Sunday, November 18, 2007

FSOSS 2007 Keynote: Applying Open Source Concepts to Non-Software Industries

The keynote speaker on Day 1 of FSOSS 2007 was Bob Young, Co-founder of RedHat and Founder/CEO of Lulu.com. The topic intrigued me and I found it interesting to consider how industries outside of software development, to varying degrees, implement concepts that are similar to those of the Open Source Development Model and those of the Proprietary Software Development Model.

Among various other topics in his talk, Bob Young discussed how some sports, particularly North American football, may be viewed as having been developed using a form of open source model because it was derived conceptually from the British sport of rugby. He also talked about the legal system and the way that lawyers use open source concepts to freely construct arguments based upon the work of other lawyers and legal precedents.

Bob Young's address to the audience was fairly informal and entertaining. I had the expectation that he would have gone more in-depth into the subject matter and I had hoped to have gained more information and knowledge from his talk. Nonetheless, it gave me a new perspective on non-software industries and how they relate conceptually to the open source - proprietary software development continuum.

No comments: