Nov 12 2008
What About An Open-Source Café Restaurant?
I missed the just concluded FOSS.my event which was about movement for free and open source software. Heard it’s been AWESOME! Of course it is. Who in the world will want to devote so much time in helping to develop and promote a software free of charge? It must be for their belief and passion in the idea, product and community of people. Long live FOSS!
Daniel Cerventus of Entrepreneurs.my led a session in FOSS.my and shared what businesses can learn from the open source. An open source movement, or any movement for that matter, is all in and about its community of people believing in its cause and collaborating together to move it forward.
It makes me think that an open source movement is like a religion, or even a cult with its own sub-culture. The people are crazy for the idea, work tirelessly to build up something for the good of all, and become “evangelists” to promote the software. In fact, the term “evangelist” is a religious term, isn’t it?
Daniel likens the community to the supporters of a restaurant who strongly believe the food and beverages it provides. I have a real story to tell here.
A customer recently asked me to join a cafe restaurant business as “member”, having joined herself. The idea is that, the café owner offers “shares” (not real shares) of profit to all members of the public who invest into the business. In return, the owner shares the monthly profit back to the members, with minimum fixed returns guaranteed.
In effect, these members will naturally want to help the restaurant do well and become “evangelists” for the restaurant. It’s a “community café restaurant”. Isn’t it a good idea? What a different business model for an F & B business!
By the way, are you interested in investing in the café? Let me know and I’ll gladly connect you with my customer.
Now what if the members also help to develop every part of the café, from the decoration to the menu, just like the software developers help in open source software development? Will it not become a real “open source café restaurant” then?
Is this achievable? So what can we learn from open source movement for business?
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Evangelist is no longer just a religious term. Guy Kawasaki’s Job was a Mac Evangelist. Okay. Mac is sometimes a religion to some people that we all know.
Yeah Daniel
I should have said the word “evangelist” was originally a religious term.