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Corporations Getting Into The Open Source Spirit
Anonymous writes "Some bastions of capitalism are getting into the open-source spirit -- not only using the software, but contributing code fixes and other mods, according to an article in today's Computerworld."
What makes you think it was a single thing? In my opinion, it was a long time coming.
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
Back in the 70's, IBM came out with their VM meta-OS. Its origins were in academia, not in IBM's shops, and in all the installations that I saw, it always came with full source. They actively encouraged customers to submit not just bug reports, but fixes, which were then sent out to other customers.
;-). I emailed the fix to the Amdahl support people, they thanked me, and it was in their next set of patches.
In one place that I worked around 1980, there was a big IMB mainframe, and one day we brought in some Amdahl people to demo their unix that ran on VM. One question was whether source was available. Their answer was "The source isn't an option; you get it whether you want it or not." Within a couple of weeks, I'd made a small fix to the kernel's clock routine (needed because the turkeys who ran our VM had screwed up their clock in a way that Amdahl's people hadn't conceived of
Closed source was to a great extent an invention of Microsoft. Before them, it was obvious to even the stupidest manager that it was a good idea to make source available to any programmers who could understand it. That way, you got bug fixes rather than bug reports.
It's actually a bit strange that we now have management that doesn't understand this. What are they teaching them in business schools these days?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This got me wondering.
Bug fixes and other contributions to open source software are in and of themselves valuable, but creating them will always be an expense to companies. With the exception of major enhancements or improvements very few will be marketable, or generate any other revenue stream for the company.
"Goodwill" however, is a recognized asset for companies. An asset that can be appraised, and entered on the balance sheet raising the company's value.
I wonder whether the open source movement could benefit from this aspect of contribution to the community, encouraging companies to create a verifyable and appraisable track record of contributions, and supporting their efforts to create genuine bankable value based on goodwill.
Just a thought.
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Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
I've been working with a lot of vendors on projects, IBM, BEA, ATG, TIBCO, etc.
You always find bugs in the products you use. Most of the time you have to develop a fix yourself, because the vendor's release schedule will not enable you to wait for the official fix. It's just good vendor relations to send the fix to the vendor.
I did that exactly for the same reason Merrill Lynch does that, to get better software.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill bugs
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
What is this supposed to mean? Open source is more compatible with communism? That sounds like a subtle insult to me.
There is absolutely nothing spectacular about corporations dealing with open source software.