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.