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."

Comments

Meh

[interiot]

You must work in a different corporate america than I do. 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.

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.

Re:Meh

[MrResistor]

Well, yeah, that's because Corporate America is run by MBAs who could care less about actually running a successful, efficient company, and really only implement policies aimed at getting them the cost-reduction bonuses specified in their contract, and then move on before anyone has a chance to realize how badly their cuts have screwed the company.

The upside is that they generally have no idea what their employees are actually doing, so it's pretty unlikely that one of those clauses will actually get enforced.

Still, shame on you for signing that contract. You should have negotiated.

Tell them your reasons

[Finuvir]

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.

Re:Tell them your reasons

[XO]

Yes, agreed.

Exactly why IS it that you want to GPL the code?

Will ANYONE benefit by having it GPL?

Difficult to present a sales pitch only knowing what we want to achieve, and not having any inkling of the steps inbetween.

step by step argument

[rnd()]

Here is the argument:

• GPLing the code may have the effect of creating a community of people to enhance and debug the code.
• If it's not a product that provides significant competitive advantage to your company, there is no harm in spreading it around in exchange for the benefit in the first bullet point.
• There may be some positive PR associated with the company "founding" an open source project. Who knows, there may even be some way to consider it a charitable donation and write it off of the company's taxes.
• Most importantly, there are a variety of Open Source licenses, so if your president balks at the GPL, consider the LGPL or one of the variety of others. They provide many of the benefits of the GPL but allow the boss to feel a bit more in control. You can always move to full GPL next year once his/her comfort level has increased.

Re:step by step argument

[swillden]

The LGPL still requires permission for others to sell derivative works.

No it doesn't. As long as the others distribute the source of the LGPL'd code along with the closed binaries, they're in compliance. No additional permission is required.

But since it allows for some closed source arrangements, it may be preferable to some bosses.

Why would some bosses prefer that others be able to use the company's property in closed source products, commercially, without permission? I would think that they'd prefer to start with a license that is more restrictive than the GPL, rather than one that is less restrictive.

support

[file cabinet]

sell the support. that's what the linux folks do (RH, SuSE, etc.)

Some ideas

[Zocalo]

• 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!

The real question

[Zphbeeblbrox]

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.

Re:MehFortune-100-America includes IBM, Sun, HP,..

[hadaso]

> 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).

What can happen to a new OSS project?

[mwvdlee]

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.