@whoismaxpelzner@bentossell For developers: more code to play with, inspect, modify. For companies: recruiting ;)
Okay, less cynical me: It is significant in the sense that generally speaking, when companies make software, they own all the rights to it. Makes sense, right? Think about Adobe and Photoshop. You have to pay for a license to use Photoshop. You can't change or modify Photoshop if there's something you don't like about it, and you certainly can't sell Photoshop to others. Or any other apps you use: Facebook, Snapchat, Uber, etc. Even if they're free to use, the software belongs to the company, not you.
But under an open source license, the software becomes available for public use. So anyone can use Nike's software, play with it, change it, make your own versions of it, etc without asking Nike for permission. Pretty revolutionary when you think about a company essentially giving away its software (this was unheard of 30 years ago). And, like Ben said, that permissiveness means more cool things get made in the world.
@whoismaxpelzner Nike manufactures products, but they know that in order to stay relevant they need a quicker, more effective, more efficient way of gauging consumers' needs and interests. The best way to do this is by investing in a platform. The quickest way to build a platform is to open source it. As for the importance of platforms, take Underarmor buying the "Map My..." apps. Their most recent ad series aired during the NBA finals even explicitly states why they invested millions buying these apps. The seasonal fashion cycle is a thing of the past, as proven by fast fashion companies like H&M. Instead of a few "creatives" designing the next season's fashion, big companies use big data, and data is expensive. For more information, there was a great article about Product-to-Platform plays in this past April's edition of the Harvard Business Review, I recommend reading it for more context. @bentossell great hunt.
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