[ Thanks to Matt Asay
for this link. ]
“I’d like to focus on one, in particular, that I think is
absolute genius: Red Hat’s. Oddly enough, I can’t think of a single
other company that uses Red Hat’s model, despite its evident
success. I’m not sure why, except that I do think few understand
the nuances of Red Hat’s model. I’d therefore like to spend a few
minutes trying to unpack exactly how Red Hat operates.“Red Hat’s model is a product of necessity. The company had to
figure out how to survive its lack of code ownership, and found a
brilliant way to turn this apparent deficiency into a strength. In
turn, this has allowed Red Hat to invest in innovation that all
benefit from, but which benefits Red Hat particularly. (As a
related side note, without a good business model, open source and
innovation are at odds–a good business model will allow a company
to heavily innovate, secure that it will be able to profit from
such innovations as much as and more than its competitors…)”