Open Source Data Platforms
The amount and characteristics of the data that are being generated are exploding. Automatically collected data from sensors, machines, and devices map out how people interact and what their behaviors are. Governments, institutions, and companies are more and more making their data available for free. The key motivation for open data is to increase the transparency of decision-making but for sure to economic value. This might not be a direct revenue stream as an equivalent to the data but rather indirect revenue which correlates to the provided data. The recent digital transformation supports the generation of data but also empowers the data to be processed in real-time. Even smartphones, for example, have nowadays enough power to process diverse geolocation data and provide navigation services. The recent need for transparency as well as the recent evolvement of open data will lead us to a data economy where humans and machines will share data on a large scale.
Open Source Pattern
Since 1998, open-source has increased popularity and become a de-facto standard for software development. Famous companies have shown that it is a viable business model to make source code available for modification and redistribution. Gassmann et al. (Link) list IBM’s strategy for its operation system Linux as such an example. The Open Source pattern can be applied to any…
