Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Why many enterprises aren't contributing to open source
One of the things that I believe is a reason for enterprises not contributing to open source is that it is diametrically opposed to the notion of a full-time equivalent (FTE)...
If you ever been in a large enterprise, many of the process weenies running the asylum encourage heavyweight processes where they attempt to level all software developers into one big category where they are all equal. Non-technical project managers tend to get assigned available resources and schedule projects using the estimates of resources who are otherwise mythical. Have you ever in your travels ran across a developer that had the same level of productivity as another?
Open source introduces variability into the equation and doesn't fit nicely into the FTE mindset of process weenies. Some developers have affinity to one language, architectural style or even product that makes it incredibly difficult to schedule down to the hour what some unknown resource will require in terms of time in order to make adjustments to code.
If you consider large vendors such as Microsoft, BEA and Oracle and the notion of selling a stack, they are successful because they remove variability from the process and enterprises who have non-technicalleadershipmanagement have no choice but to pay higher prices...
| | View blog reactionsIf you ever been in a large enterprise, many of the process weenies running the asylum encourage heavyweight processes where they attempt to level all software developers into one big category where they are all equal. Non-technical project managers tend to get assigned available resources and schedule projects using the estimates of resources who are otherwise mythical. Have you ever in your travels ran across a developer that had the same level of productivity as another?
Open source introduces variability into the equation and doesn't fit nicely into the FTE mindset of process weenies. Some developers have affinity to one language, architectural style or even product that makes it incredibly difficult to schedule down to the hour what some unknown resource will require in terms of time in order to make adjustments to code.
If you consider large vendors such as Microsoft, BEA and Oracle and the notion of selling a stack, they are successful because they remove variability from the process and enterprises who have non-technical
