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I love that Walmart is so involved in open source. As one of the most demonstrably "don't do anything unnecessary" companies that exists, their participation i

I love that Walmart is so involved in open source. As one of the most demonstrably "don't do anything unnecessary" companies that exists, their participation is a great data point to support the theory that participating in open source can come from a selfish as opposed to altruistic motive (but long term selfish). Perhaps this isn't a hard thing to prove to the hn community, but it's something that a lot of MBAs I've known have struggled with.

jmduke 13y ago
A more charitable way of phrasing your point: devoting resources open source provides a lot of value for a company, particularly ones not technically associated with buzztech (so either fledgling webdev shops or older/more conservative BigCos, like Walmart). It's great, actionable PR; it improves employee satisfaction; its an effective recruiting tool.
- thatthatis 13y ago
  In this case, my interest is in finding the absolute least charitable, least nebulous justification for open source I possible can. Not because I agree with the non charitable interpretation, but because if I can win the argument that open source is better without imploring charity, I can win the argument with CFOs and Bankers and Lawyers. As soon as you start mentioning intangibles like charity and reputation and recruiting, a certain group of people will stop listening to you. I think you can justify open source based on security, quality, and cost. If you open source correctly, you get more secure, better quality, at lower cost. My personal philosophy is one thing. The stances I employ or postulate to sway others are a sub-set.
  - eastridge 13y ago
    Thorax author here again. A few non charitable things have come out of the development of Thorax. On the developer happiness / retention front, I still work on projects for Walmart because I got to help open source Thorax. I'm now extremely happy there due to other closed source projects, but when I've been less happy it's kept me there. On the code quality front, we haven't actually gotten a ton of contributions from the OSS community, but it's a niche framework and not the next Rails, Angular, etc. But what I believed happened when we open sourced it is that we held ourselves to a higher standard of documentations, versioning, testing, etc. Now that we use it across multiple departments with teams that don't really interact with each other directly, having something more stable becomes extremely important. If there is no external accountability I think it's much easier to decide to break an API.
    - thatthatis 13y ago
      I really appreciate you taking the time to add that to the discussion. Thank you!
drivingmissm 13y ago
Walmart is also one of the most tech-forward companies in the world. They spent lavishly on satellite links before the web, and more recently are pushing on Rfid and other inventory management tech.

jmduke 13y ago

A more charitable way of phrasing your point: devoting resources open source provides a lot of value for a company, particularly ones not technically associated with buzztech (so either fledgling webdev shops or older/more conservative BigCos, like Walmart). It's great, actionable PR; it improves employee satisfaction; its an effective recruiting tool.

thatthatis 13y ago
In this case, my interest is in finding the absolute least charitable, least nebulous justification for open source I possible can. Not because I agree with the non charitable interpretation, but because if I can win the argument that open source is better without imploring charity, I can win the argument with CFOs and Bankers and Lawyers. As soon as you start mentioning intangibles like charity and reputation and recruiting, a certain group of people will stop listening to you. I think you can justify open source based on security, quality, and cost. If you open source correctly, you get more secure, better quality, at lower cost. My personal philosophy is one thing. The stances I employ or postulate to sway others are a sub-set.
- eastridge 13y ago
  Thorax author here again. A few non charitable things have come out of the development of Thorax. On the developer happiness / retention front, I still work on projects for Walmart because I got to help open source Thorax. I'm now extremely happy there due to other closed source projects, but when I've been less happy it's kept me there. On the code quality front, we haven't actually gotten a ton of contributions from the OSS community, but it's a niche framework and not the next Rails, Angular, etc. But what I believed happened when we open sourced it is that we held ourselves to a higher standard of documentations, versioning, testing, etc. Now that we use it across multiple departments with teams that don't really interact with each other directly, having something more stable becomes extremely important. If there is no external accountability I think it's much easier to decide to break an API.
  - thatthatis 13y ago
    I really appreciate you taking the time to add that to the discussion. Thank you!

drivingmissm 13y ago

Walmart is also one of the most tech-forward companies in the world. They spent lavishly on satellite links before the web, and more recently are pushing on Rfid and other inventory management tech.