LinuxPlanet: Think Tanks in the Age of Linux

“Who Needs a Think Tank, When You Have an Army of
Developers?”

“It didn’t make a lot of headlines over the long Easter weekend,
but the decision to close down Interval Research, a think tank
funded by Paul Allen with the mandate to create breakthroughs in
computing technologies, should be noted by everyone committed to
Linux and Open Source technologies.”

“You don’t need to gather a set of Big Thinkers to do great
things: the rather motley crew of Linux kernel hackers and
developers gave birth to a new way of creating useful and neat
technology, and they were assisted in that efforts by literally
thousands of programmers joining the fray. Whether contributing
code to the KDE Team or refining the essential gcc compiler for the
Free Software Foundation, these passionate developers showed that
collaboration on a massive scale could outdo anything created under
heavily controlled circumstances.”

“And to that end we’re seeing Big Ideas come directly to the
marketplace of customers, not saved up for future public
consumption. In the end, Interval Research–despite the roster of
Big Thinkers with rather impressive accomplishments–died because
the marketplace wasn’t willing to sit back and let an oligarchy
come up with the Next Big Thing. The marketplace (in this instance,
the Open Source community) went out and did its own thing, and
we’re all the better for it.”

Complete
Story