Organizational Change

Possibly the hardest part of implementing open content is the very human issue of organizational change. Licenses and content formats, for example, can be evaluated and chosen based on their perceived merits. But an organization is a very complex system of human actors. Any change in an organization is likely to be rejected when not introduced and managed properly. And the open content model is very different indeed from the way most organizations work today.

We intend to provide much more detail on this point in the future. For now, we would like to illustrate one important aspect using a quote from Linus Torvalds:

When folks first hear about the possibility of opening up an existing commercial project, they tend to ask the same questions. One question has to do with how people inside the company would feel about the possibility of having an outsider produce work that is better than their own - and having that so publicly noticeable. I think they should feel great about it, and great that they are getting paid for not even doing most of the work. In that regard, open source - or open anything, for that matter - is unforgiving. It shows who can get the job done, who is better. You can’t hide behind managers.

Source: Torvalds & Diamond (2001). Just for Fun: The story of an accidental revolutionary. New York: Texere, p. 232.