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IT Giants Accused of Exploiting Open Source

Posted by Zonk on from the do-your-own-work dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A top European Commission official has accused major IT players such as IBM, HP and Sun of using the open source community as mere subcontractors rather than encouraging them to develop independent commercial products. Jesús Villasante, head of software technologies at the commission, said: 'The open source community today [is a] subcontractor of American multinationals. Open source communities need to take themselves seriously and realise they have contribution to themselves and society. From the moment they realise they are part of the evolution of society and try to influence it, we will be moving in the right direction.'"

3 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. Go figure by 1000101 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    "The open source community today [is a] subcontractor of American multinationals"
    Big corporations getting free labor. Who would have thought they would take advantage of that? The CEOs, CTOs, etc. must be laughting their way to the bank when they see how many people are willing to do their work for free.

  2. Re:I HATE KWord by kiskoa · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    LOL, you hate the software and avoid it, because it crashed for you 3 years before? How pathetic.

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  3. Re:Everyone for themself by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    I think the point is that some developers may feel cheated if someone comes along after you've been working on something for 5 years, re-package it, re-brand it, and sell it - with source of course - and make a pile of money. Especially if that "competes" with donationware style proft stream for the developers.

    Hmmm...this sounds an awful lot like what Red Hat, Mandrake and Novell/SuSE do. I guess I'm not seeing the screams of protest...

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