Keys to Successful Open Source Product Development

Question

How do you get unlimited numbers of people to unjob from prior engagements and begin to develop public technology? The incentive must be based on Distributed Market Substitution. This means an entrepreneurial orientation. Also, public infrastructure must be set up for assistance in marketing to facilitate distributed market substitution.

The assumption is that open source products must be significantly better than proprietary counterparts. Otherwise we have no advantage. The challenge here is that we must educate about quality, which will typically be based on the elimination of obsolescence. Mere elimination of obsolescence - and dependence - is an industry transformer. For example, for the fuel industry - it's the creation of hydrogen infrastructures. For cordless drills, it's designing for a lifetime and closed loop material cycles.

Incentive Structure

Incentive strucuture must be such that public-interest work does not compete with one's livelihood. Public interest work is any non-coerced work that still tends towards economic gain - but is a shift from a volunteer mindset where volunteers are cross subsidized without direct entrepreneurial stakeholdership in a given activity.

One way to assure entrepreneurial incentive is when the collaborators are selected for distinct intent of starting an enterprise. This means that the development process must be enterprise-centric, and must include marketing support, franchising, licensing, and clear economic models for redeeming value.

• Volunteer incentive is not as strong as livelihood incentive. Public-interest - redefined via economic incentive - does not interfere with livelihood incentive.
• Thus, select for livelihood incentive and public-interest incentive.