Open Source Software

For the last 10 years, open source software was supposed to take over the business world by storm. It makes sense for enterprises to embrace this model as it is free (at least from licensing point of view) and saves lot of money. Still that had not happened. Why?

The enterprises are primarily worried about maintenance aspect of open source software. If they run into a bug or an issue, who would they turn to for help? Similarly, if they need a new enhancement, who would they request that from? In the past few decades, enterprises moved away from the practice of building their own applications and adopted implementation of 3^rd party packaged software solutions. These 3^rd party providers don't have any incentive to make their IP public and loose lucrative license revenue. But there are providers like Red Hat, who pioneered a hybrid approach of supporting and maintaining open source software, thus alleviating some of the fears of enterprises. Still that practice is limited to systems and infrastructure software and not a common practice for enterprise applications software. 

My Boss Doesn't Know Anything!!

If you are higher up in the organization, often you might have faced this situation. An employee who is technically very strong comes to you and complains that he cannot work for his new manager as he doesn’t believe that the new manager is any more capable than he is. More often than not, he is referring to the technical skills of his new boss. 

I have heard slightly different complaint from some of my friends who are at middle management level in their respective organizations. They claim that their manager is of no use. They have no clue why their boss’ boss gives her so much weight and takes her wherever he goes. 

Let us take a deeper look at both the scenarios.