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Convincing Your Superiors to GPL the Code?
jakobgrimstveit asks: "At work I've been developing an intranet/extranet portal framework in PHP based on many other peoples work, including quite a few PEAR modules. I've always wanted to release the coding framework as GPL and publish it on SourceForge, and my boss has - impressively enough - not been too negative about this. This has been going around in the organization for quite a while now, and finally the reply from the company's president was (not surprisingly): 'Why should we do so?' I now have the task of writing a document listing the main reasons for GPLing the code, and this is where I turn to the highly competent Slashdot crowd: How do I convince my bosses to GPL the code I've written? I assume many other developers have the same problems trying to convince their bosses to open up their code."
In Fortune-100-America, everything possible must be stamped with a (c) or (tm) or patent#. Advancement up the technical ladder is difficult without getting a few patents for the company.
I think people here would have a heart attack if they knew I ever even thought about GPL'ing code, as that's almost tantamount to selling trade secrets.
If you've wanted to GPL it since the beginning you must surely have some good reason for wanting that, right? Just tell them that reason, focusing on the business benefits. If there are no business benefits and you want to open-source it for idealogical reasons then you might need some help. Find business reasons (by looking at other business-led open-source projects, preferably similar to yours) or give up.
Why is anything anything?
Amazing magic tricks
sell the support. that's what the linux folks do (RH, SuSE, etc.)
- Free development of new features, some of which you might not otherwise have thought of yourselves if you can get a development community started.
- Free beta testing across a broader range of users and operating environments which should identify and enable the fixing of bugs far sooner.
- Free positive P.R. for your company, especially if things really take off.
- Free advertising for your company as well if you brand the package with your company logo and colours by default. Lots of people don't bother taking that kind of stuff out if it's not too obtrusive.
There's far more things that can be free than just "beer", and it's libre too, so you can even have some free Karma.Realistically though some of that is going to need kickstarting which will require some small financial and time outlay. Things like provisioning the initial website and forums for your applications users to bounce ideas and code back and forth. Some man hours, probably yours, to apply patches and integrate new features until such time as you hopefully have an active enough community to let others external to the company help maintain the code on their own time and dime. Be realistic and give them some negatives too, albeit with a positive spin, to show that you've thought things through and demonstrate that the benefits outweigh the expense.
Oh, and if you do eventually get the product GPL'd, submit the news to Slashdot as a "Slashback"; that should give your fledgling userbase and development community a running start!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
The real question here is why did you wan't to GPL the code if you didn't already see tangible benefits to doing so. Don't get me wrong I love Open Source. I use it all the time in my job and at home. But if you don't already have tangible benefits in mind toward opens-ourcing the code then why did you want to open-source it in the first place.
Or were you asking for benefits your companies exec's would understand? That may be a trifle more difficult to expound upon since we don't even know what your company does.
If you see spelling or grammatical errors don't blame me. I tried to preview but IE here at work borked the CSS
I think it would be more productive if you would share a practical reason for GPL'ing the code, if you had one.
-jpeg
Another potential positive aspect is relicensing. Some companies are so GPL-phobic that they will pay to have you (or your company) give them a one-off, non-exclusive waiver, so they can use your code without the (perceived) GPL albatross hanging round their necks. I've worked on open source projects (e.g. HMMER) that have made money this way.
Well, that's a pretty darn good reason why most gpl developers fail miserably in the commercial software world....
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
If the company doesn't feel okay about GPLing this piece of software, but doesn't really care about hanging on to it you might be able to talk them into simply disclaiming copyrights over it. One imagines that copyrights would then devolve to you, and you could GPL it.
Outside of that check out ESR's various works for "business minded" reasons to go "open source". He has particularly compelling arguments for just the sort of thing you've written.
-Peter
1) Assume, you're not as bright as you think you are
The security architecture flaws in the code will be revealed, exploits developed that with your self ingratiating credits attributing your handiwork to your company by way of email addresses with the companies domain and along with the unwitting conspirators names and emails who helped with the code all of which are very easy to track down using Google.
GPL Lesson 1
Do not attribute the code so that it can be linked back to the associates or persons or company you work for that uses it.
Do not gain personally from your companies work. It just smells like your trying to look good in the GPL community.
Assets of a company are company property even though you conceived developed and birthed the ugly baby, remember you're just its care taker.
Do you really need that much attention; are you able to keep up with and tolerate hands all over your pride any joy?
What happens if that encryption code you implemented, you know the one with the name "Base64_encryption() turns out to NOT be encryption at all, but no one bothers to tell you for 6 months?
You and your company could suffer irreparable damage to the public's opinion when all their accounts are stolen from your base 64 encoded databases.
Lesson 2 if you still have to enlarge your ego,
Get a large consensus of reviewer in company, including legal department, and at least one officer of the company before anonymously releasing your baby into the world.
By eliminating the perception of self ego ingratiation, you will gain true respect( A harder commodity)
If the resulting GPL release could ever be traced back to theft of records, the SOX and HIPAA folks would roast those responsible.
But the best reason to forget your idea, is simpler then all of the above.
If god wants your source code GPL'd he will accommodate you by way of haxxors who will know if your code is good enough to publish better then you do when they see it.
--
Why did the haxxor cross the road? To bit to the other side..
Ask "Is keeping this closed going to make us money?"
If it won't, and it's something that others (not your competitors) may find useful, then you may as well GPL it, to let others discover the bugs before you do.
builds goodwill of a community (that may be your customers (?))
can result in free development work by hobbyists that use your code
allows you to legally make use of the vast library of other GPL code out there
a free alternative may supplant proprietary solutions of your competitors (see IBM's various contributions..); best if you have no commercial plans for your product
open source is a cool buzzword to have attached to your product and company at little cost
Of course, if you can sell him on FSF dogma, then there are loads of philosophical advantages, too.
> In Fortune-100-America, everything possible must be stamped with a (c) or (tm) or patent#.
Fortune-100-America includes a few small corporations (E.G. IBM) that find it useful to contribute to open source. They don't do it because they "feel like giving away their property". They do it because they figured out it would produce more money for them.
So the first thing one should tell one's boss is "See, it's good for IBM!".
The point is not that if it's good for IBM it must be good for you. The point is that Releasing the code that you don't intend to sell as proprietary software might save you in development and maintenance (even if you do have a product that might be sellable, you still might gain more from releasing it and getting IBM to contribute in its development).
If your boss understands the reasoning behind IBM's contribution to to "free software", then the boss's reasoning would become "reasonable, as in evauating savings in costs. (Actually the experience emplyees would obtain in one open source project can save indirectly when it applies later to incorporating "someone else's" open source project into your company's infrastructure).
1. Code is released under GPL, nobody cares, code is never updated and might as well never have been released.
2. Code is released under GPL, code is pillaged and partially moved to other systems leaving the original code obsolete and inferior.
3. Code is released under GPL and takes off as a succesful project.
Option 3 is least uncommon by far.
Unless you have good reason to think your system will be sufficiently popular to actually gather a community (remember; there is no OSS community; only individual OSS developers), you'll have a hard time making a business case.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Consider this senario: you want to convice your boss to open source. To do you could first show him all the other open source code which is available to use. Without the viral clause this would work fine, your boss would see all this code, use bits of it and a year down the line might actually consider contributing some of their own code.
The viral clause means this senario won't happen. Your boss will read the GPL and notice that by linking in that code they will need to also release their code under GPL. For an open source newbie this is not something he'll be willing to do. The consequence of this is that the boss will instantly dismiss the ideas of open source and never get to see the advantage. In essence the viral clause creates a block to acceptance.
To get around this block, hunt out LGPL code or the other open source licences which do not restrict the freedom to distrubute products incorperating open source code under their chosen licence.
Alternativly consider becoming a contractor. The rules of engagment of different here. As a contractor you have more freedom to develop your own code base. Employers pay you for the knowledge (and code) you have built up over the years and be more understanding of your need to continue building that.
p.s. Yes I know viral probably not the best term to use here (see slashdot passim), just can't think of a better term.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
My biggest hope is that my company doesn't enforce their "all your copyright are belong to us" policy ...
... wherein every little unix script I write, no matter how small, and even if nobody at the company will ever make money off of it or even use it, can't be taken with me to my next job.
That's nice but irrelevant. GPL doesn't invalidate a copyright, it relies on a copyright holder to offer the source as GPL. Whether that is a person or a company does not matter.
If you don't like the company owning everything you write don't take their money, their health insurance, etc. That's the tradeoff, every relationship has some give-and-take. "Size" doesn't really matter, why should the company spend time/money evaluating your code and scripts to determine what is worth keeping and what is worth letting go? And finally why you expect one employer to allow you to take something they paid for to your next employer?
As I programmer I understand being emotionally attached to what one writes but come on, be realistic. Sure I would like to have some of the stuff I wrote in the past but damn I sure did like those regular paychecks that never bounced and just kept on coming so predictably.