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

hahahaha

[heinousjay]

the highly competent Slashdot crowd

Oh, sure, them. We'll just wait for them to get here...

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

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It's that second one that will convince your boss- but it needs rewording. Plugging into the Dogbert Buzzword Generator for a second, try:

"I wish to maximize my productivity by leveraging the efforts of the Open Source Development Community, thus getting us development resources at no extra cost to the company."

good luck

[quewhatque]

you might think it's a good deed for society, donated quality code to the public, but what would a business care about good deeds. they are doing business, which into itself stifles good competition, creating a better market, which does benefit society.

the only way you can convince him is to state the advatages it gives your company, and not what it gives society.
1. other people can fix your bugs and security holes for you
2. other people can add features for you
3. no need to pay for beta testers

tell him you can still maintain your rights of it in that you still have the final say in what gets merged into the source code, and that code vandalism wont happen (people putting in their own backdoors)(as if anyone can immediately donate code and have it show up).

do tell him that one negative of it is your competitors could also use your code, you wouldnt want to get fired for not telling him that someday.

Re:good luck

[chris_mahan]

There is an advantage to your competition using your code, especially if a lot of the competition is using your code. You will be seen as the de-facto standard settig body for the software, and that will attract good-will in the industry, allowing you to potentially hire their finest and brightest.

Also, bear in mind that this will give you an insight of how they run their business.

Finally, you could then turn around and sell them "SuperSoftware Enterprise Edition", since they alreay know and use and love SuperSoftware Standard.

Ultimately, though, your boss does not care unless the business makes moeny off it before year's end.

Remeber Google: If you want to build an $80B company in 6 years: Use linux and develop your own software.