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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."
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.
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.
I wonder how this fits in with their cooperation with Mysql on MaxDB?
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!
Actually, it's even simpler then that-they're afraid someone will write something better, and not be afraid to show it to the world. Is that a threat to their business model? You bet it is! Is that a -bad- thing? Doesn't capitalism eulogize choosing the best, most efficient option, all of the time?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I'm waiting politely for the best 'In Soviet Russia' comment
Ok, I'll give you a polite one: socialism has never existed in Soviet Russia.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
More to the point, if you don't touch the code, how are the bugs supposed to be fixed? Are they meant to run away when you look at them? Or do they mean "Fix our code for us for free, then pay for your work when we release the next upgrade?"
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.
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
Socialism is government-mandated. Open source software is market driven.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Exactly my opinion. Let me explain why.
The transfer from an industrial society to an IP based is purely based on the fact that the current economical system drives manual labour to countries with cheap labour costs, no unions and poor economies. When we cant have our own industry our only option in the rich countries is to put a pricetag on all our current knowledge and sell that to the emerging economies. We can have them inventing things and selling it without paying us can we. The IP market is more of a defense against the now emerging countries like China. If we cant sell goods we sell ideas, IP and culture to them.
The proper way would be to fix the system so that it isnt that much benefit in putting all the workforce abroad and keep on manufacturing our own goods. Seen from a global non economic perspective its not a good idea to ship things around the globe.
HTTP/1.1 400
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
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.
You are absolutely right of course. I would only add that it is also a futile and self-destructive "defense" in a long-term. It assumes, arrogantly, that the others are too dumb to match your R&D efforts or to produce their own culture. I hope I do not need to explain the frightening idiocy of that folly.
What is amazing and depressing to me is the number of otherwise bright people who buy into this IP sham. It is an economic and social disaster in the making, in the name of short term greed of the corporates and their paid-for, albait brainless, politicos.
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)
Yeah, what were those "bottled water" idiots thinking?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
That is even more futile. If, say, China develops a robust internal economy (which is already showing a great promise) and then limits its trade with, at that point fatally impoverished, USA, where the average consumer would no longer be able to afford even the "Dollar Store" purchases, and instead focuses on itself and its Asian neighbours, how are you planning to enforce any IP rights? Stop Chinese companies from shipping goods between Shanghai and Peking?! Or to France? Japan? Lets not be silly.
Being a large economic power with the best funded army in the world does have its merits.
As a result of all of the IP-economy scenarios the first part of your sentence would be then in the past tense: "A formerly large economic power, presently attempting to reschedule debt payments". As to the second one, you cannot be serious. Are you planning to menace, of all places, China?! With its ability to muster more soldiers then US has citizens and access to nuclear weapons as well as a vast array of armaments, including at this point ICBMs (or what do you think all that fuss about Chinese space program was all about)? I would suggest to ponder the way in which the, far, far, smaller Iraqi adventure has unfolded. In the light of these, the Vietnam war could be considered a brilliant, near-instantenious, all-around military success for the US when put next to what would happen in an engagement with near-future China. Most likely, we here in Canada would have to quickly adjust to a Canada-Chinese border.
...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.
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.
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.