1. The town of Lyon in the 1800-1900s had a thriving silk factory ecosystem due to its open governance model that incentivized collaboration and innovation. 2. Inventors would present new loom technologies at public meetings, and companies adopting the innovations would document and share their improvements. Inventors were then rewarded based on usage of their inventions. 3. This peer-to-peer collaboration network and open sharing of knowledge allowed Lyon's silk industry to grow significantly larger than London's, with 30,000 looms in Lyon compared to just 5,000 in London by 1853.

1. Eco-system over code
by stephane ribas (inria)
for fOSSa 2013.

2. I am a thief !

3. “Community over code“
by Ross Gardler,
Apache Community VP

4. Goal of my talk?

5. Why such message?

6. Ecosystem definition
(wikipedia)
[…] An ecosystem is a community in which
components are interacting as a system. We can
figure it as a network of interactions […]

7. Ecosystem definition
(moore)
An economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations
and individuals—the organisms of the business world. The economic
community produces goods & services of value to customers, who are
themselves members of the ecosystem.
The member organisms also include suppliers, lead producers, competitors,
and other stakeholders. Over time, they coevolve their capabilities & roles, tend
to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies.
Those companies holding leadership roles may change over time, but the
function of ecosystem leader is valued by the community because it enables
members to move toward shared visions to align their investments (some of
them could be activities), and to find mutually supportive roles.

8. Lyon silk factory

11. Once upon a time
1800-1900, Lyon was famous for its loom eco
system, silk factories & open attitude governance.
Demands from North America,
Major competitors in Italy and in England.

12. Patent! oooh my patent !
middle of the 18th century, english government
adopted a patent system to protect their
innovation and production of goods.
No patent system did exist in France.
The town of Lyon adopted an open attitude
governance in order to drive their innovations.

13. Momentum
The town of Lyon set up & organised public
meetings where...
●
inventors came & presented new technologies,
new methods & possible improvements for the
loom industry.
Industrials were invited to the public meetings.

14. Incentives
Companies that integrated the technologies
presented were persuaded to document and
disseminate the nature of the integrations, and
any improvements they noticed
The number of machines or processes which has
been impacted by the innovation were traced.
The knowledge based upon research and
industrials where then put back into the public
domain, people were then encouraged to present
the new modifications, and so on.

16. Monitoring
The town of Lyon carefully monitored
●
●
the presentation of novelties
the adoption of those new technologies by the
industrials.

17. Rewarding
Inventors were remunerated by the town
accordingly to the estimated value of their
invention and accordingly to the usage popularity
in the silk factories.
grants were based on the nature of the invention,
the effort made by the inventor to share his
knowledge & the effectiveness of the results.

19. Leadership
In 1814, we could count 14,500 loom in Lyon
versus 12,000 in London.
In 1853, they were only 5,000 looms left in
London versus 30000 looms in Lyon.
Lyon won the battle against the silk factory of
London.

20. Open governance
The open attitude governance of the city of Lyon
enabled the creation of an important loom
ecosystem which pushed the town of Lyon as the
leader of the silk market.

21. Why such a success?
- creation of new technologies by building new components
above existing innovations
- diversity in the production of goods,
- peer-to-peer collaboration network that added flexibility in the
production of silk goods.
- promote inventions while making them public and open,
- leverage motivations by rewarding smartly inventors.
- relationship and collaboration between the different factories
and looms.

22. Classical model
speculation, anticipation, storing
Distributors build the ecosystem on providing funds to silk
factories, facilitated speculations, and creating stocks to
decrease prices, thus undermining the responsiveness of the
supply chain.
The english silk factories were forced to reduced their prizes in
order to sell their goods to distributors.
An important impact of reducing their revenue was that silk
factories were afraid to invest in new silk machines, buy new
equipment (and more innovating equipment).

23. Classical model
why so many economists & politics are taking it for granted?
By imposing their own rules of the game the
distributors & banks killed the english loom.
this model has already showed its inferiority
against openness two century ago, we can ask
ourselves why does this mode prevails
nowadays?

24. Standardisation
the town of lyon decided to establish standards
for the loom industry.
●
●
●
facilitate the maintenance of the machines,
ensure a certain level of interoperability
between machine/components
stimulate a normalization of the “user interface”

25. New market
Thanks to this standardization, a new market
appeared
●
the market of spare parts.
Manufacturers, resellers, technicians had access
to a widely open market in which monopoly
situations where virtually nonexistent which
brought cheaper goods & cheaper services.

26. Openness
[my definition of Openness]
The concept of Openness can be defined as the
attitude to systematically freely distribute, freely
share, freely disseminate knowledge

27. Openness
Knowledge is a special kind of good that you do
not loose when you give it away.
If you are participating in a system where
knowledge is freely shared, you will get far more
knowledge from peers than you may give them.
We participate to a smart win-win system.

28. Conclusion(s)

29. “People who do not
know their history are
condemned to repeat
it”

30. Living on the
shoulders of
the giants !

31. Don't loose your time and your
money in trying to sell code

32. Openness is a
freedom we have to
struggle for!

33. What about the
Gross Domestic Product ?

34. Thanks, and,
have a nice conference!
stephane.ribas@inria.fr
@stephaneribas
http://fossa.inria.fr