Guest Blog: Is the open meme starting to spread? | Blogs | Blogs and videos | Features, Press and Policy | BCS - The Chartered Institute for IT

"The success of open-source software has far exceeded initial expectations. When Linus Torvalds launched the Linux project back in 1991, few people imagined that free software developed by open communities would ever match, let alone surpass, the efforts of industry giants such as IBM and Microsoft. Yet in a wide range of areas this has been precisely the case. Without the contributions of Linux, Apache, Java, Perl, Python, MySQL, Hadoop and many other open initiatives, the internet would be a smaller, less interesting and much more expensive place. Having observed these extraordinary developments, we have long speculated that the open meme would eventually spread to non-IT sectors. There are three main reasons why we think this is likely: Software is increasingly critical to virtually every industry, so it seems logical that the dynamics of the software market would spread to other industry sectors. As the internet is now the backbone of modern business, much more open forms of community participation are now possible in just about every industry sector. Cost and innovation pressures are now so great in so many sectors that new business and technology approaches must increasingly be considered. While these three forces have been building for some time, it appears that we may be reaching an inflection point where open technologies start to become widespread across the broader economy. Consider the following developments described in our recent report Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts: Strategies for an Increasingly Open Economy: Open source designs are a major part of the burgeoning 3D printing industry, from the design of open cars to the 3DP machines themselves. Harvard, MIT and Stanford are among the major universities making much of their courseware freely available. The growth of the YouTube-driven Khan Academy is arguably even more impressive. The US Veterans Administration is experimenting with open source health-care systems in vital areas such as electronic medical records. Government open data initiatives are rapidly emerging at both local and national levels, creating important new business opportunities. Deutsche Bank, through its Lodestone Foundation initiative, is exploring open systems ideas within the investment banking industry. While all of these developments have their challenges and will evolve at their own pace, they share a common interest in viewing certain activities as open processes with the hope of lowering costs, expanding usage and accelerating innovation. If the open meme spreads successfully beyond the IT industry, it will create significant opportunities for enterprise IT. Open systems encompass a broad range of interrelated challenges - including software licensing, interoperability standards, and transparency of process and governance ..."