Business Success with Open Source

More Rapid Innovation and Time to Market

NIH syndrome affects much more than internal tooling; it also affects development of products. Programmers love to build things, even if those aren’t necessarily things that needed building in the first place. Some programmers also are blessed with an abundance of self-confidence—bordering on bravado—and are convinced that they’re capable of creating better software than what one could acquire externally. They may be right about this, but they’re rarely correct that they can bring about that act of creation on a timescale that allows them to deliver value to the customer by the planned launch date.

Some programmers also feel that any development process that doesn’t have them building everything from ...