Editorial Open Source Business (January 2012).docVIP

Technology Innovation Management Review January 2012 Editorial: Open Source Business Chris McPhee, Editor-in-Chief Leslie Hawthorn, Guest Editor From the Editor-in-Chief From the Guest Editor It is my pleasure to introduce Leslie Hawthorn, Com- munity Manager for AppFog, as our guest editor for the While technologists have long been used to the terms “free software” and “open source software,” a testa- ment to the success of these development methodolo- gies lies in the emerging application of the term “open source” to a wide variety of sectors. Groups of doctors in disparate locations who are collaborating to discover cures for malaria describe their approach as “open source” (/7d7oza9). Marcin Jakubkowski’s TED Talk on “Open Source Ecology” – the publication of plans and schematics to enable anyone to construct the industrial machines required to power a “sustain- able civilization with modern comforts” (http://open /about.php) – has enjoyed more than 636,000 views (/6dc4bpb). Danielle Gould eloquently argues that eliminating inefficiencies in our systems of food production and distribution “requires creating incentives to move from closed, proprietary ap- proaches to open ones” (/76haums). With the application of its high-level concepts to such a dis- parate set of challenges, it is tempting to argue that free/libre open source software (F/LOSS) methodolo- gies have been validated as the superior choice overall, at least in the court of public opinion. January 2012 issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review (TIM Review). The editorial theme of this issue is Open Source Business and this issue fea- tures authors from Australia, Finland, Italy, and the United States. The theme for the February and March issues will be Entrepreneurship, presented by guest editor