Not Invented Here
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Reinventing the wheel. (Discuss) |
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2007) |
 |
This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (September 2007) |
Not Invented Here (NIH) is a term used to describe a persistent sociological, corporate or institutional culture that avoids using already existing products, research or knowledge because of its different origins. It is normally used in a pejorative sense.
As a sociological phenomenon, "Not Invented Here" syndrome is manifested as an unwillingness to adopt an idea or product because it originates from another culture, a form of nationalism.
Contents |
[edit] In computing
Microsoft decided to invent an entirely new version of a virtual-machine based language when the justice department sided with Sun Microsystems. As Microsoft's alternative to Java (.Net) matured many tools from Java were ported to .Net, such as Ant, JUnit and Hibernate. Instead of embracing the mature Java ports Microsoft created their own proprietary ports: MS Build, ADO.NET Entity Framework. Therefore rather than embracing community open source projects they chose to create their own.
Another example was the low acceptance of early British-made home computers in Japan and Japanese-made ones in Britain. For example the Timex Sinclair 2068 got almost no attention, while its Sinclair Spectrum predecessor became hugely successful. Similarly the Japanese/Dutch MSX home computer standard became successful in many countries but not in Britain and the USA, which produced competing systems. Likewise, British and American home computers got no foothold in Japan. These cases may demonstrate both the "not invented here" and the "invented here" syndromes.
[edit] In the free software community
 |
All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear. Please help clarify the article. Suggestions may be on the talk page. (November 2006) |
Many free software or open source projects have been accused of NIH syndrome because often several projects aim to accomplish the same things, just take an example of the hundreds of Linux distributions, most of them not even up to date.
When a free program is written because all existing programs that accomplish the same task are non-free, this is not NIH. The open source community may initially seek to provide the needed alternative to some fully or partially closed source implementation. Later this closed implementation may also be released under an open source license, resulting in two competing open source projects. Examples of this are Apache Velocity and WebMacro, as well as KDE and GNOME. In other cases, two projects that can be classified as both free and open source just pick incompatible licenses (like GNU Classpath and Apache Harmony until the advent of GPLv3).
But when it is done for reasons that are not purely technical or legal, this is referred to as "reinventing the wheel". Reasons to reinvent a program can include pride, ignorance, discontent with some aspect of the existing solution, self-directed learning, or the desire to create for creation's sake. These traits are not specific to open source programmers; many programmers of proprietary software exhibit them as well.[citation needed]
[edit] In Corporate IT
NIH can be common in the corporate world of Information Technology, and must be compared with technology available at the time.[citation needed]
[edit] In academia
In academic environments, the motivation for the NIH effect is twofold: first, resources from student workers are often paid in a lump sum (as a stipend, scholarship, or fixed salary) resulting in no variable increase in pay for more requested work; and second, the drive for publication at some institutions may drive repetition of work done at other institutions or in industry so that the researcher (and institution) may publish about their (repeated) work.[citation needed]
The quality of academic products developed from the NIH effect varies widely, mostly for the aforementioned reasons.
[edit] In the military
Some observers have suggested that the need to keep designers and bureaucrats in work plays an important part in decisions that prefer in-country work. [1]
[edit] In media
In the United States, a form of NIH exists in the television industry. A television network affiliated with a particular studio (e.g. ABC and ABC Studios, NBC and Universal Media Studios, CBS and CBS Paramount Television, FOX and 20th Century Fox Television) will often buy much, if not most, of its programming from that particular studio, due to the financial benefits of vertical integration.
Conversely, even if a network-affiliated studio's show is picked up by another network, it is not unheard of for the studio to pull out of the series, on the grounds that it represents a large financial investment into a program for the competing network. For example, Touchstone Television (now ABC Studios) pulled out of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation soon after it was picked up by CBS. [2]
