Three Ways That Open Source Could Benefit from Business 101

This post from Matt Asay on whether open source needs consolidation asks an interesting question, and some of the comments that came in on it were interesting. This comment caught my eye: “No. Open source does not need consolidation. Open source needs product managers.” Product managers, of course, drive improvements in commercial and proprietary software products, and listen carefully to what businesses need. At the end of our recent interview with Sun Microsystems’ Ken Drachnik, regarding Sun’s GlassFish app server, he also called for business synergy to advance open source projects. Here are three ways that open source projects can benefit from a bit of Business 101.