Trouble With Open Source?

George Russell writes "Stephen J Marshall, writing in the BCS online magazine, provides a cogent argument detailing the ills of Open Source Software for the software industry - namely, the lack of conceptual integrity, professionalism, and innovation together with the issue of ownership of OSS developed under the current Intellectual Property laws. Do these issues concern you?"

Comments

Re:Intellectual Property

[Skreems]

You're completely right. In fact, not only SHOULD they be able to, they ARE able to. The employee contract for most businesses states that employee code written in free time belongs to the employing company ONLY if it derives significantly from the work the employee is doing for pay. That means that while someone working on the Vista kernel wouldn't legally be allowed to contribute code to the Linux kernel, they're more than welcome to work on Firefox, for example, or GIMP, or basically any other product that doesn't parallel kernel programming.

Before I get flamed, let me point out that I realize there's also usually a clause that states you can't compete with the employing companies products in your outside work, so Firefox would be out of bounds for a MS employee. The point remains, though.

Re:Intellectual Property

[UncleFluffy]

I found the whole IP thing completely ridiculous.

From my memory of waving the legislation he mentions (Patents Act 1977) in front of an employer during contract negotiation time, it's not only ridiculous, it's wrong. As far as I can remember, the employer only owns the rights if the IP: (a) is produced on the employer's time, or (b) is produced using the employer's equipments, or (c) relates to the employer's business activities. If none of these are true, UK law says that the ownership of the IP is the employee's.

(Though it's seven years since I left the UK - UK-based folks should double check this yourselves).

Why does the BCS care?

[geoff lane]

The BCS is The British Computer Society. For a fee and proof that you spent years toiling in a Cobol foundary, you can become a member of the BCS.

The problem is, almost nobody involved in computing does join as the BCS has been irrelevant for many years.

Now all these upstart home programmers have the gall to create products with the quality of Linux and Apache.

In short, the BCS is a club for people who want to talk about programming rather than actually crank code.

Re:Not really

[Arker]

You want to make money coding?

So what you do is customise software. This is probably where MOST coders make their money, and always has been. The availability of standardised Free Software packages to build on has only expanded this market.