Open Source and the Bottom Line
There was an article I read recently about how organizations using open source software are increasingly finding themselves participating in the code's developer community. The rationale is completely free-market -based: without some attempt to reincorporate their changes in the main development branch, organizations who make internal-use-only customizations are relegated to maintaining their branched code indefinitely. Contrastingly, if they get it accepted by the main project, they get 'free' bug-fixes and a broader base of potential employees/consultants/etc familiar with the code they use in-house.
I've seen this happening around me with software companies (i.e. ArsDigita/Zope/etc), and some non-profits (MIT/dotLRN, and Greenpeace/OpenACS) but I guess I overlooked that there could be a genuine profit motive attached to this generosity, one that would be attractive to companies who are not in the software business. This resilience to the tragedy of the commons is probably mentioned in some ESR essay, but how many of those can you read? Preacher meet choir, etc.
Another tangibile capitalist benefit of open source participation is professional development - keeping your coders sharp by networking with other smart folks at different companies and getting a chance to work on infrastructure-related software. This is a bottom line expense at good companies, but as on oft-overlooked expense it's less widely compelling than the maintainence angle.
11:49:42 AM 
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