The Web Economy/06

Completion status: this resource is ~50% complete.

Resource type: this resource is a lesson.

Educational level: this is a tertiary (university) resource.

Community Is King

This is a lesson part of the module The Web Economy out of the Open Source ERP/Executive Masters course conducted by a private university.

Topics

• Compiere enjoyed a growing community in 2003 that puts them as a defacto leader in Open Source ERP space. But in 2006 they received external funding about USD6 million and began to close up their source and alienate their community of users. The community forked as another project called ADempiere and I was nominated as its leader^[1]. I learnt many things since then especially the rule that Community is King.
• Even though Yahoo! was the first-mover^[2] in the search engine territory, today it is taken over and threatened by Google. But when Google took in funds and go public, it suffers problems that often affect large commercial giants^[3].
• Open Source is now used to gain popularity and hold on a community. It seems to be a marketing ploy^[4] to gain following and then close off like a wolf shedding its sheep's clothing to rake in easy profits. Good example is Mambo that forked to Joomla^[5], besides the Compiere/ADempiere later case.
• With such high growth and fast saturation of many fads, the Internet^[6] still offers blue oceans for new ideas that are real and possess leadership for the world.

Discussion

After some research, have a discussion on the following, safe as sub-page and link it under Student Notes.

• Why do you think Google can easily beat Yahoo!?
• What did Google did that Yahoo! did not?
• Do you think there will be another dotcom that can beat Google in future?
• Why is Google losing trust after it went public and commercialised?
• Why does Mambo's community fork to form Joomla? Also ADempiere.
• What does the majority of the community wants out of a dotcom or site?
• Who is actually King, the site product or the community?
• Discuss the last statement in the topics above.

Activities

• Publish your works in an attractive manner in your user page, stating your own views and findings providing links to your sources. Use the talk page here to score marks.
• Create or edit sub-pages of course materials within wikiversity.
• Discuss in the forum (link shall be provided) by offering your ideas and answering or comment on others' postings.

References

1. ↑ http://red1.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=931
2. ↑ http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/2001-07-18-maney.htm
3. ↑ http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/02/12/google-losing-out-on-myspace-ad-deal
4. ↑ http://boldlyopen.com/2008/01/25/the-marketing-ploy-of-open-source/
5. ↑ http://www.siteground.com/joomla_mambo.htm
6. ↑ http://hubpages.com/hub/The-History-of-the-Internet

Links to Student Notes

(Provided by Students - subject to edit ranking by tutor)

Notable Links to Resources

(Provided by Students - subject to edit ranking by tutor)

Sub-Pages

(Done in wikiversity as course material by the students under the guidance of the tutor)