Read a good article today about running corporate projects like open source projects. It claims that if more corporate projects were run like open source projects, they would be more successful. The article emphasizes the fact that only 30% of corporate projects are considered successful and in contrast highlights very successful open source projects like GIMP.
I think a lot of what the article has to say might have some merit. But the 30%-to-GIMP comparison doesn’t hold water: take a look at SourceForge.net some day and consider how many projects are permanently stuck in the pre-planning or alpha stage, never to release a working piece of software. I’d bet the ratio of those to GIMP-like projects is much worse than 30%.