Innovation

Changes in a company’s environment usually means that it must adapt its way of doing business, especially in the IT area. Proprietary products are not geared toward being responsive. They evolve based on whatever creativity their employees can apply to a limited amount of feedback from users. The commercial software company has control over when and how to innovate.

Open source encourages innovation. The open source community includes developers and users, often working closely together. It is common on open source help and information forums to have developers responding directly to user questions, feature recommendations and bug reports. Further, if a user (individual or company) wants something that is not included in the existing application, the open nature of the software allows them to develop what they want or contract with someone to create it. Typically, if one user wants a particular feature or complementary product, others will also find it useful. The open source community is characterized by substantial open communication. Proprietary software companies can’t match this.