The open-source community has organized itself in a way that tends to
amplify the productivity effects of open source. In the Linux world,
in particular, it's an economically significant fact that there are
multiple competing Linux distributors which form a tier separate from
the developers.
Developers write code, and make the code available over the Internet.
Each distributor selects some subset of the available code, integrates
and packages and brands it, and sells it to customers. Users
choose among distributions, and may supplement a distribution by
downloading code directly from developer sites.
The effect of this tier separation is to create a very fluid internal
market for improvements. Developers compete with each other, for the
attention of distributors and users, on the quality of their software.
Distributors compete for user dollars on the appropriateness of their
selection policies, and on the value they can add to the software.
A first-order effect of this internal market structure is that no
node in the net is indispensible. Developers can drop out; even if their
portion of the code base is not picked up directly by some other
developer, the competition for attention will tend to rapidly generate
functional alternatives. Distributors can fail without damaging or
compromising the common open-source code base. The ecology as a whole
has a more rapid response to market demands, and more capability to
resist shocks and regenerate itself, than any monolithic vendor of a
closed-source operating system can possibly muster.
Another important effect is to lower overhead and increase
efficiency through specialization. Developers don't experience the
pressures that routinely compromise conventional closed projects and
turn them into tar-pits—no lists of pointless and distracting
check-list features from Marketing, no management mandates to use
inappropriate and outdated languages or development environments, no
requirement to reinvent wheels in a new and incompatible way in the
name of product differentiation or intellectual-property protection,
and (most importantly) no deadlines. No rushing
a 1.0 out the door before it's done right. De Marco and Lister
observed in their discussion of the `wake me when it's over'
management style in ``Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams''
[DL] that this generally conduces not only
to higher quality but actually to the most rapid delivery of a
working result.
Distributors, on the other hand, get to specialize in the things
distributors can do most effectively. Freed of the need to fund
massive and ongoing software development just to stay competitive,
they can concentrate on system integration, packaging, quality
assurance, and service.
Both distributors and developers are kept honest by the constant
feedback from and monitoring by users that is an integral part of the
open-source method.