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Community Calls For OSS Contributions by Banks
Erikson Wright writes to mention a ZDNet article, covering a call by open-source vendors to banking institutions. The groups are asking powerful financial firms to contribute more code to the open source community. From the article: "Concerns over competitive advantage mean that it can be difficult to persuade companies to share code with the open-source community, as it can then be easily accessed by competitors. But for technologies that have little impact on competitive advantage, financial companies could probably be encouraged to contribute code, the conference panel agreed ... 'If you're using open-source technology on Wall Street, unless you're completely reliant on a vendor to provide a certified version, you will probably invest extra time to fix it,' he said. 'What will you do with your fix? You can keep it to yourself, but if you move it upstream by passing it on to the vendor or submitting it as a patch, you know it will be available in the next version of the product. That's what drives most open- source development--collective self-interest.'"
That's exactly what I was thinking...but also ...
... they aren't going to do it.
Banks are generally reluctant to collaborate with other members of the financial community as they are worried about giving advantages to competitors
Most banks (I work at one) are paranoid about lawsuits for absolutely anything (ex: if you wouldn't have shared you source code, that hacker wouldn't have found the flaw, and you wouldn't have lost your customer's information)... and so if they think that it could turn around and shoot them in the foot
This is true in many, many industries. Working on a common code base for the good of all helps companies leverage each other's abilities to get more work done on fewer resources. Many developers don't realize it, but that's what projects like Apache are all about. Thousands of companies may need web servers or Office Document libraries, but these programs are beyond the resources of any one company to maintain.
I can't find it anymore, but Scott McNealy wrote a very good piece on Open Sourcing and industry collaboration. His key point was that anything that does not give your company a competitive advantage is not worth maintaining individually. The only time you should waste the resources on solely developing a technology is when it puts you ahead of your competitors. To use the banking industry as an example, there's no need for everyone to write their own accounting packages. There's very little you're going to gain over your competitors. However, a market analysis package that contains proprietary formulas for market predictions and benchmarking is most certainly worth keeping private. The information contained in the software can give you a huge advantage over your competitors.
So in short, it's all about spending your resources wisely. Open Source and Industry Standards just happen to be tools that help companies do that.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Looking at the european trading scene for example. These guys don't even tell their software vendors how exactly they use their products. That is after all kinds of non disclosure contracts have been signed...
So I do not see this happen, very little companies in this branche will see any tool (software, procedure or whatever) as being non essential to having their own edge.
Banks are absolutely horrible. They are mean skinflints and will never give anything to anybody, for any reason. Give source code out, for free? Come on, they won't even loan money to black people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I understand that... but sharing software within an industry eliminates any competitive advantage that software gives a company within that industry. This is *always* ignored by OSS supporters, and I don't understand why competitive advantage is so easily written off. Is the underlying assumption that software simply isn't important or relevant in business?
I had a roommate in the Army who said he *loved* to clean and for me not to worry about it, he would do all the cleaning. Okay, cool by me. Later when I was transferred from that base to another, he complained to a sergeant that I would never help clean our room/bathroom. As a punishment for my being stupid enough to take my roommate up on his offer, I was made to scour the place from top to bottom before I could leave.
My take on this is: Don't offer to freely share your software and then complain that there is no reciprocal sharing later. You did not freely share. If financial institutions are honoring the applicable licenses for the software they are using then leave them alone. Otherwise your offer was disingenuous and you become an asshole like my roommate turned out to be. If you can't sleep at night because there is no sharing in return, change the license and quit belly-aching about it because not everyone is going to get caught up in the spirit of open source software the way you would like them to.
As long as there is a competitive advantage to be gained, major banks and financial firms will not contribute back to the OSS community if there's even the slightest possibility it will cause them to lose that advantage. It's their corporate culture and I don't think it'll change anytime soon.
Any company that is run by anybody with an IQ greater than that of an eggplant that has a competitive advantage with their software will realize that "contributing" will hurt their bottom line. That's just business 101. OSS people should really stop holding their breath.
Simple example for simple people: Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world largely due to their back-end supply-side JIT software. They're not just going to give that away so that *maybe*, some hack will find a few bugs for them. That would be financial suicide, and the shareholders would sue (rightfully) the people would decided to do that.
I've worked in both banks and credit unions for awhile now.
I can understand Banks inherent unwillingness to contribute to OSS. I don't agree with it, but the culture is very averse to collaboration with anyone or anything outside the bank.
Credit unions, on the other hand, love to collaborate all over the place. They share ATMs, branches, information...all sorts of stuff. However, when it comes to things technology (core processing, etc), they share many of the same fears and behaviors as banks.
CU's have many of the same core values that OSS has. I've often wondered why 15 or so don't band together and create a full open source environment from the ground up. It would benefit members at the bottom line, as well as give the CU world important flexibility in competing with banks. Properly, executed, of course.
Are they modifying code, distributing it and not respecting the terms of the license? I thought OSS was supposed to be "free as in speech" AND "free as in beer." So... why is anyone expecting them to give code and money back now? It's one thing to ask them politely for donations to help pay for the development, or to request services like 0% interest loans for development groups that support them, but what's up with this welfare baby entitlement mentality?
Don't give your code away if you intend to try to squeeze code or money out of them later. The time to ask for an equitable exchange is when things get started, not well after you've given them the product with no notice that it'll cost them anything and then try to squeeze some cash out of them. This is to OSS, what try to tax used CD sales is to the RIAA.
I'd call it outrageous, were it not for the hypocrisy and downright idiocy of much of the "community." I can't even count the number of times that the "community" (as opposed to the developers and sincere, committed supporters who actually had basic social skills) has acted counter to OSS interests in front of me and those I know be it at school, online or at work. Imagine being called a "fucking idiot" by the local Linux know-it-alls back in 2000 because you think that BeOS was a far more sophisticated desktop than Linux with KDE 1.0. Please, someone tell me how the "community" is typically something more than a mob.
I do work for one of the nation's (U.S.) largest insurance companies (read: paying money) and the major reason why they won't touch open source is liability. They want the ability to point to a vendor or software maker and say, "Their fault!" if something goes drastically wrong.