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

Legal verus Ethical

[jawahar]

Closed source software is *short term* investment whereas Open source software is *long term* investment.
Closed source software is *legal now* but unethical.
Closed source software is like *renting* a car whereas Open source software is *owning* a car.
Closed source software is like eating *restaurant* food whereas Open source software is eating *home made* food.

Hope this helps to convice your superiors.
And some words of wisdom "Think politically, Act technically".