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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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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)