How do you run an open source company?
January 25, 2008 – 7:12 pmI love reading the reactions of new XO owners, both kids and adults (and then there are the hackers, who are kids in adult bodies…)
Well, the ones that understand that the laptop is still a work in progress by a largely volunteer community of open-source hackers, that they’re supposed to figure things out on their own and tinker, and who don’t expect it to replace their $2000 corporate laptop running Excel and Powerpoint with 24/7 tech support reporting overseas to a pyramid hierarchy.
I have decided that I do not want a traditional MBA.
I want to learn how to run an open-source company.
(Yes, I’m still studying engineering education – but I’m becoming more and more convinced that entrepreneurship, particularly that of the socially-responsible type, is a mandatory skill for good hackers – since entrepreneurship is the creation of value, and hacking is an excellent way of learning how to cleverly create and explosively leverage that value while having fun in the meantime. It’s another tool. You expand your reach.)
This is a larger statement than it might seem – the most common question I was asked while in the Philippines was “so, when are you going to get your MBA?” My father and all my uncles did it; my cousins are starting to head towards the same, and everyone expects my brother to follow (and I guess they figured I would as well). It almost seems like the traditional career/study path of the Chinese-Filipino kid, although I know it’s not the only one.
Trouble is, according to my mother, “you can’t get a degree in it.” (I don’t care.) But there’s also the problem of how you learn to do it – which makes me a very, very happy Mel. Because in the absence of a formal program of study, guess what?
I get to make my own.
3 Responses to “How do you run an open source company?”
I found your site on google blog search and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. Just added your RSS feed to my feed reader. Look forward to reading more from you.
- Randy Nichols.
By Randy Nichols on Jan 25, 2008
Not to harsh your buzz, but you can be a hacker and get an MBA – I did. :-) I got a lot out of my concentrations in operations and strategy at Sloan. You could too, but it certainly isn’t the only path, and most of the good entrepreneurs I have advised weren’t MBAs – though they did realize the value of talking to one on occasion…
By Peter Schmidt on Jan 26, 2008
Thanks, Peter.
I definitely want to learn about lot of the things that MBAs study – plan on reading over the shoulder of my little brother when he goes for his.
I also definitely don’t know what I don’t know, both in terms of MBA-ness (reading syllabi from various colleges only means so much when you haven’t taken similar courses) and what exactly running an open-source company entails – actually, even what it really means. Should probably start asking. :)
By mchua on Jan 26, 2008