Eat one's own dog food
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To say that an association is "eating its own dog food" means that the association uses the products that it produces. For example, Microsoft emphasizes the use of its own beta and released products inside the company.
Using one's own products has four primary benefits:
- The product's developers are familiar with using the products they develop.
- The association's members have direct knowledge and experience with its products.
- Users see that the association has confidence in its own products.
- Technically savvy users in the association, with perhaps a very wide set of business requirements and deployments, are able to discover and report bugs in the products before they are released to the general public.
The phrase can be used disparagingly by accusing a company of not eating its own dog food, such as if a networking company were to use a competitor's network products for its own day-to-day business.
The term originated in television commercials for the dog food Alpo. Actor Lorne Greene would tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it's so good that he feeds it to his own dogs. It became slang during the dot-com craze, and is used most commonly in reference to technology companies.
If taken to an extreme, a company's desire to eat its own dog food can turn into Not Invented Here syndrome, in which the company refuses to use any product which was not developed in-house.
In the development process at Mozilla, fine details needing extra polish for an imminent Netscape release would be tagged catfood, to indicate a dish fit for a fussier creature.
External link
- What Is The Work Of Dogs In This Country? (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000012.html) (Joel Spolsky, Joel On Software, 05 May 2001)