better faster.

Worldwide collaboration on software projects has necessitated better processes to produce applications that can compete with commercial offerings. And exposing the applications’ strengths and weakness in the form of releasing code to the developer community has served as a proven educational tool.

Through sharing of code and intellectual property, students of OSS now have access to a wealth of resources, and as contributions grow, revolutionary ideas will unfold.

The developers seem to be getting younger. And the code and processes more mature. And the surface area is growing exponentially. I believe we are about to see fundamental improvements in the kinds and quality of software – improvements that are no longer linear.