How Samsung Is Bringing Open Source Culture Inside The Firewall

Software companies have long realized the economic and strategic value of using and contributing code to external open source projects. But they're much slower to understand and apply the same open source methods of collaboration to their own projects internally, said Phil Odence, vice president of business development at Black Duck Software in a Collaboration Summit presentation today.

Companies that take the practices, processes, culture and methods from the open source world and apply them to internal software projects can see the same competitive advantages that participating in open source projects provide, including lower development costs, faster time to market, better code, increased innovation, improved collaboration, and better retention, Odence said.

“The most important thing about open source may not be the technology, but the methods it's bringing inside the firewall of corporations,” Odence said. “It's really hard to do, for some companies more than others, but the payoff can be huge.”