Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SAP Exec Disparages Open Source As IP Socialism

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the code-envy dept.

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."

10 of 498 comments (clear)

  1. Bogeyman... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Bogeyman... by gowen · · Score: 5, Insightful
      You get what you deserve...
      Sometimes you get what you deserve.

      Mostly, you get what your parents deserve.
      Why should I be penalised if my mother is a crack whore? That's not my fault, is it?

      Simple fact is, the standard of living/health care/education of 99.9% of the the children in America is not attributable to the children. Children of the poor, are getting punished through accident of birth, not for any other reason.
      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    2. Re:Bogeyman... by ThePhilips · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've been on one exhibition where some stats were drawn.

      1st. Year 2003. In my application field, in North America (U.S. & Canada) ~650 start-up were founded. Europe? - 25!

      2nd. My company - start-up - has made on exhibit to top 10 european start-ups. How? BY DEFAULT! We haven't yet managed to produce or sell something! It's just there were no other start-ups to compete against.

      I'm living in Germany last 4 years - I yet to seen any progress at all. My poor home country Belarus - classified as "poor", "third-world" & "dictatorship" - sees more investments in development than "rich" Germany.

      "Stagnation and protectionism" are two words I can use to describe local social and political systems.

      And SAP actually is traditional German business working on traditional German principles. IOW. If complete idiot was hired - he will never be fired. (Competence of personel in Germany is really last thing anyone cares about. I'm working for third company and nobody - except staffers - ever looked into my CV.) All bugs are there to stay, since it can break numerous customer applications. 'Customer feedback' is something mythical, non-existent and ignored. Everything what have workaround is considered to be not bug, but feature. Ergonomics (it's over all German) doesn't ring any bells. Thick unpenetratable wall of management, secretaries, sales, service peresonel effectively shields any knowlegeable engineer from ever communicating with customers. And so on. I worked for similar company for some time.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
  2. He got it all wrong by MadMoses · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:He got it all wrong by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      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.

  3. Re:Why against open? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?"

  4. SAP uses open source by Aussie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Does he know nothing about the technology? by machalla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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..

  6. The same old FUD from a new party member by number6x · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. it's rather "IP communism" not "IP socialism" by dermond · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Intellectual property [IP] socialism is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society," he said. "And we are an IP-based society. If there is no way to protect IP, there is no reason to invest in IP."

    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:

    • socialism/communism => the means of production should be not privatly owned but in the hand of the public:
    • free software => source code (the most important means of production for new software) should be in the hand of the public

    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:

    In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
    Karl Marx, 1875 in "Critique of the Gotha Program"

    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)