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.

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.

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.

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.