Slashdot Mirror
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."
The most surprising thing in an article like this is the fact that it is getting written at all. It used to be that only MS would get this kind of rah-rah journalism, but the tide seems to be turning.
Now, stuff like this seems to be showing up all the time. I wonder what single thing tripped off this new trend.
Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire
DARPA supports BSD, and now big business buying Open source. Either sanity is breaking out everywhere or the apocolypse is coming soon to a planet near you.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
I run a moderately-sized software company.
We use a lot of open source software, so I'm always looking for good ways to contribute to the oss-movement, but the consequences are too difficult to judge.
We actually thought about making our source open for the benefit of non-profit organisations (it's a project-management software).
Has anybody made any experience with something like this? We are talking about enterprise-level software here, not your average free-for-students-ide.
Fleur de Sel
...has spawned a whole magazine already. That does certainly suggest Linux is ready for prime time.
So you're going to create a database telling people exactly what software government agencies use and give them the code. Does anyone else see this as a security risk?
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
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.
Actually, I thought it was a geeky Vin Diesel.
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
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.
------
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
the value of a MCSE drops another 20 G's a year.
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
Perhaps the problem with this particular form of ignorance is that many really care nothing about freedom and choice and thus promoting the things that provide them. Instead they are the vandals that break just to break. Yes comrade, let us take up arms and uhh... why are we doing this? *BANG* Never question mindless violence my comrade, who is next with these "questions?"
Please take the politics and personal agendas out of everything you do, especially software. Many are tired of seeing everything laced with your crap.
Tim O'Reilly had an interesting discussion with Adam Turoff on why Open Source communities do work so well.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3017
Thanks,
Gerard
You're trying to tell me that buisnessmen, with their buisness management degrees, in charge of big buisnesses, finally are figuring out the buisness model that is the opensource concept.
Seriously I'm acctually shocked to see this in the press presented in such a clear and logical manner. Usually when the press refers to any Free/Opensource project they place a little blurb about how anyone can make contributions to the code. Almost never do they drop names of companies/governments who do. I guess this just goes to show after a while people can unlearn the proprietary method of software development.
Phase 2- get them to realise the idea of Free Software. Let them know it should be their right to change, develop, and distribute code.
I wish there was some there was some way that I could be outside playing basketball, in the rain, and not get wet.
The most interesting part of this is the reason Merril Lynch gave as to why they posted patches back. They wanted to have a seat at the development table and did not want to have to maintain a fork of the product forever. Certainly not a RMS view of OSS, but one that makes more sense (and dollars) in the long run.
K
You're misinterpreting goodwill, which, IIRC, is defined as the difference between the book value of a company's assets and the price paid for it in an acquisition. It's often interpreted (at least by me) as a function of the value of the brand associated with the acquired company.
i.e. Amazon's actual assets are probably miniscule compared to its stock price, but the value of the marketable name is substantial.
Also note that you'd have to be able to associate a value for the contribution in question, which, since the code is released to the world for free, is pretty close to nil. As such, it's a stone cold expense.
Unless, of course, you're trying to build positive karma within the OSS community, which is certianly possible, but probably shouldn't show up on a balance sheet.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
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.
I recently posted a short article on this subject on SYS-CON's SYS-CON's Linux Business and Technology (the publishers of Java Developer's Journal). I think an even better article on Corporate open source adoption is the one in the March 15th issue of CIO magazine.
...that just keeps gaining momentum. Linux/open source gets some press, some "hip" factor, PHBs start to look at the hip new thing (I can just hear some manager asking his newly minted MSCE, "Say, what would it take to switch to this Linux thing I read about in businessweek?"), the more the PHBs look at it, the more press it gets...
It's cool, but at the same time, a lot of the people writing about it clearly don't understand it -- the mutilated description of the GPL in the recent Businessweek article bears witness to that. Then at the same time (in that article, and elsewhere) there's the continued use of phrases like "a ragtag band of software geeks", which I don't consider pejorative or anything, but it begins to get a little old.
I think this will be a Good Thing. As long as the "trend" lasts long enough for people to figure out how to use it(Linux, etc); if they just abandon it the first time they're prompted to fsck their filesystem, it could stop rolling. But hopefully by that time the this-could-be-more-user-friendly-dept. will have worked some more magic...
philcrissman.com.
Companies like Microsoft are greatly overcharging for their products, perhaps not for the initial sale, but for the upgrades and on-going development. Or do you really think that the incremental improvements in your Office XP upgrade are really worth several hundred dollars to you compared to the version of Office you already paid for? And why would you want to pay for improvements that often are largely based on user feedback anyway, rather than representing actual R&D work by the software company?
Those are market inefficiencies with the commercial software model that open source software corrects. Sure, the open source model isn't perfect either, in that not everybody who benefits pays exactly for what they are getting, but it seems to all average out statistically well enough for open source software to be competitive.
One thing I notice is that participating with the Open Source community changes the way I look at corporations. It's another benifit I was surprised that wasn't mentioned in the article. Some people, myself included, see corporations in a much better light when I notice they are contribuiting to Linux development or any open source project.
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
This casual reference by the Submitter can be used to illustrate a fundamental bias within the community of Open Source users. (I'd argue that most Open Source contributors wouldn't take this view.)
How is it that Open Source and Capitalism are commonly viewed as being diametrically opposed?
Two Points:
Companies that utilize Open Source in order to more rapidly or cheaply deliver whatever service or product they sell on the market will win out in a competition against peers that develop a product with purely in-house tools. This is because an enormous expenditure of resources would be required to exceed the quality and speed of an active open source community project. --Doing away with that cost will help a company to cut prices below what a competitor can sustain.-- A fine strategy therefore, would be for a Company to promote those Open Source groups with whom they share a common interest. If a company depends on computing power to achieve success, it could benefit from helping the Mosix group deliver exceptional clustering software, for instance.
Open Source uses a reward system that is very similar to Capitalism. The strength of capitalism is in the nearly 1:1 ratio of talent to reward, as well as the constant feedback-loop the market presents to new products. Open Source rewards contributors with status; the best programmers are richly compensated in this regard. In many ways status is better than money. (Arguably, a primary attribute of money is the proxy action it has on status.) Additionally, Open Source has it's own feedback-loop in that a single programmer searching for available status, has an incentive to review other people's code in the hopes of improving it. This action multiplied thousands of times over the life of a project is an efficient and dependable machine for improvement.
The "bastion of capitalism" fits very nicely with Open Source, which is why Linux is winning the war in IT departments all over the world. The Open Source yin-and-yang of Status and Peer-Review is a close approximation of Capitalism's Money and Markets.
As a contributor, I can tell you that just as Companies need things to cost less, Programmers need things to make better. Open Source and Capitalism are becoming the best buds, and only an Open Source parasite or a Corporate nobody would fail to see the natural symbioses of the two.
IBM was shunned for many years by both the Unix and opensource communities.
However they are now looked upon as the good guys and their bussiness skyrocketed as a result. IBM is what most hackers have on their minds if their employer needs support and consulting for huge projects. They are not free or cheap but you get what you pay for.
I use to live in NewYork and the NYLUG is one of the best in the country. IBM for years has been generious in donating their rooms for the meetings and group gatherings. Alot of the locals in the meetings have consulting contracts with IBM as a result.
The more they help free software advocates the more advertising they get as well as improved software they can sell for their clients. We all win.
I believe JBoss is also an advertisement for a consulting firm who produces it. There bussiness has taken off thanks to free advertising from their product.
Opensource does work well in getting your name out. Alot of PHB do not trust salesmen because they do not know if their products are any good. With opensource software they can test them out.
http://saveie6.com/
Anyone who has used the code licensed under
'viral' (read GPL) open-source licenses cannot
close their source code.
This is blatantly false. The GPL only requires
you to GPL your code if you distribute it. This
means that company X is allowed to take GPL'd
code, modify it for their own use and use it
internally for as long as they like without
ever releasing their changes to their competitors.
While it's true that they can't sell their
software without GPLing it, 99.9% of software
written isn't written to be sold as a product,
it's written to meet internal needs of an
organization. That's what "in-house" development
is.
*sigh* back to work...
The main crux of this comparison, as far as I can tell, should be made in reference to other aspects of business. Consider a manufacturing plant of some kind. In this plant they have equipment that they built, equipment they bought on contract and have serviced, and equipment that they bought but maintain themselves. The equipment they build or maintain is directly related to their business, and the operators/engineers are sufficiently trained and experienced to cover the majority of their needs. Over the years they have filled each equipment need they've had with the solution that was best at the time, and presumably address their solutions over time when difficulties or cost concerns come up.
This is roughly analogous to in-house software, proprietary software, and open source software. A company is free to pick and choose which solutions work best to remain in business. The main difference is very few companies naturally have Software Engineers/Designers/What Have You in the course of their normal business developments. Whereas a small manufacturing company is likely to have been founded by people making the product by hand, rarely are office environments founded by programmers (Exception: software companies which by this analogy are manufacturers of software and would fit with them).
The important thing to remember is that software isn't the only third party products these offices, or even manufacturers, use. There aren't many advocates for Open Source Copiers, or Open Source Pens, or Open Source Coffee Makers, all calling for GPL'd blueprints. The significant difference with software is that the only real resources required are the source code (or blue prints) and the person capable of understanding and modifying them. Virtually everything else would require a parts supply chain which, if not part of the main business, usually isn't an economical path to follow.
In conclusion, the cost of maintaining anything utilized by an organization that isn't directly related to the organization should be compared with the costs of outside solutions, whether talking about software or coffee makers, and whether talking about businesses, governments, or even your own house.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.