When the strategy fails, don't blame open source...

This article at infoworld.com got me thinking, Tizen failed because it's open source model or because it was badly managed?

It seems to me that the failure of Tizen has to do more with how the project has been managed so far, rather than with it being open source software. With Samsung betting heavily on Android, and Intel getting its hands on whatever OS can make its chips relevant, Tizen really had much chance to succeed.

As with proprietary software projects, open source projects success depend heavily on how the leader of the projects manage them. On both sides, there are far more projects that fail than those who become success stories. Neither development process comes with a warranty of success attached with it, since there are many factors that can determine if a project will be a success or a failure.

Trying to pin the blame on the open source development of Tizen, is quite shortsighted. As it states, the failure of Tizen is more a matter of strategy than of the open source model itself. Blaming open source instead of the poor strategy misses the point, since what failed was the strategy itself,

In a way, Microsoft has a big failure on its hands with its Windows Phone OS, since it barely stands on the smartphone market. The success story for proprietary software on mobile operating systems goes to Apple with their iOS, and the iPhone.

At the end, Tizen is a model on how not to manage an open source project. The failure can be blamed on the strategy used to mange the project, not on the open source model used to develop the OS.