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.'"

Comments

The Inverse

[Adrilla]

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.

The hand that feeds them

[HaydnH]

"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.

meh

[metricmusic]

Don't believe him. He's trying to turn us against IBM. Look at what happened to Anakin.

Bah to your 'Hmph'

[wurp]

People who write code because they think they're going to change the world never do.

Richard Stallman might disagree with you.

Re:Bah to your 'Hmph'

[Peaker]

Many would agree that Richard Stallman, with his GNU manifest, has in fact initiated the Free Software movement, that later also yielded the opensource movement. He has also inspired Linus to make Linux free, if you note the fact Linus has used Richard's GPL license on Linux.

In other words, without Richard, we'd be stuck in the 80's or early 90's where all software is commercial crap, shareware crap, and all of the power over computer users would belong to big companies - forever locking them in and controlling their computer usage.

I'd say he changed the world more than say, a random prime minister of some country did.

oh dear...

[ladget]

The European Commissions worries about the Open Source Community? Stop software patents and we are fine!

Re:Everyone for themself

[the_xaqster]

....I'd be if I were up all night coding a release, and then, suddenly, my commerical counterpart announces a new build, new features, and and an upgrade fee the next day!

But what would stop you getting the sources, incorperating their improvements into your code, adding a new feature that people will want, but not enough people to justify the company developing it, and releasing it yourself, for free? Or even just taking the Open source code and releasing it for free, changing for support? Then the company is left changing for the same (or less featureful) product you are now giving away.

Open source cuts both ways. They can base their commercial app on your code, but you can base your code on their commercial app.

Swings and roundabouts really.