eco systems - apps4work/co.a4w GitHub Wiki

"Let's create an eco-system in which lots of programmers invest their time in making my product line better"

That is much easier said than done.

"We are open; we have an API; we have documented a file format".

Good things to be, to do, and to say, but not the whole story.

Open-source - a magnificently powerful movement than can reasonably take credit of much of that which is the Internet and the web, and therefore seismic changes in the human experience. But tell me again, why software should be free?

Richard Stallman famously differentiates between "free" as a in "free Speech" and "free" as in "free beer", and holds that open source is the former and not the latter. The reality is that it is both. Open source is free; the appropriation of value is just a different set of tricks. (Typically charging for services and support).

Much good software is open source. Much good software is written by programmers in their spare time, without the expectation of making money out of it, or written because their projects needed it and they made it available as Open Source because "why not?". Much Open Source software builds on existing open source and the contagious attribute of Open Source licences require the derivative product be open source. This creates headaches for proprietary software companies but seeming not for the general open source community.

But question should not be how do we "take advantage of" the Open Source community -- because they are not going to be taken advantage of. They have as much right to a reasonable reward for the value that they add as anyone else. Actors, and artists, and inventors and designers get paid for the value of their creation, but programmers should be expected to give their value for free?

The eco-system we envisage will have a lot of open source software. The software we have invested in to start the ball rolling will be be open source. We hope that the "utility" Apps for Work that are obviously necessary will be open source, even if we dont write them. We hope that the open community will make better version of the ones we do make.

But if you want to create an eco-system around your product line, you need to think about the needs of the people and companies who make up that eco-system. They are not interested in your bottom-line. They are not interested in hacking your obscure, perhaps undocumented, data formats or communication protocols. Their bottom line (whether it is dollars or nerd-points) depends on having the best bang for their buck. If you make it hard, you can expect them to be in the eco-system for your competitors, not yours. If you expect your eco-system to be your differentiator in the market place, you don't understand the dynamics of eco-systems. If you don't care about their bottom-line, you wont have an eco-system to not care about.

Apps For Work is an eco-system for everyone. One in which players succeed by being good at what they do. One of the reasons we might succeed is that PAAT is a nobody. PAAT is not an established player. Apps For Work and the Part Interface aren't the property of somebody who is big who might be the competitor of somebody else.

The operational Apps For Work system will be mixture of open source and proprietary software, as well as open source and proprietary product data. We reuse the concept of "copy left", exploited by Open Source licences to keep people playing by the rules, to keep people playing by the Apps for Work rules, so that software and product producers can appropriate a fair share of the value they add, and we use a open market system to ensure they get no more than their fair share. This is called the Open Product Licence.