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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."
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.
Worse:
"Open source is great for debugging, but it's crucial not to touch [the code]," said Agassi.
If it's "crucial" not to touch the code, what kind of a hous-of-cards are we dealing with here?
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.
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!
...after all, SAP made most of their profits when opensource was still an underdog. Just like M$ would smear FOSS. Does this surprise anyone?
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."
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
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.
Maybe because Linux is a kernel, not a desktop.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
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
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.
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?
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..
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
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)
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.
Yeah, what were those "bottled water" idiots thinking?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
They're probably just ticked off that the OSS community didn't jump on their wonderful SAP DB database! So what if it's the crappiest amalgamation of computer languages ever seen to mankind? It's open source, man! You were all supposed to fix it for them!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
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.
I understand it when nonstandard stuff is complicated, but here we're talking a process that is as bog-standard as it gets: a child is born, in Germany, with german parents and should be registered as a german citizen. This is something that happens 1000 times a year in this city alone.
I counted. The process involves visiting 6 different agencies with a sum total of 22 different documents in totally 65 copies, meaning most of the agencies require nearly or even precisely the same documentation.
It's just stupidity. It costs literally millions for people who do nothing more than move paper around. For example, the application for "kindergeld" and "erziehungsgeld" requires *precisely* the same documentation, and since *everyone* gets "kindergeld" the entire application-process for erziehungsgeld could be replaced with a single checkbox on the already existing form for kindergeld.
Only the "erziehungsgeld" is for unfathomable reasons paid by the department of work ("Arbeidamt") inspite of having nothing to do with work whatsoever (you get it even if you never held a job in your life...), and the different agencies are incapable of communicating, so you gotta do the same thing twice. The same process, by contrast, in Norway consists of the following: Show up for the birth bringing along some kind of ID. After the child is born, sign the pre-filled form the hospital put before you. That's it. (it's sligthly more complicated if the parents *arent* married, in that case a "declaration of fatherhood" and a signature from the father is required additionally)