The Open Source Business? 297
Ted wonders: "Being an advocate of the open source software movement for some time, I'm wondering how and if the principles of open source software could be applied to a new type of open source business. In a world where people slave away for the sole profit of a board of directors and merciless shareholders, is there room for a new type of organization that throws away the archaic and monolithic organizational structure of today and from there form a company that has its direction dictated by all of the members that run it. An organization where everyone has an equal say in what goes on. There isn't any limit on how many people can be involved (the more the better, in fact) as long as they can be useful. Could this be the way of the future?"
Our first order of business... (Score:3, Funny)
Five bucks says he used Vi to make the whole thing.
Motivating the Employees (Score:2, Funny)
If a small tweak to the startup fee structure were made this could be quite lucrative for all us.
Right now there is a 25 euro signup fee that goes straight into the company coffers. That just doesn't make me feel motivated enough to go out and get the amount of new people to join the venture in order to make it succeed. Now with the following small tweak, we could reward people for signing up coworkers. We will start with a list of 7 unique people.
nightowl03d
nightowl
niteowl
notnightowl03d
not really nightowl03d
really not nightowl03d
nice nite owl who is not that mean old nightowl03d
Now suppose Dave Rhodes wishes to join our open source company. All he does is crosses off nightowl03d adds his name to the bottom, and sends in the 25 euros to the company.
nightowl, would be next in line. Nightowl03d gets 20 euros, and the company gets a 5 euro management fee, At the end of this iteration we would have the following list.
nightowl
niteowl
notnightowl03d
not really nightowl03d
really not nightowl03d
nice nite owl who is not that mean old nightowl03d
Dave Rhodes
So Dave would sign as many people up as he could, (possibly through bulletin boards), every person he signs up, gets to bump off nightowl, move dave up, and add their name to the bottom as follows...
niteowl
notnightowl03d
not really nightowl03d
really not nightowl03d
nice nite owl who is not nightowl03d
Dave Rhodes
Mark Garner
In no time at all Dave will be at the top of the list and making a good income. Hmm, this open source company thing could just work, just so long as people are honest and give proper credit to the people at the top of the list.
Re:Leadership by committee? Doubtful. (Score:2, Funny)
Bad analogy. Some engineers could learn a thing or two from a janitor who instead of being confrontational and droning on about wild ideas that aren't feasible, actually does 8 hours of work.
What you really want to avoid is a bunch of engineers standing around arguing with the janitor thereby preventing him from getting anything done.