http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
The meaning of Open
written by Jonathan Rosenberg, the senior vice president, Product Management, Google
Even though the openess is good for the community or the overall human beings, sometime I thought the companies would/should think of opening their intellectual products as a kind of “social donation”. Therefore the company may not have benefits from “locking-in” the user or customers, but doing good for the society. Like the generous donations they make at the end of the year.
On the other hand, I believed that the openness should benefit the companies in some ways. Since, if not, I figured this many of companies would not do that. But could not fully understand why.
In that sense, the article wrote by the Jonathan Rosenberg at Google helped me to understand why the openness is important.
It was a long article, but worth my lunch break.