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IT Giants Accused of Exploiting Open Source
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.'"
But aren't they also helping Open Source by increasing it's popularity? They are huge companies that carry a lot of weight, and they can get people to adopt it who wouldn't have thought to before. Which can bring in more developers through increased recognition of the movement.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
I think someone is taking himself - and open source - too seriously.
People write code because they enjoy it.
99.9% of the time what they do has no meaningful impact on 99.9% of existance.
People who write code because they think they're going to change the world never do.
--
Toby
He seems to forget a lot of OS software gets coded today by people who get a check for it. If half of the devellopers on a big project are paid by corporations, is it that difficult that the project does what the corporations want?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
The OS community (and those who appreciate and respect it - like many on slashdot) seem to be pleased when there is some big name take-up on open source software.
When you write software for pleasure, you like others to use it.
When others make loads of money from it, the feeling is mixed.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
Everyone who contributes to open source has their own adjenda. Private individual programmers may just love using the community software, business may just love the low price tag. Who can complain when everyone (open) wins?
__
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Big vendors may well presnt themselves as an open source "portal", saying "OK - you want open source; this is our IBM open source product..." but this is only slightly harmful now. I still believe the future development of open source is in the hands of individuals who are relatively uninfluenced by big business interests, focussing instead on the technology, and just making a better product. Plus, the open source community has this ingrained ethic about doing it yourself - the ability to fork at any time on a principled issue acts as a sort of safety valve.
I guess an analogy is two fish swimming in a stream - at the moment the shark of big business is swimming alongside the remora of open source in the same direction, but should things change, both will take their gained advantages from the arrangement and swim away in different directions once more.
However corporations package it, the community is strong to its principles and will not be subverted for capitalism. Contrary to what Villasante says, the open source community does not need to actively work to achieve social change - by its very nature any success it will accrue will do that job for it.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
"The open source community today [is a] subcontractor of American multinationals."
To be fair, although the multinationals do have a lot to thank the OSS community for, I think the OSS community has a lot to thank the multinationals for in return. Take Open Office, where would that project be without Sun buying StarDivision in 1999 and open sourcing StarOffice 5.2 in 2000?
Personally I feel that the current relationship is symbiotic and works well. Sure in the future the OSS community should probably become less reliant on the multinationals, as long as they don't bite the hand that's fed them.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
it boils down to "code for food, shelter, amusement"... Those open source programmers, helpers do it to earn a living, doing what they like to do, and in return get money, which allows them to live where they want to. The return for multi's is working software done by motivated workers.
The side effect is that the code is also usable by third parties, even competitors (remember who ships samba with their unix products, or who ships linux with their hardware).
...why on earth does he expect IBM, HP or Sun to encourage development of independent commercial software products - products that would compete with those offered by the IBM, for instance?
The owls are not what they seem
Don't believe him. He's trying to turn us against IBM. Look at what happened to Anakin.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/metricmusic
I think Red Hat's arrangement with Fedora Core is pretty good. Fedora Core - great community operating system. Every other year Red Hat stick it in a box, say ooh it's certified and offer support, and sell it.
Gee. If only Stallman had thought of it that way.
KFG
... as long as the giants don't get exclusive ownership of the code. And if the the code was developed with their funding and remains in the public domain, it is they who are getting "exploited".
Richard Stallman might disagree with you.
I'm sorry, but that's just utter crap. The reason people from a university get employed is because:
1) It shows they have the concentration to sit through several years of education, so there's less chance of them quitting within a few months
2) It shows they have learnt basic software engineering skills that many geeks do not learn by themselves, such as UML.
(Taken from a presentation I made explaining open source as a development model for large businesses)...
A common misconception about open source is that because it is "free" it is somehow a charity operation where programmers work bene-vola because they want "to contribute".
This is, however, wrong. When Adam Smith said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest", he was accurately describing a world in which self-interest creates mutually-beneficial structures.
Open source contributors are attracted for different reasons, depending on how far they understand and identify with the technology at hand. We can identify the self-interest of each role, while seeing that the overall structure serves everyone:
* "Users" will evangelise (seeking security in the company of others using the same technology).
* "Power users" will help others who have problems (seeking the kudos that comes from helping others).
* "Pundits" will discuss the technology in public forums (seeking the fame that comes from being able to accurately identify trends and future winners).
* "Insiders" will take on parts of the testing process (seeking better familiarity with a technology that may become an important part of their skill set).
* "Players" will delve into the technology itself, taking on smaller roles in the process (seeking the kudos and fame that can come from being on a winning team).
* "Key players" will take on major roles in the project (seeking to impose their ideas, turn a small project into a major success, or otherwise earn a global reputation).
* "Patrons" will provide financial support to the project (looking to sell services, often to the users, that require the technology to succeed and be widely used).
The naive view of open source focuses only on the players, ignoring the wider economy of interests. A successful open source project must attract and support all these classes of people (and others, such as the "troll", who vocally attacks the project in public forums, thus stiffening the resolve of the users and pundits who defend it).
Thus we can understand the needs of each role:
* Users need a pleasant and impressive product so they can feel proud about showing it to others.
* Power users need forums and mailing lists where they can answer questions.
* Pundits need pre-packaged press releases, insider tips, and the occasional free lunch. Some controversy also helps.
* Insiders need regular releases, frequent improvements, and forums where they can propose ideas for the project.
* Players need extension frameworks where they can write their (often sub-standard) code without affecting the primary project.
* Key players need badges of membership, and access to the right tools and support.
* Patrons need a high-quality and stable product that supports their services and additional products.
The only people working full time, and usually professionally, on an open source project are the key players. All the others will take part in the project as a side-effect of their on-going work or hobbies.
While a traditional software company must pay everyone in this economy except the users, an open source economy must only pay the key players, who make up perhaps 2-5% of the total. Further, the key players will work for significantly less than the market rate, since they also derive a real benefit from working on successful projects, which I call the open source "payload". The most important part of a future programmer's CV is the section titled "Open Source Projects". This is the payload. It translates directly into dollars, proportional to the impact and importance of the open source projects involved.
When compensation plus payload does not cover the cost of working on a project (in terms of loss of compensation for alternative work), the key player will suffer "burnout" after 12-18 months, more or less depending on the person's tenacity.
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What, you expect me to call Jesus a liar?
ps - funny, not troll.
The European Commissions worries about the Open Source Community? Stop software patents and we are fine!
If we make software for commercial reasons, it is evil. If we fund open source, it is evil.
This is my sig.
Nowadays we often _have_ to be "mere subcontractors" because of the ever looming threat of software patents. If the commission wants us to be more independent then create the legal framework to allow and and stop pushing for software patents.
I don't know who in the EC wrote the directive but it certainly does NOT encourage open source developers to become more indepentent. It scares developers into only developing under the protection of their feudal lord (ie, a large company who can afford and is interested in wasting money on patents and patent litigation)
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
1) It shows they have the concentration to sit through several years of education, so there's less chance of them quitting within a few months.
Nice so they can safely be dead wood/office drone, they might even fit in a japanese company if they stop breathing
2) It shows they have learnt basic software engineering skills that many geeks do not learn by themselves, such as UML.
Yeah... it show they passed the test... not that they understood the questions
Suppose some guy is laboring in a factory making widgets; selling the widgets is making the factory owner rich but the people who actually make them are struggling economically.
Let's leave aside the fact that this paradigm has always been a crappy one. You can't look at this situation in isolation. It makes a difference for example what the laws are and who, in practice, gets to make them. It makes a difference what the labor and widget markets are like, and whether the skills needed to compete really are commodity skills. It makes a difference how the boss treats the workers in general.
Leaving aside the fact that such a paradigm pretty much leads to pointless arguments based on incompatible assumptions, the the fact that it does incite these arguments is instructive. How you react to it depends on whether you are socialist in temperment or capitalist.
The Socialist temperment in its extreme form automatically looks for an fixates on anything smacking of inequity. The Capitalist temperment is quick to dismiss the possiblity that inequity can exist; any economic transaction is in their view tautologically fair.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
He Said:
He Meant: He Said: He Meant: He Said: He Meant: He Said: He Meant: He Said: He MeantOr am attributing to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I'm getting sick of Americans trashing America.
I'm also getting sick of people on Slashdot trashing America.
I'm also sick of people on Slashdot trashing Slashdot (figure that one out).
There really is nothing quite like sitting at dinner with an American girl explaining to her dining companions, all or almost all American, what a bunch of heathens we are, and how much we could learn from those overseas. What really bothers me is that this is intended to somehow exempt them from judgement. Americans explaining how dumb their countrymen are really do not sound any more intelligent for having done so.
I actually went and read the article, and (surprise, surprise), Villasante is really not saying what Slashdot reports that he's saying.
If you read the entire article, he's not specifically complaining that corporations are abusing the free coding of open source. What he is saying is that the corporations who release open source are also very responsible for lobbying for a lot of things that are later likely to inhibit open source development in the future. His working example is the European intellectual property legislation, that would ultimately inhibit open source in the wider view but is still being campaigned for by the likes of IBM and Sun.
His point is that open source is the future of the software industry for Europe, yet by putting these laws in place that will give more power to the multi-national corportions, Europe is inhibiting its own future software industry.
He's suggesting that open source developers are happily working with these corporations at ground level, but the same organisations might ultimately lead to a less productive open source model. This is what he means about the open source communities not taking himself seriously.
I'm inclined to agree with him in many respects. Being able to develop in conjunction with businesses is a win-win scenario in terms of actually getting software developed, but we shouldn't necessarily ignore what else these businesses are doing just because they're cooperating in one aspect.
If I hire you as a sub-contractor, what you write isn't your property, it's mine. If, OTOH, you are an open-source programer, then what you write is shared by you and me. And if, as is normally the case, the code is made publicly available, it could be considered a charitable contribution, just as if you requested that some or all of your paychecks be sent to UNICEF or something.
Admittedly, current accounting practices aren't set up to handle these types of values transfers, but that doesn't mean that they aren't occurring.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
OK, I actually read the article and he's got some good points. However the whole reason that these companies have a lot of sway with the open source community is that they are actively participating within it! I agree with him that the open source community could use some added independence and the solution is simple: the EU should increase their participation within open source community!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
We have had this discussion over and over in the past. Somebody should go and tell this bureaucrat to think, listen and learn before he opens his mouth. That way we will saved a nuissance and he won't have yet another reason to be embarrassed.
From the moment the EC realises it is part of the evolution of society and starts to give real support to FOSS, we will be moving in the right direction.
Philosophers have to cure many intellectual diseases in themselves before arriving at the notions of common sense.
and they will tell you they aren't. Geez, do we just hate big corporations or what?
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Your precisely correct. Look at the work of the OpenBSD developers to open up hardware documentation. Recently they have worked on (since the vendors will not work with) Intel's Centrina and Adaptec's RAID controllers.
The Linux crowd often doesn't get it. NDA == EVIL.
I wonder what fraction of open source coders *really* are Americans?
Maybe Villasante should get together with Enderle and decide whose FUD to believe.
How can you get anyone on the right, or the left to agree with you? ;o)
The overarching assumption of our time is that all change is the product of, and requires intent; if the intent is not in man, it must be God's. In our post-Christian [European] era, that which is not the product of the 'will' of a corporation must be that of a state entity, or else explicitly goodwill of a collection of individuals.
Natural selection is not part of such thinking. Emergent behaviour is perceived as the result of as-yet-unseen forces.
The power of FOSS is the is delivers results beyond that of the intents of the participants. The commoditisation of software spreads technology further afield. The availability of soure code does wonders for software development everywhere. By increasing the availability of resources everywhere, so must more can be down, so that the comparable harm to 'incentives' becomes a joke.
Yet the 'outcome requires intent' mentality means that the world moves steadily toward ever-stronger intellectual property regimes, and that the opposition, insofar as it comes from politicians is hopelessly idealistic, since they fail to grasp why FOSS is so very pragmatic.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Look, I code for KDE and use KDE. I truly love it. But kword had absolutely NOTHING to do with OpenOffice being created. MS makes money on 2 products (and loses on almost all the rest); Windows and Office. If not for the monopoly on those 2 products, MS would have died long ago ( their code sux, their support is horrible, they really do not have original ideas, etc. etc.).
Sun opened StarOffice in an effort to depieve MS of their monopoly. They also supported Linux for quite some time thinking that much of the sale would be in the MS market.
OpenOffice/StarOffice is making inroads into industry. It is obvious that this idea is working the way that Sun meant it to. The Linux route, though, has been killing Sun as well as Windows. They never thought that Linux could compete in numbers (financial or benchmarks).
With all that said, I do use and like kword. But every so often I use OO as it gets the job done nicely.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sounds like he's just been listening to ESR and the like and never heard RMS. Had he, he'd noticed not everyone is just hacking for the good of the big companies but for themselves and everyone.
Open Source was a reaction on the, from an american view-point "too business unfriendly" Free Software, to get acceptance from and win supporters among businesses and thus make the free software more popular and ubiqous.
However in taking the descission to promote the licenses this way, one did not only distance oneseleves from the idealistic Free Software advocates, but also from the leftists, who, in the rest of the world aren't as few and unimportant as in the US. I think that one could argue that this descission was taken on a bit too US-centric arguments.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Why do you miss the point? That is, if the grandparent says he doesn't want to load the KDE libraries, then why would he load the gnome/gtk libraries? There's no way to have a modern really light desktop on linux. Sooner or later you'll have to load one of the two main widget toolkits.
Personally, I enjoy my linux desktop best when I use wmaker or enlightment. But I will load Firefox and konqueror and not
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Whenever something goes bad in Europe, European leaders are running around saying "America this", or "America that". It's not America's fault that Europe cannot both have a cradle to the grave welfare state with guaranteed social stability and a dynamic capitalist society at the same time. It's not America's fault that France and Germany have huge unemployment rates.
All of our transatlantic problems are because of that simple quandry. Europe sees that America's trade policies are trashing its way of life. But Europe doesn't have to follow them. Europe doesn't have to have giant economic growth and doesn't have to try and become a unified alternative to America. Those are European decisions, not American ones. IF Europe wants to have a slower economy and fall behind economically but have more social stability, then let it.
What I hate is blanket statements. Americans are a bunch of heathens that should be more integrated with the world. Americans don't understand foreign countries. Americans are stupider than their more civilized European counterparts. I mean, America has more people in more countries, both in businesses and in the military, then no nation in the world has ever had. America leads in many areas of research, has a robust economy, and yet, we're "stupid".
Look at how much Europeans trash Texas. I'm no fan of that whole Southern Texas thing, but, if Texas were a country, it would be comparable to many European States in terms of economic activities. It's certainly larger!
This is my sig.
LOL, you hate the software and avoid it, because it crashed for you 3 years before? How pathetic.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!
I hate the software and avoid it because it crashed the first time I used it. And again. And again. It crashed whenever I wanted to change the typeface in a document. In other words, I had to conciously try to avoid the problem area every time I used the damn thing and it *still* crashed.
That was a pretty fundamental bug to have slipped through testing. What did it say about the rest of the product? Not something I'd want to have to rely on.
It was the equivalent of coming to a job interview with ketchup stains all over your shirt. You can change the shirt if it affects your ability to do the job, but the fact you didn't bother in the first place gives a bad overall impression of your attitude/abilities.
You know something? If I had a good reason to, I'd probably have given it another go by now. But I have OOo, MS Word and LaTeX, and I can't be bothered. Yeah, I'm human; KWord failed me repeatedly when I didn't have time to waste, and unless there's a compelling reason to give it another go, I'm not wasting time with it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
With mounting pressure from M$, or SCO, or any other company that feels wronged by people "giving things away for free" they will fight against the opposing buisness model with tooth and nail. OSS simply does not have the capital to take on software patents, accusations of stolen code, etc. when they come along.
OSS can take care of a lot of things very quickly. It's model for developing software and man-power availible is simply mind-boggling -- something no corporation could even match. There is not a company in the world that could pay to employ the amount of man-power OSS has on constant active reserve.
But let's face it, in this day and age it's simply not the ideas you have, and the things you can do; it's the money you have. It is unfortunate, but we see it in every walk of life in first world nations: second rate products are allowed to flourish and become main-stream consumer goods due to the capital the company that produces it has (*cough* microsoft *cough*). Mean while these companies will use their capital to destroy their competitors by any means possible. OSS is an easy target because it has no ready reserves of $$. You can always insist that somewhere buried in the kernel is an offending bit of code, or that microsoft was the first to develop a certain code declaration or algorithm. Of course everyone knows that is crap -- but who has the money to back up that fact?
When it comes right down to it, these companies like IBM, HP, and the like are absolutely needed to protect OSS from the imperfections of our own society -- so that OSS is less political and more development. The OSS model works great, but it can be eroded by capitalism on legal grounds unless somebody does something.
With all of that said, I would like to thank all of the large companies who work with OSS to keep it alive. Companies that work for people, and not for a corperate board, are few and far between; it's always nice to see something good done with money and power.
A mistake that many people, including this commissioner, make when thinking about open source development is to think that creating a commercial software product is essentially creating some software and then getting paid. In fact, there is a huge amount of work and even more risk in getting it from the point where it is a perfect piece of software to the point where you have money.
Marketting, sales, accounting, payroll, tech support, and business administration are all full-time jobs that developers don't want to do, and all of them would be necessary to have a successful commercial product. Open-source developers could do all this extra work, and would either get some money or lose some money. But they could also paint houses if they wanted more money, and it would be more fun, and a less risky and faster source of income.
A lot of open source work is done for free, but I suspect that a lot of the long term maintenance isn't. If you want to be paid, you'll have to do what you're paid to do.
Just because the Open Source Movement isn't as openly communist as some socialist EU official would have liked doesn't mean it doesn't meet its goals of open software.
If the problem is truly that IBM and the like are selling branded Open Source, and people are buying it, then the GPL will lubricate the production of competitors for 'IBM Open Source.' If this official somehow wants society to realize that IBM software isn't so different from, say, Debian software, well then I hope he's got the cash to market to the purchasing managers.
I contend that the "Open Source Community" is taking itself seriously, which is why more and more of these programmers are becoming subcontractors. Hell, a lot of the kernel work is done by people paid by big companies to do so. If it appears to be a complete mess, its because, in part, it is so. Amatuers and professionals alike can write software; by saying something close to "you want IBM Open Source" IBM is putting its professional word behind the software. Open source is not a centrally planned economny, no matter how many people have told you that the GPL reeks of socialism and that RMS echoes the rhetoric of famous Communists.
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Open Source Sysadmin
Wow. There are just soo many different ways this post is wrong wrong wrong.
1. Europe is Economically Unhealthy
I'd argue that they are doing just the opposite. Streamlining markets, simplfying trade, lowering tariffs. If they can keep the IP free, then they will really be into somethings. You've heard of the EU right? It may not be happening quickly, but there's no doubt it's changing.
2. Europe is "losing" to the US
No. I'd argue that currently both the EU and US are both constantly struggling to maintain GDP growth and maintain high(er)employment. This is not "losing." See #1 for why the EU's growth opportunities are very good. That you think the U.S. is somehow winning shows how much of the USA-is-#1 crack you smoke. It's 2005, not 1950.
3. Subsidies EU-Yes US-no.
This is plain wrong. The American economy is subsidized in -many- ways. They simply aren't as obvious to you.
Please turn off the Fox News and learn a few *-facts-* regarding how the American economy operates.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html