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SAP Exec Disparages Open Source As IP Socialism
FlorianMueller writes "According to a VNUnet report, Shai Agassi, the president of the product and technology group at SAP, disparaged open source as 'more likely to break applications' than to deliver innovation. He also equated the open-source development model with 'Intellectual property [IP] socialism,' which he says 'is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society.' In Europe, it isn't a secret that SAP's management primarily views open source as a threat to its business, and that SAP is politically on Microsoft's side. SAP and Microsoft co-financed certain pro-patent lobbying activities in Europe, and recently co-founded the European Software Association, an entity that is expected to lobby for software patents and against open-source adoption by European governments."
They are affraid that anyone sees their horrible source code.
I take it then that SAP software always works first time, doesn't require an army of consultants to install, correctly and no one has a bad word of any kind to say about it?
Strewth, Americans really have a thing about socialism. Just invoking the word scares people, even though the rest of the Western world has, to some degree or other, accepted and embraced facets socialism (the Welfare State, socialised medicine). When your elderly people have to travel to Canada to buy cheap drugs, it's socialism that they're benefiting from.
Now, I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, but socialism, in it's most basic form means "sharing." It means looking after your fellow man, particularly those who have nothing. Attach a bearded guy, and a couple of nails and it turns into Christianity.
This article deals with 'socialism', so I'm waiting politely for the best 'In Soviet Russia' comment.
If he believes that OSS is "socialist", and also believes that it is a threat to his business, then isn't he saying that the socialist model can come up with a market solution that is more competitive than the capitalist model? I thought to capitalist types that type of thinking was heresy.
It's all nonsense of course. OSS is the open market coming up with the most efficient solution to an expensive problem. Nothing socialist about it at all, unless you believe businesses sharing development costs for stuff that helps them run their businesses is socialist.
is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society
No, one of the worst things that can happen to our society is that it's turned into an IP-based society.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
Open source will go the way of the dodo eventually. It will only take greater competitive forces and a bit of free riding before the open source crusaders realise that it is in every sense as untenable as any other similar model.
I wonder how this fits in with their cooperation with Mysql on MaxDB?
Just look at the amount of patent trolls out there, filing/buying the broadest possible patents imagiable, and then pouncing on some unsuspecting inventor, who, with real innovation, but no patent lawyer, has overlooked this broad patent.
The inventor is sued into the ground, and the patent troll gets all the takings. Fair? I think not.
With open source however, no one company/person is entitled to control all use of the invention, but that doesn't mean they can't make money from it.
Ok the inventor won't get filthy rich, but he won't be left hungry either.
SAP is consultingware, sold to bosses, not users. Its user friendliness is abysmal, and the company bleeds its customers for obscene amounts of money in exchange for catering to their fears of not being able to take care of their business. Business processes worldwide are bent and pushed to fit the SAP way of working, rather than the other way around. In other words, yes, SAP is, umm, "evil" in the ./ sense.
They are also a corporation, and pretty much a monopolist riding a one-trick pony. Of course they see Open Source as a threat! And as a competition, they must combat whatever threatens their bottom line.
In other words, they had to say this or something like it, sooner or later. You could say they're legally obligated to.
Nothing new or unusual, in other words. Just the usual FUD. *sigh*
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
>'Intellectual property [IP] socialism.'
Well, in many ways you can see that socialism appeared as a reaction versus totalitarian and/or oppresive regimes (yeah, I know this oversimplifies things, don't chew me up for it). So if you see Open Source as "IP Socialism," perhaps you should reflect for a second on why we have gotten to this point.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
...after all, SAP made most of their profits when opensource was still an underdog. Just like M$ would smear FOSS. Does this surprise anyone?
Socialism or corporatism?
Compulsory sharing or a government-granted corporate monopoly on ideas.
I'll take socialism, thanks.
The costs are typically astronomical to start with, but the costs just go up as you need a band of specialized software liason managers to manage the system.
Just so you know where they are coming from. My take? Bullshit/FUD from another closed-source software vendor.
http://www.sap.com/index.epx/
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
He's afraid, he'll wake up one day and nobody pays SAP ridiculous money for it's 1 idea.
Interestingly of course SAP has actually had a history of doing Open Source, including releasing its own product (sapdb, now MaxDB) and certifying R/3 on Open Source platforms including Linux, and the MaxDB database. They probably also use some of the Apache libraries in Netweaver.
So far from breaking their product suite SAP actually enable you to rely on Open Source to deliver the sort of availability you'd expect from a proper ERP.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
What so bad about OSS being a socialism in the first place? I think this guy just bringing back the old scary story about communists and that "they want to destroy us"!
Actually, I've studied socialism a lot. And I think that this is a very, very good business model and Free Software is a good proof. However, it still requires carefull research regarding how to implement it right on a country (world?) level.
My point is: they can't reason anymore about "why is OSS bad" and so they try just to scare people, leaving out the fact that the ghost they are showing is sooo dead and out of date.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
"Thieves disparage open source as eliminating the impetus to thieve."
They don't like open source yet they have some..
http://www.sapdb.org/
Anyone seen this film (or read John Nash's work on Game theory)?
The general principle is that cooperation can produce better results for everyone than competition. Calling this socialism (which appears to be an insult in America) does not make it any less true.
What we need to consider is when cooperating works, and when it doesn't. For most application developement, giving free assistance to others will not actually result in a cost. They will not neccesarily be competing for exactly the same customers and in many cases, the other party is obliged to offer tit-for-tat cooperation. This means the whole industry moves forward faster, costs go down, and the potential number of customers will go up. Everybody wins.
This does not apply neccesarily so well to the IP based commercial software industry, especially when there is a single company dominating the software. But it doesn't have to. Free software has its place, and can bring benefits.
Maybe because Linux is a kernel, not a desktop.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
... government meddling to give creators their "fair due" via monopoly. It's dressed up in capitalist terminology, but it's usual justifications are highly socialistic.
Eulogize? Interesting choice of word there.
Come to think of it, you may be right. Modern Capitalism and the way it is curtailing freedom of intellectual property may be in the process of burying the best and most efficient in favor of the most advertised, best funded, most highly FUDded, what have you.
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
If Joseph McCarthy was still alive, he would have personally seen to it that you were declared a commy.
On a serious note: sad to see that there are still people who take the same rhetoric as McCarthy to ban open source to the realm of Evil, while at the same time most likely profiting from its innovations.
Money is probably the only thing that this person cares for, next to the knowledge that he has the power to control his IPs.
I'd much rather be called a commy, socialist or IP-vandal than defending the remarks these people make.
But, as pro-IP lobbyists are using open-source, open-source lobbyists are using IP (albeit on a scale restricted to IP for those using IP themselves) and creating IP-related technologies.
For us to actually get any further without intellectual property, is to ban it altogether from the open-source movement.
Its sad to say, but that is most unlikely to happen in the polarized (software) world we find ourselves in today.
In the SAP web shop you will find Python and Apache struts. They also open sourced their RDBMS.
I can't logon on to work at moment and check (UPS maint), but it is full of it.
It is possible this bloke doesn't speak for the whole company.
How ironic. When somebody utters the words "broken application" in my presence, I find it hard not to think of SAP.
Hands up everyone that has worked for a company that nearly went bust while trying to migrate to SAP.
SAP provides useful software!
or
Intellectual Property socializes you!
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
As many slashdot readers may not have familiarity with
mainframes, this may seem obscure, but nevertheless
worthwhile.
In the IBM mainframe world, the clustering system
known as parallel sysplex involves a rather interesting
use of what would otherwise be a general purpose
computing engine as something that IBM calls a
coupling facility. It enables mainframe-based
software like DB2 to coordinate the use of system-wide
locking, caching, and list processing at a much
higher level of performance than if left to
conventional software.
SAP has what was at one time called SAPDB, and is now
called MaxDB, which has an interesting mode of operation
known as LiveCache. By the way, as an aside, SAP refuses
to document use of LiveCache so that open source users
might actually explore its possibilities. LiveCache is
used by SAP's Advanced Planning and Optimizer subsystem
of their ERP software to cache objects from multiple
sources so as to improve performance of the package
overall.
A careful study of the IBM coupling facility patents
and SAP's design and use of LiveCache might reveal
some interesting similarities. Of course, SAP may
very well have an appropriate agreement or licensing
arrangement with IBM for this, and that would be all
well and good. I hope there might be some way to find
out whether this is the case, should IBM possibly
choose to pursue this.
As another interesting anecdote, Oracle recently
purchased an in-memory database software company
whose product is also being used in a similar
performance-enhancing multi-system caching and
coordination arrangement. This of course is being
used to enhance Oracle database performance, in a
manner which again seems astonishingly similar to
the IBM mainframe coupling facility. Oracle might
also have an agreement or arrangement of some kind
with IBM to deal with this, but this is unknown.
We all must wonder about this, at least just a
little.
1. [...] open source as 'more likely to break applications' [...]
;-)
2. [...] SAP's management primarily views open source as a threat to its business [...]
Perfectly consistent, if they think that 1.) is true, then 2.) is only a logical consequence, because until now it has always been SAP's job to break things...
Socialism is government-mandated. Open source software is market driven.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Like the rest of science and mathematics, software is discovered, not created. IMNSHO it would be to the best interests of all if this was legally established. Virtually everything in math and science already existed in nature and was only discovered and modeled by mankind. The freedom of exchange of ideas, limited to our understanding of the natural state of the universe, has always helped that expansion. Mathematics has been called the language of science, software is merely an extension of mathematics.
A free exchange of ideas in science and mathematics is a good thing even in a capitalist society. Software being mathematics on a computer is no different. Nothing socialistic to see here, move along.
I've always seen it more as idealist marxism :D
Sadly that never worked in practise, Goodbye OSC, Hello OSCC (Open Source Communist Community)!
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
SAP our power!
Then that means M$/$AP must be "IP Fascism", then.
I mean, a spade is a spade, right?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Open Source is Intelligent Design and urked..
then I thought about and figured, perhaps that is a better definition of OS?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
At some point either GNU Enterprise or Compiere are going to be good enough and supported enough to do away with their only product.
Oh and open source and free software have nothing to do with socialism and every thing to do with supply and demand...
Deleted
Or you might sap from sapdb, an open source replacement for oracle database ( well older version of the oracle db that is)
Note that in the article that SAP is one of Microsoft's suppoters in their campaign to convince the EU against adopting Open Source solutions and use their own buggy proprietary crap instead.
Like the whole SCO/Linux embarassment this is just another MS backed attempt to discredit OSS. The sad thing for "them" is that people now recognize such statements, the one from SAP, for what they really are....Microsoft Anti-OSS Propaganda.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
In fact, SAP has quite some experience with (well, kinda...) "open" development processes:
Their biggest product, good old R/3, is written in an interpreted language (ABAP/4) and delivered to the customer with the complete source code.
Now we all know users having "requirements" and we all know how many cheap and bad programmers are running around and we know the result if you combine those two: it's a mess. Imagine, the linux kernel would be written in python and it would also contain the code to place buttons on the left or right side of the desktop. And now try to maintain it.
Of course, he has an agenda. And they make their living by selling expensive products....
I'm pretty sure closed-source != "Democracy"
Hilarious. This guy is attacking his own company in effect. Sap uses eclipse as its development tool of choice and is migrating a lot of the older style development towards java using an eclipse based ide (Netweaver Studio). It uses apache and tomcat for some of its mobile products. Linux is one of the basic supported os that SAP runs on (and is recommended to run on). Having had to use and develop SAP components for the last year or more I now know more about SAP than I have ever wanted to. Ignorance must be a strength in this case..
Socialism, and communism (absolute socialism), are founded on the principle of coercive distribution of wealth, and lack of property rights. The central planning agency (government) must hold actual power (the "right" to coerce as a means to an end) over the individual; otherwise, the individual will naturally concentrate on improving his own and his family's quality of life, rather than serve the goals of central planning.
Free market economics, or capitalism, is founded on the principles of voluntary trade and property rights. If a transaction isn't 100% voluntary on the part of each party, then it isn't an example of capitalism, because it eliminates the principle of mutual benefit which is not only how production is achieved, but how all wealth is created.
My point here is not to convince you of the merits of one system or the other; my point is to show why it is completely ridiculous to associate open source software -- an obvious example of production based on voluntary assocation -- with socialism and communism. Where is the central planning agency? Where is the "right" to initate force? There isn't one. Participants in the open source community do so entirely by their own will, and that is exactly why it works. Property is determined voluntarily, not coercively.
So the truth is the exact opposite: open source software is compatible with and benefits from capitalism, not socialism. If the core principle of capitalism (voluntary association) was eliminated through government, then the open source movement would be eliminated along with it. If government "took over" open source software, running the show thorugh coercive distribution of wealth, it would THEN become socialism, and the voluntary participants would disappear because they couldn't work for themselves on their own terms.
They are right. I read their announcement with a broken browser within a broken window manager based on broken libraries on top of a broken X-server sitting over a broken kernel.
I nead a break...
It's interesting that the best he can come up with is that open source breaks applications and isn't innovative. I admit that OSS isn't (generally) very innovative but then nor are a lot of companies. Yes there are some that lavish money on research but most pretty much just copy what their competitor is doing. More to the point though OSS just doesn't have the budget or man power to do a lot of research. It's a fundamentally different approach to software developemnt than the way it works in a company. I think in the long run the companies that succeed will be the ones that do research to keep ahead of the OSS crowd who will always create a free offering of any popular piece of software (e.g. an operating system, an office suite, image editing etc etc).
As for OSS breaking other software all I can say is that the other software must be very poor written if it can be broken so easily. Yes the OSS piece might be a heap of steaming feces but serious breakage in another piece of software is the fault of that other piece of software. At best it's the fault of the tester for not picking up the bug before it went out the door. At the end of the day he doesn't have to use any OSS so if he considers it a risk. The guys an idiot clutching at straws trying to do what his master tells him.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
if FOSS is socialism, then Microsoft & others of the same business model are tyrant dictators wanting to userp absolute power, and we all know what absolute power leads to...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... I'm wondering if people realize that patents are, by the enablement requirement, OPEN SOURCE.
1st of all, Socialisim is nothing else but a variant of Fashisim in a haphazard disguise of fake marxisim.
What this guy probably is trying to say is that the concept of OSS is marxisim. That he mixes both doesn't shed a bright light on him.
Truth is that key concepts of OSS actually are marxisitc. The whole point being that marxisim utterly fails when it comes to material things (see any material-goods-economy even remotely related to marxisim) but outpaces by margins of magnitude any other concept when it comes to imaterial goods. Especially in the IT world, where copying imaterial goods is extremly easy. Here really everyone can take what they want without lessening that what others have.
OSS is marxisim with the brakes removed. Maybe that's what has SAP scared.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think IPv6 will fix this problem, like it fixes everything else!
IP socialism? Is there another kind?
//Someone explain why this line is here?
Debout^H^H^H^H^H^H#TOP les damnes de la terre!
Debout les forcats^H^H^Hks de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratere
C'est l'eruption de la fin^H^H^H#END// Say what?
Okay, so it's weak...
There aint nothing wrong with voluntary socialism. Forced socialism has problems, in that people are lazy, so relying on people to give something for no reward doesn't always work. But if people voluntarily do it, that's called a good thing. Socialism that actually works if you will.
Under socialism, you give up property whether you want to or not. With open source, you share if you want to. Nobody is forced to participate. The difference is that black and white. Anyone who tries calling open source "socialism" is either misinformed, or is trying to accomplish something through deceptive philosophy instead of fair trade.
I agree with SAP in so far that "IP socialism" is the worst that can happen to any IP-based societies.
What SAP is missing out here, is that their comment, much like yours is actually beside the point - shouldn't the question be, whether the type of "IP-based society" we live in is actually a good thing in the first place.
The statement, in a sense, reads more like "revolution is the worst thing that can happen to any tyranny". The comment is absolutely correct - but it doesn't mean that revolution (or in the case of this post "IP socialism" is a bad thing).
Personally, I believe in some IP protection - tech research is becoming so expensive that companies need to be able to protect their findings so that they can re-coup their expenditures. Imagine - a company spends a couple of billions to develop some medicine that will eradicate most diseases - and another company just comes along offering a generica version of it really cheap, because it doesn't have to pay for the research? That would be a "not-good-thing"(TM).
On the other hand, most patents taken out nowadays seems utterly ridiculous (see for instance the plug-in patent, amazon's one-click,
So, instead of attacking SAP for the statment itself, maybe we should rather alert SAP to the underlying problem in their own statement...
You have got to admire and respect the honesty, candour, and directness of a company who market products and services that cost their customers enormous amounts of money in licencing and services, with the name "SAP".
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Have you heard those Google guys use loads of open source? Dirty, high-earning, free market commie b*st**ds...
Radio on your iPod
So, are they against open source? Why is socialism bad all of a sudden? I thought helping people was good. Are people still obsessing over the whole socalism==communism thing.
Were these guys paying attention when New Orleans flooded?
May the Maths Be with you!
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /www.sapdb.org
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
"But if you look at the most innovative desktop today, Microsoft's Vista is not copying Linux, it is copying Apple."
And Microsoft is everyones's yardstick.The best yardstick ever!
"Intellectual property [IP] socialism is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society,"
And the IP-based society is the best society! Ever!
Strange move by socialdemokratiska arbetarpartiet
I heard a story how SAP bought a business from a guy in one European country. With changed names, it could be exactly the same like it was in Chicago in 20s-30s. "We want to buy your company; if you don't want to sell, we will create our product and we will force you out of business." Irony is that the guy was their business partner! The guy literally cried after that "friendly offer".
After this story, do you still find their OS attitude strange?
No sig today.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=subsid.sa p-ag.de
When will they figure out that "Open Source is socialism' line just doesn't work?
Free and Open Source software is about as socialist as "We The People", or "E Pluribus Unum".
Free software is about a community forming and providing the solutions to their own problems. You know, "By the people, of the people, and for the people".
I guess that SAP has joined with the opposition party. They all speak with one voice. They all spread the same party line lies and propaganda. Their followers believe the lies.
What's more socialist, expecting all of your solutions from big brother named Bill, or developing them on your own? Monopolies are illegal can only continue to exist when government allows them to. They oppose democratic grass roots solutions and try to mandate solutions from the top down. They act for their own interest and not for the consumers. That pretty much describes socialism and closed source software.
Give it up already. Free and open source sofyware is a force of market economics. It is a better way to design, deliver and support software. It is lowering costs and improving the bottom line of the consumers of software. F/OSS is leading the way in the commoditization of software, and the profit margins of the closed source vendors are being threatened.
Too bad!
Compete fairly or get out of the game.
People like this from big companies hate open source because there's no barrier to entry. What they've been doing is spending huge amounts of time and money developing certification exams, restricted proprietary software, etc to put a hedge around their domains so not just anyone can get in, only those who pay the barrier to entry fee by taking exams, buying software, buying SDKs, etc etc etc. Only people who are rich, or can get big companies to pay for the barrier to entry, etc can play ball. Open source destroys this hedgemony by letting anyone who can cobble together a mediocre computer (I just put SuSE 10 on an old box) have access to software and information. Anyone, even a disadvantaged person, can learn Linux, gcc, MySQL (or Postgres), etc. There is no monetary barrier to entry. A scary concept for some! So we get people screaming about socialism, unconstitutionality, etc etc etc.
actually, as a communist i kind of appreciate this kind of FUD.
these people equate free software with communism/socialism as a means of spreading FUD against free software, but as a side effect they make the idea of communism/socialism interesting for people who do not like the idea of "intelectual property".
and the equation is not that far off:
where of course the therm "socialism" is not really exact here because the "in the hand of the public" means in the phase of socialism that it should be owned by the state. where "free software" means not owned by the state but really owned by the public, that is: belonging to anyone who wants to make productive use of it. this form of "free association of working people" is a hallmark of communist socity and not of socialist:
so the SAP Fud is wrong i think. it is rather not "IP socialism" but "IP communism". where the P in "IP communism" is still an oxymoron of course.
A specter is haunting Europe -- the specter of Communism. [...] Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? (from the communist manifesto)
Here's the funny part though. Marx would love the path that the US has trodden so far, despite the politicians telling you the exact opposite. The issues are examined in some detail at http://laissez-fairerepublic.com/TenPlanks.html.
It made me chuckle the first time I saw it, way back, and things have only got worse since then, with DMCA, RFID passports, CCTV, population databases, etc etc. Very sad.
We're forced (by management) to use SAP where I work.
All I can say is that it's the most horrible, unfriendly, opaque, cryptic, badly designed steaming pile of shite that I have EVER had the misfortue to use.
I really do dread to think how much of our companies mantime is wasted every single day trying to get information into or out of their wretched system. And you can never be sure you've actually updated anything as when you log off the system generates a message saying "unsaved data will be lost. Are you sure you want to log out ?". WTF ? I just pressed "save" 3 times, have you saved it or not ????
It really is the most infuriatingly crap software I've ever seen. The icons are totally meaningless, the functions are not logically grouped, there is no consistency betwen various parts of the application. And yes I realise that a reasoanble amount of the blame for this can be heaped on the people who designed our implementation of SAP but, having seen the tools used to build a SAP solution, all I can say is that SAP itself is just shite.
SAP is a complete waste of time and money. I'd rather work with something written in Microsoft Access and VBA (and that's saying something as I HATE those sort of solutions)
Moral of the day: "Only saps use SAP."
http://www50.sap.com/linux/
Well SAP just proudly presents,
more then 1000 Customers are
running mission critical Systems
on Linux. For those who do not
know, moving a Company to SAP can
easily cost millions of USD. Money
is not a primary issue. Stability
is! So do not put MS and SAP into
the same spot, MS does not work in
the Linux-World. Mr. Agassi is a
manager, who just farted through the
wrong hole. Do not worry, SAP is rather
a OSS Supporter. Go for http://www.sapdb.org/
This Article is not good journalism, as you
can see from the comments below. A real
Journalist would have asked more critical
questions.
The USA economy and politics are based on something i like to call the "don't even smell that shit" concept. Instead of basing the country structure on more important principles and accepting that there are other political, economical, religious, and social ideas; they base their country on ONE single idea on each category, and convince their people that every other kind of idea in each area is "shit", and "you have to disagree with shit other than owers, and you shouldn't even test the smell of other shit to see how it is". "All Shit, besides owers, smells bad".
So, instead of accepting that comunism is just another political system, and that there are and will be comunist countrys out there, they attack the concept itself, and not in a "we prefer capitalism" fashion, but in a more "that shit is evil" fashion.
So, here is where they have the "un-american" concept. Everyone in the USA wants to be "american", and the government convinces you that if you do anything they don't like, you are "unamerican". A pretty simple concept, and not very different from Stalinism. The difference is that Stalin was a smart man, that he wanted the best for his country, and that he had just one face. You may disagree with his methods, but he did what he considered best for his people, and a big part of what he had to do was because of the external presure made by the USA. The same that happends in Cuba.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Does Shai Agassi consider charity to be "the worst kind of competition"?
Wikileaks, no DNS
to change a lightbulb?
AL Invade Poland.
In Soviet type socialism, they were no property ownership rights whatsoever: everything was owned by the State. Property was not for everyone to use, it was not open. I couldn't just grab my neighbour's car because it was better than mine.
In open source, the original software vendor retains the copyright, but the software can be used freely by others, including modifications. That's the general case, because there are various licences ranging from the totally open to the totally restricting-open.
I gotta say that the web GUI on SAP R3 is positively totalitarian. Why can't we get Bush to invade THAT?
Open Source differs from Socialism in an incredibly important way. Socialism and Communism is Government imposed. Open-source is truly the work of the people. The true definition of Freedom. Governments have never executed a public welfare policy effectively and/or without corruption. People have done it thoughout the ages and, I expect, will continue to do so in the majority of cases when Freedom rules the day. - He who does not learn from History is doomed to repeat it.
which he says 'is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society.'
No, the worst thing that can happen to any society is to become "IP-based".
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
It's all okay then! We should just become cynical and accept this FUD as "business as usual".
Not me. I'm in here for the long haul..
I will rather go down fighting than give up and let others run the show.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I'm not an OSS zealot, but it's obvious even to me why proprietary software companies hate it. It's not because OSS is so much better or less buggy. Most OSS stuff I have seen isn't better or less buggy (most, not all). The real business problem is that it puts a floor under the value proposition of software sales. It is the combination of quality and being free. Being free isn't enough (and frankly most companies don't care that they get the source code). Nobody wants crap even if it is free. So the combination of being decent quality and being free set a lower limit to what proprietary companies can offer. It forces them to innovate or it forces them to lower their prices. So more money goes to the R&D pile (or marketing pile, if they really can't compete) instead of the profits pile and their stock suffers for it, at least initially. It gives consumers the ability to say: "Why should I buy your hideously expensive software and be locked into you for years when I can get this software that is Good Enough(tm) for free?" OSS might be a problem for software companies but it is good for consumers.
...considering that SAP is sold to management almost exclusively in terms of its ability to centralize, control, and report all aspects of an organization. One could almost say it's Stalinist in its ability to stifle anything resembling innovation or flexibility.
Further, at a seat license of something around $12,000 PER YEAR, the push by company commissars, er, I mean CIO, to make sure everyone uses this wonderful piece of software to justify the promises made to the central committee, er, executive board is only just short of Soviet-like.
Brezhnev would have used SAP.
You bet your ass I'm posting anonymously.
that a company called SAP has the audacity to castigate anyone
Here in Ireland, where I live.. sap is another word of fool/idot/moron
Something tells me I won't be running right out to buy anything from a company that describes itself as sap(s)
Fortunately for Open Source, today's put upon pro-Open Source techie, is tomorrow's pro-Open Source IT director
Good luck to the SAPs I say....
Children of the poor, are getting punished through accident of birth, not for any other reason
Yes, I imagine most of those births were accidents. When the poor clueless uneducated masses reproduce like animals without any sense of how to finance their offspring, we end up with more of the same - kids with the same genes growing up to continue the cycle. Meanwhile the responsible people of the world reproduce at much lower rates.
Sorry if that appears on the surface to be a racist comment. I don't intend it that way. I view people of any race who reproduce out of sheer boredom or irresponsible stupidity to be all in the same category.
Kick the trough and the pigs start squealing.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Us, Them, You People, We the People.
Two legs bad, four legs good, two legs better.
Capitalism, Socialism, Facism, Totalitarianism.
ISM.
GOOD IDEAS, bad ideas.
Idea ideas.
Don't bother to see what works.
Go with what your parents told you instead.
Even if you read this, it's not going to register.
Accept the fact that you're the masses,
and the masses are boring and predictable.
All that's new is old again.
...too many +5 Informative and +5 Insightful comments. What happened to your sense of humor?
For us to actually get any further without intellectual property, is to ban it altogether from the open-source movement.
Don't worry, the commie-calling by proprietary vendors is a temporary aberration I think, only tenable while FOSS is not fully mainstream and hence still somewhat of a mystery to business. Even MS knows better than that, now.
As soon as initiatives like the recent IBM/Sony/Phillips one get some head of steam, the anti-FOSS crowds are going to be shown up for their FUD and McCarthyism. Calling such megacorps commie ventures is transparently funny after all.
which he says 'is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society
i do not know on what planet this man resides, but i'm pretty sure that i do not live in a IP-based society.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
It is a very socialistic approach to development. As some have pointed out to me here on slashdot, many of the things that make a piece of software great are missing in open source products.
They maintained that the things like self installation and good interface don't get done without "a big company forcing someone to do it" because they are not fun things to code.
Another way of saying that is those things don't get done because no one is paying for them to be done.
The big joke during the cold war was that the Soviet work ethic was no good. Same with open source.
What's missing is capitalism.
Strewth, Americans really have a thing about socialism. Just invoking the word scares people,
I'd say it is more like loathing. In 1980 when President Reagan came to power a general concensus formed. The US would seek an increase in standards of living through maximizing economic growth and levels of employment, not through government control of the economy or wealth redistribution. This is the basis modern conservatism in the US. The policy was a departure from a 20+ year flirtation with socialism that culminated in Carter's disastrous presidency.
even though the rest of the Western world has, to some degree or other, accepted and embraced facets socialism (the Welfare State, socialised medicine).
The US is attuned to ideas from the rest of the world. But we believe most socialist ideas have been discredited.
When your elderly people have to travel to Canada to buy cheap drugs, it's socialism that they're benefiting from.
Simple microeconomics. Naturally Canadian price distortions will attract American buyers. The question is does the Canadian model promote a healty, innovative drug industry? You could just as easily talk about the many Canadians that come to the US for surgery because it is rationed there.
Now, I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, but socialism, in it's most basic form means "sharing." It means looking after your fellow man, particularly those who have nothing. Attach a bearded guy, and a couple of nails and it turns into Christianity.
In the US we have enumerable charitable religious organisations who live by the ethos you describe. The question is if it is the role of government to implement it. In the US you have the right to pursue happiness. The rest is up to you.
an ill wind that blows no good
More fundamentally, making any segment of an economy socialistic (or the entire economic system) is something that is imposed on the society. I say "imposed" because, even if a society democratically chooses to socialize some segment of the economy, a government must (1) appropriate the producers' labor for a compensation less than they could receive in a free market, and (2) forbid (or severely restrict) the free market exchange of the particular goods or services.
Open source software and its development is done voluntarily. No one's work is coercively converted to public "property", or at least is not done by a government. Indeed quite the contrary: most governments will enforce one's property rights against those who remove the producers' private benefits.
So I realize that businesses love Linux as the latest buzz-word and the whole OSS that comes with it (as well as Windows OSS), but it is an entirely different market.
SAP (esss eehhh pee) is expensive. Hundreds of thousands if not millions depending on volume. You won't find small business with SAP, and rarely will you find medium business who's put it in place (though some- especially with education and institutions embedded in farming out new trained people that work in the community a lot). These customers value the support and huge backing of big-corp and the exclusive use of custom software components of SAP.
So what's SAP worried about? I haven't the slightest idea. But I'd say they are ENTIRELY different markets and I don't think big-corp is really about to replace SAP, which they've spent millions on, with some OSS software.
OSS software is competition like any other, and yes you can have a corporate backing and support in the progress. Note that OSS does not equal FOSS (free open source software). Clearly this is just a way to get press considering it says nothing. Move along. That partnership with M$ inspired to flush OSS out of the corporate skin.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
His statement:
"But if you look at the most innovative desktop today, Microsoft's Vista is not copying Linux, it is copying Apple."
Basically says that Mocrosoft is not an innovator, but they copy Apple's innovations... and as we all know Apple is inovating with the help of Open Source.
Hmmm....
Let's shut them down.
Socialism is a highly centralized decision making structure.
Open Source, as well as capitolism, is a highly de-centralized decision making structure.
In that sense, SAP is far more socialist than open source - especially since it is trying to increasingly harness patents.
...entering freely into agreements to give, receive and exchange goods called 'socialism'?
Y'know, for all the ads I see in eWeek, I still couldn't tell you what the hell SAP does. Since you seem to know something about it, could you explain it to me? The buzzwords make my head hurt.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I find it funny that all these companies that side with Microsoft are companies that Microsoft eyes enviously. Microsoft would stab SAP, and other companies like Sage, right in the back and steal their revenue in a heartbeat.
When it's coercive, and you don't have a choice, it's not "sharing" anymore -- it's simply coercive distribution of wealth.
While there is some truth in that, be careful with that word "coercive", because it is an emotive word which can be used for effect rather than factually.
For example, if the rising FOSS pyramid becomes massively more powerful and empowering than proprietary development done from scratch, then developers could be said to "have no choice" but to move to FOSS, since their product would be underpowered, buggy, costly, etc etc otherwise.
But they do still have that choice in reality, and they are not being coerced to FOSS physically, mentally, nor legally. Only their own wallet strongly pushes them towards FOSS. To maintain that they are being coerced would be very much pure FUD.
Open Source Commmunity disparages SAP as IP Fascism
... and the head honchos have forgotten how SAP got successful and big. At least that is what I think, having worked at SAP in the nineties.
SAP is actually (for the most part) an open source company. Given it is not a "free" open source company.
SAP's software has two parts, the core engine (Basis) and Applications. Arguably the "Basis" is not the key to SAP's success, it is the applications. How could they replace more and more parts of the "Basis" with freely available components such as Java.
However SAP does give the source code of its applications to every customer . It also trains and supports every customer (for money) to edit and enhance the source code. I think that constitutes limited open source although not free (public) open source.
Actually SAP benefit(ed) enormously from this model. Because, customers have often enhanced or tweaked SAP's applications on their own cost and so made case studies and implementations free of charge for SAP. Regularly SAP's customers do beg SAP to take these enhancements and add them to the standard. Because, as Mr. Agassi mentions, it is more costly to maintain them over future releases, then to create them. And what is better for a customer then to push its suppliers products into the direction that is important for oneself?
SAP is a good model how opening your source code to your customers can benefit the quality of your product as well as the feature set. It is a cheap way to field test enhancements and communicate with your customer.
Does it sometimes lead to support problems? You bet, but it is still an ingenious way of growing your business.
Want proof? SAP lived and grew for 15 years in Germany and Europe (US was different), without (WITHOUT) a sales force that made cold calls (or marketing that placed magazine ads, etc.). All their business was word of mouth! Just like many free open source projects that have no money for marketing. It also means that not the biggest marketing budget, but the best product is successful.
I guess Mr. Agassi looks only on the problem side.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
I consider exchanging the rights to distribute my code in order to build on millions of lines of code created by others as very profitable! Barter is capitalism in its purest form!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Unfettered democracy is simply a tyranny of the majority.
Which is why few nations ever make the attempt to organize themselves as pure democracies. Rather, most democratic countries organize themselves around some sort of republican model where democracy is tempered with certain constitutional rights that inhibit the grosser deficiencies of democracy.
My (admittedly naive) understanding of socialism, was that it was the exclusive province of the government; the government decides to provide some good or service that was otherwise only available through non-state actors- companies, contractors, vendors, or not available at all.
How is this even remotely related to shared intellectual property, contributed by individuals and corporations (non-state actors), to a common good? Especially, as the primary result seems to be the establishment of high-quality standards that private and public players need to adhere to in order to participate in the market?
It seems like a government appropriation of an idea- which is what copyright and patent laws do, they leverage the power of the state against the ownership of an "idea"- is far further along the path to socialism than the free and interested contribution of ideas to a common market.
Frankly, this guy's head is so far up his ass, he can probably see out his nostrils.
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
Attach a bearded guy, and a couple of nails and it turns into Christianity
...???
So??? could we say then that, sort of, socialism is the opium of the masses???
Just joking, your point is valid, but that won't help with the sapping tactics used by Microsoft's friends.
Open-Source is not socialism for one simple reason. Socialism, by definition, mandates sharing through force of law. Open-Source does not attempt to mandate anything through force of law, except that it stay shared itself.
The difference is key, because it makes Open-Source a choice, much like any other, and freedom of choice is what capitalism and individualism are all about. A truly socialist Open-Source license could probably be written -such a license would probably mandate that the user release all of his code as Open-Source, even if the user's apps take no code from any Open-Source applications- but I doubt that such a license would catch on.
The economic model for the developed countries is to concentrate on owning the higher margin, knowledge-intensive layers of activity while the developing countries handle the more physical aspects like manufacturing.
Problem is, we're in the middle of a information revolution that will be as important and life-changing as the industrial revolution, and if the economy and society want to move on, anything that stands in the way of that revolution must step aside, otherwise society stagnates under an older model that is already in a mode of diminishing returns.
So, they want to handle this new environment the way they're handling the old one, by concentrating ownership of information in a few huge multinational oligopolies through ip laws. They won't get away with it because historically when a new mode of production arrives, the societies attached to the older one stagnate. Just watch the rise of France and England after the Spanish Empire.
The new production mode will be based on information freely available to anyone, and software is basically, information. A new economy will appear, different to the current one, and producing a new kind of society, hopefully more democratic and liberating that the current one, as the infrastructure determines to a great extent the ideological suprastructure of a society.
Since socialism requires coersion (usually government coersion) then it is not socialism.
Sharing and giving are perfectly acceptable within free-market economics, just not forced sharing.
Additionally, not all free market advocates believe that IP is actually property.
Isn't to get rid of unnecessary intellectually-based property one of the ideas of open source?
Isn't open source not only about sharing ideas but also about allowing more than one person/group/entity to have the same idea and to produce a product using the same means?
Patents were to protect businesses in the beginning, but now it seems that they have become a cash cow for both businesses and lawyers.
Victory shall be mine!
To quote Inigo, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
OSS is not Marxism. Perhaps superficially, if you think Marxism = "No Property", and perhaps there are some similarities to Anarchist Communism. But in OSS there still is property -- you have the right to license your software any way you want. It certainly is like a gift economy, but the the scientific community and the Internet in general has had a similar character.
In OSS, where is the class warfare? Windows vs. Linux users? Marx was focused on society's commodity fetishism and the exploitation of labour for profit by capitalists who owned the means of production. But in "creative arts" that generate IP -- whether songwriting, recording, software development, book / article authoring, etc. -- the "means of production" is owned by the worker themself. The fetishism is still there in many cases (witness popular music), but I fail to see how open licensing is about overthrowing the existing order to bring about a paradise of worker-rule. It may be changing the face of one industry, forcing it to be more competitive, but not global the economic system.
Look at Linux -- anyone that thinks it's "gratis" hasn't looked at RedHat's prices lately. A subscription is in some cases more expensive than a Windows Advanced Server 2003 install! OSS companies will continue to find ways to make it "inconvenient" to use the software without purchasing a support subscription. And it's still far from a foregone conclusion that proprietary software companies will falter.
-Stu
Agasi is swiftly replacing Scott McNeally and Uncle Fester for the Ken Olsen Memorial Trophy for IT industry executive most likely to make an idiot of himself in public. They need to ditch him fast and send Henning Kagermann with him and bring back Hasso Plattner, if he would come back.
On the patent/IP side the corporations own the government and the patents. Effectively, software becomes a massive state industry controlled by vast beurocracies. Very socialist.
On the OSS side, everything goes into the public commons. People working under the auspices of corporations and government sponsored research are some of the biggest contributions to OSS. Very socialist.
A pox on both their houses. The garage and VC-funded software startups, unencumbered by patent trolls. That was capitalism in the software industry. We had it for a while it seemed. Keep us there. That's where real innovation and money, on a level playing field, are made.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
...when someone calls you a socialist, it's a great sign they completely misunderstand capitalism?
Pro-Capitalism = Pro-Competition
Pro-Capitalism != Pro-Monopoly
He also equated the open-source development model with 'Intellectual property [IP] socialism,' so a system where everyone is free to write anything they want and free to sell their work to those who create different kinds of things is called "socialism". Whereas a system where no one can write anything without first searching a database written in obscure legalese to try and determine the "IP" owner of every sentence, and then obtaining permission, usually by paying for a license, is called what? "Feudalism?" Or maybe we are talking about the system where you aren't allowed (or can't afford) to own any copies of the actual words, but must always ask an officially approved mechanical priest for an interpretation - "the Dark Ages"?
to anyone running their products. SAP is made of several layers, the OS, DB, SAP kernel and application. The application source code is available to anyone, is written in a SAP owned language called ABAP/4. You can modify this code to adapt it to your company, either by yourself or by following instructions from SAP, called SAP notes.
What the guy mean he is against free software, not software with source code.
. . . where democracy is tempered with certain constitutional rights that inhibit the grosser deficiencies of democracy.
Until some nutter comes along and removes those constitutional rights under the guise of "protection from the enemy," where "enemy" can be drugs, terrorism, yourself, your neighbor, homosexuals, heathens, or some other trumped-up bogeyman.
Fuckers.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I respectfully disagree, and would say that its basic form means stealing what is not yours and giving it to others. In almost all cases, especially in the United States, the politically connected are the ones who benefit the most.
I believe when people talk of socialism here, they are referring to the ideal of socialism, not how it's been practiced in the past (or currently, either).
You could equally say that the capitalist ideal allows fair distribution of goods and services by the law of supply and demand; but as practiced here in the States, its basic form means stealing what is not yours and giving it to yourself. In almost all cases, especially in the United States, the politically connected are the ones who benefit the most.
Sorry about the plagarism.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Fuck, one can find a few likeminded idiots all around the world who still believe that tripe and keep avoiding all the historical facts about what their beloved leaders actually did and what their cherished system always lead to because of its inherent failings.
Jesus, you ain't kidding. 51% of the voting public here in the US voted for Bush the second time around. Talk about avoiding historical facts, and cherishing a fucked-up system.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If OSS is socialism, the I'm a socialist. Perhaps Karl Marx was right after all?
These communist bastards must be stopped. We'll start with this guy.
He also equated the open-source development model with 'Intellectual property [IP] socialism,' which he says 'is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society.'
Translation: "IP 'socialism' is the worst that can happen to an IP-dependent company in an IP-based society."
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Dude, you are smoking the finest-grade selfish bullshit in the world.
First, it's usually no 'accident' that people end up with the children they conceived. I'm at a complete loss as to what you could mean by that.
The "accident" is not the children; it's the parents. The only thing that differentiates Paris Hilton from a crack whore of similar bad taste is the parents to which she was born.
Basic economics tells us that it costs nothing, and is basically fair, to let things work naturally, such as families.
"Basic economics" of the capitalist variety tells us, in general, that which rich people wish to hear. It is otherwise just as artificial as any other economic theory.
If you want to do something to change the natural state of affairs, it's going to cost a ton of money, like trying to keep all forests free of debris!
Basic social theory tells us there is a direct correlation between a person's education and their ability to be "successful," by almost any definition of the word. Our education system is structured such that those in poor communities receive poorer education than those in well-to-do communities; and this doesn't even address private schools. Basically, if you are born poor, you are more likely to stay poor.
If you want to do something to help those people, it's because you want to provide them with an unearned benefit to artificially IMPROVE their lot.
This statement is based on complete ignorance. "Those people" are just as deserving as you. Many of them moreso, I'd judge from your selfishness. Success is not measured by a bank account; worth is not measured by a paycheck. If that were true, CEOs would not receive salarys 500 times greater than a corporation's lowest salary.
Personally, I believe the only way forward is to help each other forward, instead of punching the weak in the face. But that's me. I'm kind of an idiot that way.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Unlucky.I posted the exact same comment last year. Which I own. Now pay out.
Also: My fave ad from Private Eye: Received bad legal advice? Sue your solicitor.
This comment is copyright me, 2005-2016 (I'm going to die young)
[nt]no text[/nt]
SAP released there DB under an open source licesnse and MySQL picked up the good bits? SAP DB
This bastard's got a lot of nerve.
He'd be Larry Ellison's BITCH right now if the Government hadn't stepped in with corporatist welfare protectionism.
Let's revoke all his government-granted copyrights and patents (ie. Corporate Welfare) and see how much he loves REAL Free Market Capitalism.
While we're at it, he can build his own internet, and educate his own workers too. Fucking tool.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I find amusing that he describes open source as socialism. Socialism is a system where there's a central control of business by the government. This is almost exactly the opposite of that. Certainly there is a collective effort and collective benefit and so that notion of common interest and community is akin to what socialism is about. But the big flaw in socialism is the inefficiencies of central control, not that collective interest element.
The American fear of Socialism is derrived from the second S in USSR. Remember the Soviet Union was our Al Qaeda for many decades and so there's some assumptions that arise when you talk about socialism. Personally I don't think socialism and capitalism are incompatbile, you just have to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Capitalism's strength is the creation of efficiencies through market competition. Capitalism fails completely when competition does not exist. Also, capitalism, when allowed to run it's natural course, tends to favor an unequal distribution of wealth. Socialist policies, can help smooth the rough edges on capitalism. Adjusting laws to create competition where it is needed, and regulating industries where competition is effectively impossible. A company with no competition is no more efficient than a government operated one, and it's a hell of a lot more expensive.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It's illogical.
:)
If M$ lobbies EU governments see it's right and adopt it.
OpenSource, opposition to patents, whatever it is
This SAP guy has no clue what computing was like in the 70s. Gates should think back as well. Open Source basically is like the old SIGS... except with the age of the internet it's much more structured. I wish Open Source existed when I was in College. I did subscribe to a a bunch of SIGDs when I was 16, and learned how to program through them. Now... Open Source reminds me of those days, and I have been using open source and contributing from time to time since 1992. I predicted in 1992, that in 20 years, Open Source would be mainstream and be prefered. Granted, curently we have to mature our Enterprise level support. Redhat destroyed Linux's reputation in the Enterprise by releasing Redhat AS 2.1, what a terrible distribution, no LVM support... gee. It's been hard enough convincing my employer to use Whitebox where we can. Also a large killer buisness intelligence application needed extremely fast I/O, faster than what our EMC SAN can turn out, so I ended up benchmarking on a P570 with the new storage array that IBM sells that replces the D80 stuff. It's not the OS that got me speed, it's the
... clone, patch, patch, patch, test, clone, patch, ... where's the savings? My company's IT department was too small to take on this ambitious project on it's own, so they hire consultants.
storage array, that damn thing is fast. The software, written by Demantra, isn't the fastest in the world. I believe if they partition the databases and index them we will get more speed. It must go through 15 million records. Well the Dell/EMC solution took 3 hours to run a job, the P570 took one hour.
Anyway, the new blade computing technology is now out, got to love infiniband. And Linux running on
the new technology is great, gotta love OpenMosix. Even more.. Mysql on OpenMosix. This could
eveolve into an Oracle killer. Larry Ellison needs to eat some humble pie anyway. They charge far too much for licenses, and anyone who runs Oracle knows
patch, patch. It's as if Oracle is designed this way on purpose. The ERP rollout at my company has been a killer. Over budget, does Larry know this crap can kill a company? Even a company that's been around for over a hundred years. My company let go IBM due to this. I don't believe Oracle India is the answer as well. Why.... well even though outsourcing saves you 66% or so, they don't get it right the first time, or second, or even the third sometimes. So
Possibly if we put together our own staff, we could have saved money. I don't want to mention how much overbudget we are. But it's huge, scary even.
If the company was open more to Open Source, and I was hired while they were debating over SAP, Oracle, DB2... I would have turned them on to other solutions.
Open Source isn't socialism. There is a lot of money to be made in supporting and Deploying Open Source.
Some people (Larry Ellison and CO.) tend to make money on the shirttails of Open Source, but if they were true Open Source then Oracle and the Application server code would be release as Open Source and who knows, maybe a product would evolve that won't need 3 family packs, a K10202 service pack.. etc.
Anyway sorry about all the text.. I just ended up venting a bit.
IP blah:
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
I cannot believe how many people do not understand the political power structures in this country! Man, the gray-hairs can be lethal!
As well, "growth", at the expense of other things, is not growth at all.
As a friend says - Why is the U.S. in a race to the bottom? (when there are examples of better living standards elsewhere)
Sorry, this isn't an attempted flame. It's just that SAP doesn't really have that devout of a fan base. I haven't talked to any user or developer that preaches how great their product is. I do hear from execs or SAP certified engineers about how much money can be made with it. But every first proposal for a deployment is wildly over optimistic, and bears very little resemblance to what actually gets put in place. However that doesn't stop people from using those over optimistic proposals as models for how SAP works. In short, they are big on hype.
They won't be able to dictate that you change your business model to work with their software.........
Seems that as in politics, IP socialism beats the hell out of IP fascism.
SAP makes huge fortunes supplying literally socialist governments. But they won't be caught describing it as "corporate welfare". Especially since a real socialism would require the source to be published so its owners, the people, could exercise all their rights to read and use it. Since they paid for it and all.
--
make install -not war
""But if you look at the most innovative desktop today, Microsoft's Vista is not copying Linux, it is copying Apple.""
cool I think I will go out and buy Vista today - oh wait - nevermind.
in the sense that it fails to reward land and means of production.
How horrible.
Setting aside Anarcho-Communism, I think history has shown that Communism is quite distinct from Socialism. See Revolutionary Spain for an example of how Communists happily conspire with the bourgeouis and Western states to keep actual socialism from thriving.
Communism is totalitarian, anti-democratic, and ironically capitalistic (in that it accepts the same division of labour as a capitalist society, only it assigns to party administrators the economic functions reserved for "The Free Market" in the West). As long as a hierarchy of planners and bureaucrats exists, structural corruption is inevitable. And, in the case of historical communists movements, I would be jaded enough to say that accumulating power to their roles is the prime motivator for commie intelligensia.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
"But if you look at the most innovative desktop today, Microsoft's Vista is not copying Linux, it is copying Apple."
Which is copying Linux!
The open source model far works too well to be called socialism...
I am a Democrat and believe in giving people a hand up. What frustrates me is the statistics I read recently that something like 80% of black inner-city kids will drop out of High School (a good education is considered acting 'White'. And aprox. two-thirds of black kids are born to unwed mothers.
Now, how can anyone hope to lift themselves out of poverty when they are competing for jobs without a High School Diploma? How likely will a mother, no matter how hard working, ever be able to raise her standard of living on one salary?
I believe in giving a hand up. I wish the 'Black Culture' would stop blaming White Society for all their problems and take a look at their own backyard
I was going to ask them if this had anything to do with their experience releasing SAPBD under an open source license....
Oh wait.... Maybe it only applies to their competitors.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
FOSS is mutualism applied to software.
Mutualism -- you know, "Do unto other as you would have others do unto you."
Let's take a look at the word here, okay? Socialism... that is Social-ism is about constructing and crafting society.. however in reality, in Realpolitik, socialism is
about changing society the WAY IT SUITS THEM. "THEM" being the functionaries and
big business working hand in hand to crank out the next generation of docile workers,
I think what you were thinking of is the sort of benevolent socialism practiced in part
by our Germanic ancestors. But then you should also keep in mind that especially they
stressed independent self-sufficiency while upholding a system of welfare for the sick
and those of age.
I will second all that. I've lieved in Germany for decades and man... things really turned to crap when the Socialist Party took over. Elvind is right... People here are for the most part either on Workfare or employed but grossly underpaid. But on the other hand... The German Fortune 500 are doing exceedingly well... while laying off ten-thousands of people. Tell you what... I think East Germany (German Democratic Republic) took over West Germany.
Think of the billions I will rake in from everyone (except the lucky illiterate). I will amass a bigger fortune the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellson combined! You can throw in Rupert Merdoch and Warren Buffet as well. I'll be able to buy Mobil-Exxon for chump change!
But, like Bill Gates, I will give with one hand while taking away with the other. My worldwide charity: the elimination of bad haircuts for peoples of all ethnic groups, religious denominations and economic status. In fact, Gates will be one of my first projects, after he cedes control of Microsoft. My patent beats your patent, just like Pokemon!
Hmm, I wonder if I could patent letters, or even writing? What about patenting speech...
Socialism is an evil doctrine. It is communism dressed up as "social responsibility". It deserves to be wiped off the face of the Earth and held up as another example of a political system where "ideologocal purity" is more important than dealing the real world.
Socialists are delusional and they would admit to being communists if only they had the courage of their convictions.
Here's news to business people: you don't have to use - or even touch, or think about - open-source software! If you want to release a program that isn't open source, that's fine - good for you. We're not forcing you into writing open-source programs, but both you and us alike have the freedom to release our programs under whatever sort of license we want. Just because I choose open-source doesn't mean you have to.
I think some companies are getting a little greedy and wish they could just take the source and put it into their closed-source programs. They don't like the "our program, our rules" sort of thing. I've got news for them - just because someone is releasing their source into the community for everyone to use doesn't mean that you can take it as your own. It's fine to charge for a CD, but it's NOT okay to think that our open-source code is just out there for you to take as your own - if you want to use open-source code, then you've gotta follow the rules of its license. You don't want me to steal your programs and code, do you? We obey your licenses when we buy your products, now you obey our licenses. Don't get greedy - we're giving you free code, and there's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING saying that you can't make profit off of it (just look at companies like SuSE, Mandriva, and RedHat) but you can't just take it as your own.
www.linuxpenguin.net
eulogy
The company know industry wide as the parent of so many software products. What do these products do? Simple they allow you to be able to make SAP run......
I can see how well written software open or closed source would be something SAP would fear.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Open source software is the exact 180 degree opposite of both capitalism and socialism. Yes, you share. But you also get 100% personal ownership of open source.
Let me say this again just to emphasis the importance. You personally own every piece of open source software in existance. You. Own. It.
Socialism where the state owns everything and the individual owns nothing. Socialism is the exact opposite of what open source is about. In fact the state has nothing to do with open source.
Now under corporatism only companies are allowed to own things. Capitalism is the exact opposite of empowering the individual to own things and act on their own behalf, every since the psychopathic corporate state has become empowered. (Watch the movie "The Corporation." Very scarey stuff.) Basically corporations demand power and ownership of everything and have the means to accomplish that, despite any reservations any individual has in regards to the stated policies of the corporate entity.
Funny... socialism is the exact opposite of open source... and corporatism is the exact opposite of open source... how can this be? Because corporatism is communism. Only there is no oversite of this system by the consumer units and worker serfs like there is in a state.
Control by a very wealthy elite, no oversite, their only goal is increasing wealth and market share and returning value to their share holders, other wealthy men. Except for the fact that communist states had to have a 5 year plan and the corporations only look ahead to the next quarterly statement.
When people start talking about exclusive ownership of things, it's not about ownership... it's about control. They don't want to own the software. They want to own YOU.
Since when does software become less valuable just because you don't have exclusive control of that software? Is it because your company is so inept that if you have any competition at all you would go bankrupt the first year?
I say to these would be corporate overlords. Stop your whining. Yes, the playing field is now fair and everyone has a ball, so you can't win anything by threatening to take your ball home. Suck it up buttercup, provide the customer what they need and be good citizens yourself and you will win. Provide crappy customer service and you lose. Before they could turn a loss into a win with exclusive ownship, but that always screwed over the customer. Now the customer has a choice. We like choice.
Just ask HP how great SAP is!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I thought calling things socialistic was a good thing in many parts of the EU? :-)
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I thought the strategy of accusing your enemy of being a communist died about ten years ago... Guess we're not quite there yet.
Hi!C _EVENT.mp3 where it is possible to hear the interview.
Here is a remark from Shai Agassi in the SAP Developer Network: https://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/wlg/1700. Perhaps you might need a user/pwd to access this.
But from what I read there: "let me start by telling you that Tom Sanders, who wrote about my remarks at the Churchill Club on VNUnet.com got the story wrong and took my quotes completely out of context." and "didn't properly characterize my point of view".
There is even a link to http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/z/e/200511/110905_CH
More from the article in the SDN by Shai:
"SAP contributes and support many Open Source projects, and I personally help the community and its visionary leaders on many occasions."
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.