Monday, November 3, 2008

Mozilla Open Source Assignment

The article discusses open source organizations, and uses the company Mozilla as an example. The article is an interview with current chairman and former CEO of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker. Mozilla is an organization that depends on the open source platform, as many of their best ideas come from members of their “community.” Their “community” is made up of members not affiliated with their company, but help develop and improve their software/products. These “community” members are everyday people, whom believe in the open source platform.

I was fascinated by Mitchell Baker’s management strategy. It is not often CEOs believe in letting the public help improve a business strategy. Mitchell relies on members of the Mozilla “community” to solve many of Mozilla’s business problems. In my opinion, this is something very intriguing. Essential, this “community” is free labor for Mozilla, and the members receive no compensation for helping improve, and develop the Mozilla product.