I can feel this one in my bones. This piece needs more work but I think it has potential…
Burton group writes, “Open source software (OSS) is here to stay ”most enterprises can no longer afford to ignore the advantages of low up-front costs, quality code, and a labor pool of software developers and system administrators experienced with best-of-breed OSS projects.”
The information worker job is one of the few beacons of hope for the economically oppressed to move ‘up’ the social ladder. Indeed the pace at which countries like India and China have shifted from agrarian and manufacture based economies to information based economies is nothing less the amazing. The middle class created by people transitioning from rural poor to urban middle class has helped stabilised and enrich several countries.
Corporations are now beginning to realise the potential of the labor pool for exploitation. The subtle message in the Burton group statement is companies must exploit free labor in order to compete in the what will inevitably become the slave marketplace of knowledge workers.
More to come…