Themes Connecting Our Projects

From CommerceNet Wiki

Open Source is a driver of Engineering Innovation. Decentralization of software production allows collaboration by like-minded engineers around the world. Rapid innovation results from engineers being able to quickly see other people's ideas reified as code, and iterate or riff on those ideas. Open Source software is also useful to provide alternatives to Software Monopolies.

Open Source is also a driver of Engineering-based Entrepeneurship. Open Source has significantly lowered the costs of starting a software venture by allowing businesses to share the costs of developing and maintaining software. Open Source allows numerous unconnected businesses to develop software more quickly and cost-effectively by using off-the-shelf components maintained by communities of interest.

Engineering-based Entrepeneurship is becoming available to a larger potential group of participants due to the vastly reduced capital costs and the ease of monetization by "outsourcing" advertising sales to external organizations like Google and Overture. Businesses that required a $10 million investment in 1998 might require a $1 million investment in 2004.

Opportunities for Engineering-based Entrepeneurship fall out of needs that are developing in the interstices of Software Monopolies -- for instance, RSS search engines and advertising networks. This type of decentralization of business opportunity requires support from Decentralized Software Architectures.