Don’t be a corporate web design bully
The corporate web design bully is the organization to which takes and takes and who selfishly refuses to share and contribute. The web has undoubtedly gone social; especially within the community building this Web 2.0. Many of my previous employers love to utilize frameworks and JavaScript libraries but in that one-off chance they themselves create something unique – they refuse to share and can only think of how to capitalize on it. Everyone is striving to be innovative – yet that conversation seems to always begin by referencing those who’ve already innovated. It is the collective knowledge and sharing of that knowledge that has really driven the web to where it is today. If you are utilizing script.aculo.us, referencing Yahoo and Google or even viewing source on other amazing resources – then realize you are only where you are by someone else sharing.
They’ve shared with you and now you claim to have the ability to innovate – I’ll call you an innovator the day you share with us and we use that to call ourselves innovators.
You know you are a corporate web design bull when …
You read blogs religiously, yet you believe what you have to say belongs to your company’s ears only. You make web 2.0 cool by referencing other peoples Javascript libraries, yet you believe that small bit of JS you write yourself is too valuable to share. You’ve become dependent on stock icons yet you refuse to give credit and slap a registered mark on every pixel you draw.
Many large and naive companies defaultingly become corporate web design bullies simple because it is their nature. They want to have ownership of everything that comes as a result of the 8 hour working day and want to believe that they did it all by themselves.
You work on the web; realize the different playing field you are on. This isn’t Pepsi and Coke and the leaking of the special recipe. There is no value in that one line of Javascript you wrote that does something that no one has yet to do. I ask that all of you realizing you are where you are today through collective thought and the sharing of ideas just open up and also feel free to share ideas. Give back to the community which you take so much.
- April 27th, 2007
- 6comments
- I am a proud member of the 9rules network
I hear what your saying and agree. Everything I do on my sites are derivatives of other’s, if I see a neat effect or style on a site I’m in the source figuring out how they did it. My wife thought Newsvine was a weird coding site when I first starting reading it because I was trying to see how it worked more than reading the articles :)
I try hard to not just steal stuff. I’ve passed up doing several cool things because I didn’t want to rip it and couldn’t think of a creative way to do something similar that wasn’t just the same end result. On a personal site it’s easy to give credit but on a corporate site you can be fairly limited in how visible your credit can be. In the source itself as a comment is ok, visible on the page usually not.
So far I haven’t made an effort to put any of my work out on coding sites, mainly because I don’t think I’m good enough yet. When I go looking at scripts half of them I think shouldn’t be out there because they aren’t very good either. I am having a hard time deciding when something is good enough to share and when it’s just too hack. I guess I feel I’ve never come up with something from scratch so people should be reading/learning from the source not my stuff.
Very nice and clear translation of the process which creates a “tragedy of the commons” as applied to web design specifically, and technological progress in general. It’s a shame that the USPTO allows and encourages such a gold rush by companies to patent fundamental aspects of programming and design. With patents on basic algorithms so easily acquired, I’m surprised no one has been granted a patent on the IF-THEN construct yet.
It isn’t just about stealing and plagiarism — it is about taking from the collective that has so gracefully given and refusing to not give back.
I understand that not everyone is a blogger and not everyone can create new items and document them for the world to use — who has the time? My issue is with the corporation that takes and actually creates a mandate to not give back. To not blog, to not share and to simply not speak of what happens 9 to 5.
Sure their are security concerns, but you wouldn’t have a product to protect if you yourself didn’t take advantage of shared knowledge.
“To not blog, to not share and to simply not speak of what happens 9 to 5.”
Are you talking about Google, then?
Google is known for their secrecy — however, they have been pretty good with sharing and growing the community. The AOL’s of the world are a less giving when compared to Yahoo! — although my specific rant is directed towards the smaller organizations. The ones dependent on the share knowledge. Google can keep their secrets — but if you leverage Yahoo! YUI to build your product, then don’t be naive to think it is truly “YOUR” product — share as you have taken.
“feel free to share ideas”
I think that this one of the keys of the www’s evolution. www is a playground where, in the same time, you learn and teach. In the most of cases you don’t even realize how you/your work influenced and inspired others…