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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
Don't believe him. He's trying to turn us against IBM. Look at what happened to Anakin.
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Richard Stallman might disagree with you.
(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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ps - funny, not troll.
The European Commissions worries about the Open Source Community? Stop software patents and we are fine!
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.
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.
I wonder what fraction of open source coders *really* are Americans?
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.
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.
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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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