Management 'Scared' by Open Source

A discussion panel at EclipseCon exposed how managers are freaking out over open source. Apparently a disconnect exists between managers who set corporate open source policies and developers supposed to follow them, but who end up covering their tracks to make it seem like they are not using open source. Developers, though, end up using open source because of its ubiquity and not using it 'puts them at a competitive disadvantage because their competitors are.' And the Lawyers are in a panic.

Comments

The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[freedom_india]

1) Managers are under the mistaken impression that if i just use spring or Jakarta Commons, the company MUST open up the whole project in which it is used (like a proprietrary trading system) to Open Source.
Many managers don't realize that just "using" Spring does NOT force you to open up your systems.
You only need to open up if and when you modify Spring framework with your own code.

2) Open source hacks is another fear they have: the fear that somehow using open source tools will make their client sue them.

3) Leak Back: Managers fear developers, in their zeal to promote open source, will incorporate company's code into open source for 'benefitting' others. Much like SCO claimed. Developers are not fools.

It requires a maturity level beyond that exists today and i don't blame them since these managers were brought up an era where you pay good money for good things.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[tomstdenis]

Along the lines of #1, most folk I meet are fearful of the license issues in terms of "do we owe royalties or something?" Where I work, we use my public domain OSS projects, but we also use others (openssl, swan, the kernel, etc) and we have to be careful of how we distribute things. Fortunately, most of it is in source form which alleviates GPL/LGPL issues. But it's always in the back of our minds.

Tom

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[pammon]

Managers are under the mistaken impression that if i just use spring or Jakarta Commons, the company MUST open up the whole project in which it is used (like a proprietrary trading system) to Open Source.

Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution? Suddenly, that company is legally vulnerable.

You only need to open up if and when you modify Spring framework with your own code

No, that is not correct - the Spring framework does not require you to distribute your changes. You just proved the point: licensing mistakes are easy to make. If you were developing a program that incorporated Spring, and mistakenly believed that it required you to license your source, you would cost your company a great deal of money by doing so. That is why the fear is legitimate.

Open source hacks is another fear they have: the fear that somehow using open source tools will make their client sue them.

And that's a reasonable fear. If I sell code that violates a license to a client, that client becomes legally vulnerable and might sue me. Because open source software is so accessible, it becomes easier to inadvertently violate a license.

Leak Back: Managers fear developers, in their zeal to promote open source, will incorporate company's code into open source for 'benefitting' others.

I doubt very much that's a concern. No developer is going to risk their job for open source warm fuzzies, and conversely, no open source project is going to accept leaked patches. Any project that did would open itself up to huge legal liability. Corporate espionage and bribery is a much bigger worry.

You mentioned maturity, but I think you have it backwards - corporations have developed strict, mature processes for keeping themselves on firm legal footing, and licenses are reviewed and vetted by the legal teams. The wide availability of license-encumbered code means that engineers have the opportunity to play lawyer. That's bad, and if you're a manager, you should be scared by that.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[rlauzon]

The main reason is the lack of knowledge. Period. (At least for the companies that I've worked for.)

The people who makes these decisions are frequently ex-techies who don't realize that they have no useful knowledge anymore, simply because they've been living in management-land for so long. So they make decision based on simple rules. Back in the '80's, the rule was "no one got fired for going with IBM." Now, it's "no one got fired for going Microsoft."

Time and time again, they choose to pay for overpriced Microsoft products instead of going with an open source alternative. For example: when we "upgraded" to Windows XP, we also "upgraded" to Office XP. No one could give me a clear reason why we chose to pay $75 per license for Office XP instead of going to OpenOffice for free.

The only time non-Microsoft products enter the enterprise is when these people aren't part of the decision process. For example: our new PBX system runs Asterix and the "print servers" that we put in the remote locations are all appliances that run Red Hat.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[SpaghettiCoder]

With regard to your premise number 1, I don't agree that's a "mistaken impression" at all. You have referred to "using" Spring, but it's not as simple as that. What if I downloaded Spring, renamed it and sold it to my client as my own work? I would be in trouble. It's not a clear cut rule which is the same in every case, and the legalities would depend on the specifics of the individual case. If you use any open source code in your company's software, your failure to comply with the legal conditions for doing so (such as the GPL) can and will put you in close communication with your lawyers if the original coder ever finds out you've ripped his code in secret.

These companies are not under any false impressions. They have every right to seek legal advice to protect themselves from being liable to pay damages under intellectual property law. The safeguards referred to in the article (e.g. blocking SourceForge and prohibiting devs from bringing in flash drives) might help them if it ever came to a court of law, and if they were accused of "turning a blind eye" to copyright theft. It seems reasonable to me.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Kjella]

1) Managers are under the mistaken impression that if i just use spring or Jakarta Commons, the company MUST open up the whole project in which it is used (like a proprietrary trading system) to Open Source.

To be fair, I don't expect a manager beyond a certain level to understand the complexities of libraries and linking and 'derived work' and patent clauses or whatnot. In particular not if they're entering into a legal agreement on the company's behalf, which is exactly what a software license is. I certainly wouldn't want to take a developer's word that he knows what legal implications it has, any more than I'd take a lawyer's word that he can run networks because he's written SLAs. Depending on the beuraucracy of the organization, it might be a shorter and easier way to write it themselves than to go down that route with policies and legal and whatnot. Managers are rarely the ones to ask for foregiveness rather than permission.

To take one example from a client that shall remain nameless. I needed an SQL tool to do my job, and the only approved tool was Query Analyzer. At the same time they were in a process of migrating to a new platform, and everyone issued new PCs had to be on the new platform. Unfortunately, they had not certified Query Analyser (and Enterprise Manager) for use on the new platform. Could I have it installed anyway? No, against policy. Could I downgrade to the old platform? No, against policy. Could they make an exception to policy? Blasphemy. I could tell you how much time and money was wasted on that, but you'd swear I was lying.

2) Open source hacks is another fear they have: the fear that somehow using open source tools will make their client sue them.

Half the reason Microsoft is so unpopular is because they deserve it. The other half is because Microsoft has been blamed for a million cock-ups by incompetent managers or their subordinates. Whenever there's a flaw in a product, the client is trying to grab the one closest to them and make it their responsibility to fix it. The further it gets passed up the chain, the less chance they'll get help. Once it's passed off to upstream support, the ball is sort of passed. In that respect, the fact that you *could* in theory fix an opensource tool is more of a disadvantage than anything else. In that sense, I think it might actually be legitimate. In addition, there's simply managers covering their ass.

3) Leak Back: Managers fear developers, in their zeal to promote open source, will incorporate company's code into open source for 'benefitting' others. Much like SCO claimed. Developers are not fools.

I don't think they're half as worried about that as the other way around, apart from blatant "let's post the whole products source code on the Internet", which has nothing to do with open source. If some odds and ends from lone developers leaks, it's a shame but they got pretty much a full arsenal of legal work to stop it. If SCO had any real claims, and those were pointed out specificly they'd be gone by the next point release, never to return in any official kernel. What I do think they're worried about is changes of context and ending up sued for copyright infringement themselves.

Let's for example say you've built up some internal tool based on GPL code, which is perfectly OK. But then you figure out that your partners, customers or something also should be able to use that tool. Suddently you're distributing that tool from one legal entity to another and the GPL is invoked. Parhaps the GPL'd bit is just some library or code that got thrown in sometime because it was useful and it's internal anyway, right? Again, there's also the personal angle and the company angle. It might not be a big thing for the company as such, but I swear: If your company gets sued it comes from legal, up to executive management and down on that manager like a ton of bricks.

Certainly, that's not something new and you can get sued by others too. But paid licensed code has usually been through a whol

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex]

No one could give me a clear reason why we chose to pay $75 per license for Office XP instead of going to OpenOffice for free.

I use openoffice all of the time - and the answer to your question is "open office is only an acceptable replacement for basic users of office applications" - have you tried opening a complex spreadsheet in openoffice ? it'll take ages. On my 3 year old windows laptop similar spreadsheets open in 20% of the time in Excel.

Openoffice is very good - but for a small % of users it is a very poor replacement, 75$ is also a bargain for MS Office.

Alex

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Mateo_LeFou]

I don't know much about Spring in particular, but depending on the license it's perfectly legal to download it, learn how to build it, and make someone pay you to install it. Charge whatever you can get; try to keep a lid on how easy it is. Attributing it to yourself would break the license, but it would be *your breach, not the client's.

"If you use any open source code in your company's software, your failure to comply with the legal conditions for doing so (such as the GPL) can and will put you in close communication with your lawyers if the original coder ever finds out you've ripped his code in secret."

The good news is that policy from the highest levels at the free software foundation is "never let a request for damages interfere with a settlement for compliance." So if a manager finds that they are noncompliant, they will get guidance (from Moglen) about how to get back into compliance, rather than a lawsuit.

On the whole, it seems like a much friendlier proposition that having a team of attorneys crawl over every vendor's EULA with a microscope.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[CastrTroy]

There's a big difference between using openoffice, and altering open office and trying to sell it to someone else as a product. If the developers and management can't understand that, then there are other issues. Of course there are a couple issues with packages like MySQL, where simply calling the API can require you to open source your product, but that's just something the company has be aware of. I don't think dealing with open source licences is any more difficult than dealing with the closed source licenses that Microsoft et al give you with their product.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[l0ne]

Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution? Suddenly, that company is legally vulnerable.

Oh, come on! The dev community has worked twenty years to get to the point where you can reuse existing code without having to copy and paste it. We were calling this inheritance if I'm not mistaken.

Also, it's common sense that other people's code is other people's. If your developers are not intelligent enough to understand that and actively research the license for the code they're taking, they should not be your developers. I can do it, and I'm just a Slashdot-reading moron!

No, that is not correct - the Spring framework does not require you to distribute your changes. You just proved the point: licensing mistakes are easy to make.

They're also easy not to make. Not as easy as they are to make, but easy enough. Think safe sex.

If any contributions are properly documented (it's easy with a proper source management system), and made by a group of competent developers, as above, things work out correctly. If you cannot keep your devs in check, you have more to worry than just licensing problems. Google does this, Apple does this, Microsoft (!) might be even doing this, and none of them ever had licensing problems of any kind.

Open source hacks is another fear they have: the fear that somehow using open source tools will make their client sue them.

And that's a reasonable fear. If I sell code that violates a license to a client, that client becomes legally vulnerable and might sue me. Because open source software is so accessible, it becomes easier to inadvertently violate a license.

Using an open source tool and modifying it are two deeply different things. No FOSS tool that I know of limits what you can do with its output. OS X is compiled with GCC, but it's a commercial OS, for instance.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[ivan256]

Managers are under the mistaken impression that if i just use spring or Jakarta Commons, the company MUST open up the whole project in which it is used (like a proprietrary trading system) to Open Source.
Many managers don't realize that just "using" Spring does NOT force you to open up your systems.

It doesn't help that they have salespeople from BlackDuck Software reinforcing their fears. Theys guys come knocking telling CEOs, and CFOs (they're very careful not to make initial contact with the technical guys) that if they don't run the BlackDuck product against their source code, they're going to end up getting caught with a line of GPL'ed code in their product and be forced to open up the whole thing. They do this despite the facts that accidentally including GPL'ed code wouldn't force the company to open their code (though they may be forced to remove the GPL'ed part), the Black Duck product produces more false positives and false negatives than valid results, their product provides no guarantees at all, and the BlackDuck software itself is almost certainly violating the copyrights of GPL software authors everywhere.

The open source community has little to no PR to educate businesses about their product, and at the same time IP Lawyers and predatory companies like BlackDuck are spreading false information to maximize billable hours and license fees.

I don't think that your reason #3 is so much of an issue. If it were, companies wouldn't be so willing to outsource. Rather, they'd be afraid that the outsourcing company would use their code in other customer's products as well. I simply don't think that the typical executive manager or investor today is educated enough to even consider that, much less be afraid of it.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[rlauzon]

I use openoffice all of the time - and the answer to your question is "open office is only an acceptable replacement for basic users of office applications" - have you tried opening a complex spreadsheet in openoffice? it'll take ages. On my 3 year old windows laptop similar spreadsheets open in 20% of the time in Excel.

Yup. Just did it. Opened quicker than Excel for me.

Openoffice is very good - but for a small % of users it is a very poor replacement, 75$ is also a bargain for MS Office.

I would agree that for a small percentage of users OO is probably a poor replacement.

But I would argue that those people are using the wrong tool for the job and that the only reason they are using MS Office is because it's the only tool they know about (or the only one that their IT dept will let them have).

And we are back again to letting the wrong people make technical decisions.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

No one could give me a clear reason why we chose to pay $75 per license for Office XP instead of going to OpenOffice for free.

Here's a clear reason. Open Office is a toy. I am actually not a power user of Excel, but every time I try Open Office Calc (spreadsheet) it is very disappointing. Just the other day I wanted to graph 2048 data pairs contained in a CSV file. I am using a dual core machine with 2GB of RAM, and nothing else is running. In Open Office's spreadsheet program it takes 15 seconds just to create a simple line graph (default parameters) and then for some bizarre reason it simply hangs, unresponsive for another 12 seconds before it accepts UI commands again - 27 seconds in total!. I tried this on two different machines, not believing what I was seeing. And for reference, the memory footprint of Open Office with the data loaded and the graph displayed is 74MB. In Excel, by comparison, on the same machine the graph is displayed in less than a second (a blink of an eye actually). That's a factor of about 50 faster! And the memory footprint is 4MB (a factor of 18 less than Open Office). I don't know about you, but I won't wait 30 seconds for a simple graph to be displayed - that would drive me nuts. One more thing. The default graph in Open Office is poorly formatted and requires some tweaking before being usable. In Excel the default is quite acceptable so I don't have to fiddle to get it to look decent.

Open Office may be an alternative someday, but at least as far as the spreadsheet goes (which is arguably the key application in office for business users), it seems still to be a long way off. And I have yet to try Office 2007 wherein Microsoft presumably raised the bar yet again (though maybe not, they do have an unfortunate tendency to sometimes take steps backwards).

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[SpaghettiCoder]

I agree it is much better than having close legal scrutiny of individually crafted terms and conditions, but I wonder what would happen in the following situation. Suppose I build someone else's GPL'd code without giving proper attribution (an abhorrent thing to do anyway) and make a broad statement such as "it's all my work" when selling the compiled, installed binary to a client. The client adduces from my statement that it's all legit, and hands me the cash. I go on my merry way and milk the reputation I've accrued with this deal, with more contracts of a similar nature with other parties. One day, an open source software dev Googles his own project to find out what the commercial sector is selling, in the same field as his open source software project. Looking a little deeper, he finds it striking just how many similarities exist between their shiny, glossy packages and the functionality provided by his own little interface or library or whatever. He obtains a copy of what they're selling, and runs it through a debugger, and finds that by an amazing coincidence, the exact names he has given to various objects, functions and procedures are found in the commercial packages. So who does he seek out for compensation? The self-employed obscure contractor who nobody knows, and who's based in God-knows-where or the up and coming household name (i.e. the small-to-medium-sized firm)? How does he even know that the local big boy hired the contractor who sold his own code to them under false pretences? He doesn't know, so he writes to everyone: the retailer, the wholesaler, the software company - everyone. They all write back to him saying we're terribly sorry we didn't know. We hired a guy who said the work was his. So will you take $5000 and be cool? Of course the open source guy is reasonable and he agrees. But because money doesn't grow on trees and they have to justify every penny, the companies then seek out that Joe Bloggs who sold them the software. They want the cash they paid him for the software, and to recover all the compensation they had to pay out. Of course he can't pay, so they are forced to write off the debt.. Wouldn't it have been better to look for a proper dev in the first place, than to advertise for solutions? The best place to look would be open source, in case someone talented has already produced what you need for your company.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

" have you tried opening a complex spreadsheet in openoffice ?"

Yes.

"it'll take ages"

False.

"On my 3 year old windows laptop similar spreadsheets open in 20% of the time in Excel."

False again.

You probably meant that open *Excel* spreadsheets on Openoffice.org took ages; that I admit. But open *openoffice* spreadsheets on Openoffice.org works just OK. On the other hand, trying to open Openoffice.org spreadsheets on Excel doesn't take ages: it takes forever.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

I would agree that for a small percentage of users OO is probably a poor replacement.

Please see my comment at http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225968&c id=18299300. I would submit that anyone who does even simple graphing in Excel is not a candidate for Open Office. Given that Office is predominantly a business application, and given that Excel is the primary component for business users, I think this means that Open Office is simply unsuited for business users.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

"With regard to your premise number 1, I don't agree that's a "mistaken impression" at all"

Yes, it is. It wouldn't be a "mistaken impression" if source code added *new* legal problems, but the case is that it doesn't add new problems at all, so they shouldn't be more scared about the GPL than they are about Microsoft's CLUF, for instance. There lies the "mistaken impression".

"What if I downloaded Spring, renamed it and sold it to my client as my own work? I would be in trouble."

Of course you could be in troubles. But "what if I downloaded Microsoft Office 2003, renamed it and sold it to my client as my own work?" I certainly would be in *big* troubles too, so where's the novelty? Answer: nowhere. For you to use code written by others, you need them to agree. Sometimes this involves royaties sometimes not, that's all.

"if you use any open source code in your company's software, your failure to comply with the legal conditions for doing so (such as the GPL) can and will put you in close communication with your lawyers"

If you use any closed source code in your company's software, your failure to comply with the legal conditions for doing so (such as the Microsoft's CLUF) can and will put you in close communication with your lawyers.

So once again: where is the novelty of the case so company's lawyers can cry "fire, fire!" when talking about open source that were not the same with all closed source they don't cry "fire, fire!" about?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[dhasenan]

You don't have to release the source to your modifications of GPL code unless you distribute your modifications. If your company wants to roll out a heavily modified version of GNOME for internal use, the GPL allows that, and they don't need to share the source with anyone until they distribute the binaries outside the company.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

"To take one example from a client that shall remain nameless. I needed an SQL tool to do my job, and the only approved tool was Query Analyzer. At the same time they were in a process of migrating to a new platform, and everyone issued new PCs had to be on the new platform. Unfortunately, they had not certified Query Analyser (and Enterprise Manager) for use on the new platform. Could I have it installed anyway? No, against policy. Could I downgrade to the old platform? No, against policy. Could they make an exception to policy? Blasphemy. I could tell you how much time and money was wasted on that, but you'd swear I was lying."

I'd believe you since I've been there too.

But then, what's the case about "fearing open source" when the fact is that the ones that stablished the policy were the ones that shited it -and such situations will rise both using open or closed source software?

No. I think the (somehow) real "problem" with open source is twofold:
1) Marketroid FUD speech. A PHB is not a technician and surely knows more or less about "technocrap" than a geek about quarter balancing. So the PHB forms an opinion with the elements that reach their hands (just exactly the same *we* all do). And what he has on his hands are pretty coloured brochures from well known closed source companies that can spend money on those issues against vague references from other products that do not expend money on bright coloured brochures (and for the most part, such "vague references" will come from the side of the ones that do expend money on bright coloured brochures).
2) The old adaggio: timeo danaos et dona ferentes. It's free thus it must hide something malicious.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Dogtanian]

The only time non-Microsoft products enter the enterprise is when these people aren't part of the decision process. For example: our new PBX system runs Asterix Those feisty Gauls sure know how to get what they want.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

Using an open source tool and modifying it are two deeply different things.

Not while "linking" and "modifying" remain synonymous, they're not.

Added to which, the GPL - probably the most popular OSS license - does not require "modification" to apply its restrictions, it merely requires "inclusion".

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[init100]

No FOSS tool that I know of limits what you can do with its output.

One category of programs that may cause such issues are lexical and syntactical analyzers (also known as lexer and parser generators), since they often include parts of themselves in their output.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[TobascoKid]

So because OO.org is not suited to some business users it's unsuited for all business users?

Looking at your post, why are you using a spreadsheet to do that kind of graphing in the first place (even Excel)? You seem to be claiming that your particular use of spreadsheets shows that OO.org is not suitable for all business use, even though you are using it in a way that is non-representative of typical business use cases.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

4) Many technicaly inclined managers dislike Open Source because the source is available for anyone to see, mainly hackers (crackers to be politicly correct) so it's all the easier to find exploits and one manager I discussed Open Source with seems to think that commercial software developers can get patches for exploits/bugs released faster than Open Source developers. At least he thought that until I explained that with closed source, only authorised developers can make patches, usually a small team and with Open Source, ANYONE that can code in the language the project is written in can patch the application, meaning possibly millions of coders.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[init100]

Of course there are a couple issues with packages like MySQL, where simply calling the API can require you to open source your product

That might be why MySQL also offers commercial licenses, which presubaly do not carry any such requirements.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[shaitand]

Funny you should mention that. I just got my first chance to work with excel in Office 2007. I can certainly say that it was a nightmare.

I am not an excel user nor am I tied to a UI scheme. I am a frequent game player (each UI unique with different levels of quality) and also commonly use various new open source tools (again, many have unique UI's of various quality levels). I can truly say that I have never seen anything quite so horrid as the user interface in 2007. It took a full 10 seconds just to figure out how to print my spreadsheet. The standard File, Edit, View, etc menubar that is found in every windows application known to man no longer exists. The set of toolbars that is used instead is an absolute clusterfuck. There are options scattered about. You might have two options on top of one another and then the next option is skinnier but as tall as the two before; a third segment will again have two elements but that are as thick as 1.5 of the first elements. It hurts just trying to find an element in that.

I couldn't tell you how quickly you could graph data in office 2007 because I'll be damned if anyone could ever figure out how to do such a thing.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

So once again: where is the novelty of the case so company's lawyers can cry "fire, fire!" when talking about open source that were not the same with all closed source they don't cry "fire, fire!" about?

Because closed-source code doesn't try to pretend it is available for source-level availability, as open-source frequently does.

There are potentially _significant_ and _far reaching_ effects of using GPLed source code in other software that are frequently glossed over by its advocates. Corporate legal departments are right to be wary of these implications as they could potentially have a large detrimental effect on key technologies and competitive advantages.

Disingenuous comparisons with using source code from closed-source products will not change this, not matter how frequently they are made. Closed-source products typically do not even try to pretend their source is available for viewing, let alone possible use.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drooling-dog]

Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution? Suddenly, that company is legally vulnerable. That's basically a non-issue, because those "snippets of code" are out there and readily available to your developers whether your organization actually uses the software or not. You might as well argue that they shouldn't have access to any programming manuals, because they might appropriate some of the (copyrighted) example code.

Open source licenses are more permissive than those for proprietary software in all respects that I can think of, including distribution. But no, you can't simply modify it and sell it as your own under a more restrictive (e.g., closed source) license. But that's about it.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[g2devi]

> Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution?

This is a valid concern, but it goes deeper than you think. It's been a few years since I programmed for Win32 and MFC, but back then, it was quite common for Windows programmer to google for hacks^H^H^H^H^H solutions to problems or copy code from book CDs to solve problems and to cut and paste them into code. In web programming, it's even more common to look for libraries or snippets that solve a problem rather than reinvent the wheel.

Years of blindly clicking book-long EULAs or online EULAs that change silently on you without your notice have taught people that licenses don't matter and are things to be ignored. Most developers who do this don't seem to be aware of licensing issue and assume that if it's on the internet or if it came with or on a book, then it must be public domain and fair game. In a large number of case, this is not the case, and a stricter license ("you may use this code in non commercial code" or "you may use this code but not modify it" or even "this code is for demonstration purposes only, do not use it") is attached. Shared source muddles the issue further since it leaves you to SCO-like "you looked at the code so anything you write is contaminated" type lawsuits.

This is what managers are really afraid of.

What many managers haven't clued in on is that open source makes managing this concern easier because most open source software falls into 10 or so licenses that can be divided into three or so categories "share quid pro quo" (e.g. GPL), "library quid pro quo alike" (e.g. LGPL), "attribution" (e.g. BSD, MIT). So it should be easy to define a policy for them and provide a mechanism for new licenses to be added. If you enforce the policy to make your developers actually *look* at the license and *care*, there's little reason to fear and reason to be more confident than you aren't accidentally setting yourself for IP lawsuits from *non-open source* publishers since your developers will be avoiding those like the plague in favour of open source software of the appropriate type.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

To be fair, I don't expect a manager beyond a certain level to understand the complexities of libraries and linking and 'derived work' and patent clauses or whatnot.

You should. It's their job (even if they often don't realise it).

I'm not going to try and argue the average manager *does* understand this sort of thing, however, they most certainly _should_ and you should endeavour to place yourself into a position (assuming you aren't shooting for management yourself) where you are working under someone who, at the very least, understands the principles which underly modern software, even if they are not a coder themselves.

Those of you changing jobs should be sure - assuming you aren't job searching under any sort of duress - to talk to the person who will be your manager and, ideally the person who will be his manager. Try to assess their technical knowledge. Probe principles, not specific implementations. Only take a job when you are comfortable that your boss and, ideally, his boss, have at least a broad understanding of what it entails on a technical level.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[multipartmixed]

What the hell is wrong with using Excel to do graphing?

I regularly generate reasonably complex CSV files with *nix tools, usually out of prof, truss, dtrace or syslog output. A couple of quick clicks in excel, up pops a graph which contains useful visual information. Why, just the other day I solved a multi-process race condition with a floating bar chart derived from a log file...

Excel is really great for that sort of stuff, lots of built-in graph types you can quickly try, it understands things like dates and floats, and if you wind up with something really cool you can take a few more minutes to add some labels and colours and bang it into a PDF.

Compared to what.. What other tool allow that? Hmm. I'm thinking here. Whatever tool that might be, it sure as hell isn't installed on my desktop and I don't know how to use it.

So, in your magic neverland where Excel is not the right solution.. What is? And why should I spend time+money on it, when Excel already does what I want it to?

(And, for the record, I use Excel '97...)

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[F452]

I've just started using OO.o Calc for personal use and it looks pretty good and I think will be fine for my needs, but I was curious about your scenario so I tried it out. With 2048 data pairs, you're right -- it's pretty slow for a simple line graph both in Windows and in Ubuntu with 1GB of RAM. I saw the same 30 seconds. In Excel, it's instantaneous.

I think Excel is a fantastic application, by the way, but I'm more interested in freedom. Especially for personal use. I know it's going to be harder to sell a corporation on the wonders of software freedom if there is a significant performance difference.

I went on to try Gnumeric in Ubuntu and it worked *much* better. It also can make the line graph instantly. I don't know how it will do on larger and more complicated operations, but it's easy enough to use Gnumeric and make further comparisons there. (I'm wondering now if I should start with Gnumeric, since I'm just starting the process of moving away from Excel.)

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Criminally Insane Ro]

Kill them all and let god sort 'em tout!

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[dasmoo]

My managers aren't scared enough. I have to constantly remind them that we can't just take source that someone else has written, change it so it suits our needs and then charge for it. Obviously with no actual authority I'm saying this purely because they're acting immorally, but this is something managers should really keep in mind as they are the ones who'll take the full force of the shit storm if anything ever happens.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[gitarman]

drsmithy wrote

"Added to which, the GPL - probably the most popular OSS license - does not require "modification" to apply its restrictions, it merely requires "inclusion"."

IANAL and it has been a while since I even read the GPL, But IIRC I am free to use / modify any GPL program completely unrestricted up to the point I redistribute, because really, who would care whose programs I use privately (assuming I am not pirating a proprietary code)?

So as I understand it Spacely Sprockets can build whatever system using Spring or whatever, modify it so that it works the best (for them!) and can only redistribute the modified code under GPL. What is less clear (to me) is what if they only wanted to distribute patches of their own code without distributing the Spring source. I suspect that the same rules apply, but again IANAL.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

No FOSS tool that I know of limits what you can do with its output.

One category of programs that may cause such issues are lexical and syntactical analyzers (also known as lexer and parser generators), since they often include parts of themselves in their output.

Got any examples?

The most common lex and yacc tools distributed with Linux are Flex and Bison - or at least they were when last I had occasion to use such things. It's not true in either of those cases.

Flex, if you look at its sourceforge page is distributed under the BSD licence. So there are no problems with flex.

Bison is more problematical, since it's released under the full GPL. The problem is acknowledged by the FSF

Some programs copy parts of themselves into the output for technical reasons--for example, Bison copies a standard parser program into its output file. In such cases, the copied text in the output is covered by the same license that covers it in the source code. Meanwhile, the part of the output which is derived from the program's input inherits the copyright status of the input.

However the same FAQ entry continues:

As it happens, Bison can also be used to develop non-free programs. This is because we decided to explicitly permit the use of the Bison standard parser program in Bison output files without restriction.

So Bison isn't a threat either.

Which tools were you thinking of, specifically? I'm sure the authors of such tools don't intend to lay traps for proprietary developers, and I expect they'd be happy to make the relevant changes if it meant wider use of their tools.

Failing that, it would be a worthwhile exercise to publicise any such tools that are incompatible with proprietary development processes. As opposed to just going "Open Source! Be Very Afraid!" which doesn't seem to contribute anything of value to the debate

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[cyclop]

As a researcher that sometimes uses spreadsheets for quick-and-dirty graphs, I can assure you that the kind of graphs you are describing are easily well done also with free spreadsheets like Gnumeric or OO.org.

However, it would seem reasonable (from what I understand) for you to automatize things a bit more and script Gnuplot/Matplotlib/whatever to automatically get the right graphs from your logs. It maybe requires you to code a couple of lines first, but after you automagically have graphs from your logs instead of copying-pasting-etc. Are you really sure Excel is the right tool and/or the only one for what you are doing?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

Speaking of usability problems, I decided to benchmark some number crunching with OO to compare with Excel (2000). I entered the formula:

=IF(b2>b1,b2,b1)

which is as simple an Excel formula as you could write. OO complained "#NAME?". In Excel, of course, it just worked. I pulled up the OO help and learned that OO uses semi-colons rather than commas to delineate the IF function fields. Why??? If OO uses a different formula syntax that is a massive usability issue as far as I am concerned. I agree that Office 2007 may be difficult (or rather, different) to use, but if business users can't use the formula syntax to which they are accustomed then OO is a non-starter for spreadsheet users, even without considering its pathetic graphing performance.

As an aside, I just tried Excel 2007 and it did take me a few minutes (and the use of its online help) to figure out how to graph my data. The graph displayed instantly and was acceptably formatted. But it was a little annoying that the graphing function was (by default) buried under the "Insert" menu rather than being a toolbar/ribbon button.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Presence1]

Lack of knowledge may sometimes be the cause, but not always.

I use the OO apps every day on my machines. They are pretty good, the price is right, and I prefer to avoid the MS tax where possible. I also think MS Word sucks because it tries to do WAY too much for me (turn off all that crap, and just let me write!), and I think Excel 3 was the best version (very nice but still lean).

Yet, in most recent software company I co-founded and served as CTO (building self-service web apps), we made a decision to use MS Office instead.

Why? Compatibility. The business-side partners, while sympathetic to the open source cause, and certainly liking the price, were emphatic that they needed to frequently exchange files with suppliers and customers. I would have liked to make the case for OO, but I could easily find files in Word, Excel and PowerPoint that OO would fail to properly display or edit. So, with these inconvenient facts, I agreed that MS Office was the way to go.

Am I disgusted with MS practices in making compatibility so difficult? Absolutely. But I still needed to make decisions based on the actual facts on the ground, not the ideal that OO will (someday) be fully compatible. We had a company to build and needed the best, most cost-effective tools to get the work done, even if we are being oppressed by a monopoly compatiility issue.

A few years later, my current startup is in development and fabrication of high-performance composite products. We are starting out with OO, and compatibility is better, and MS Office is even more bloated, but I have a suspicion that the same decision will ultimately be made again.

Either way, neither decision will have been made from ignorance, and certainly not from any kind of "nobody got fired for buying XYZ" attitude.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

why are you using a spreadsheet to do that kind of graphing in the first place (even Excel)?

I use Excel for this because it is really good at graphing data. And I am not alone in doing that; it is the tool virtually everyone in business uses to make graphs.

You seem to be claiming that your particular use of spreadsheets shows that OO.org is not suitable for all business use

Graphing data is hardly an odd use model for Excel. The majority of users do this every day. And as I demonstrated (try it yourself if you don't believe me), if your user is going to create graphs (even insanely simple graphs like a line graph from a column of points), then OO is not the right tool. It's as simple as that.

Just because your particular (limited) usage of spreadsheets does not include graphing does not mean Open Office is suitable for most business users.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

I can assure you that the kind of graphs you are describing are easily well done also with free spreadsheets like Gnumeric or OO.org.

Using OO, I invite you to create 2 columns of 2048 numbers, select them, and create a line graph. Nothing fancy or exotic. Then tell me graphing is "easily well done" using OO. If you have access to Excel, try it there also. I would be very interested to hear your comments. I can't comment on Gnumeric, but I can tell you that business users are not going to be willing to use Gnumeric to graph the data they already have in their spreadsheets.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

but I'm more interested in freedom. Especially for personal use.

Freedom? Didn't you mean "free" as in beer? There are hardly any shackles associated with using MS Office. I bought Office 2000 six years ago and continue to use it today (it runs on Vista). How is this impinging on my "freedom", exactly? Now "free", on the other hand, I can understand. And for personal use OO may be OK, unless you also are a heavy MS Office user at work, in which case the differences would be maddening and not worth the money saved.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

Given that Office is predominantly a business application, and given that Excel is the primary component for business users, I think this means that Open Office is simply unsuited for business users.

By which logic, MS Word never took off and everyone is still using Word Perfect.

The fact that it doesn't seem to have worked that way suggests there may be a flaw in your logic

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

"Because closed-source code doesn't try to pretend it is available for source-level availability, as open-source frequently does."

Which open source does so?

All I know is that software is protected by copyright laws and distributed under a license agreement. I *know* that even if I'm not a lawyer. How can a lawyer think otherwise?

"There are potentially _significant_ and _far reaching_ effects of using GPLed source code"

There are potentially _significant_and_far_reaching_ effects of using closed licensed source code too. In fact, *everything* covered under copyrigth laws have potentially _significant_and_far_reaching_ effects, *I* know this and *any* lawyer knows this. On the other hand, open source licenses tend to be written down in clear-crystal terms in order to avoid any misconceptions (albeit only on a best-effort intent) while other license agreements, CLUFs et al. seem to be written specifically to mislead people or force the law to say things not imagined by the legislator (the most blatant case: "if you pay for something you acquire some rights for the thing to be done properly" which most CLUFs try to work against). On a company, attorney's work is dealing with contracts and license agreements day-in day-out so what's the *specific* problem regarding license agreements on the open source camp? If anything, a company attorney should be glad that, on average, open source license agreements tend to be easier to deal with.

"Disingenuous comparisons"

Where do those "disingenuous comparisions" come from? What you are doing is trying to make people Fear where there's nothing new to fear about and ofering Uncertainty talking about generic issues when the real case comes down as easy as read the f* license that comes with the code, in order to make people Doubt about the validity of a hugh class of software distribution agreements in negative and vague terms. And you know what Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt makes up to, right?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[oscartheduck]

The question that comes to mind is, why not? Athough Excel is the most common spreadsheet, that's not a reason to adopt its syntax for *everything*. In fact, it might be a reasonable way to get sued.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

The question that comes to mind is, why not?

Because people enter Excel formulas as easily as they touch type - without having to think about the syntax. Let me turn your "argument" around. Maybe OO should require a different keyboard. I hear the "dvorak" keyboard layout is "superior". Of course you realize that is insanity. Well, changing simple formula syntax for no real reason is also insanity and, frankly, unforgivable. I would never recommend OO to any business user just because of this problem, nevermind the pathetic graphing performance of OO Calc.

BTW, the original comment questioned why a company would spend $75 per seat for Office XP when they could use OO for free. The poster suggested it was stupid to "buy Microsoft's inferior products". I offered several concrete examples as to why OO is innappropriate (ie, inferior) for business users. So far the responses have been "Why are you graphing with Excel?" and "What's wrong with changing spreadsheet formula syntax?" These are both prime examples of why OSS will never penetrate corporate desktops.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[newt0311]

2048 data points? how about using a dedicated tool such as gnuplot or ploticus? They can handle such data frequencies in milliseconds and automating them is trivial as compared to excel (is it even possible to automate excel?).

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[l0ne]

Which completely misses the point. What I meant is, FOSS tools are safe to use in an environment where one wants to produce non-FOSS final products of any kind, including software, as long as the final products do not include any part of the original FOSS tool. I can put any license I want on a file made with OpenOffice, GIMP, Inkscape or -- yes -- GCC.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[samkass]

Open source licenses are more permissive than those for proprietary software in all respects that I can think of, including distribution. But no, you can't simply modify it and sell it as your own under a more restrictive (e.g., closed source) license. But that's about it.

Replace the word "modify" with "include", and replace "sell it as" with "sell it with", and you're closer to the truth.

I wish I could use and contribute to some of the open source projects out there on company time, but the GPL-- which is getting a whole lot more restrictive with v3-- really restricts what you're able to do. If people would at least use LGPL everywhere it would help a lot, and I'd be able to integrate the projects and thus be able to contribute to those projects on company time. I suspect you'll see restrictive licenses like GPLv3 slowly die while the freer licenses like LGPL get more and more popular, and those projects get higher and higher quality.

For example, my company's primary product includes a Java GUI. It would be nice if I could include some GPL Java web browser on top of it. I don't even want to modify the browser, just use it. And in this case, my application is acting more or less like an OS layer for the browser. But legal is unsure whether the mere act of allowing it to run in our workspace would force the entire codebase into GPL. So I can't use it, can't contribute bugfixes on company time, and can't improve it. I really wish they were getting freer with GPLv3 instead of more restrictive.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[paeanblack]

From the GP:3) Leak Back: Managers fear developers, in their zeal to promote open source, will incorporate company's code into open source for 'benefitting' others. Much like SCO claimed. Developers are not fools.

Developers are not legal experts either. "Who retains what rights to which code" can become a sufficiently complicated question without bringing the umpteen F/OSS licenses out there into the mix. If the developers can duplicate what already exists in F/OSSland for less money than the legal team can unravel the rights, then staying proprietary is the right decision.

Along the lines of #1, most folk I meet are fearful of the license issues in terms of "do we owe royalties or something?"

Exactly. The trouble is that answering their question can cost more than what incorporating F/OSS will save.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[dvice_null]

> You only need to open up if and when you modify Spring framework with your own code.

Insightful my ass.

First, open source itself does not mean anything else, except that you can view the source. If we are talking GPL which most people talk about when they speak about open source, you can use and rape the GPL code as much as you want in your closed source projects and you have to publish nothing as long as you don't distribute it.

On the other hand, if you do distribute GPL licensed code, then everything distributed with it must be GPL (or under a license that follows the rules of GPL). This is the reason why you don't see closed source binaries distributed with Linux distributions.

GPL doesn't take any rights away from the users of the GPL program, it only gives them more rights to use it, with certain condititions.

But besides GPL, there are others also. For example SQLite is public domain. It means that you can do anything with the code, no restrictions at all.

What about open source without any licenses? Well that would be copyrighted material. It means that you have no permission to distribute it. In some countries it might even be illegal to modify it.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you aware of the fact, that parameter separator in Excel depends on current locale? It also means, that in languages using comma for decimal separator you cannot use comma for delimiting parameters. Instead, Excel uses - yes, semicolons!

In en_US locale you seem to be using, semicolon is used to delimit rows in constant arrays. Other locales are supposed to use pipe, but it doesn't work in any version prior 2007 (it is fixed in 2007). So basically when you are in wrong country (let's say, any European country), you are unable to use constants arrays.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

We were talking about business users, who are intimately familiar with Excel (and, graphing using Excel). The OP wanted them to use OO because it's free. I rebutted that with a few pointed examples of how OO Calc is simply unsuited for business users. Regarding your suggestion, there is no business user who is going to crunch numbers in Excel, then write them out to a CSV file and then run some other tool like gnuplot or ploticus when they could simply highlight the data and click Graph-Line-Finish.

Your comment actually highlights an interesting clash of cultures. In the Linux/Unix world, a large collection of "point" tools are used (hence the desire for command line interactivity). They rely on standard interchange formats. Scripts are thrown together to chain these point tools to accomplish some task. In the Windows world, the "swiss army knife" approach, like Office, is used; you stay in Office and it does everything you need (as long as you are the kind of user they designed it for, which is basically business users). We witness every day (especially on these boards) the gulf that exists between these two cultures. Small wonder neither side can convince the other to switch; they are as different as night and day.

PS Yes, it is possible to automate Excel. It has a macro language which is commonly used (even by many business users), and it supports VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), which allows even more sophisticated automation.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[M. Baranczak]

FOSS introduces potential problems, but those problems can be avoided with a little bit of common sense. I worked at a company that relied heavily on open source, so I know it can be done. It's not brain surgery.

You want to talk about "competitive advantage"? If your company has a blanket ban on FOSS, then you're severely limiting your competitiveness.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

I was not aware of that fact, though I don't see why it makes a difference to my argument. If OO wants to replace MS Office, it needs to work the same way (especially as regards formula syntax in Excel) or it will have no chance of adoption on US business desktops. But as I pointed out, OO operates differently than Excel (on my machine), and I hasten to add that I have done no customizations. I am running the default US regionalizations and the default installations of Office 2000 and OO 2.0. In other words, I am the 99% use model for US business users. It seems like you are suggesting that US users should switch over to using commas instead of decimal points in their numbers so they can save $75 every year and use OO Calc - yeah, that'll happen.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[HalAtWork]

Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution? Suddenly, that company is legally vulnerable.

Well, they won't when you tell them you're not developing OSS so they need to come up with all their own code!

You just proved the point: licensing mistakes are easy to make. If you were developing a program that incorporated Spring, and mistakenly believed that it required you to license your source, you would cost your company a great deal of money by doing so.

Which is why you have to read the license. Even closed-source software providers draw up licenses for their software for you to agree to, they should be able to read them themselves. They probably read them for all of the closed-source software that they install on their PCs, so why wouldn't they read the licenses for open-source software? Anyway, such a "mistake" may actually benefit a company if their software becomes more useful through OSS, and if they are able to maintain both a closed and open version as Sun does with OO.o, etc.

. If I sell code that violates a license to a client, that client becomes legally vulnerable and might sue me.

Not if they didn't agree to a license that YOU were supposed to agree to. You passed on modified code with a modified and possibly invalid license... the company you passed it on to didn't agree to (and weren't planning to) the GPL or whatever in using the software you passed on to them so why should they be subject to its rules?

corporations have developed strict, mature processes for keeping themselves on firm legal footing

Not if they skip over license agreements and just allow anything (closed or open) onto their computers!

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[cyclop]

but I can tell you that business users are not going to be willing to use Gnumeric to graph the data they already have in their spreadsheets.

Apart from the fact that Gnumeric is a spreadsheet, so they could build and graph the spreadsheet all in once, I was talking about an admin plotting data from server logs, as the parent seemed to imply, not business users.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Tassach]

A little reducto ad absurdum here... Suppose I release the following program under GPL:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

Does that now mean that any Perl script that "includes" mine is now subject to the GPL? How big does an "inclusion" have to be to trigger the GPL? One line of code? Ten? One hundred?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[TheRaven64]

I'm not going to be drawn into the spreadsheet debate, since I consider both Calc and Excel, along with all other 123-clones, to be inferior to anything based on the Improv model, and wouldn't touch either with a barge pole. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few freedoms you give up when you choose Excel over something like Calc:

• The freedom to chose your platform; Excel only runs on Windows, and you don't have the code to port it to another platform if you want to.
• The freedom to fix bugs yourself. Admittedly, this is quite theoretical when compared to OpenOffice.org, which has a spectacularly complicated code-base, however you can't even pay Microsoft to devote a day of developer time to fixing a bug that is irritating you, while you probably can find someone sufficiently familiar with the OO.o codebase who can fix your bug if you offer a financial incentive.
• The freedom to distribute copies of the app to your friends. If you are working on an Excel spreadsheet with someone, and are using different versions that cause interoperability problems, you can't (legally) just give them a copy of the version you use.
• The freedom to manipulate your data in any way you please. The Calc data format is documented (although the documentation is fairly badly written), so you can do XSLT transformations on it yourself without relying on OO.o at all.

There are probably a few more, but these are the ones that spring to mind.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[gnasher719]

'' Does that now mean that any Perl script that "includes" mine is now subject to the GPL? How big does an "inclusion" have to be to trigger the GPL? One line of code? Ten? One hundred? ''

No matter what the size, it doesn't "trigger the GPL".

Lets say I have written an identical two liner and published it, but without GPL, so nobody is allowed to duplicate it. What's the difference between including your code and mine? Each one is copyright infringement and treated identically. The only difference is that the person copying your code has one more way to make his copying legal (by publishing everything under GPL) which someone who copies my code doesn't have. But nobody can ever be forced to publish their code under the GPL.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

Interesting list. Here are the freedoms I enjoy using Excel on Windows.

- The freedom to be able to work on >90% of the world's desktops and get things done the way I want to work.
- The freedom to download thousands (probably millions) of pre-existing spreadsheets and plugins without having to write the code myself.
- The freedom to send my data files (XLS) to virtually anyone in the world without having to send them an application/explanation as well.
- The freedom to manipulate the data in any way I please. Excel easily exports in many formats including CSV and imports from a huge variety of formats as well.

My list of freedoms are the freedoms that matter to ordinary users who have a job to do, and for whom Excel is simply a tool to accomplish that. Your list of freedoms are more targeted at technical people. This whole thread has been about forcing business (ie ordinary) users to switch to OO versus MS Office. My list trumps your list in that context.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drooling-dog]

But legal is unsure whether the mere act of allowing it to run in our workspace would force the entire codebase into GPL. That is completely absurd. Perhaps legal should spend the 20 minutes or so it would take to actually read the GPL.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in a similar situation a few years back. I needed a small XML parser for our Java application. The main contenders at the time were kXML and TinyXML. Well, that URL about tells the story. Short story shorter, kXML was BSD but still too big, TinyXML was small but GPL, so I ended up writing my own. Today, kXML is still going. It's not the big projects that are hurt from a restrictive license, but the small ones.

(What is this word: I have no idea.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Compatibility. The business-side partners, while sympathetic to the open source cause, and certainly liking the price, were emphatic that they needed to frequently exchange files with suppliers and customers. I would have liked to make the case for OO, but I could easily find files in Word, Excel and PowerPoint that OO would fail to properly display or edit. So, with these inconvenient facts, I agreed that MS Office was the way to go.

I use both MS Office and OpenOffice at work, for some pretty hefty files, and this still sounds like a kneejerk reaction.

I can't remember the last time OO couldn't open a MSO file. But I can remember the last time MSO couldn't open an MSO file: two days ago. It happens all the time, especially between different versions, but even (as it did this week) between two installs of what claim to be the same version of MSO.

If you're going with MSO for compatibility with your suppliers, does that mean you're going to buy every version? (95, 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007?) That gets pretty expensive. And it still doesn't solve the problem of what to do when somebody sends you a file made with the same version of MSO that your install of MSO won't open.

What I do personally (outside of work): just use OO. It works fine 99.9%+ of the time. The one time every few months it doesn't work, I ask the person to resend in a different format. Never had any complaints. I suspect a lot of people are using MSO because the other guy is, and the other guy is using it for the same reason.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

Yours is an interesting supposition, but I think you are the one with flawed logic. First of all, I have not talked about menus and user interface differences at all - and that is principally the difference between Word and the then dominant Word Perfect. My two complaints regarding OO Calc are that the syntax of the formulas is different, and the graphing performance is pathetic. There are obviously many user interface differences as well, but those are less of an impediment to OO's adoption, so I haven't bothered to discuss them. And if UI changes prevented adoption, MS Office 2007 would be in alot of trouble. No, Microsoft knows that users are most interested in the features and the performance. They will deal with the UI differences because that is a short-term irritation. But having to wait 30 seconds for a graph is a continual irritant, as is having to change the way you enter formulas (as long as you also deal with Excel spreadsheets at the same time).

For simply typing documents there was not much difference between Word Perfect and Word. But imagine if you had to type in some other language with Word versus Word Perfect. Or imagine if it took 5 extra minutes to print preview with Word versus Word Perfect. Do you think Word would have supplanted Word Perfect given those severe shortcomings? I highly doubt it. Further, if Word didn't support, or offered a lousy implementation of, some common word processing functions (like underlining, automatic TOC creation, etc), then Word would not have usurped Word Perfect. Carrying this line of reasoning a bit further, it's interesting that when Excel came out, Lotus 123 was the dominant spreadsheet. And so Excel supported Lotus formula syntax, and at the same time it also added superior graphing tools. This allowed Excel to take over. It was a better 123. But, importantly, it was easy for users to adopt it because it had the features they required (plus some), and it allowed them to type their formulas the way they were accustomed to.

So, the fact that Word supplanted Word Perfect, and Excel usurped 123 are both, in my view, supportive of my logic.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[jelle]

'Using OO, I invite you to create 2 columns of 2048 numbers, select them, and create a line graph. Nothing fancy or exotic. Then tell me graphing is "easily well done" using OO.'

Ok, I had never used openoffice spreadsheets to make a graph, but I took your challenge and it was surprisingly easy, with most time spent on the 'pg dn' key going down to row 2048.

So here it is: "Graphing is easily well done using OO".

It took me longer to make this post than to startup openoffice (without quickstart), open a spreadsheet, make two columns, the second the sqrt() of the first, make aline graph of it, and resize it a bitto appreciate the curve.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[fourchannel]

"Who retains what rights to which code" can become a sufficiently complicated question without bringing the umpteen F/OSS licenses out there into the mix. If the developers can duplicate what already exists in F/OSSland for less money than the legal team can unravel the rights, then staying proprietary is the right decision. I bet a better decision would be to say "fuck it!", and let Humanity retain the rights to the code.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[mcalwell]

Oh, come on! The dev community has worked twenty years to get to the point where you can reuse existing code without having to copy and paste it. We were calling this inheritance if I'm not mistaken. You are mistaken. Inheritance refers to deriving a class from another class.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[canuck57]

Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution? Suddenly, that company is legally vulnerable.

That is done and pro-actively overlooked all the time. People steal code every second of every day of every year. Need a web pull down? Go to a page that has one and copy it. Need a little help authenticating with kerberos, go download some code. How about ...

The real problem is it is always the safest for legal to say no, even though they haven't read the license.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution? Suddenly, that company is legally vulnerable.

That's a straw man if I ever saw one. If your programmers are copying code from other projects without licensing it, you have problems anyway. It doesn't matter if the project was OSS or if it was a former school project (usually the school takes ownership of it) or if it was from a former employer.

OSS is actually easier than other systems to check for these sorts of violations. You can buy software that'll fingerprint sourcecode and look for overlap. Since you can just add every OSS project you can find into the database, you can easily find unauthorized copying. You'll have a harder time finding the other violations until after the lawyers come for you.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

There are potentially _significant_and_far_reaching_ effects of using closed licensed source code too.
Yeah, if your devs are billionaires who can afford to window-shop closed source code licenses from their pocket money. Meanwhile, in the real world, the poor dev in a cubicle scours SourceForge for projects related to his current problem. He may lift code from SF without clicking 'I agree', but he cannot even access a closed source project's code without a management go-ahead.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[shaitand]

I disagree with your argument that OO should mimic excel. Certainly those who have learned excel don't want to switch. Just as those who learned all the keybindings and functionality in wordperfect didn't want to switch to word. And just as notes users didn't want to learn to use excel. In the end this didn't stop either of those programs from being more or less usurped by the office suite (neither did arguably superior functionality at the time this changeover occurred).

Once the business environment decides to switch to OO individual users will either grow and adapt with the industry or move to new fields. The ability to learn new programs that replace what you have used for the past 10 years is an essential skill for any office role that requires computer use.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the '80's, the rule was "no one got fired for going with IBM." Now, it's "no one got fired for going Microsoft."

The solution to this is to start firing people -- not for choosing Microsoft specifically, but for any time they pick a solution without weighing the alternatives.

"We have MS Office." "Why did you choose that? Where's the cost comparison with OpenOffice?" "Uh..." "You're fired."

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[modeless]

As a developer on an internal project, I am reluctant to use even BSD licensed code. I have no problem with giving credit where credit is due, I just can't personally guarantee that it will happen. At the moment we don't have formal user documentation or any other good place to put the attribution required such that it will stick around. There's no possible way I can guarantee, when I put something in, that it will remain in the future. The code I'm writing, though it is internal for now, could end up anywhere in a few years. If anyone forgets to copy all the correct attributions when moving the code around, all of a sudden bam! You're illegal.

That's why I only use public domain code, of which a surprising amount exists. At the moment, I'm using SQLite and ANTLR (though v3 is moving to BSD...).

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Frumious Wombat]

Because gnuplot makes ugly output and ploticus is command-line driven? It's like stepping back into the early 80s, or earlier if you had access to 123 in the 80's. I use GNUPlot for band-structure plots, or quick and dirty visualizations, but I've had physical science journals complain about how gnuplot graphs looked, and ask whether they could be replotted using something better. That would be other chemists, btw, not the secretarial staff, that was raising the objection.

Would that there were something better than Excel that was reasonably priced, but there's a reason that people who don't use Excel tend to have something like Deltagraph lying around on their HDs as well.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

"Yeah, if your devs are billionaires who can afford to window-shop closed source code licenses from their pocket money"

I bet you haven't work too much in the bussiness.

"Meanwhile, in the real world..."

Menawhile, in the real world, tons of developers work on either internal projects with total source code access (the vast majority) or gain access due to company's agreements (directly or on scrow) to the source code base they are playing with.

The fact is there's quite a lot circumnstances where a developer comes in contact with foreign source code that is managed by telling the developer what he can do with the code and what he can't (hell you are trusting your coders for some of the most important assets you company has: both its IP and its information management procedures but you are not confident they can follow some easy directions like "you ain't touch non-blessed foreign code"? that's absurd) but it seems that only *open* source code poses a significant copyright threat. That's FUD and nothing else.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[tkinnun0]

Once you link against it, your work becomes derivative. Suppose you introduce feature A inspired by the GPL library. Then you introduce feature B inspired by feature A. Repeat for C, D, E, F, G... How do you fix the situation?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[gnud]

Suppose you introduce feature A inspired by the GPL library.

You are confusing copyright and patents. The GPL covers copyright- A feature inspired by any product under any license is OK, as long as that feature is implemented by your company, and of course, no patent covers it.
(IANAL, ofc)

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[RealGrouchy]

the fear that somehow using open source tools will make their client sue them.

I hear this one.

Once I used an open-source hammer to fix my front doorframe, and now RMS owns my whole house!

- RG>

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

(What is this word: I have no idea.

sculpt

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[l0ne]

... which is done to encapsulate some implementation, to allow easy reuse and possibly overriding. I know, I know, it's just a small part of OOP; but it's in there for that, too.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[chromatic]

You don't redistribute it.

(I suspect your use of the word inspired confused the other respondent somewhat; it's not clear to me whether you're linking in that case.)

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[CDarklock]

The problem is that IP law in this country is massively and irrevocably broken. Only a protracted and expensive court battle will provide any answer as to whether a given use of open source code was or was not in violation of the license, and most companies cannot afford one. Even those that can, when they examine the reality of the legal minefield that is IP law, end up simply unable to determine with any real certainty what the outcome will be.

So one developer who doesn't understand the actual legal meaning of some terminology in the license can say something that leads a company into a multiple-year court battle that may conceivably cost them millions.

The upside is you save a few bucks on developers, but the downside is just a bottomless pit of suck. It's simply not worth it.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[iangoldby]

I think you'll find that by prohibiting others from making derivitive works from your code (which is clearly a direct rip-off of Tassach's) you are violating Tassach's rights under the GPL. Of course, if you wrote yours first, then Tassach is violating your copyright by re-releasing your code under the GPL.

Of course this is an absurd argument. I rather think that was Tassach's point.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Politics and ignorance. The last time there was a major upgrade, all of the data and email that folks in various departments had created were wiped clean. Things have settled down a bit and productivity has arguably recovered since then, although it's irritating to have to wait for another load of new patches and bug fixes to be installed after every new upgrade. I hate Microsoft, even though I've grown accustomed to it. I just wonder if there are some in management circles who at least hate Microsoft as much as a junkie hates the opium he's addicted to.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

I'm glad you found it so easy. And did you observe the same inexplicable 30 second freeze up while it created the graph? One other person on this thread tried this same thing and reported the same intolerable delay I saw. As for how easy it was to create the graph that's not a surprise since it is a complete copy of Excel - highlight the range, click graph, choose line, finish. Except Excel gives you your graph instantaneously, whereas with OO you have to cool your heels for what seems like an eternity.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[nnkx00]

As far as I know, there's not a single F/OSS license that in any way, shape, or form limits what you can produce using the software. Photoshop does not limit what you do with the pictures you make using their software. Likewise, neither does GIMP limit what you do with the pictures you make.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drooling-dog]

How do you fix the situation? There's no situation to fix. Knock yourself out. Be inspired as much as you like.

You can take GPL code, customize it, and sell it for as much as you can get. What you can't do is withhold the source code or impose a license on your customers that is more restrictive than the GPL that you got it under.

But take someone else's code, close it up, and sell it as your own, without attribution, then you have a problem. It amazes me that anyone can think this is unfair or unreasonable.

You run into a somewhat gray area when you want to mix your own code with GPLed code; e.g., if you're using GPLed libraries and such. As long as they're kept separate in distribution, your own stuff shouldn't be affected (you'll still have to provide source for the GPLed package, however). That's pretty much how shared libraries work anyway.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

Which completely misses the point. What I meant is, FOSS tools are safe to use in an environment where one wants to produce non-FOSS final products of any kind, including software, as long as the final products do not include any part of the original FOSS tool.

Does a shared library count as a "tool" ?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

Which open source does so?

Pretty much all of it. People advocating the GPL tend to be the worst, however, since they are inherently more interested in influencing other people's code than their own (because, if they weren't, they wouldn't be using the GPL).

Or haven't you noticed how frequently "you have access to the source" is put forward as an advantage of open source software ?

There are potentially _significant_and_far_reaching_ effects of using closed licensed source code too.

Straw man. The source code for closed-source products is neither easily available nor, more importantly, advertised as being usable.

Where do those "disingenuous comparisions" come from?

People like you. You made one just a few sentences ago, trying to pretend that source code for open-source and closed-source has similar availability and, hence, using either has similar legal considerations.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[jelle]

"I'm glad you found it so easy. And did you observe the same inexplicable 30 second freeze up while it created the graph?"

While it was creating the graph, there was a burst of CPU usage that did seem a little excessive, but I didn't time it and it didn't bother me enough to thing about timing it.

You can report OpenOffice bugs or enhancement requests on-line. A quick look aroung the openoffice website found this place for that: http://qa.openoffice.org/

If you report it, and somebody fixes it, then I guess you can save $500 per computer...

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

Yours is an interesting supposition, but I think you are the one with flawed logic. First of all, I have not talked about menus and user interface differences at all

I think my logic was sound enough, given the assumptions in your post. If you want to introduce new elements for consideration, then the conclusion I draw amy have to change, but that doesn't invalidate my earlier logic :)

My two complaints regarding OO Calc are that the syntax of the formulas is different, and the graphing performance is pathetic.

And to that extent, (and apart perhaps from the needless note of derision) I don't have any argument with you. Clearly you don't like the way OO Calc does things, and I'll take your word for it regarding the graphing performance. Therefore it's probably not a good choice for your at the moment. If the graphing problem is a common one, I expect it will be addressed before too much longer; FOSS development cycles tend to be faster than proprietary ones. On the other hand I don't suppose that Calc's formula syntax is ever going to be to your liking, so by all means stick with Excel. The important thing is that you have a choice.

However, from there you seem to be arguing that

• since OO Calc doesn't suit your needs, it therefore doesn't suit anyone else's need
• almost everyone already uses Excel, therefore no one is going to want to switch

But really the only reason you've given me not to migrate my business to OO is that, if everyone else joins me, it might make your graphs run slower. Amy while I sympathise, I don't find your argument particularly compelling.

if Word didn't support, or offered a lousy implementation of, some common word processing functions (like underlining, automatic TOC creation, etc), then Word would not have usurped Word Perfect.

Which is, in fact, the case. At the time Wordperfect was in the same position as MS Office is now - a de facto industry standard, MS Word ignored many WP conventions, most notably perhaps was WP's code-based format which offered many clear advantages over MS style based approach. Migrating to Word broke a lot of software that was designed to take advantage of WP's codes features and if you do a quick Google you can still find HOWTOs for converting one format to the other, and even advocacy pieces explaining why MS Word is not yet ready for X - although I'll grant that none of them cite speed in rendering graphs as a problem. So the switch-over was nowhere near as easy as you suggest - and yet still it happened. And what happened once can happen again.

Personally, I think it will. If we price MS Office at 200 bucks a seat, then a company with 5000 office could sponsor a team of developer for e year to fix the graphing problem, save 90% of that year's IT budget, and still have the work done inside their migration timetable. I don't think you can argue against numbers like that.

So, the fact that Word supplanted Word Perfect, and Excel usurped 123 are both, in my view, supportive of my logic.

I suppose that all depends on the conclusion you're trying to support. If your point is "Microsoft are the best" then fair enough - although in that case there are a few other points I might like introduce into the argument. If your point is that "open office is a toy", then no, your logic doesn't support that proposition at all. For anything else, I think you need to state your point more clearly.

At the end of the day, however, your complaints with OO Calc sound a lot like the advocacy pieces from those WP diehards who were so opposed to MS Word. I can sympathise, but I believe the fin

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[multipartmixed]

> However, it would seem reasonable (from what I understand) for you to
> automatize things a bit more and script Gnuplot/Matplotlib/whatever

You understand [slightly] incorrectly. 90% of the time when I'm making a graph (actually, perhaps much more than 90% of the time), it's a one-off graph derived from ad-hoc analysis, for my eyes only. I graph not to present or share information, but to help me understand problems, especially when understand can only be gleaned by inputting large amounts of seemingly random data into my brain and finding patterns.

Ad-hoc analysis in terms of log/trace/etc extraction and so-forth is trivial for someone like me who counts shell, sed, grep, uniq and sort among his closest friends (and has done so for nigh on two decades).

While it is certainly possible for me to learn a dedicated graphing package, or even something like matlab to graph this data... It REALLY is easier to use excel to just snake the data in from a CSV or (column-width file, or space-delimited file...), highlight the rows and generate six or eight different views in about a minute, including the possibility of best-fit lines, log axes, etc.

So -- I'm definately no MS fan boy -- but Excel really is a pretty good package; it's been paid for on my Windows desktop for ten years and it works well for me. I also have a decade of practice using it. What I really take issue with is the GP claiming that excel is good for nothing because there are special-purpose and/or OSS packages out there which do similar things. That's crap.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

If anyone forgets to copy all the correct attributions when moving the code around, all of a sudden bam! You're illegal.

What's the worst case? The FOSS devs say "excuse me, you need to acknowledge us in your package", and your company says "oops, sorry. administrative oversight". Everybody friends again.

It's not like you're going to going to lose your IP for missing out a CREDITS file. And from what I've seen from lurking on Groklaw (IANAL) I doubt that a judge would look kindly upon a suit for damages when the clear intent of the software licence was that it be used freely, and where the company had already take action to place themselves in compliance with the licence.

As long as you make sure the requirement is documented in the project metadata, what's the problem?

[ That's not a dig - I just want to understand your position ]

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

But take someone else's code, close it up, and sell it as your own, without attribution, then you have a problem. It amazes me that anyone can think this is unfair or unreasonable.

But that - protecting someone's GPLed code from being "closed up" - is not the GPL's purpose. The BSDL or LGPL do just as good a job.

The *GPL*'s purpose is to force _other people's_ code under the GPL, if they want to use someone's GPLed code, even if that GPLed code makes up only a tiny proportion of the entire product.

If you are a developer, the GPL is not about what you want to happen to *your* code, it's about what you want to happen to *other people's* code. If you only want to protect *your* code, the BSDL, LGPL or similar will do the job just as well.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[tkinnun0]

There's no situation to fix.
If your original work has become derivative due to linking to a GPL'ed work, you have continued to add and modify parts of your now-derived work and later want to remove the derived parts because your business is selling original works, at which point does the work become original again? I looked for the experts, and their helpful answer was 'Fix it'.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Presence1]

You make many good points, but still are a tad short of the mark.

OO can indeed open most MSO files, it just fails to catch all of the formatting, or displays other minor but annoying and time-wasting incompatibilities.

Yes, MSO even has incompatibilities between versions (one of the many reasons it sucks). But at the business level, this is dealt with by using the most prevalant current version (i.e., the newest or just previous ver.). Even if they do show up with an incompatibility, they just tend to say "well, I sent it from Word", and everyone feels OK about it, and just blaming MS. The biz guys don't want to be perceived as the odd one out, trying to impose something that is inconvenient to their partners. Yes, I agree that technically, MS-MS incompatibilities are worse, and should be reason enough to reject them.

However, in biz and politics, it is often the case that perception is reality. In this case, even if they are sending incompatible files, or calling back about receiving incompatible files, that is OK, if they are using the standard, which in this case is MS. Sad, but true.

This same logic will work to OO's advantage if they ever get to be the standard. Do do this, they will have to be CLEARLY BETTER for several years. Being 'good enough' is not good enough.

Of course, this won't keep me from using OO as long as it works for us, and making some efforts to push it.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[modeless]

The FOSS devs say "excuse me, you need to acknowledge us in your package", and your company says "oops, sorry. administrative oversight".

You left out the part where they fire me for exposing them to liability. And also the fact that I am not the kind of person who thinks violating the BSD license is fine just because there are no consequences. If I add some BSD code to this project, I want to ensure the license is followed. But I can't ensure that.

And you must admit that it's possible things could get uglier. For example, an IP holding company could buy the copyright to the code and start suing. I'll grant that's far-fetched, but stranger things have happened. The law is not something you want to mess around with just because you don't see how anything bad could possibly happen.

If there was a piece of BSD code that would save me months of work, I would probably use it. That situation hasn't yet occurred. But I would clear it with management first (and they'd probably send me to legal). I'm not going to go around copy-and-pasting such code willy-nilly. Public domain, on the other hand, is hassle free.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[heinousjay]

On the other hand, trying to open Openoffice.org spreadsheets on Excel doesn't take ages: it takes forever.

Yeah, but the three people who have OO.O spreadsheets can afford to wait.

I kid, I kid. Not really, but still.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Fordiman]

What I don't get is the SaaS issue; if you're only providing software to one client, you only have to provide source code to that one client to be compliant with, say the GPL. And there's nothing in the GPL that says you can't sell modified GPL'ed work; just that you have to have the source code available to anyone you distribute (sell) it to. Even then, you only have to provide the bits of code that are within the same scope as the GPL'ed code (ie: if you use a modified KDE in your product, you have to provide the source for that modified KDE. You do not, on the other hand, have to provide the self-built kernel and X server that it runs atop.)

Also, those who go for SaaS code aren't generally in the business of selling software; they want something that they can use internally, or as an app to run on a server. If you want anything more than a one-shot, wouldn't you want your own development team?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex Belits]

This is one of the "BUT GIMP DOES NOT WORK WITH CMYK!!!!" (actually it does) arguments that Windows fanboys repeat constantly. You are slightly better than the rest of them because you have bothered to find out completely useless for "business user" scenarios where OO is slightly slower or uses different (though better justified) syntax. Congratulations. Now shut up and open a bunch of .xls files someone emailed to you -- there is a possibility that they aren't full of viruses.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex Belits]

And you must admit that it's possible things could get uglier. For example, an IP holding company could buy the copyright to the code and start suing.

Yeah! Someone will buy a BSD-licensed piece of code just to be able to file nuisance lawsuits that will at most award him a fraction of his legal costs and your announcement that you credit him. He can't retroactively add stuff to the license, so all he can do is to pester people who managed to run afoul of the attribution clause, and only if it wasn't already revoked like it happened with most of BSD-licensed software anyway. If he indeed has nothing better to do, it would be easier to just buy a building with your office to evict your company.

Next Microsoft shill, please.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex Belits]

Name three GPL'ed libraries that are not readline. Explain why at least one of them is in any way relevant to your work.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[ewanm89]

So then we have a problem with #include main(){ } And #!/bin/bash And something in every piece of code possible! I don't think standard keywords can count in court as technically they are under the language's copyright and are being used as a tool!

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex Belits]

A combination of GPL'ed and your code is a derived work because (duh) it includes GPL'ed code. Since your code is unusable without GPL'ed one, even if you distribute it separately it's still a part of derived work. You can use it internally but you can't distribute it -- a part of derived work is still a derived work.

If you modify your code so it does not use anything GPL'ed (by means other than adding a mangled version of GPL'ed code, of course), it becomes usable on its own, therefore you can do with it whatever you please as long as you don't violate licenses of other pieces that you use in it. No one would care if in the process of development you made intermediate versions that would be illegal to distribute as long as you didn't actually distribute them.

IANAL, however this is really, really simple -- this is why people told you to just fix your product. GPL isn't designed to prevent all possible kinds of freeloading by commercial entities or to exterminate non-free code, it specifically prevents one thing -- converting free code into non-free one. If your code never was free to begin with, it does not hurt you.

Developing code that is supposed to be redistributed with a GPL-incompatible license around GPL'ed libraries in a hope that eventually they can be replaced by something else is stupid because such a replacement usually involves a switch to a different interface provided by a different product, or reimplementation by people who may have trouble inventing a code that is different from GPL'ed source that they have seen. However this is not something that one can do accidentally. It's much more likely that someone "accidentally" will include restrictively licensed sample code from a book, or perform a modification/redistribution of some product commercially distributed in a source form but with closed license -- in those situations license terms can be unknown or misunderstood by the developer.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex Belits]

While you might say open source code should see the same rigor, it usually doesn't because it's gratis and can be taken from one internal project to the other without issues.

This is baseless.
Developers never have to pay when they use closed code within the company, yet they are aware that they can't just stuff it into everything when the license prohibits it, may require unacceptable royalties, etc. If anything, developers are usually less aware of the details of commercial licenses because those licenses are usually completely unreadable, and managers don't explain to developers any details of potential royalties and other costs involved. On the other hand, BSD license is very short, and the text of GPL mostly consists of explanations why and how it is supposed to be used. Very difficult to miss any details.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Eythian]

Just for another data point (heh), I did this with =A1+1 in the first column, and =A1^2 in the second and filled down (with a 1 in the first cell so it all worked) to 2400 or so. Drew a scatter plot, and it came up in about half a second. This is OOo on Ubuntu x64.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[cbreaker]

No. What you want is to open up a store and beer, but the only way you can stay in business is if everyone keeps giving you free beer.

You could build a closed source app on LGPL binaries, and that's why it's a discouraged license over the GPL in most cases. Core libraries that are required for proper OS function, that's a good place for LGPL. If you ask for more then that, you're looking for a freebie. Spend the time, effort, and money developing your own code, if you don't want to adhere to the rules set forth by the GPL developer.

It's just too bad that folks such as yourself want to use GPL code in your closed-source software. Sorry, but that's not what the license allows you to do. What is it about the GPL that always gets people in an uproar? You never see people complain about license restrictions on closed-source software code, which is basically "Don't ever use this code. Ever. Unless you pay us lots of money, and then we'll think about it."

PS you can buy rights to use GPL code, if you ask the author and come up with an agreement. The author has the right to license the code under the GPL and any other license he/she wants, simultaneously.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[jbolden]

Yes it would make their program GPL if they "included" your program. On the other hand of they independently derived it or got from another source then your license wouldn't apply. Programers tend to think in terms of some sort of platonic absolute version of the code. The law thinks in terms of a tree of derivation. Where those lines came from is what determines their legal status.

Just as an aside, those lines are so common that the courts are likely to find that any copyright if null. But the burden would be on the defendant to prove that kind of public common usage. Companies don't like having the burden in lawsuits.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

You left out the part where they fire me for exposing them to liability.

So let's get this straight: Hypothetically, you use BSD code on an internal project. You clearly document the licence and the obligations that it imposes should the code be distributed externally. Someone else distributes the code without observing those obligations, and they fire you for exposing them to liability. As opposed to, say, the miserable tosser who put the code out there without bothering to look at the documentation or do basic due diligence before distributing.

That seems a little harsh to me. Probably good grounds for a wrongful dismissal suit too, or whatever they call it in your part of world,

And also the fact that I am not the kind of person who thinks violating the BSD license is fine just because there are no consequences.

Of course you're not, and it was never my intention to imply otherwise. I apologise if I came across that way. But you know, using it on an internal project and making sure you comply with the licence internally, and making sure the potential obligations are well documented - I wouldn't have called that a particularly cavalier attitude, myself.

And you must admit that it's possible things could get uglier. For example, an IP holding company could buy the copyright to the code and start suing. I'll grant that's far-fetched, but stranger things have happened.

It does seem a bit of a stretch. I suppose it all depends on what you consider acceptable risk or not. I mean if don't do anything that could conceivably result in being sued, no one would ever do anything at all. Like Bruce Schneier keeps saying - you can construct a movie plot scenario to justify almost any course of action or inaction - sensible or otherwise.

I'm not going to go around copy-and-pasting such code willy-nilly.

Of course not, and I wouldn't suggest that you should. On the other hand, if you track back a few messages, we were talking about the use of Flex. Flex doesn't involve you cutting and pasting anything at all. What it does is generate code, and there are some standard chunks of code distributed as part of that package which get inserted into all of its output. So we're talking about using certain clearly defined chunks of code in a precise manner, and one which quite clearly falls within the intended use of the package. About as far from willy-nilly cut-and-paste as you can get,

And if you've ever done any compiler writing, you'll probably appreciate that, yes, a good lexical analyser generation package can indeed save months of work,

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

completely useless for "business user" scenarios

I didn't realize you were the arbiter of all that is useful to business users. I bow to your omnipotence. I'm sure all those people who use the Excel graphing function (that would be a very large number of people, many of whom are "business users") will be surprised to learn they are stupid. Here's a thought you might ponder in all of your wisdom. If graphing data is so useless why was it included in OO in the first place? Granted they did a crappy job on it, but isn't it better to omit useless features rather than to include a poor implementation, giving "fanboys" like me fodder with which to beat them up?

... where OO is slightly slower ...

A factor of 50 is not slightly slower. 30 seconds to wait for a graphic, during which time the application is frozen is a little more than "slightly slower" - it would be better described as "borderline useless". I thought I was back in the 1980's waiting that long for a simple line graph. On a dual core machine with 2GB of RAM no less. This suggests strongly to me that the underlying code is extremely poorly done, and makes me wonder about the rest of the application. You have to really go out of your way to make a simple operation like that take so long. Either that or you have to be really incompetent.

BTW, I said nothing about GIMP other than implying that it is (undeniably) inferior to the closed source application it is attempting to emulate: Photoshop. Do you really disagree with that assessment? And I should also hasten to add that since Photoshop is not a Microsoft product, the "Microsoft fanboy" label you ascribed to me, sadly for you, does not apply. If you must assign me some derogatory label, please refer to me as a "Quality Product fanboy" as that more correctly describes me. You see I am not blinded by religious fervor and irrational hatreds. I evaluate products on their merits and choose the one that does the best job. And I don't put with up, nor do I recommend, crappy products if there is a better alternative, even if I have to spend some money to get it.

Now shut up

Ahhh, the standard response from open source zealots when someone speaks the truth. Sorry, but I will not shut up. I will continue to point out that which is obvious -- that most OSS is a poor imitation of *real* products. And given time I will also continue to provide detailed, verifiable reasons why OSS is inferior, such as I have in this thread. Happily, the gulf is so large, it rarely takes more than a few minutes to find a gaping hole in any given OSS application's functionality.

One more thing. While I am happily productive using those xls files someone emailed me, you can enjoy staring at a frozen screen waiting for OO to render a simple line graph.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Use how? What if one of the engineers needs a snippet of code, copies it from Spring, and incorporates it into their product without attribution? Suddenly, that company is legally vulnerable.

And the same goes if they do that with any other software for which the company has source code access. How is that an argument against using OSS? If you're worried that your engineers are dumb or dishonest, just implement an acquisition process that keeps open-source code separate from proprietary code. Or even restrict OSS use to precompiled binaries only.

It's not hard - I run a complete OSS desktop at home, but the only source code I ever see is code I've written myself or am modifying with the authors' knowledge and approval.

I doubt very much that's a concern. No developer is going to risk their job for open source warm fuzzies, and conversely, no open source project is going to accept leaked patches. Any project that did would open itself up to huge legal liability.

Just because you know it's implausible hasn't stopped it being the whole basic foundation for much of the anti-OSS FUD out there today. See SCO vs. IBM, for example.

You mentioned maturity, but I think you have it backwards - corporations have developed strict, mature processes for keeping themselves on firm legal footing, and licenses are reviewed and vetted by the legal teams. The wide availability of license-encumbered code means that engineers have the opportunity to play lawyer.

So you say, but most of the code does in practice only use one of a handful of licenses, and those licenses are typically much shorter and simpler than the multi-page monstrosities that come with most proprietary software. Once your legal team has approved or rejected the GNU GPL, BSD, and maybe the Apache and Mozilla licenses, you should be in a position to put in place a perfectly effective open-source policy that will cover the majority of cases.

Merely saying "ooh, I'm scared, better ban it all to be on the safe side" is not leadership. But that's the real problem - managers are too interested in covering their own asses to get out there, educate themselves, and make rational decisions.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

"People advocating the GPL tend to be the worst, however, since they are inherently more interested in influencing other people's code than their own (because, if they weren't, they wouldn't be using the GPL)."

So people distributing under the GPL are trying to tell how you distribute *your* code!? That's first news to me. I was under the strong impression (both because I developed code under the GPL and used code under the GPL... and took the time to read the GPL itself) that people distributing under the GPL are just telling under what circumnstances are you allowed to use/distribute such code. If you abide OK, if you don't, you won't use that code but, of course, you can still completly free to dictate how is *your* code to be distributed nevertheless.

"Or haven't you noticed how frequently "you have access to the source" is put forward as an advantage of open source software ? "

The fact is that there *is* an advantage about having access to the source (sometimes the advantage is minimal, such the "shared source" case from Microsoft, sometimes the advantage is hughe, such is the case for Public Domain code, but there *is* an advantage). Not only open source recognices it, but all contracting/licensing under non-redistribution and/or scrow (which on my experience is the vast majority of big software contracts) recognices that too.

"Straw man. The source code for closed-source products is neither easily available nor, more importantly, advertised as being usable."

And I again, have to say that you probably haven't been too long on this bussiness: having access to the source code is quite usual, even on source code being distributed under non-disclosure/closed source agreements. Obviously is not as common as the case with open source (where you *always* gain access to the source) but it is quite common anyway. And, obviously, neither open nor closed source advertise "the code to be usable", but "the code to be usable under such and such terms as expressed in the acompanying license".

"People like you. [is being disingenous]"

Thank you.

"You made one just a few sentences ago, trying to pretend that source code for open-source and closed-source has similar availability"

No. I didn't go into the relative frecuency of gaining access to open source code relative to closed source code, but I said (and so I maintain) that there's quite a lot of times where developers gain access to closed source code and that doesn't seem to pose "significant threats" as seems to be the case with open source. And I say that smels FUD from miles away.

"and, hence, using either has similar legal considerations."

But of course they have! On closed source you are limited to whatever the license agreement stablishes. On open source you are limited to whatever the license agreement stablishes too. Where's the difference?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Haeleth]

Does a shared library count as a "tool" ?

In my experience "tool" generally refers to a program or utility, not a library. E.g. using Subversion instead of MS SourceSafe, or Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, or the GNU coreutils instead of the restrictive equivalents that come with most Unixes.

All these are perfectly safe things that short-sighted management could nonetheless easily rule out on the grounds that "open source is dangerous" - a position they adopt because they've been mislead by comments like yours into believing that any use of OSS risks contaminating their entire codebase, when in reality the only risky activity is linking against virally licensed libraries.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Haeleth]

Does that now mean that any Perl script that "includes" mine is now subject to the GPL? How big does an "inclusion" have to be to trigger the GPL? One line of code? Ten? One hundred?

It's not a question of size; it's a question of creativity. Copyright protects original expressions, not things that are functionally required to take the form they do.

So, if your program merely turned warnings and strictness on, but did so in a clever or obfuscated way, or used some kind of unusual formatting, then it would be protected by copyright and anyone who copied it would indeed have to license their work under the GPL or risk a lawsuit for infringing your copyright. But since the sample you posted merely does so in the standard way that millions of programmers use every day, there is not a trace of original expression in it, and consequently it is not protected by copyright.

(IANAL, of course, but this is hardly rocket science.)

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the "BUT GIMP DOES NOT WORK WITH CMYK!!!!" (actually it does)

Oh no it doesn't.

Of course, I'm talking to someone who actually has a special "you are lame!!!111lol" webpage that he redirects Windows users to. It doesn't speak very well for his capacity for rational debate.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Haeleth]

You have referred to "using" Spring, but it's not as simple as that. What if I downloaded Spring, renamed it and sold it to my client as my own work? I would be in trouble.

Ditto if you renamed and resold a proprietary product. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a problem with open source software.

If you use any open source code in your company's software, your failure to comply with the legal conditions for doing so (such as the GPL) can and will put you in close communication with your lawyers if the original coder ever finds out you've ripped his code in secret.

Ditto if you use any proprietary code without complying with the conditions. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a problem with open source software.

These companies are not under any false impressions. They have every right to seek legal advice to protect themselves from being liable to pay damages under intellectual property law.

Perhaps they should be more concerned about the violation of proprietary licenses, which - due to their greater complexity and more restrictive terms - are much easier to violate accidentally, and much more likely to lead to expensive lawsuits. How many companies can honestly say that they don't have a single bit of unlicensed software on their systems? Are you sure you deleted all that trial software after the trial period expired? Are you sure you're only using 50 copies of that software at a time? No, wait, maybe you were only allowed 50 unique users in total. Or was it 50 workstations? Damn, better get legal to check again...

I know that if I were responsible for setting out a corporate IT policy, I would - for example - mandate the use of an open source tool like 7-zip for data compression, to avoid the risk that the company might use unlicensed copies of WinZIP and open itself up to being liable to pay damages under intellectual property law. Seems to me that using freely copyable software is a simple and economical way to protect oneself from accidental copyright infringement. But who am I to comment? My hair isn't pointy.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Haeleth]

Because closed-source code doesn't try to pretend it is available for source-level availability, as open-source frequently does.

It's not "pretending". It really is. You then have the choice of whether or not to actually take up that offer, and if you decide to leave the source code well alone and just use the tool "as is", then you are safe from any potential infection. Easy, isn't it?

There are potentially _significant_ and _far reaching_ effects of using GPLed source code in other software that are frequently glossed over by its advocates.

Very true. And that's a very good reason for companies to be wary of using GPLed source code. But I don't see why it's a reason for companies to be wary of using GPLed software.

Disingenuous comparisons with using source code from closed-source products will not change this, not matter how frequently they are made. Closed-source products typically do not even try to pretend their source is available for viewing, let alone possible use.

Many don't; some do. Microsoft's "shared source" programme is an interesting example; I wonder how wary companies are of it?

But the simple fact remains that there is a big problem, which is that companies are unnecessarily restricting the use of open-source programs, when legal liabilities typically only arise with the use of source code or libraries. Yes, it's disingenuous to pretend that source code from closed-source products is just as available as that from open-source products. But it's just as disingenous to pretend, as you constantly do, that open-source products shove source code down your programmers' throats. It's quite simple to benefit from the cost savings and efficiency savings that open-source software can provide, without in any way opening yourself up to legal liability. For example, deploying OpenOffice.org and Firefox as part of your company's standard desktop build is in no way going to risk contaminating your own products or opening you up to any sort of liability whatsoever.

I find it amusing that you are lambasting OSS advocates for constantly harping on about source code availability, and yet you fall into the same trap yourself!

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Haeleth]

On the other hand, if you do distribute GPL licensed code, then everything distributed with it must be GPL (or under a license that follows the rules of GPL). This is the reason why you don't see closed source binaries distributed with Linux distributions.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit. Clause 2 of the GPL explicitly permits distribution together with proprietary software: "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."

You don't see closed-source binaries distributed with many Linux distributions because many Linux distributions are run by people with a philosophical objection to closed-source binaries. However, you will find that some distributions, such as Linspire, most certainly do include closed-source binaries.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[jp10558]

Wait, so the problem is not that it's hard to use at all, but that it takes 30 seconds to render a graph? For me I'd then look at how often this is done, and the benefit from moving further off the MS upgrade mill. While personell time is costly, if this is something someone does once a day or less, 30 seconds rounds to 0 for any practical purpose (where I work).

Now, if someone is doing this all day long, one after another, 30 seconds is indeed unacceptable, but then I might well look towards automating it also, or some other workflow than graph after graph via click in Excel - it seems at that point it's something that's coming from automatic data collection, and computers can graph far more efficiently than a person in that situation.

The hard part is somewhere in the middle, and the only answer is "it depends", and again I may have a distorted view from where I work, but I just don't see much Excel for graphing use.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[PastaLover]

Using an open source tool and modifying it are two deeply different things.

Not while "linking" and "modifying" remain synonymous, they're not.

It's true that the FSF's position on the GPL's interpretation is that merely linking against a library is enough for your product to be a "derived work". In most cases I would disagree with them (IANAL but I've researched the subject somewhat) but courts are usually expected to look favorably upon the copyright holder so indeed you should never link to GPL code and redistribute it with your works, just to be on the safe side. Anything that doesn't include redistribution is of course okay, though if you ever want to sell a propietary product that includes GPL code you'll have to sell your customers the code under the GPL or replace those GPLed parts. I think this is mainly what's freaking out the business types.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Fordiman]

'cept, while ther are many OSI licenses, the GPL/LGPL is by far the most popular (by software-user count), followed by BSD, AFPL (ghostscript is in EVERYTHING). If you stick to free software with just the major licenses, you only have to answer the question a few times, while you get access to a very large number of programs.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Fordiman]

Oops. Missed Apache in that list. It's probably even with the GPL in end-user count

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

While demonstrating the truly pathetic graphing performance of OO Calc I accidentally stumbled across another serious bug in OO Calc (the type of bug Microsoft would be excoriated for). I dropped a read-only CSV file into Calc. It dutifully imported the data. Then I highlighted the data and clicked graph, dragged out the graph rectangle, selected the appropriate options to configure the graph and ... nothing. I of course waited for at least 30 seconds because I know how pathetically slow OO Calc is with graphing. Still nothing ... no graph ... no error message .... I tried it again, same result. Puzzled, I noticed the "read only" descriptor in the window title. I closed the file, turned off the read-only attribute and reperformed the experiment. Voila, it worked badly just like yesterday, but at least I got a graph. So apparently for some bizarre reason if you open a read only file the graphing functionality does not work, though it "appears" to work. Pretty poor quality I would say.

Whenever I test OSS stuff I am usually reminded of a story a friend told me. He was visiting a mid-East country. He went into the men's room and they had one of those hand drying blower machines. He pressed the button to dry his hands and cool air came out. He examined the unit and realized there was no facility for heating the air. Apparently they had copied the "western" design, but didn't realize it blew hot air. Most OSS is like that. Superficially it looks like the *real* product it is copying, but just below the surface it falls apart. Now, before you blast off and call me the usual derogatory, unimaginative and trite names, I want to add that not all OSS is like this. Firefox is an excellent, best in class browser, and I used it exclusively until IE7 came out. Now if a machine has IE7 I use that, but if it doesn't I install Firefox and use that. I also have had good experiences with various Linux distributions, though not as a desktop replacement. I find KDE and Gnome sorely lacking relative to OSX and Windows). GIMP is good for what it does and I sometimes use it if Photoshop is not available. I am sure there are many other fine and competitive OSS applications, but I am afraid I cannot put Open Office in that camp - it is just far too buggy, sluggish and "foreign" to be useful to most users as an alternative to MS Office.

PS You might wonder how Excel handled the read only file. When I opened it, Excel warned me I was opening a read only file and asked if I wanted to continue without saving changes. I opted to open it anyhow and of course the graphing functions worked properly. Oh, and the window title also informed me the file was read-only in case it slipped my mind. This is the type of behavior I expect and demand from *real* products. I don't expect 30 seconds of frozen UI while a simple graph is created. I don't expect to be led down a series of dialogs configuring a graph only to be presented with nothing ... no error, no graph, no hint as to what could have happened (or not happened in this case). Just imagine, I have used OO Calc for all of about an hour and I have stumbled across 3 serious problems. What are the odds those are the only serious problems in that application?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

I just tried the same thing (Open Office 2.0.3 on Windows XP) - same machine as before (dual core, 2GB). Same results as before - 15 seconds before I got my graph and another 12 seconds before the UI was again responsive.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

But really the only reason you've given me not to migrate my business to OO is that, if everyone else joins me, it might make your graphs run slower.

Actually I have reported 3 distinct problems with OO Calc (based on about an hour's usage). Yes, the graphing performance is abysmally slow ... if you use Excel to graph then OO Calc would be intolerable to use. Second, the formula syntax is different than Excel. If you are the type of person (like me) that writes Excel formulas as fast as you touch type then OO Calc is not for you, because you will be forever fixing "typos" in your formulas. The third bug I found had to do with read only files - OO Calc "acts" like it's letting you create a graph (again, the graphing subsystem), but in the end it simply ignores you and does nothing - no graph, no error. Now, I will grant you that the 2 graphing bugs only affect users who graph. However, the formula syntax differences are more far-reaching and will really frustrate a seasoned Excel user (like me). And I can't help but wonder how many more nasty problems there are lurking given how quickly I found these 3. I suspect that the entire code base may be beyond repair given this kind of serious bug discovery rate on a supposedly "mature" application. And hence my comment about OO being "a toy". So in summary, I simply could not recommend OO Calc for any serious spreadsheet work. Perhaps it is OK for poor college students, or for high school students (though the student edition of Office is only $149), but for business people who depend on their office tools, I think the $75 per seat license fee (according to the OP) is money well spent.

But I think MS Office is doomed to join VisiCalc, Word*Star, the Dodo and the Passenger Pigeon. It'll be interesting to see who's right.

Indeed it will. What, pray tell, do you envision usurping Office? Surely not OO, which is just a poor imitation. Perhaps Google Office will bump Microsoft off, though I will be amazed if companies are willing to store their sensitive data on Google's servers, and have it flying all over the web for anyone to see. I think in the end Office will survive, but its price will drop in response to competition. As OO has shown, even trying to match MS Office in functionality is a huge task, and one not easily accomplished with a Microsoft-level of resources, so I don't see anyone creating a "better Office". They might, however, create a simpler, cheaper one that meets most users' needs (see Google Office example).

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[cyclop]

90% of the time when I'm making a graph (actually, perhaps much more than 90% of the time), it's a one-off graph derived from ad-hoc analysis, for my eyes only. I graph not to present or share information, but to help me understand problems, especially when understand can only be gleaned by inputting large amounts of seemingly random data into my brain and finding patterns.

Yes, I understood that. This doesn't change my point, however.

Ad-hoc analysis in terms of log/trace/etc extraction and so-forth is trivial for someone like me who counts shell, sed, grep, uniq and sort among his closest friends (and has done so for nigh on two decades).

While it is certainly possible for me to learn a dedicated graphing package, or even something like matlab to graph this data... It REALLY is easier to use excel to just snake the data in from a CSV or (column-width file, or space-delimited file...), highlight the rows and generate six or eight different views in about a minute, including the possibility of best-fit lines, log axes, etc.

Yes, but (for my point of view) it would become even more trivial to pipe that column width file etc. in a custom script that generates the wanted graph. Or, even better, having the script that uses sed-grep-uniq etc. like you would do to automatize graph generation. If you tell me it's not more trivial, I believe you, of course, it was just an idea.

So -- I'm definately no MS fan boy -- but Excel really is a pretty good package

Surely Excel is among the best spreadsheets around. Free spreadsheets most probably than not rank behind Excel, but are not THAT bad, expecially given their price. That is the only thing I'd like to pin-point.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[modeless]

I certainly appreciate that a lexer/parser generator can save me months of work. And as I mentioned in my original post, I'm using one. When I did my Google search for parser generators, I found several, and I chose the one that was public domain over BSD and GPL ones because the license makes it easy to use. I was unable to judge merit having not used any of them before, but ANTLR did not look markedly inferior to the alternatives. (Some lexer/parser generators, including ANTLR, require distributing a runtime with your application, not just the output code; thus the license is relevant. Bison/Flex was not an option as we are not using C).

I think you are overestimating my aversion to BSD code. Like I said, the situation where using BSD code would save me months of work has not yet come up (because there is more public domain code out there than you might think), and in that situation I would use it. Also, if our project had already incorporated some BSD code and therefore had precedent (approval from management/legal, a CREDITS file or equivalent to put the attribution in) I would be more comfortable.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

So people distributing under the GPL are trying to tell how you distribute *your* code!?

Yes. The whole point of the GPL is to influence how other developers license their unique, unrelated code if they want to use yours.

That's first news to me.

Maybe you should read it and understand RMS's objectives with the GPL, then.

I was under the strong impression (both because I developed code under the GPL and used code under the GPL... and took the time to read the GPL itself) that people distributing under the GPL are just telling under what circumnstances are you allowed to use/distribute such code.

Indeed. And those circumstances are targeted specifically at other developers' code.

If a developer wants to "open source" _their_ code, as they release it, they should use the BSDL.
If a developer wants to "open source" their code and any subsequent 3rd-party _modifications_ to that code, they should use the LGPL.
If a developer wants to "open source" their code, any subsequent 3rd-party modifications to that code, *and the independent code written by anyone else who wants to use their code*, they should use the GPL.

If you abide OK, if you don't, you won't use that code but, of course, you can still completly free to dictate how is *your* code to be distributed nevertheless.

Not if you want to use GPLed code, you can't. Your code is bound by the terms of the GPL, regardless of what you want to do with it.

And I again, have to say that you probably haven't been too long on this bussiness: having access to the source code is quite usual, even on source code being distributed under non-disclosure/closed source agreements.

Well, I have been around IT for a while and I'd have to say the number of development projects that have access to closed-source code, even under NDA, is relatively small. Moreoever, said access is granted with the very, very specific and obvious condition that it cannot be used.

The same cannot be said about open source. Where the code is easily obtainable and the general attitude is that it *can* be reused.

No. I didn't go into the relative frecuency of gaining access to open source code relative to closed source code, but I said (and so I maintain) that there's quite a lot of times where developers gain access to closed source code and that doesn't seem to pose "significant threats" as seems to be the case with open source.

And it doesn't, because the conditions around which that access occurs and the attitude to it is vastly different. Moreoever, the potential implications of "rogue code" are substantially different ("simple" lawsuit vs potentially having to GPL a previously closed-source product).

It is the last thing that gives the lawyers and directors the biggest worry, because once code is GPLed, its value as a standalone product rapidly approaches zero.

In other words, if $COMPANY is creating $SOFTWARE and has invested $X in doing so, planning to recoup that expense from selling $SOFTWARE at $Y per copy, then if $Y suddenly drops to $0, their whole business is basically fucked. OTOH, if they "only" get hit with a lawsuit for including some closed-source code, resulting in a once-off damages payment or maybe some sort of per-copy royalty, then the only real impact is that $X has gotten larger or $Y has gotten smaller and the time taken to recoup $X has gotten longer.

Where's the difference?

The differences are the likelihood of using "rogue code" (significantly higher with open source) and the potential implications of doing so (possibly much worse with GPLed source code).

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

It's not "pretending". It really is. You then have the choice of whether or not to actually take up that offer, and if you decide to leave the source code well alone and just use the tool "as is", then you are safe from any potential infection. Easy, isn't it?

Except that's not the attitudent typically put forth by the OSS community, which tends to be more along the lines of:

"Here's the product and here's the source code. Take it, use, modify it, do whatever you want with it.".

Then in really small letters down the bottom "but don't forget your modifications may be subject to the GPL (or similar)".

Very true. And that's a very good reason for companies to be wary of using GPLed source code. But I don't see why it's a reason for companies to be wary of using GPLed software.

This particular sub-thread is not about using GPLed software, it's about using GPLed (or closed-source) _code_.

Making these sorts of criticisms about using GPLed _software_ would be stupid, because they simply aren't relevant.

But it's just as disingenous to pretend, as you constantly do, that open-source products shove source code down your programmers' throats.

Where do I do this ?

For example, deploying OpenOffice.org and Firefox as part of your company's standard desktop build is in no way going to risk contaminating your own products or opening you up to any sort of liability whatsoever.

Nor have I ever suggested it would.

I find it amusing that you are lambasting OSS advocates for constantly harping on about source code availability, and yet you fall into the same trap yourself!

Where ?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[snadrus]

OpenOffice Calc can help you out here...

Your Money: Free download from OpenOffice.org with no registration.
Your Time: no learning curve -- It has the same menu items for starting points, see below

-Open (Folder Icon) --> test.csv
-Check "Comma" and Ok. The preview is available to adjust for odd formatting.
-Insert --> Chart -->
      (it guessed the rows)
      XY Chart (with previews like Excel)
      B Spline (Because I want a trendline)
      Title: Trend of test.csv
-File --> Export as PDF (or XHTML) (Near 'Print' for familiarity)
The graph looks essentially the same.
-------------
Next Questions:

To try out Cubic Spline:
Rt-click --> Chart Type

For Floats & Dates:
Floats work on import.
Rt-Click Column --> Format Cells --> Date

You can do all you want with colors and details.

This is just as 'pre-installed' with Windows as Excel is.

Freedom is about choices where there is more than one 'solution'.
Weigh the 'pros' and 'cons', especially the expensive upgrade you soon face as your current solution becomes unsupported.
You also won't lose your current work because OpenOffice reads Excel 97 formats (sometimes better than the latest MS Office).

This is a sincere effort to educate.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex Belits]

hhh, the standard response from open source zealots when someone speaks the truth. Sorry, but I will not shut up. I will continue to point out that which is obvious -- that most OSS is a poor imitation of *real* products. And given time I will also continue to provide detailed, verifiable reasons why OSS is inferior, such as I have in this thread. Happily, the gulf is so large, it rarely takes more than a few minutes to find a gaping hole in any given OSS application's functionality.

I see, you have spent a lot of time trying to justify your positions by cherry-picked scenarios and generalization with no evidence. If this is all that such a resourceful person can present in a desperate attempt to support his point of view, I think, Open Source software is doing great.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Alex Belits]

http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml

Of course, most of "advanced Photoshop users" that still passionately demand CMYK support in Gimp never did anything that actually needed it (hint: printer drivers don't need it in the application).

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

"Yes. The whole point of the GPL is to influence how other developers license their unique, unrelated code if they want to use yours."

Bullshit. The GPL makes quite a few provisions so if your software is really unrelated you can use and even distribute your software, whatever its license is, along with GPL.

"Maybe you should read it and understand RMS's objectives with the GPL, then."

I think I clearly understand RMS' objectives with the GPL, thanks. I even know better: I know to read the GPL itself.

"If a developer wants to "open source" _their_ code, as they release it, they should use the BSDL. "

False: if you want to use *my* code to leverage your efforts so you have to code *less* due to the existance of *my* code, the you will have to use *my* code under *my* terms. You can go as far as distribute your pure code (since its *yours*) under whatever license you want to, but as long as you distribute *my* code intermingled with yours, then you will have to do it under *my* own terms. You can go so far as to publish your code as a patch against my codebase; then you will only be distributing your code and you will be able to do it under whatever license you see fit. You please go read the damn GPL.

"If a developer wants to "open source" their code, any subsequent 3rd-party modifications to that code, *and the independent code written by anyone else who wants to use their code*, they should use the GPL"

That's plain FUD. You can write as much code of your own and release it under any license you see fit -as long as "your" code is not built up as a modification of my own source code; that's it. You can publish your code as a patch against mine; you can use, for instance, a DLL of mine I released under GPL and publish strictly *your* code under whatever license you see fit, as long as it's only *your* code the one published (ie: you can release your source code under whatever license you see fit, since that's only your code, but you won't distribute a binary unless you GPL the binary too, since that binary is a modification of my library since it contains ones and zeroes that are the pure result of my coding efforts).

"And it doesn't, because the conditions around which that access occurs and the attitude to it is vastly different. Moreoever, the potential implications of "rogue code" are substantially different ("simple" lawsuit vs potentially having to GPL a previously closed-source product). "

And that's again FUD. Open source is distributed under some license terms, closed source is distributed under some license terms. Even more: if we talk about the GPL is about a lawsuit versus the choice to GPL the illegally distributed under closed-source terms -or- stop distribution of the offending code -or- reaching to a new agreement with the GPLed code copyright holder. You have more options, nore less, and more sane too (if you illegally distribute closed source code you will be against a lawsuit or... a lawsuit, where the GPL has an explicit provision that if you distribute GPLed code you can be OK by just stopping the distribution once demanded without further allievances -and still retain the "default options" of a lawsuit or reach a new distribution agreement off-courts with the copyright holder).

"It is the last thing that gives the lawyers and directors the biggest worry"

It is then a worryness based on false assumptions provided to create fear. FUD again. And again, what kind of attorneys worth their salt has a company that even fail to read the damn license? It's everything right there!

"The differences are the likelihood of using "rogue code" (significantly higher with open source) and the potential implications of doing so (possibly much worse with GPLed source code)."

FUD, FUD and more FUD. Firstly you are mixing at your leisure talking about "open source" an talking about "GPL" as you see fit to your intentions. Secondly you are making blatantly false asertions about the GPL. Thirdly you are extending such assertions -in case they were true, and they don't, to open source in general. FUD, FUD and more FUD I say.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

Actually I have reported 3 distinct problems with OO Calc (based on about an hour's usage).

Yes, yes. I understand that you don't like it, and I understand that it doesn't suit your needs particularly well at this time. Moving on...

And I can't help but wonder how many more nasty problems there are lurking given how quickly I found these 3.

And as it turns out, you have a point. There are code quality issues with the graphing package, and the graphing section is being re-written from the ground up, this time as a separate package. So it seems your concerns are already being addressed.

I suspect that the entire code base may be beyond repair given this kind of serious bug discovery rate on a supposedly "mature" application.

Another overly broad generalisation, I think. Just because one module is overdue for some refactoring, that doesn't mean the entire codebase is beyond redemption. In fact from the number of using OOo every day, I'd suspect that the graphing code is an anomaly rather than the rule. Otherwise I'd be using AbiWord and Gnumeric (which apparently has excellent graphing capabilities) for my day to day needs rather than OOo. And a lot of others like me too, I suspect.

Perhaps it is OK for poor college students, or for high school students (though the student edition of Office is only $149), but for business people who depend on their office tools, I think the $75 per seat license fee (according to the OP) is money well spent.

mmm... but I think that in these days of shrinking budgets, that proposition might become an increasingly hard sell to the CEOs and CIOs of this world. Especially when they see their competitors increasingly evading the Microsoft Tax by going open. Doubly so if they find there's an office package that works for 90-95% of the workforce. Still, best of luck and all that...

What, pray tell, do you envision usurping Office? Surely not OO, which is just a poor imitation. Perhaps Google Office will bump Microsoft off

You don't get it. It's not about which application gets to be the next king of the castle. ODF is going to blow Microsoft's office monopoly wide open. You'll have a choice of a couple of dozen apps, all of them with different interfaces, all optimised for different tasks, many of them free. Open Office is the vanguard, and by far the most visible, but what you're looking at here is a paradigm shift.

You never know, you might even like it.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

And as I mentioned in my original post, I'm using one.

A point, I confess, which utterly escaped me last time. Perhaps we're talking somewhat at cross purposes in which case?

I think you are overestimating my aversion to BSD code.

I didn't think of you as particularly averse - although I can see how it might have come over that way. You strike me as someone who has investigated several alternatives and chosen sensibly based on the findings. I confess, I thought your legal scenario a little over-cautious, but then since have a perfectly good public domain package to use, the question doesn't really arise.

Also, if our project had already incorporated some BSD code and therefore had precedent (approval from management/legal, a CREDITS file or equivalent to put the attribution in) I would be more comfortable.

And that's the point, I suppose. Management are going to need to evolve procedures to handle the use of FOSS in the workplace, whether it be development packages, or just office apps.

A lot of it is just a question of awareness, of course. There's probably a lucrative course of seminars there if anyone wanted to start teaching them.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

increasingly evading the Microsoft Tax

Oops, you made a small slip there. As I have explained, I gravitate to the best product that lets me do my job. I don't put a heavy emphasis on price, though obviously price matters. I don't view paying for a product that helps me get things done as "a tax", given that I have a choice, which in this case, thanks to OO and others, I do.

Another overly broad generalisation, I think

I have been careful to qualify all of my statements to refer to OO Calc, not generically to OO. I do not have any meaningful experience with the other applications in the OO suite. I am merely saying that Calc (and specifically the graphics subsystem) is poorly done, and is not appropriate for spreadsheet users who graph. Now as to this being an overly broad generalization. If you were looking at buying a product, say a car. You sit in the driver's seat and hit the heat button and cold air blows. You hit the AC button and room temperature air blows. You turn the fan speed knob and the fan speed does not change. Obviously the HVAC system in this car is messed up. You know nothing else about this car. What do you suspect you might find, based on what you know, in say the engine compartment, or the transmission? It certainly doesn't give you confidence, does it? I have not spoken in absolutes except as regards the Calc graphing functions (and you yourself acknowledge I am correct in this criticism). But I am raising a warning flag about the balance of the functionality, about which I know very little, based on my experience with this one aspect of OO. It was done, I assume, by the same team and under the same development conditions, so my assumptions would not be unfounded.

but I think that in these days of shrinking budgets, that proposition might become an increasingly hard sell to the CEOs and CIOs of this world

CEOs and CIOs are business people who make decisions based on facts, not touchy-feely "software freedom" religious arguments. If I am a CIO and I need an office suite for 1000 employees, I need to approach the selection choice rationally. Let's try a simple (albeit contrived) example. Let's say the typical office worker costs my company $75K/year including overhead. Now suppose the "free" office suite made my employees slightly less productive (like if some of them do a lot of graphing, for example, and are forced to wait 30 seconds per graph). If each employee only wastes 5 minutes a day waiting unnecessarily, or working around some feature deficit, then I am wasting 1 of every 100 employees (5 minutes is about 1% of an 8 hour day). That means that if I spend less than $75K dollars to eliminate that 5 minutes of wasted time, I am ahead. Now according to the OP MS Office XP seats are $75. If I bought 100 seats (one for each employee) I would have spent $7500, but I would have gained $75K in productivity - a factor of 10 return on investment! That is the way CEOs and CIOs look at the problem. It is not a "Microsoft tax", it's a productivity enhancer. This is in essence the "cost of ownership" argument that you keep hearing about. It's real and it matters.

You don't get it.

I have to disagree here. In fact, I think I am much more in tune than most here on /. I see software as a tool, not as a "movement" or a "community" or as a "religion". And ODF is not some world-changing thing. Microsoft will support ODF, and yes, others will offer ODF-compliant office suites, and yes, Microsoft will lose some market share in the office market, but only insomuch as the other applications work well and allow people to do their jobs. All you have to do is open your eyes. XLS is pretty universal these days -- OO can read and write XLS files, as can many other applications, including the emergent online spreadsheets. This is not fundamentally different from ODF in that regard. And yet despite this fact (and OO has been around for years) Excel is the t

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

cherry-picked scenarios

Not quite. In fact it was virtually my first experience with OO Calc. I had some data I needed to graph. The machine I was on did not have Excel so I pulled down OO and used that. When I saw how slow it was I actually figured the machine I was on was too underpowered (1GHz C7 with 1GB DDR400). Only later when I replicated the problem on a dual core machine and did a careful comparison with Excel did I realize it was OO Calc that was the problem. This led me to try a few more things and, lo and behold, each thing I tried revealed a new problem.

generalization with no evidence

Well, I posted exactly how to reproduce the problems. Others on this thread did in fact see the same thing. That, my friend, is evidence. It sure beats the typical "M$ is teh sux" language that passes for evidence around these parts.

Open Source software is doing great.

I agree whole heartedly. Just the fact that I took the time to download and install OO and try it out is a testimony to OSS. And I am an avid user of Firefox, have used GIMP on occasion if Photoshop is not available, and also use Linux (not for the desktop), Apache and MySql. OSS is wonderful. I just had to take exception to the OP's claim that his company wasted $75/person on Office XP licenses when they "could have used OO for free". It is that kind of dogmatic, blind behavior that gives OSS a bad name. If it bothers you that I am willing to spend my time finding and advertising problems with OSS, try thinking of me as QA for OSS, helping the community to fix it so it really is a viable alternative in more and more situations.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[oscartheduck]

I want to start out by saying that I don't actually think Microsoft's Office suite is inferior in any way to OpenOffice.org - it's a by far superior product right now. I should clarify: the questions I was answering were yours, not the OPs, though I understand that their stuff provides some context. Also, your keyboard example is a weak straw man at best. Let's not confuse the issue by trying to argue by analogy.
 
  Now, whether or not you believe it to be so, I actually think that if I were running a business of, say, 100 employees and I have the choice of paying $75 per seat, a total cost of $7500, or of telling my employees that we were running OpenOffice.org and they just had to learn that the comma wasn't appropriate in Calc, it's a semi-colon, at a total cost of let's say $25 lost in "mistake time" to my payroll, I know what I'd choose.
 
As you've already accepted that there's a retraining cost with Office 2007, though, then really speaking what comes in to play is the performance issue that you've pointed out here and in other places. You've said that OOo simply takes a lot longer to do basic stuff vs Office 2003. However, I haven't seen the blow by blow for how long Office 2007 takes to perform these same things on the old hardware. If it's like the new version of windows and there's an outright hardware upgrade needed to get a responsive application, then I'm afraid OOo is the winner there. A rising tide carries all ships, after all.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[init100]

Which tools were you thinking of, specifically?

No specific tool. I vaguely recall that I read several years ago that some tool in this category had a license that would have generated this type of issue. My post was just meant to point out one category of programs where a license may apply to the output of the program.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

Fair enough, then. In which case, given the tone of my reply, thank you for the civil response.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

increasingly evading the Microsoft Tax

Oops, you made a small slip there. As I have explained, I gravitate to the best product that lets me do my job.

Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about you - I was talking about Redmond's pricing policies, and how they are increasingly viewed in the rest of the industry.

Another overly broad generalisation, I think

I have been careful to qualify all of my statements to refer to OO Calc, not generically to OO.

Have you? That doesn't come across in phrases like "open office is a toy", or "the entire code base may be beyond repair". Call me picky, but a non-telepathic lifeform could easily form the conclusion that you were referring to more than just OO Calc with those statements.

If you were looking at buying a product, say a car. You sit in the driver's seat and hit the heat button and cold air blows. You hit the AC button and room temperature air blows. You turn the fan speed knob and the fan speed does not change. Obviously the HVAC system in this car is messed up.

Suppose I go to buy a car and the vendor says "it car's in good shape and will do everything you need, but the cord holding the fluffy dice dangling from the rear-view mirror is worn almost through. But if you wait a couple of weeks, I'll send you a new one in the mail". Do I therefore assume the engine is shot?

You're projecting your own values and work patterns onto the rest of the world. You're making the assumption that if you don't like marmalade then no one likes marmalade, and that therefore marmalade vendors are guilty of criminal negligence. It's not a valid inference.

If each employee only wastes 5 minutes a day waiting unnecessarily, or working around some feature deficit, then I am wasting 1 of every 100 employees (5 minutes is about 1% of an 8 hour day). That means that if I spend less than $75K dollars to eliminate that 5 minutes of wasted time, I am ahead.

Sure. If. On the other hand, if only 5 employees out of a thousand are thus affected, it makes sense to get 5 copies of Excel and save the cash for the rest. And that's assuming the difference is that pronounced, which is certainly open to debate.

And ODF is not some world-changing thing.

I suppose that depends on what aspects of the world you consider. It's going to end the MS office software lock-in; that's going allow other developers to compete with them, which is going to bring down the price of office software generally, and drive innovation in the area. I think we're going to see some far reaching changes as a result of ODF.

If it helps me do my job better I will. But I won't like it just because it isn't from Microsoft, or because it's free.

Indeed. And I've said on at least two occasions in this discussion that Excel clearly meets your needs better than OOo at this time, and that I encourage you to continue using it. But hey, why let anything people actually say get in the way of your pre-conceived notions?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

I was talking about Redmond's pricing policies, and how they are increasingly viewed in the rest of the industry.

Sounds a little bit like a broad generalization to me. I hope you aren't drawing this conclusion based on what you read here on /. Group-think and group-speak run rampant in this place.

... but the cord holding the fluffy dice dangling from the rear-view mirror is worn almost through

Touche. I suppose one over-reaching analogy deserves another. Maybe I really, really like fluffy dice - did you ever think of that? Maybe the fluffy dice play an important role in the driving of the car by blocking the sun during certain times of the day. People like you are very quick to dismiss fluffy dice just because you don't happen to think they're important. Well they are very important to some people. OK, I admit it, I'm a fluffy dice fanboy. Ya got me!

But hey, why let anything people actually say get in the way of your pre-conceived notions?

Wouldn't you think that if I had preconceived notions I would never have tried OO? I really wanted it to work for me since I was able to install OO on my thumbdrive (check out the U3 initiative at http://u3.sandisk.com/download/Download_no.asp), hence having it available anywhere I go without having to install it on the machine. Unfortunately this particular aspect of OO will not work for me, but I will continue to try other portions - who knows, maybe I will be surprised. One thing you can be certain of - if I use it and am impressed by it, I will freely and willingly say so. I am not blinded by ideology or envy (of the Redmondians). I just want good products that help me be productive.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

Well argued. Let me counter by suggesting that if you have 100 employees, and the advantages (features, performance) of MS Office allow each employee to save a total of 5 minutes a day (heck, that's only 10 graphs per employee per day - if you have 10 employees cranking out 100 graphs/day you also achieve the same savings), you have just saved 1% of your labor (5 minutes is about 1% of an 8 hour work day). Now, the typical office worker, allowing for benefits and overhead, costs about $75K, so saving one person means saving $75K. It would seem to me that $7500 is a small price to pay to get $75K in return. Heck, even if each employee saved only 1 minute per day due to the superiority of MS Office versus OO, that still constitutes a net savings of $7500 after purchasing 100 MS Office licenses.

As regards the question on Office 2007 on old hardware, I am not aware of any performance differences in the new suite. I did some crude benchmarks (very limited) and found no difference in performance on my machine between Office 2000 and Office 2007. As I understand it, the "big savings" with Office 2007 are supposed to be in productivity due to a more coherent and easier to navigate UI. If this indeed is the case, the upgrade (per my above numbers) would in fact be compelling. I guess we shall have to see what the early users of Office 2007 report.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[oscartheduck]

I don't really have anything to contribute here save that I want to say that I'm also interested in seeing what happens. The new UI is a bold move and a fine example of MS producing something innovative.

I also wanted to say that it's *so rare* to see folks on slashdot just come back and say "I see what you're saying, this is another way to think of it" without being bitchy about it that I wanted to thank you for your polite response.

Low content, yeah, but I felt it was necessary to say thanks.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

It is sad that so little civil interchange happens on /., but it is these rare instances that keep me coming back. And not coincidentally, those are also the ones from which I usually learn the most. Thanks.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

Bullshit. The GPL makes quite a few provisions so if your software is really unrelated you can use and even distribute your software, whatever its license is, along with GPL.

Unless, of course, you want to use your software in the most common, expected and useful ways.

I think I clearly understand RMS' objectives with the GPL, thanks. I even know better: I know to read the GPL itself.

Something I've done numerous times. The objective of the GPL - to "infect" codebases and thus create more GPLed code, is patently obvious from both its content and RMS's opinions. It's _clearly_ all about other people's code, largely because that objective is the only significant restriction it adds over the BSDL or LGPL (or similar).

False: if you want to use *my* code to leverage your efforts so you have to code *less* due to the existance of *my* code, the you will have to use *my* code under *my* terms. You can go as far as distribute your pure code (since its *yours*) under whatever license you want to, but as long as you distribute *my* code intermingled with yours, then you will have to do it under *my* own terms. You can go so far as to publish your code as a patch against my codebase; then you will only be distributing your code and you will be able to do it under whatever license you see fit. You please go read the damn GPL.

Congratulations. This rant has won Tuesday's Non-sequitor Of The Day award.

And that's again FUD. Open source is distributed under some license terms, closed source is distributed under some license terms.

This was also a strong contendor for the non-sequitor award.

Even more: if we talk about the GPL is about a lawsuit versus the choice to GPL the illegally distributed under closed-source terms -or- stop distribution of the offending code -or- reaching to a new agreement with the GPLed code copyright holder.

You need to step back for a few minutes between rants and take a deep breath. Your outrage is affecting your ability to elucidate your point.

The problem with reaching an agreement with the "GPLed code copyright holder" is that practicality frequently deems that nearly - if not completely - impossible due to the different sources the code in a GPLed codebase may come from.

You have more options, nore less, and more sane too (if you illegally distribute closed source code you will be against a lawsuit or... a lawsuit, where the GPL has an explicit provision that if you distribute GPLed code you can be OK by just stopping the distribution once demanded without further allievances -and still retain the "default options" of a lawsuit or reach a new distribution agreement off-courts with the copyright holder).

More "choices" indeed. They could be sued -or- have the revenue stream stopped -or- have the value of their product nullified.

Are you still wondering why lawyers prefer the known quantity of a simple lawsuit ?

And again, what kind of attorneys worth their salt has a company that even fail to read the damn license? It's everything right there!

Section 5 is probably the bit causing them concern, in particular an conclusion being drawn that if a comnpany is distributing a "GPL derived" product, said product represents implied acceptance of the GPL.

FUD, FUD and more FUD. Firstly you are mixing at your leisure talking about "open source" an talking about "GPL" as you see fit to your intentions. Secondly you are making blatantly false asertions about the GPL. Thirdly you are extending such assertions -in case they were true, and they don't, to open source in general. FUD, FUD and more FUD I say.

I am doing nothing of the sort.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Yer Mom]

Photoshop does not limit what you do with the pictures you make using their software.

Actually, the Photoshop EULA prohibits you from making pictures which are obscene, defamatory, or otherwise illegal.

Granted, this is a CYA by Adobe so that they won't get sued for making it possible for you to produce those pics — and if they do get sued, they'll be able to turn around and recover their costs from you because you broke the licence. But it's in there, all the same...

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

"You only need to open up if and when you modify Spring framework with your own code."

No, you need to open if you are _distributing_ the modified code, code which uses open source libraries, or otherwise contains all or part of code which is covered under an open source license.

If you keep it in house and only use it for your business, and don't sell or otherwise allow people to get copies you don't need to open squat.

Example:
I write a php credit card issuing site for a bank using PHP. This is a proprietary app which is neither sold nor distributed in any way. It takes an html application, connects to the bank's systems, runs a credit check, and approves the customeer, issuing a credit card number.

If I grab php-socket.tar.gz from source forge and use it in my application, I do not need to open my source.

However, if I grab php-socket.tar.gz from source forge and use it in my application, then turn around and sell my application to other banks, or make it available for people to download, I need to open my source.

-AC

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[turbidostato]

"Congratulations. This rant has won Tuesday's Non-sequitor Of The Day award."

I see, Chewbacca Defense. So after all is not that you were non-knowledgeable about the GPL; it's not that you are one of those "minor trolls" that FUD about the GPL because they prefer BSD-like licenses (of course for *other's* work, not theirs); it simply you are a blatant troll.

Have a nice day.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

I hope you aren't drawing this conclusion based on what you read here on /. Group-think and group-speak run rampant in this place.

It's a bit of a stretch, perhaps. Still something seems to be driving the recent spate of high profile open source migrations. I doubt they'd be happening if the numbers didn't make some sort of sense.

Isn't "group-think", the psychological term for "no one around here takes me seriously?" ;)

check out the U3 initiative at http://u3.sandisk.com/download/Download_no.asp [sandisk.com]

Useful site, thanks.

One thing you can be certain of - if I use it and am impressed by it, I will freely and willingly say so. I am not blinded by ideology or envy (of the Redmondians). I just want good products that help me be productive.

Good for you. You might check back in a year or so when they finish the graphing re-write. They'll probably still not use the same formula syntax though. Pity you're not on Linux or I'd suggest Gnumeric which used to boast bug-for-bug compatibility with Excel. I don't know what the graphing is like though.

But really, do what works. So far as I'm concerned, the argument is all about choice. And that includes the choice to use MS products if you so choose.

It's just that, personally, I don't think they're destined to remain a popular choice, not once the world's expand a little more.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[drsmithy]

I see, Chewbacca Defense.

Uh, no. My original comment:

If a developer wants to "open source" _their_ code, as they release it, they should use the BSDL.

The irrelevant response that it garnered:

False: if you want to use *my* code to leverage your efforts so you have to code *less* due to the existance of *my* code, the you will have to use *my* code under *my* terms. You can go as far as distribute your pure code (since its *yours*) under whatever license you want to, but as long as you distribute *my* code intermingled with yours, then you will have to do it under *my* own terms. You can go so far as to publish your code as a patch against my codebase; then you will only be distributing your code and you will be able to do it under whatever license you see fit. You please go read the damn GPL.

If you can see any way of connecting my comment about what the BSDL does to a rant about developers having to use code under the license it is supplied with, please share it. At no point did I even _suggest_ - let alone advocate - that developers should not respect the license that source code is available (or not) under.

So after all is not that you were non-knowledgeable about the GPL; it's not that you are one of those "minor trolls" that FUD about the GPL because they prefer BSD-like licenses (of course for *other's* work, not theirs); it simply you are a blatant troll.

Wow. Personal attacks. How surprising from the cult of GNU.

(FYI, I think the LGPL (or similar - the LGPL itself isn't the best example because RMS wants to make it unattractive) presents the best balance for open sourcing code. The BSDL doesn't provide sufficient incentive to efficiently generate a decent base of shared source. The GPL, OTOH, goes too far in the opposite direction and makes code - as a discrete product - pretty much worthless, thereby offering a discincentive to producing new and innovative software.)

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[doom]

A little reducto ad absurdum here... Suppose I release the following program under GPL:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
        use strict;

Does that now mean that any Perl script that "includes" mine is now subject to the GPL? How big does an "inclusion" have to be to trigger the GPL? One line of code? Ten? One hundred?

Presuming this is a serious question, you need to understand the doctrine of "fair use" a little better.
You can't use copyright to get a monopoly on small bits of stuff like this -- the precise size
is not defined in the law (because despite their repuation, lawyers are not as anal retentive as
programmers), but there's no way a claim of infringement on something like this would stand up in court.

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[LaughingCoder]

Isn't "group-think", the psychological term for "no one around here takes me seriously?" ;)

You took me seriously when I said that?

Re:The main reason is lack of clear knowledge

[NickFortune]

Isn't "group-think", the psychological term for "no one around here takes me seriously?" ;)

You took me seriously when I said that?

Nice one.

It's been a pleasure disagreeing with you.

Heard that

[tomstdenis]

When big enough companies use [or acquire companies that use] my software, I usually get a call from a manager or legal dept. Turns out big companies are not only scared of OSS but also public domain software. The idea that I give out something for anyone to use without license seems to scare them.

It's like a fiver you leave on a bus for anyone to have, people are always skeptical if they can in fact take it.

On the plus side, it's fun explaining the public domain to folk :-)

Tom

Re:Heard that

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not clear that that's stupid. The GPL license is a very specific commitment that subsequent users have a set of rights. Whilst PD software is clearly much safer than most proprietary software, where the license may just change in the next release, it doesn't have the guarantees of GPL software.

E.g. If I get your software from a downstream distributor, I've got no guarantee that their code is also PD. If your code was under the GPL then there would be real problems for the down stream distributor if they later try to change their mind (look at the problems SCO has got into by trying to steal Linux, for example).

Re:Heard that

[tomstdenis]

Agreed, except in my case the people who contact me are getting the code from me directly. So the distribution is public domain. While it's legit to question the origins of the code, most don't get too hung up on that. They're more worried about how they license public domain code from me... hehehe

It helps to have a consistent coding style, makes my code easy to argue that it came from one source.

Tom

Re:Heard that

[teh kurisu]

I think I understand their concern. Technically you still have copyright over your works, as copyright is automatic, but it's what you do with that copyright subsequently that makes it de-facto public domain work.

Also, it's not strictly true that you're passing it on without licence - you are entering into a verbal contract with your clients (which I believe is binding in most legal systems, but don't quote me on that) which gives them certain rights over your copyrighted work. A good lawyer would probably prefer a written contract, so that they have some form of proof in the event of a dispute.

Re:Heard that

[DRichardHipp]

I've actually *sold* a few of licenses to the public domain SQLite library. Companies call me up and say they want to license the product. I carefully explain that no license is necessary and that they can use it forever for free for anything they want. But they still want a license. So I sell them one. So far, I've sold them cheap. Maybe I should charge more....

This appears to be more of an issue in Europe where, apparently, the concept of "public domain" is less well defined than in the US.

Re:Heard that

[multipartmixed]

This is funny, I'm seeing SQLite for the first time (I've heard of it, but not looked at it..) after searching for an Oracle replacement.

So far, I've looked at MySQL (its row-locking makes me feel a little snaky) and PostgresQL (looks like it will work just fine, but has a large ramp-time).

SQLite looks like it was almost written for me.

So, what's wrong with it. I'm serious, why aren't more people using it? Or are they just not a vocal group?

I use databases for INSERT, SELECT [row] .. FOR UPDATE, SELECT via index, um, that's about it 99% of the time. Oh, and sequences. The other thing I look for is that it's not going to vomit if the kernel panics halfway through a write and can do hot backups or full exports simply. And that a million rows isn't considered overly large. And that it's about as fast as Oracle 8 [or faster] doing INSERTs, UPDATEs, and SELECTs.

*Reading* Hmmm. No support for certain kinds of joins, that's okay, I don't do joins at all in the product I'm thinking of.. Hmm. No support for foreign key constaints, that's cool, I don't use 'em. Triggers are borked, I don't care. Little support for alter table, that's okay, my DB abstraction layer makes ALTER TABLE post-dev painful anyhow. No nested transactions, that's okay, my db layer doesn't support that either (currently use OCI autocommit-off...commit paradigm exclusively). You don't support writing to views... Okay, I always thought writing to views was stupid anyhow.. Grant and Revoke are meaningless to me also.

Wow.

If your product stacks up as well as your home page suggests, I'll definately be evaluating it for commercial use. Endian-proof files is nice, as we are also migrating some of our platform from sparc to x86.

So, public domain, huh? That "license" is compatible with my enterprise; the primary key being that it's written in C and I get the source code.

Can I buy support and/or consultation services? (When I say "consultation", I don't mean "hold my hand", I mean "talk to me on the phone for a few minutes while knowing everything there is to know about the product").

Oh, now this is interesting.. You don't support row-level locking? That may be why SQLite wasn't drawn to my attention in the first place... I wonder if there is a workable work around in my environment; how do I handle the contrived case of:

SELECT a FROM mytable WHERE x=y;
{let b = a + 1}
INSERT INTO mytable SET a = b;

Okay, this is getting off topic. But now I think I know what I'm going to be doing next month...

Re:Heard that

[Speare]

And then there's the guy in IT who uses the phrase "public domain" for things that are open sourced, licensed with sources, published in textbooks, or anywhere in between. Even if he knows the difference, he's poisoning the well by callously disregarding the important distinction of "the owner makes the source available" and "the source has no owner."

Re:Heard that

[tomstdenis]

Agreed. It's surprising how few people in the commercial software world [well I guess even OSS] really know what it means to say "public domain."

Oh well, not much we can do but contribute, educate, and have fun :-)

Tom

Re:Heard that

[thsths]

> SQLite looks like it was almost written for me.

> So, what's wrong with it.

SQLite is great for what it is: an embedded database. So if only one process (thread?) has access to the database, SQLite is doing a reasonable job. The performance pattern is ok for easy operations, but updates and complex operations may be slower than on a full blown database system. Also the administration tools are limited (which is not usually a problem for an embedded database).

Actually many programs use SQLite, but because it is embedded, the user may not know about it.

Re:Heard that

[nuxx]

Just so you know, SQLite is used in quite a few places. Two apps which come to mind which use it (I use these every day) are Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Apple's Mail.app.

Re:Heard that

[Anonymous Coward]

"This appears to be more of an issue in Europe where, apparently, the concept of "public domain" is less well defined than in the US."

Actually, it is much more well defined than in the US.

For example, at least here in Germany, works only become public domain when the copyright term runs out (i.e. 70 years after the author's death); this means you cannot put it into the public domain while you live.

Thus, writing a piece of software and then saying "this is in the public domain" is not legally valid, you'd need to write up a license specificially for that, otherwise you can sue for copyright infringement.

To summarize: Over here we take the distinction between "owner makes the source available" and "owner is deceased" somewhat more seriously.

Re:Heard that

[modeless]

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for the awesomeness that is SQLite, and especially for putting it in the public domain. It's been the perfect base for the C# application I'm writing at work (via the equally excellent and also public domain System.Data.SQLite wrapper). The public domain license means I can use it without worrying about maintaining lists of attributions (such as required with the BSD license, and which, as a lowly developer, I can't guarantee will remain with my code forever, inevitably causing legal problems down the road).

In the future, I see many more C# applications using SQLite, especially after Microsoft releases C# 3.0. SQLite combined with C# 3.0's language-integrated query features will be killer.

Re:Heard that

[multipartmixed]

Interesting response -- thanks!

SQLite isn't the drop-in replacement that I want, then -- but is definately a good fit for certain specialized tasks I have in mind.

*hmmm*

Maybe going big-powerful RDBMS in 1999 wasn't such a shit-hot idea. It WAS the path of least resistance, though... :)

Re:Heard that

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm actually it's more than that, since he has it clearly written on his web site that "LibTom Projects are public domain open source libraries". The only problem I would have is

a) how do I know that he's a real person telling the truth (and that coming from an AC :-)
b) how do I know that he really understands his legal situation and can release code (for me it's enough to be very careful to do free software work out of work, but in the USA your employer may have rights over your undying soul, let alone source code)
b) how do I prove I knew it later.

In our company, that's simple; we print out sign and date the license (in this case his front page would be sufficient) on the day we download the software. This is enough to show good faith, even in the case where he is lying and gets found out later. That limits maximum damages for code to actual damages (i.e. normally close to nothing), which means that our lawyers will easily make suing us unprofitable. That's something you can never avoid if you use any outside material. E.g. many distributors of proprietary software have later discovered that some up stream code house put GPL software in there without them knowing.

Re:Heard that

[theCoder]

You're right about poisoning the well. I once overheard someone saying something like "So what this Gnu company did was license the zip technology to make this gzip format." I almost cried.

I didn't bother correcting the speaker. It was just something I heard in passing, I didn't know the speaker, and I suspect that the truth would have just bored or confused him anyway. I did add it to my quotes file as one of the saddest things I've ever heard.

Re:Heard that

[jbolden]

Declaring that you are distributing something under public domain (that is declaring you have copyright) when you don't is fraud. Its no different then if he was saying Windows Vista was public domain.

managers who set corporate open source policies?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apparently a disconnect exists between managers who set corporate open source policies"

There's your problem right there. Managers shouldn't be setting corporate open source policies. Managers are ill-equipped when it comes to setting technical policies. Let the techs make the technical decisions and let the managers... well.. uh.. manage.. stuff. Whatever it is they should be doing.

Gifted Peasant (got) Lawyer

[AHuxley]

In Capitalist West management scared about your lawyer exposing code theft.
In Soviet Russia KGB scared about not stealing enough code for you.

Re:Gifted Peasant (got) Lawyer

[agent dero]

Jokes are only funny when used less than once every 24 hours. Please step back from the keyboard and try again tomorrow.

You capitalist pig.

The license issues

[mi]

And the Lawyers are in panic

And for good reason. Just listening to all the talk on whether or not Novell is violating GPL (perhaps by simply partnering with another vendor - Microsoft) should make a lawyer's skin crawl...

If more code was released under BSD-type license, we would've seen wider adoption.

So, GPL was used to wrestle a few vendors into releasing their own code. And what? Who has looked into that code or used it for anything else? And how many other vendors have (foolishly) decided to avoid "open source" and come up with their own (usually inferior) re-inventions of the wheel, because of that?

It is hard enough to use an outside solution because of the NIH syndrome. Restrictive licenses exacerbate the problem...

Re:The license issues

[imroy]

So, GPL was used to wrestle a few vendors into releasing their own code.

I'm sorry. What did you just write? Give me one example of a company being forced to release previously proprietary software under the GNU GPL. One. I dare you.

Re:The license issues

[mvdwege]

[...] all the talk on whether or not Novell is violating GPL (perhaps by simply partnering with another vendor - Microsoft) [...]

Stop spreading FUD. Novell was doing more than simply partnering with Microsoft. They took out what amounted to a patent license in all but words, which would call into question their ability to distribute GPL code. The patent clause in the GPL is quite clear: if you have a patent license to code under the GPL, you must be able to transfer that license along with the code, or you can't distribute under the GPL.

Novell's problem is caused by the fact that they are hemming and hawing around whether or not they actually do have a patent license agreement with Microsoft and what its exact terms are.

Mart

Re:The license issues

[mi]

Give me one example of a company being forced to release previously proprietary software under the GNU GPL. One.

Do a Google search will ya?

How about Cisco for example, uhm? Or Linksys:

In June 2003 some folks on the Linux Kernel Mailing List sniffed around the WRT54G and found that its firmware was based on Linux components. Because Linux is released under the GNU General Public License, or GPL, the terms of the license obliged Linksys to make available the source code to the WRT54G firmware. As most router firmware is proprietary code, vendors have no such obligation. It remains unclear whether Linksys was aware of the WRT54G's Linux lineage, and its associated source requirements, at the time they released the router. But ultimately, under outside pressure to deliver on their legal obligation under the GPL, Linksys open sourced the WRT54G firmware in July 2003.

Now, you could say, the open-sourced firmware was never proprietary to begin with somehow, but that's just semantics — clearly, Linksys thought of it as proprietary and weren't planning to release the sources until the outside pressure made them do it. I'm not aware of anybody benefiting from this open-sourcing, however, and this lack of benefits (from vendors being wrestled into releasing their "GPL-tainted" code) was my main point.

I dare you.

Now that I've successfully responded to your dare, what will you do? If you are a female, you can scratch my back for 5 minutes. If you are a male, you can take out my garbage — once, this Monday. Make your pick.

Re:The license issues

[HRogge]

Linksys... they created a router and used linux code (iptables for example). Later they had to release the whole firmware as GPL code, that's why we have free firmware for linksys routers. http://lwn.net/Articles/73848/

Re:The license issues

[mi]

Stop spreading FUD. Novell was doing more than simply partnering with Microsoft. They took out what amounted to a patent license in all but words, which would call into question their ability to distribute GPL code.

Whether Novell was right or wrong, the truth remains — they had GPL-related troubles (and may have them again). Had they used BSD-licensed wares, they wouldn't have had these troubles. End of story.

Re:The license issues

[Skunkhead]

Linksys? as far as i remember they opened up the code for wrt54g because of violation of the gpl'ed netfilter code.

Re:The license issues

[rbanffy]

"If more code was released under BSD-type license, we would've seen wider adoption."

If more code was released under BSD-type licenses, we would see a lot of proprietary software using such software and small contributions to the original, BSD licensed code, only where compatibility between the BSD core and their proprietary extensions is required.

GPL-style is an economic incentive for corporations to act nice (help others or don't sell your "enhanced" version). BSD is no such thing.

Re:The license issues

[LinuxDon]

Quote: "I'm not aware of anybody benefiting from this open-sourcing, however, and this lack of benefits (from vendors being wrestled into releasing their "GPL-tainted" code) was my main point."

There are a lot of people benefiting from this actually.
Ever heard of http://www.hyperwrt.org/ and http://openwrt.org/ ?

Now you can actually run a webserver on this device.

Granted, you can create a discussion about the commercial value of it all, but it certainly has a very high educational value. Also, this code (with some modifications) could be used on other/similar devices as well.
The way I see it, this is a big win. Instead of reinventing the wheel people can now start off with the already existing code. And I bet Linksys is actually selling more devices because of openwrt instead of less, so Linksys has won too.

Re:The license issues

[imroy]

Now, you could say, the open-sourced firmware was never proprietary to begin with somehow, but that's just semantics

How is that semantics? I thought that was the whole point - PHB's are afraid of having to release all or part of their precious proprietary software. But that's not what happened with Linksys/Cisco and the WRT54G routers. It was a striped down Linux distro. Ok, they had to put it together, perhaps write some shell scripts. I'm not sure where the web interface came from. But did they have to release any super-secret proprietary source code? I doubt it.

So really, has there been any actual cases of a manager's worst nightmare, the scenario that Microsoft has been FUD'ing us with for years - having to "open source" their internally developed software because a developer in some way used Open Source Software? That's what I'm after. And I don't believe it's ever happened. It's just FUD but the managers don't know any better.

Re:The license issues

[rbanffy]

"I'm not aware of anybody benefiting from this open-sourcing, however, and this lack of benefits (from vendors being wrestled into releasing their "GPL-tainted" code) was my main point"

How about owners being able to modify their router firmware? There are _LOTS_ of mods for the WRT54G mainly because of this and the WRT54G enjoys part of its sales because it is so flexible.

Hell. I have a modded one on my office.

So, I am one who benefited from this.

You can take my garbage. Tuesdays.

Re:The license issues

[rbanffy]

"proprietary software using such code".
                                                                  ^^^^

Preview is for sissies.

Re:The license issues

[mi]

It was a striped down Linux distro. Ok, they had to put it together, perhaps write some shell scripts.

Well, if that's all it was, why is OpenWRT offered as an example by another responder to my post? Apparently, some work was required to go from a "Linux distro" to "Linksys firmware" — and that work is now available to all because of GPL.

And I'm not saying, it is bad. But it certainly is something, a "PHB" is justified to be concerned about.

Re:The license issues

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precisely the reason people release under GPL. Rather than thinking of what's best for the developer some people are more concerned about what's easiest for the business. Giving some software companies' previous history, I am certainly not about to release any of my code under a license that allows a commercial entity to copy and profit from my work without credit. All these debates seem to be about why we should change the license to enable greater corporate adoption. But why should I be worried about that?

Re:The license issues

[ciggieposeur]

Now, you could say, the open-sourced firmware was never proprietary to begin with somehow, but that's just semantics clearly, Linksys thought of it as proprietary and weren't planning to release the sources until the outside pressure made them do it.

ALL code licenses are "just semantics", because all laws are "just semantics". Many companies have taken F/OSS code and pretended that they had the right to make it their own and were stopped by the legal copyright owners from doing so. They were in fact making derivative works of someone else's work.

Now try to do what the GP actually said: find a company that first developed a piece of proprietary software, added a piece of F/OSS code to it, and was then forced to open up their original work as a result.

Re:The license issues

[mi]

How about owners being able to modify their router firmware? There are _LOTS_ of mods for the WRT54G mainly because of this and the WRT54G enjoys part of its sales because it is so flexible.

Interesting. So, now I aware of the benefits — in this case. Cool.

You can take my garbage. Tuesdays.

I can, of course, but I don't have to. Unlike the poster who dared me to come with an example of something, I simply said, I'm unaware of something (else) — and you informed me...

Re:The license issues

[TobascoKid]

Had they used BSD-licensed wares, they wouldn't have had these troubles.

They also wouldn't have had a marketable product. If you decide to distribute GPL code then you have to play by the rules. End of story.

Re:The license issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a manager in a large "network infrastructure provider", this is so much garbage. We use both GPL and BSD code. The GPL is much better for us since we can release the source code without much discussion. Using BSD code, we always have problems keeping sync with the outside. This means that in all of the experience I have seen, BSD stuff has always ended up as a maintainance nightmare.

The GPL is great for "open source" (I fear to say Free software here; we aren't talking about people doing it for the good of humanity in this particular case) in companies since it defines a clear standard for cooperation with other companies.

Re:The license issues

[YA_Python_dev]

If more code was released under BSD-type license, we would've seen wider adoption.

No, we would not. *BSD OSes existed for a long time before GNU/Linux and they had a much smaller adoption. Then GNU and Linux came and we know the rest of the story. Why the difference? Because much more people are willing to contribute to GNU and to Linux because they are GPLed!

Re:The license issues

[mi]

GPL-style is an economic incentive for corporations to act nice (help others or don't sell your "enhanced" version).

GPL is more of legal incentive, than an economic one... Hence the lawyers' worries...

BSD is no such thing.

Yep. BSD is not an enforcement tool.

Re:The license issues

[Anonymous Coward]

If you decide to distribute GPL code then you have to play by the rules. End of story.

Which is why managers and lawyers want to stay away from GPL (and open source in general), as stated in the article. Duh.

Re:The license issues

[mi]

Now try to do what the GP actually said: find a company that first developed a piece of proprietary software, added a piece of F/OSS code to it, and was then forced to open up their original work as a result.

Although such cases likely exist, I don't have to present them here, because I have not spoken of them. The case of Linksys being arm-twisted into releasing their code illustrates my point (not the GGP's apparent interpretation).

That the arm-twisting may have benefited Linksys itself overall (as was credibly suggested by other poster) is not really relevant here — they did not want it, and all of us would've objected to such arm-twisting.

Concerns about such arm-twisting applied to their companies is certainly contributing to managers' fears of Open Source. Justifiably so.

Re:The license issues

[mvdwege]

Novell bought GPL developed projects. To turn around later and blame the GPL for Novell's PR nightmare is stupid. There exists something called 'due diligence'.

Mart

Re:The license issues

[mi]

They also wouldn't have had a marketable product.

Come, come... Certainly, you are not saying, that Apple's FreeBSD-derived MacOS is less marketable, than Novell's Linux-derived SUSE (or whatever)...

If you decide to distribute GPL code then you have to play by the rules.

Yes, of course — true of any license (and decision). The point is about the rules being too restrictive for some people.

Re:The license issues

[l0ne]

The problem with BSD is that it can become proprietary at any time - you have to be actively involved in your BSD project for it not to disappear. GPL is a pledge that whatever happens, your code will be there, ready to be read and possibly used by anyone even after you have lost interest in it.

Yep, the GPL works for the good of humanity, you cinic :)

Re:The license issues

[mrchaotica]

But it certainly is something, a "PHB" is justified to be concerned about.

Yeah, but so what? Do you think that the PHB somehow doesn't have to be concerned about the alternative, which is either licensing some proprietary solution (which, legally, is probably even more complicated to deal with) or writing it in-house from scratch (which, obviously, would be complicated too).

In other words, there's going to be issues (licensing or otherwise) whether OSS is used or not, and I've yet to find any situation where the issues with OSS are more onerous than the alternative.

Re:The license issues

[TobascoKid]

Certainly, you are not saying, that Apple's FreeBSD-derived MacOS is less marketable, than Novell's Linux-derived SUSE (or whatever)...

The marketable bits of OSX are the bits that are proprietary. Seeing as Apple have (more or less) kept Darwin open then they could have just as well have used a GPL'd kernel (like Apple's own mkLinux).

If Novell released NovellBSD, they certainly wouldn't be putting some slick propeietary UI on top of FreeBSD. Without that, why would you buy it? There's certainly nothing stopping Novell from releasing a version of BSD, so why don't they?

The point is about the rules being too restrictive for some people.

There's nothing stopping anyone from writing their own (software patents not withstanding). If GPL'd software is too restrictive then proprietary software would be even more of a straight jacket. About the only reason that I can think of as to why the GPL would be "too restrictive" would be when somebody wants to exploit the works of one set of people solely for their own benefit and at the expense of another set of people.

Re:The license issues

[TobascoKid]

So why are managers and lawyers eager to go with proprietary software? Have you ever read some of the EULAs that go with various proprietary libraries? You have to play by those (often far more onerous) rules too. Proprietary software is a far larger legal minefield - the only benefit is that it's a legal minefield that the M&L's are used to.

Re:The license issues

[BruceCage]

"If more code was released under BSD-type license, we would've seen wider adoption."

The premier goal of those who license their code under the GPL is not wider adoption (neither by public nor business), it is guaranteed freedom of software (including any forks). Any business that builds upon GPLed code should be well aware of this.

"The point is about the rules being too restrictive for some people."

I believe it is relevant to quote Stallman concerning this subject, so I shall. The following is taken from The GNU GPL and the American Way:

"I designed the GNU GPL to uphold and defend the freedoms that define free software--to use the words of 1776, it establishes them as inalienable rights for programs released under the GPL. It ensures that you have the freedom to study, change, and redistribute the program, by saying that nobody is authorized to take these freedoms away from you by redistributing the program under a restrictive license.

For the sake of cooperation, we encourage others to modify and extend the programs that we publish. For the sake of freedom, we set the condition that these modified versions of our programs must respect your freedom just like the original version. We encourage two-way cooperation by rejecting parasites: whoever wishes to copy parts of our software into his program must let us use parts of that program in our programs. Nobody is forced to join our club, but those who wish to participate must offer us the same cooperation they receive from us. That makes the system fair.

Millions of users, tens of thousands of developers, and companies as large as IBM, Intel, and Sun, have chosen to participate on this basis. But some companies want the advantages without the responsibilities."

Re:The license issues

[Bent Mind]

It was a striped down Linux distro. Ok, they had to put it together, perhaps write some shell scripts. I'm not sure where the web interface came from. But did they have to release any super-secret proprietary source code? I doubt it.

Just off the top of my head, it's been a while.

They took the Linux kernel and patched to support a Broadcom wireless NIC. They then sold the compiled version as their own software. Someone found a bug in the interface that dropped them into a shell and discovered it was Linux. Linksys responded by offering the Linux kernel source without the patch. People complained when it didn't work and legal again was threatened. So Linksys rewrote the patch to use a binary blob. Nothing proprietary was lost.

Open Source developers then used the patch and blob to reverse engineer a Broadcom driver for BSD, and latter, Linux.

My memory of the events is hazy. I'm sure there is a Wiki article somewhere with more/better details.

Re:The license issues

[mi]

If GPL'd software is too restrictive then proprietary software would be even more of a straight jacket.

I'm not comparing GPL'd vs. proprietry software. I'm contrasting GPL with BSD-license — the latter being far less restrictive.

About the only reason that I can think of as to why the GPL would be "too restrictive" would be when somebody wants to exploit the works of one set of people solely for their own benefit and at the expense of another set of people.

Tell me now, how is Apple's MacOS "at the expense" of a FreeBSD developer or, indeed, of any other "set of people".

Re:The license issues

[Dogtanian]

Are you claiming that Linksys didn't have the option of paying damages to those whose code it had illegally distributed instead?

Re:The license issues

[mi]

Yeah, but so what?

Thanks for the "yeah". The answer to the "so what" is simple — it is hard enough to prevail of the NIH syndrome. Additional concerns over the GPL makes the case for using open source even harder.

Using BSD-licensed open source eliminates those additional concerns.

Re:The license issues

[Dogtanian]

Come, come... Certainly, you are not saying, that Apple's FreeBSD-derived MacOS is less marketable, than Novell's Linux-derived SUSE (or whatever)... No, I believe that he's suggesting that a BSD-licensed functional equivalent of the GPLed code in question might not have been available.

Re:The license issues

[Dogtanian]

under a license that allows a commercial entity to copy and profit from my work without credit The BSD license requires people to credit you too, it just doesn't stop them developing proprietary software based upon your code.

Re:The license issues

[init100]

Granted, you can create a discussion about the commercial value of it all

I'd say it could have a lot of commercial value. After all, the WRT54 series is recommended all over the 'net just because of the moddability of the product and the community around those mods. This could certainly bring in more sales.

Re:The license issues

[init100]

Some people think that anything that you can (legally, i.e. The Pirate Bay et al. excluded) find on the internet for free must be free in every meaning of the word. Then they are surprised and angered that this might not be the case.

Re:The license issues

[dhasenan]

Unless they had the whole firmware as a single work, they wouldn't have needed to open source the whole thing due to iptables; they'd just produce their modified iptables source. And a halfway decent lawyer could have shown that the iptables functionality was a separate work. Either substantial portions of their firmware infringed on OSS copyright, or they chose to open the rest of their firmware for unrelated reasons.

Re:The license issues

[init100]

That the arm-twisting may have benefited Linksys itself overall (as was credibly suggested by other poster) is not really relevant here -- they did not want it, and all of us would've objected to such arm-twisting.

So people should just ignore license violations, because the licensee does not want to abide by the license? Does this also apply to licenses by BSA members, or just open source licenses?

By the way, who is this "all of us" that would have objected to Linksys being compelled to abide by the GPL? You? Certainly not me. Actually, your use of the word "arm-twisting" have some negative connotations in that it implies some unfairness to Linksys, which I cannot agree with.

Re:The license issues

[LingNoi]

If more code was released under BSD-type license, we would've seen wider adoption.

You spelled "exploitation" wrong.

Re:The license issues

[cyclop]

Unless Linksys had been living under a rock for all these years, Linksys was with all probability fully aware it was not complying with the GPL: yet they went along with it, in the hope no one would have discovered them. They were found violating it and they were forced by the copyright holders to take steps to comply with it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Business is scared of GPL because it doesn't know it or because they willfully want to violate it. If they are informed AND they keep honest, they have nothing to fear: just to choose if it's good for them or not.

Re:The license issues

[cyclop]

They could have sold, let's say, a FreeBSD derived distro. They didn't. They probably see more value in Linux than in FreeBSD (personally I see a lot of value also in FreeBSD, but they thought different) and decided to go along with it. Nothing stopped them. So why whining about GPL?

Re:The license issues

[drsmithy]

GPL-style is an economic incentive for corporations to act nice (help others or don't sell your "enhanced" version).

The GPL is an economic incentive for corporations to continue reinventing the wheel, so as to retain a competitive advantage in their software.

It is a _legal_ "incentive" to "play nice", assuming you believe that "playing nice" entails GPLing their own work.

BSD is no such thing.

True 'nuff. The BSDL's purpose is to create a widespread library of source code for general use, something the GPL almost specifically tries to avoid.

Re:The license issues

[swillden]

Stop spreading FUD. Novell was doing more than simply partnering with Microsoft. They took out what amounted to a patent license in all but words, which would call into question their ability to distribute GPL code.

Whether Novell was right or wrong, the truth remains — they had GPL-related troubles (and may have them again). Had they used BSD-licensed wares, they wouldn't have had these troubles. End of story.

Oh, bullshit.

They deliberately set out to find and exploit a loophole in the GPL in order to make themselves the "safe" seller of Linux. "Buy SUSE and you'll be free of MS patent worries, buy Red Hat and you may get sued."

The Novell-MS issue is not an example of a company choosing to partner and then finding out it caused them GPL problems. They scrutinized the GPL for a way to obey the letter of the license agreement while completely violating its spirit, and they found one, and they used it. What they neglected to consider was that most of the community can easily move to a new license that doesn't have the same loophole.

Whether it was Novell's idea or Microsoft's, they set out to screw the Free Software community and when they get burned by it, they will have received their just desserts, nothing more.

Re:The license issues

[swillden]

Using BSD-licensed open source eliminates those additional concerns.

Sure it does. BSD-licensed code allows you to do things GPL-licensed code does not, because the owners of the BSD-licensed code chose to give you greater permissions. If there exists BSD-licensed code that does what you need done, that's fine. Go for it.

On the other hand, the reason that GPL code is so much more prevalent is because more authors of open source software, both individuals and *especially* corporate contributors, are more comfortable with the GPL. If you need component X, chances are much better that you'll find one under the GPL than under BSD.

The GPL space is richer than the BSD space, for good reasons. Companies that want to take advantage of the GPL riches have to comply with the terms of the license. If they don't like that, too bad. They're welcome to stick BSD or, even safer, just write their own software.

Re:The license issues

[swillden]

I'm not comparing GPL'd vs. proprietry software. I'm contrasting GPL with BSD-license -- the latter being far less restrictive.

And far less interesting, too.

The Apple example is a red herring. Yes, Darwin is BSD, but Apple spent many, many tens of millions developing all of the proprietary software on top that makes OS X what it is. Sure, Novell could write their own software on top of BSD. Five years and a hundred million dollars from now they might have something that people would want to buy. Maybe. They want something they know they can sell now, and they don't want to pay a lot for it, so they sell Linux and other software from the far richer GPL space.

And since they're choosing to profit from the use of the software developed by the GPL community, they have to play by the community's rules. It's not complicated, really.

Re:The license issues

[RobertLTux]

and the funny part is linksys now makes extra money for going open source since currently you need to buy a wrt54gL to get the hackable router (the nonL version is a crippled fully proprietary version ) and the MSRP is about US$10 higher

Re:The license issues

[david_thornley]

If BSD-style licenses were the best thing to get open source used, then why is one of the most successful things in open source Linux? The Linux kernel, a lot of supporting utilities, and the development software is all GPLed. This hasn't stopped Linux from being adopted in lots of corporations.

Re:The license issues

[Frumious Wombat]

You're forgetting the BSD copyright issues. About the time Linux was becoming public, the various BSD releases had been held back to AT&T owned code, which meant you had to buy an expensive license to get your own copy. If you were a Uni, it wasn't bad, but for an individual, somewhat daunting. When they finally factored the last of the proprietary code out (during the 386BSD days), people were still worried that it wasn't really gone, and therefore waited for someone else to be the first to be sued. I knew Comp-Sci grad students at that time who thought it was great, if it was really clean, but with Muppet-Labs just up the Jersey Turnpike from us, didn't want to contribute to the project, and be the test case for AT*T's lawyers. It wasn't the BSD license, but the licensing of BSD by AT&T that held it back.

So, some of Linux's success was timing, and BSD being held back by fear of lawyers. Had Linus waiting another year or two to make his public release, you might all be running *BSD on your home machines, and arguing why it hadn't taken over the desktop yet. You'll also notice that the early user environment wrapped around the Linux kernel was heavily BSD flavored, which made an easy transition from the other cheap Unix of the day, SunOS.

Re:The license issues

[pjrc]

I'm not aware of anybody benefiting from this [WRT54G router] open-sourcing

I have benefited from the WRT54G router firmware. Many others have as well, with similar stories, so mine is not an isolated incident.

Specifically, I'm working on a big art project which will be installed at Burning Man this year. It has 32 stepper motors, 32 rotation sensors (to detect when people are touching and moving the pieces, rather than the motors), 32 optical sensors, and 6 sonar-based movement sensors. All this stuff uses quite a lot of power, and I need the whole thing to run from a battery, so power consumption is a big problem. The individual devices are controlled by eight 8-bit microcontrollers which use very little power, and communicate via a serial RS-485 network to a linux-based controller which makes all the decisions and controls everything.

Like so many other projects, I'm using the WRT54G router. It has a 200 MHz processor and runs linux, so it's fairly straightforward to develop quite complex code. Most importantly, it consumes only about 3-4 watts of power. That's a BIG DEAL when running from a single 12 volt battery plus a few solar cells to offset some of the consumption during the day... and the WRT54G runs directly from a single, unregulated 12 volt power source! That's a LOT better than one of those VIA ITX format motherboards plus peripherals plus an ATX power supply at 15-20 watts or more. There are a number of ARM-based linux boards, but really, the WRT54G is a very attractive platform - just because there are some other alternatives that might also work does not mean I and many others have not benefited from the WRT54G.

however, and this lack of benefits (from vendors being wrestled into releasing their "GPL-tainted" code) was my main point.

I simply do not agree.

In some alternate universe without a large base of compelling GPL (and GPL-like) code - much would be different than we now know and accept.

For one, there simply wouldn't be such a large base of code. The GPL provides a social framework that appeals to a large number of talented individuals. Without the GPL, contributions to free projects would be of a much less grand scale. The same is true for proprietary vendors, like IBM, who currently pay a great number of the heaviest contributors to the linux kernel and many other high profile projects.

I could go on, but it seems pointless.

You can call me a nobody, say me and others like me are insignificant, there there's absolutely no denying that I (and my project) have personally benefited from Linksys releasing the WRT54G firmware.

Re:The license issues

[Dun Malg]

and the funny part is linksys now makes extra money for going open source since currently you need to buy a wrt54gL to get the hackable router (the nonL version is a crippled fully proprietary version ) and the MSRP is about US$10 higher The newest (v5 and up) '54G routers aren't "crippled", they just run VxWorks instead of Linux. This change allowed them to do the same job with half the flash memory. Purely a cost cutting maneuver. The fact that they still sell the '54gl model shows they actually learned something from the ordeal.

Re:The license issues

[NoOneInParticular]

O RLY?? BSD has its own set of problems, although less specifically stated as the GPL. Let's focus on binary redistribution of BSD-licensed code. What it says is:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

...

(2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

...

So, if you take a BSD-licensed piece of code and modify the hell out of it, all you have to do is add this license to the distribution, and sell it for any price you want and forget about license issues ... or is it? The license gives the receiver of the code the permission to redistribute it, apparently including your own modifications, especially if there is no clean separation between the original code and your modifications. So your clients can redistribute your binaries to whomever they want. There goes your get-rich-quick scheme, and no wonder corporate lawyers are worried.

The big differences between BSD and GPL licenses is that GPL forces distribution of the source, and has more spelled out definitions of linking. BSD is very vague about what is actually covered by this forced copyright notice, especially when it is a binary redistribution, and is therefore legally less clear.

Re:The license issues

[Brandybuck]

The other poster didn't say anything at all about "previously" proprietary software, only about original software.

Re:The license issues

[Dun Malg]

Linksys? as far as i remember they opened up the code for wrt54g because of violation of the gpl'ed netfilter code. No, they had to open it up because they patched the kernel to work with Broadcom network hardware. They eventually complied by releasing the patch as a binary blob, but that was quickly reverse-engineered into a real linux Broadcom driver.

Re:The license issues

[Brandybuck]

Why the difference?

Maybe because AT&T decided to sue BSDi at precisely the same time that Linus was looking for a i386 based Unix? That lawsuit scared people away, not the license.

Re:The license issues

[Brandybuck]

Had Linus waiting another year or two to make his public release, you might all be running *BSD on your home machines, and arguing why it hadn't taken over the desktop yet.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that the main reason people are using Linux instead of BSD is because there are more *proprietary* drivers for Linux. Contrary to popular Slashdot opinion, Linux advocates care more about proprietary video drivers than they do about licensing.

The GPL on the Linux kernel is like a Carbon Offset. It let's you criticize other poeple for using proprietary software without feeling guilty for using it yourself.

Re:The license issues

[Frumious Wombat]

Again, that's *now*. 1991-1993, BSD is chained to the ground because of fear of AT&T's lawyers, so people wanting a Unix for personal use go Linux instead. By the time that's sorted out, people have too much time/mindshare invested in Linux, have started to become experts, and have begun evangalising it. It's not a bad solution, but many of the reasons that are currently suggested for why Linux took off and BSD didn't as much rely upon legal issues that are now almost 20 years gone. Technically, BSD was much more advanced, but fear of AT&T held it back just long enough.

Kind of like a new yard; if you keep spraying Roundup to keep the broadleaf weeds down, you'll give grass time to start. Later, when you stop spraying, the grass is still dominant because of the interlocking roots that got established while you kept the dandelions at bay. Think of lawyers as intellectual Roundup.

Re:The license issues

[rbanffy]

"The fact that they still sell the '54gl model shows they actually learned something from the ordeal."

I would say they learned there is a market for hardware that's open enough so users can modify it.

Everybody won and I just love win-win situations.

Re:The license issues

[mrchaotica]

Using BSD-licensed open source eliminates those additional concerns.

No it doesn't. If you use GPL code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the GPL. If you use proprietary code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the proprietary license. And if you use BSD code, you have to perform the due diligence to comply with the BSD license. No matter what license you use, if a license exists you still have to be careful to comply with it! There's no difference between the GPL, BSD, or any proprietary license in this regard.

Re:The license issues

[Brandybuck]

That explains 1993, but it doesn't explain 2007. You can put a fully featured FreeBSD box in front of a staunch Linux advocate, and he'll think it's just another Linux distro.

The mindshare investment is red herring. It's just as much work to move from Debian to Fedora, as it is to move from Debian to FreeBSD. The acclimatization is on the order of a few hours at most.

Re:The license issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding Linksys: how much of the software contained on the Linksys routers had been developed by Linksys? Maybe a few perl scripts for the Web interface, but anything else and more significant? Maybe they just thought: all of the important software on their routers *already* was available on the net, so what?

Re:The license issues

[Teancum]

You also forgot to mention how the California State Board of Regents decided to get into the mess as well and tried to claim that all BSD stuff belonged to them, even if that was a short lived and misguided thought when it was suggested. And other legal wrangling by the state of California.

That and the other problems with the infinitely growing license due to the advertising clause where everybody who added stuff tried to tack their name onto the end. That was a big deal once upon a time as well.

Your memories here about the problems with the BSD license is square on. The legal cloud over the BSD distros certainly was a push to some early developers of Linux to move in that direction instead, as many of them were really license agnostic and just wanted to have a fun hobby to play with.

Re:The license issues

[Alex Belits]

It certainly did. Many computer-literate people, myself included, recommend others specifically WRT54G (or similar router) with DD-WRT or other third-party firmware, as opposed to routers that can only use its vendors' firmware. Linksys even sells a more expensive WRT54GL with more RAM and flash (like v1-v4) for people who use larger configurations.

If Linksys originally developed its current v5-v6 firmware, their product would be inferior, and users who wanted anything better than that would have to buy a much more expensive model. Even taking into account that Linksys is now owned by Cisco, one of the companies that produces "more expensive models", there would be a huge gap between their cheap and expensive wireless routers, so many users wouldn't buy either. Third-party firmware elevated the quality of cheap WRT54G to the level needed for more demanding applications (Bittorrent, games), complex NAT/forwarding/DMZ configurations, large networks, VPN, even some VoIP telephony. Lucky for Linksys/Cisco, this covered exactly the range where their other products weren't. Of course, being full of idiots, Linksys management refused to make the next logical step and sell WRT54G with third-party firmware preinstalled, however they still benefited from it.

Re:The license issues

[jbolden]

That's not true at all. Most libraries charge a $X / copy unlimited right to redistribute. The second most common license terms are $Y per copy distributed. Other than that there are generally very few terms. Moreover in 30 some years of legal history by and large there are almost no cases of being being sued who were actively complying with the pay $X or pay $Y. Further coming into compliance generally just means paying money.

Open source licenses are often much more complex and coming into compliance once you violate can be difficult.

Re:The license issues

[jbolden]

There was a huge difference between the Linux culture and the BSD culture in mid 1990s. The BSD culture was interesting in making Unix free for current Unix users. The Linux culture was interesting in creating a free OS to replace commercial OSes. The BSD people never really got interested in widespread acceptance until around 2000.

Re:The license issues

[nadaou]

If more code was released under BSD-type license, we would've seen wider adoption.

And how much GPL code would have never been written if the project was not GPL? For my part I have contribued many thousands of lines of code to GPL projects and at the same time only bug fixes to BSD projects.

In short, there are many open source developers, right or wrong, who are not ego driven and have no interest in developing under a license where the perceived return is much more abstract. It's a matter of motivation. With the GPL I get a tangible return on my investment.

Many popular projects would simply not exist without the GPL.

open source is exactly what?

[OffTheLip]

Managers may be afraid of unknown open source packages but much of what they do is governed, managed if you will, by open source software. As has been said time and again here the internet and much of the global communication grid is dependent on open source offerings. It what they don't know that they fear. Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft.

Re:open source is exactly what?

[pammon]

It is not the quality of the software that is scary to management, but the unknown legal implications of incorporating it into their own offerings.

Re:open source is exactly what?

[Teancum]

So would they feel more comfortable including something like a DirectX installation package with a Microsoft EULA that is included with their own offering? Or that their developers have copied code snippets from the same DirectX SDK and knowledge base, also under that license?

I would say that the GPL'd stuff has far fewer unknowns and legal implications than what the MS software inclusions might have, and that is just one clear example of many propritary software licenses that might be compiler plug-in tools to customized equipment drivers. Has the legal team gone through all of those licenses to see what is exactly legal and what royalties needed to get paid?

Re:open source is exactly what?

[jbolden]

So would they feel more comfortable including something like a DirectX installation package with a Microsoft EULA that is included with their own offering? Or that their developers have copied code snippets from the same DirectX SDK and knowledge base, also under that license?

Sure because Microsoft is one entity with a consistent personality.
1) They have a long history of being thrilled when you make your applications windows only and being very supportive. By and large they tend not to enforce their rights fully
2) They have a long history of being understanding when developers cross the line into copyright violation who agree they violated and are willing to come into compliance. Usually this is a no cost option.
3) They have a long history when people grossly violate copyright (accidentally) or patents of simply requiring reasonable license fees and not going for all sorts of punitive actions.

The free software community is a bunch of entities who are all over the place ideologically
1) They are extremely aggressive about enforcing their rights
2) They tend to attack products publicly for non compliance which can business partners
3) By in large for large scale violations coming into compliance effectively waiving all rights on the derived work.

Re:open source is exactly what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not the quality of the software that is scary to management, but the unknown legal implications of incorporating it into their own offerings.

Unfortunately, it isn't even that - the problem is the FUD that has led them to believe that there may be legal implications simply from allowing it to be installed on their own internal computer systems.

Companies being wary about incorporating OSS into their own offerings is good. They should be. If they aren't, they might easily end up violating licenses, and I'm sure we all agree that's a Bad Thing. But companies being frightened of all open-source software is not good. Managers believing that merely using GNU make to manage a build process might force them to open up all their source code is not good. And that, sadly, is the situation we're in, thanks to the very effective FUD campaigns that Microsoft and their shills (Enderle, Cringely, DeDio, etc.) have mounted.

Re:open source is exactly what?

[Teancum]

I think you have that exactly reversed.

It is Microsoft who is extremely aggressive about enforcing their "rights", attack products for non-compliance (note especially the "shared assurance" problems with XP and Vista), and have been known as "the Borg of the internet" for several other reasons, including going after small companies and either buying them out (when the legal cost isn't worth it) or driving them into submission, particularly by explicitly writing a competing application to drive them out of business.

I hardly call it safe if you deal with Microsoft products, particularly if you are a software development company.

And in terms of free software applications, only a very few are even backed by what could be called any sort of corporate infrastructure. Yes, IBM (and their Nazgul), Red Hat, MySQL AB, Novell, and a few other companies are involved directly with their own apps that are open sourced. And those are ones I would be a little on the more cautious side of trying to screw with as well for the same reason that they have deep pockets if you fail to comply with their terms.

But for the most part GPL'd software is stuff that is either written by a large community (like the MediaWiki software running Wikipedia, or perhaps Firefox for a better example), or is just a very small handful of hobbyists who just love programming and are doing it in their spare time. Most of them are flattered that you have even sent them an e-mail saying you like their software at all!

While there is quite a bit of bluster that is sometimes said about license enforcement, how many people do you know (besides the $1 million+ revenue companies of major apps I mentioned above) that have actually even tried to enforce the GPL? The Free Software Foundation does occasionally send a cease and desist letter, but nobody has even tried to challenge the GPL in any real substantial way, except for SCO... and they took on IBM for that!

I can tell you of many times that Microsoft has gone into corporate offices and conducted "license audits", and of several people who are either in jail for blatant copyright infringement of Microsoft product, or for all practical purposes lost their business. Some that are right here in the town where I live! I can't name even one company or person (with the exception again of SCO... and they are still around even if on life support) that has gone out of business due to including a GPL'd piece of software.

Again, I would be far more afraid of the Microsoft EULA than the GPL any day.

Re:open source is exactly what?

[jbolden]

I think you are trying to over-generalize what I wrote. I was addressing the issue of Microsoft copyright enforcements against people developing software using Microsoft tools and crossing over the line. This wasn't about their overall personality and every aspect of their behavior.

1 -- Microsoft has gone after a few small companies. They play very rough when it comes to product development. However by and large they have generally deliberately hurt big companies: Netscape, adobe, intuit, Lotus. For small companies they seem to be more like an elephant trampling through the woods. They just don't notice ....

2 -- There was a successful GPL MySQL license enforcement against Nusphere, which essentially bankrupted Nusphere.

3 -- You'll notice my article was very clear about accidental Microsoft violations and making good faith efforts to rectify. Whole different world if they violation was deliberate of the company doesn't agree to basically apologize and pay up. But you are talking criminal acts, I was talking honest people making mistakes.

Strange conceptions indeed

[thsths]

I had a problem with the BSD three clause license once. If you every read commercial software documentation, there is usually a section full of advertising clauses for contributed software. But no, management deemed this not acceptable. Of course there was no time either to remove the BSD code, so we just left it there.

On the other hand the leaking of GPL code is a reasonable concern. It happens all to often with common software such as MySQL. And you here statements such as "but if we use Perl, we are not linking against the MySQL code", which are dubious at best. Or "if the customer downloads the library himself, we are not responsible".

Of course banning open source is not the solution. Actually most commercial software packages have some content of open source code (Windows has the BSD network stack, Matlab has BLAS, Adobe uses the JPEG library...). And even if you ban all open source software, you can still violate the license of a commercial package :-). The only solution is to be careful with what you ship, period.

Of course they're scared

[imroy]

If people are wondering why managers are scared of Free/Open Source Software, just look at Rob Enderle's recent story posted here on Slashdot yesterday. Managers are the targets of these schill reporters (Enderle, O'Gara, Lyons) and their efforts are clearly working. We might not fall for their FUD, but managers and other non-techies do. And that's why they get paid.

Re:Of course they're scared

[pammon]

If you were in the business of selling software, would you feel comfortable using code written by folks who are philosophically opposed to the existence of your business? If you're going to blame the commercial software shills, you also have to acknowledge the impact of the open source shills.

Re:Of course they're scared

[Anonymous Coward]

Get real:

1. Microsoft are philosophically opposed to the existence of any other profitable software company.
   
2. There are profitable software companies selling support and services around GPL software.
   

I thought Endertrolls article was funny, a little detached from reality but amusing.

Re:Of course they're scared

[imroy]

If you were in the business of selling software, would you feel comfortable using code written by folks who are philosophically opposed to the existence of your business?

Richard Stallman is against the existence of commercial software, and he gives very good reasons for why he thinks it is bad for society. But I'm not sure he is against the existence of commercial software businesses. He probably just sees them as a waste of time i.e spending time and money to produce something that will ultimately be restricted and kept behind closed doors. Why not instead work on something that can be not only used by everyone, but even (potentially) modified and improved by everyone? But anyway, what does that have to do with being "comfortable" about using GNU code? Judge the code on its merits.

...you also have to acknowledge the impact of the open source shills

Open Source shills?

From Wikipedia:

A shill is an associate of a person selling goods or services who pretends no association to the seller and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer.

So how can someone be a shill for a product which isn't being sold and is developed by a community?

The word you should have used is either advocate or zealot, depending on how and why a person promotes Free/Open Source Software. I'm usually an advocate, although I can cross into zealot territory sometimes. I try to avoid it because I know it is often counter-productive.

Re:Of course they're scared

[LinuxDon]

I don't know what kind of manager everyone has, but I can't think of any manager having the time to read such crap like Rob Enderle has produced.
In my experience managers can actually be educated quite fast/well on open source if you know how to sell it to them. The main keywords are 'cost savings', 'reliability', 'significantly less downtime', 'scalability', 'flexibility', 'performance'.
And big company's like Novell, IBM and RedHat selling opensource/linux make a very strong case.

Actually, in my experience management doesn't care what is running on the servers as long as it -just works 24/7 and saves them money-. It's not like they will actually have to fix it should any problem arise. Please note that you will have to take full responsibility for the product your are recommending, anyone will back out immediately when you have any doubt. In contrast to commercial software, 'finger pointing' games cannot be played with open source, so if anything goes wrong you'll be shot on the spot. But in my experience everything will go just fine and expectations will often be exceeded.

If you take the time to make an alternative cost calculation for the next project and invite a company that can sell it to you, chances are good a manager will change his mind.
Also, make it very clear that it's the manager's budget and you are just trying to make their life easier. In the long run, your manager will become your friend.

The main problem are engineers without any Linux/Unix experience fearing for their jobs, they will do anything to sabotage the whole thing and start shouting like the world is coming to an end.

Re:Of course they're scared

[pammon]

Richard Stallman is against the existence of commercial software, and he gives very good reasons for why he thinks it is bad for society. But I'm not sure he is against the existence of commercial software businesses.

Splitting hairs, I'd say - in any case, I think we agree that it's hard to reconcile "commercial software should not exist" with "I want to sell commercial software." As to 'judging the code on its merits,' I wouldn't want to buy from someone who didn't want me as a customer, even if the price were zero. If nothing else, I'd worry that they would be less likely to accept patches, fix bugs that were important to me, interact on mailing lists, and in general provide support. It's not necessarily a deal breaker, but it's a factor to consider. In large organizations, procedural issues can dominate the technical ones.

And - no offense intended - 'judge the code on its merits' is not practiced by the FSF community (if you'll permit me to generalize from RMS), who believe that, for example, schools should use exclusively free software, regardless of any technically superior proprietary alternatives. For RMS, too, procedural issues dominate the technical issues.

From Wikipedia I see your Wikipedia and raise you one Merriam Webster:
shill b : one who makes a sales pitch or serves as a promoter

Re:Of course they're scared

[The Cisco Kid]

GNU and RMS are not opposed to *commercial* software. They are opposed to *proprietary* *closed-source* software.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html# Commercial

Re:Of course they're scared

[imroy]

If nothing else, I'd worry that they would be less likely to accept patches, fix bugs that were important to me, interact on mailing lists, and in general provide support.

I acknowledge that is a valid concern, but I don't know if it's really happened. It depends on the project though. Most probably don't really care. I bet most people wouldn't notice on a mailing list or wherever. A lot of people have email addresses that end with ".com" because of their ISP, so you'd probably just blend in. The FSF might be a little different for their GNU projects though, especially when accepting patches. I know they require some sort of release form for anyone contributing more than a certain amount (12 lines?) to any of their projects. And since the whole SCOG vs IBM mess, Linus and the other Linux kernel guys have begun keeping better records of who contributes patches. Not that any copyright infringement has actually happened, they just want an easy record for any future claims, instead of having to sift through a dozen years of the kernel mailing list and patches.

And - no offense intended - 'judge the code on its merits' is not practiced by the FSF community (if you'll permit me to generalize from RMS), who believe that, for example, schools should use exclusively free software, regardless of any technically superior proprietary alternatives. For RMS, too, procedural issues dominate the technical issues.

Touché. But note that one of the reasons given is "Free software permits students to learn how software works". Is that not a merit in this case (education)?

FUD

[mapkinase]

I read the first sentence of the article, and it is clear to me that it is utter BS.

If the company policy is closed source that is it. Managers are absolutely right to make sure that nobody uses open source in company products, because if somebody sneaks in snippets of GPL-protected code into their applications, that might have big legal ramifications.

Said that, the company policy to use open source in their productsor not is another issue. That is up to particular company, particular circumstances. For some it is better, for some it is not.

Re:FUD

[drooling-dog]

Managers are absolutely right to make sure that nobody uses open source in company products, because if somebody sneaks in snippets of GPL-protected code into their applications, that might have big legal ramifications. That makes no sense whatsoever, for several reasons. First, including GPL code in their own applications is perfectly OK, as long as the code isn't going to be sold or distributed under a more restrictive license. Second, open source code is out there whether your company chooses to use it or not, and unless your developers are as stupid as your managers apparently are, they know where to find it. Third, a lot of source code has been published under more restrictive licenses than the GPL (e.g., example code in programming books), and you're no less liable for that if you appropriate and sell it as your own. So, do you deny your developers access to programming manuals? And fourth, because open source code is so readily available, it is much easier to search your own code against a body of commonly used open source to detect any potential problems. Having done that bit of due-diligence will put you in much better standing should a dispute arise.

Given the importance of the issue and the amount of money at stake, managers need to take an hour or two to become familiar with what's really in the GPL and other open source licenses. The picture may be a lot different than the one their proprietary software vendors are painting for them on the golf course.

Re:FUD

[wrook]

I'm not sure I read your comment right, but if I did I just can't agree with you.

There are lots of places where you can legally use open source and Free software in a closed source environment. To cut that out of your arsenal is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Of course it depends on the license and what you are willing to give up. But as previous posters have said, you can use public domain software anywhere. You can use BSD licensed software almost everywhere as long as you don't mind telling people that's what it is. You can use LGPL software as long as you don't mind distributing the source for the LGPL software. You can use GPL software as long as you don't mind distributing the source for the GPL software and you have a good separation between the GPL software and your closed sourced software.

I've worked primarily in closed source companies. I should be clear that I think such business practices are stupid. They hurt the customer and they hurt the competitiveness of the company using them. I can't tell you the number of times I've spent a company's money writing features that help achieve lock in without giving the user anything in return (or even make the customer's experience worse). I think that's dumb. It pisses off the customer and wastes money.

Management (and legal) tend to have this idea that they *must* "control" the market otherwise they will lose. They optimize their strategies into tricking customers into locking-in rather than focusing on executing better than their competition. A typical closed source software company does speculative development, spending money up front and then trying to sell what they have already built to customers. In such a company, R&D makes up 10-15% of costs while Management, Sales/Marketing and legal make up the other 85-90%. *This* is why they get freaked out over using open source or Free software.

Their entire focus is on bamboozling and coercing their customers. Saving even 25% of R&D costs (4-6% of total expenses) is not worth it if they have even a small chance of "losing control" of their market. They basically don't care if the solution will be better. Even an "advertising" clause is usually unacceptable since it shows the user that the company's precious "IP" is actually partially derived from something that anyone can acquire at zero cost. It destroys the illusion that one *must* buy from that proprietary company.

It's strange to be a Free software advocate working in the "closed software" world. I've mostly spent my time just trying to understand what makes "closed software" tick. In the end, these companies are trying to win the lottery (and if they already have, they are trying to turn the lottery into their own private mint that churns out tonnes of cash on demand). They spend money up front and are looking for a return down the other side. Generally speaking they aren't particularly interested in "building a business" -- i.e. creating a stable revenue flow and making a living off of it.

Especially with small companies, there is a need to generate some "worth" in the non-people aspects of a company. After investing $2-10 million up front, they are looking to sell the company (not the software) for $100 million to $1 billion. You can't sell a team of people for that kind of money (or so they think -- in other industries people pay significantly more for a portfolio of satisfied customers). "Owning" all the non-people assets of the company is paramount to their strategy. Using open source or Free software to reduce costs is not an attractive position for them.

However, I've noticed as more and more "up front payment" companies have started to chip away at the "back end payment" companies' market. Instead of selling software as a "fait accompli product", these "up front payment" people sell customization to an organization. They offer the customer more choice at the same price. Slowly, this business model is starting to make an impact (although the potential market

Re:FUD

[The Cisco Kid]

You seem to have confused *USING* "Open Source" software, with *INCORPORATING IT INTO PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE YOU ARE DEVELOPING AND NOT COMPLYING WITH THE LICENSE UNDER WHICH YOU OBTAINED IT*

Using vi or emacs to edit the source code for your (proprietary) program places absolutely no licensing requirements on your program. That is an ENTIRELY different situation that extracting pieces of the source code for vi or emacs and including them in your closed-source 'text editing' program.

Re:FUD

[mapkinase]

It is absolutely clear that you have some kind of reading disorder. I might have it too, but at least I admitted I did not read the article.

Seriously.

Re:FUD

[mapkinase]

Managers do apply easy, simple and overrestrictive solutions all the time and not only to handling open source access. If one coder takes a short cut and compiles in a class he found yesterday on sourceforge, surely management might freak out and forbid access to the sourceforge. Especially in a big company with a little mutual trust of co-workers (and that is MORE GENERAL desease than "anti-sourcecode" conspiracy).

In any case, if you do not like the company, move on. Every company, even Google, I am pretty sure, have its own restrictions, and every private company is not a democracy.

Singling out open source as a somehow singled out target of management wrath is just juvenile. Management is not against open source, management is against one particular potential danger of messy handling of it.

I have been in developer environments where coders are really unscrupulous in their coding and use GPL-ed code right and left. Trust me, those environments are going to hell sooner or later.

Private company in general is better than other entities because of the rigorous discipline inside the company. As always on every level of society abuse of that leads to sad results for the company. But it has to be there.

Re:FUD

[dunkelfalke]

the problem is the lack of loyalty.
because the management stopped to see the developers as humans long ago (they are not humans but resources now) the developers have stopped to be loyal and just don't care. this whole situation has caused more and more stupid policies.

in a companies, where managers are still loyal to developers and vice versa, such policies aren't needed because the developers can decide by themselves about the libraries they use.

Best Buy

[Hadlock]

This amuses me greatly, as my good friend is a manager of a Geek Squad department and they're not allowed to use open source tools, although he frequently sees them being used (and lets it slide for obvious reasons). I forget the exact reasoning, but it does involve liability to some extent. Apparently stand alone geek squad "stores" in strip malls and the like are allowed to use "more advanced" tools for some reason.

Re:Best Buy

[chill]

That's amusing. Wasn't it Geek Squad just had their pants sued off for distributing and not paying for internal copies of Winternals software? They licensed ONE copy and made it, and other tools, available on an internal FTP server for everyone.

WTF then is the problem with FOSS? At least it would have made what they were doing legal. Or do they WANT to be criminal scum?

Re:Best Buy

[Hadlock]

I believe that was the incident that led to the death of the Knoppix STD in geek squad.

Re:Best Buy

[WaxedMint]

:) That really is funny. If you read A GPL license vs. for example, the M$ EULA, there is very little difference in the amount of liability the M$ has vs. GPL'd software. M$ will cover you for the greater of $5, or the price of the software, The GPL, of course, covers you for nothing. IMO, practically speaking, the M$ warranty is worthless, compared to what sort of liability the end user is subject to, and the difficulty in actually getting a refund. A google search turned up this interesting little article ... http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/article/7040 . Getting any refund is much more trouble than it's worth.

sections 17 and 18 of the M$ EULA ...
17. EXCLUSION OF INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL AND CERTAIN OTHER DAMAGES. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF PROFITS OR CONFIDENTIAL OR OTHER INFORMATION, FOR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, FOR PERSONAL INJURY, FOR LOSS OF PRIVACY, FOR FAILURE TO MEET ANY DUTY INCLUDING OF GOOD FAITH OR OF REASONABLE CARE, FOR NEGLIGENCE, AND FOR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY OR OTHER LOSS WHATSOEVER) ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE, THE PROVISION OF OR FAILURE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT OR OTHER SERVICES, INFORMATON, SOFTWARE, AND RELATED CONTENT THROUGH THE SOFTWARE OR OTHERWISE ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE, OR OTHERWISE UNDER OR IN CONNECTION WITH ANY PROVISION OF THIS EULA, EVEN IN THE EVENT OF THE FAULT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), MISREPRESENTATION, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF CONTRACT OR BREACH OF WARRANTY OF MICROSOFT OR ANY SUPPLIER, AND EVEN IF MICROSOFT OR ANY SUPPLIER HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
18. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY AND REMEDIES. Notwithstanding any damages that you might incur for any reason whatsoever (including, without limitation, all damages referenced herein and all direct or general damages in contract or anything else), the entire liability of Microsoft and any of its suppliers under any provision of this EULA and your exclusive remedy hereunder (except for any remedy of repair or replacement elected by Microsoft with respect to any breach of the Limited Warranty) shall be limited to the greater of the actual damages you incur in reasonable reliance on the Software up to the amount actually paid by you for the Software or US$5.00. The foregoing limitations, exclusions and disclaimers (including Sections 15, 16 and 17) shall apply to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, even if any remedy fails its essential purpose.

Re:Best Buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe when the auditors showed up, they were shown Best Buy's "other" server that had license metering software.

Not all management and lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Only incompetent management and lawyers.

Okay I digress, most management and lawyers.

That's what lawyers do

[Livius]

The timid are easily frightened by whatever they cannot control.

Lawyers are upset only because they realize there is no justifiable legal work in open source licenses. Sometimes you need lawyers, but never forget they look out for themselves, not their employers.

disempowerment

[ex-geek]

I believe that another important fear is that of disempowerment. Open source is usually free of charge, which means that their budgets and thus their importance decreases. Also, there is no need for developers and IT staff to go to their superiors to ask and beg in the first place. They can just download, evaluate and use free software right away.

Free software is also not advertised unlike commercial products, which means that managers can't even communciate, what is going on, to their kin.

Compare: "I recently negotiated a licencing deal with <known software company> for <known software product>, which i deemed to be the best solution because of <list of buzzwords>"
To: "Well, my IT guys implemented a working system on their own, using some software I can't pronounce and really don't understand."

Re:disempowerment

[motek]

Ahh... the moderation! This is rather silly, not 'interesting'. We weren't talking about IT, but development, in the first place. I have been running a software R&D group for a long while. In the long run, all costs are marginal comparing to personnel expense.
And besides - if you really must see me as an evil person - the power to refuse somebody something is not much of a thrill. Comparing to the simple fact I can just fire him...

Re:disempowerment

[drerwk]

In the long run, all costs are marginal comparing to personnel expense.

I mostly agree, at least in my experience personnel are 50% or more of my budget; the largest single dollar cost. But time has a cost as well, and here is where I prefer that people not reinvent the wheel because it costs time. I would rather that my team know about both the open source options and the payed for options and pick the best solution among the options. But I find that it usually takes longer to get the payed for options installed and running, so we often have a good solution up and running before we can get the payed for options in the same state. Lastly, I am finding myself tired of the 30 day trial. My when I use a complex development tool, like Rhapsody, it takes me more than 30 days to find the warts. And they all have warts, so once again at least with the open version, if I really hate the warts I can fix them. Fixing it myself does not happen often, but in one case ages ago I was able to fix the gcc 1.34 ARM backend, and that was a huge win.

Re:disempowerment

[Danny Rathjens]

No offense, but you are statistically insignificant. If he made some kind of absolute statement about all managers being motivated this way then your counterexample would have merit. He simple made an interesting observation that 'an important fear' is losing a bit of control over developers, not that it is what motivates every manager - nor did he even imply you are evil. It is only human to want to have power and to brag to others, not evil.

Re:disempowerment

[Anonymous Coward]

...payed for options ... Just so you know, "payed" is the past tense of "pay" only for the narrow case of when it refers to the letting out of rope, line, or other cordage, e.g. "he payed out the line carefully as the barge pulled away". All other cases, including when you're talking about financial payment, use the word "paid".

Re:disempowerment

[drerwk]

Thanks! Spelling is not my forte.

Re:disempowerment

[Lord Kano]

Free software is also not advertised unlike commercial products, which means that managers can't even communciate, what is going on, to their kin.

Compare: "I recently negotiated a licencing deal with for , which i deemed to be the best solution because of "
To: "Well, my IT guys implemented a working system on their own, using some software I can't pronounce and really don't understand."

My boss has no such problems. Imagine the above scenario where one manager makes your quoted presentation and the next one says "We got the project done, on time and we spent 40% less money than we did on the last similar project."

Did you get the job done? Does it work properly? Did you stay within budget? These are all more important questions than "Why don't I know more about your job than you do?"

Opposition to OSS is either based in ignorance or selfishness.

LK

Lawyers aren't alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Even IT managers act in their best interests, Microsoft Windows is crappy enough to keep them employed fixing it for eternity.

Truth

[jawahar]

People make money out of others ignorance.
People make money by adding value to others.

Resistance Is Futile

[codepunk]

I cannot think of a single company anywhere that is not at least using open source software. Hell, there is likely very few if any that do not at least use it indirectly "google search". Now granted
developers within a company shipping a product should be trained in what you can and cannot use and under what circumstances. Soon here even java will be open source, so you will not even be running your application servers and custom code without a open source component.

What we are talking about here is proprietary development shops and people closed source apps, yes
by all means you should be afraid "we don't want our code in your application".

Management def Freaked

[ChronoFish]

Though where I work (a state government entity) it's not about legal concerns, it's about "security". There is not only a mis-understanding, there is "no" understanding about opensource.

This is what happens when a new official is elected. You've spent 4 years getting the word out that opensource is safe, cost effective, and effcient, and that it opens doors to a whole new constituentcy when you release open services.... Then a new guy brings in new leadership and they want to put the breaks on because it doesn't jive with their sense of good software use.

Ironically, they have no problems with custom software (which I write, and which we contract out) which has to be the most dangerous software in the industry.

-CF

Price equals quality

[petrovski]

Me and the IT-professional at the law firm I work in are currently trying to create a new website. It is one of the biggest corporate law firms in Denmark. When our IT-guy requested that the new website should have a content management system, and that he had found a great open source system, the partner in charge insisted on paying for a system that costed $10.000 because the company shouldn't rely on shareware.... and this guy works with copyright law. There is a general misconception that you can't possibly get something for free that is as good (or better) than something you pay $10.000.

Re:Price equals quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I can relate. My company insists on using a custom proprietary VPN instead of ssh with port-forwarding.

Re:Price equals quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent! So, If I download FreeBSD and rename it to ExpensiveBSD (Gold Edition), will your company pay me $20,000 for it and replace the free OS they're currently using? ($10,000 for the Silver Edition, which is exactly the same as the Gold Edition, but the advertising materials will highlight different features.)

Scene One: Staff Meeting

[natrius]

Manager: So you're telling me that someone already wrote code that performs a task we need done in our software, and they're letting anyone use it for free?
Coder #1: Yeah, I think it's cool that—
Manager: AIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
[Manager faints.]
Coder #2: That's the last project on SourceForge that we hadn't used yet. How are we going to get out of work tomorrow?
Coder #1: Hmm... Wanna go grab a beer and start yet another Python web framework?
Coder #2: You're a genius.

Speaking of nobody

[Mateo_LeFou]

Nobody has ever accidentally freed their code.

"We have never, in the history of free software, despite everything that has been said by lawyers and flaks and propagandists on the other side - we have never forced anybody to free any code."
http://www.geof.net/blog/2006/12/10/eben-moglen

Re:Speaking of nobody

[Teancum]

This is a true statement due to the fact that if you decide not to "open up" the software, you are simply stuck with software you don't have a license to distribute. And that is something you should have thought of before you put in the GPL'd (or other free license) software into your product.

In most cases you can also (likely) go back and replace the GPL'd stuff with something you've written yourself... if you are a competent developer. It may require a "clean room" type development effort at a critical time of the product development that may get some eyebrows raised or people get fired due to the project getting late, but it isn't necessarily the end of the world either.

If you don't want to have people see your source code that is co-mingled with GPL'd software, just don't release it at all.

How this applies to something that is done internally within a company is another story, but then again you only have to provide source code to those who actually get the software.

There were some FOSS licenses (or at least free/shareware software) that did require giving any changes made to the software back to the original software developer, but those licenses never did grab that much mindshare among software developers. Even then, how would that original developer even know unless you actually released the modified software?

Broad generalizations are always so useful

[ArmchairAstronomer]

Look at the context of this post, it was a pannel discusion at a conference. It means they didn't have anybody to speak about something infromative so they got bunch of so called experts to talk about something "controversial" to fill the time. It treats the groups discused as monolithic morons. Developers, Managers and the always popular "Lawyers". We are "Freaking Out", "Scared", "in a panic" all very informative descriptions for how people deal with complicated problems. News flash! There are clueless "developers" who don't understand the conequences of their actions on the orgaizations that pay them. There are clueless "managers" who have never read a EULA of any kind. There are clueless lawyers, nuf said. How about the report of a real discusion between thoughtfull people about trying to balance Stallman's la la land philosophy with Ellison and Gates' Ferengi capitalism.

Commercial Licences

[TobascoKid]

And even if you ban all open source software, you can still violate the license of a commercial package

Which a point rarely made about proprietary software. Practically every piece of proprietary code comes with a different license, with an entirely different set of restrictions. It's a lot easier to make a misstep with proprietary software than it is with open source, and your risk of being taken to court (as opposed to just some public shame restricted to tech circles) is far higher.

Re:Commercial Licences

[bzipitidoo]

I was wondering when someone was going to comment on proprietary licenses. Why aren't managers worried about the rules in the proliferation of proprietary licenses? Potentially far worse minefields than any open license. I've seen an EULA that demanded that any work you had that was related to the functions of their software must be given to them! Yes, even work that you had done before you ever had seen their software. They removed that clause, but plenty of obnoxious stuff is still in there including my favorite, number 14, the "jack booted thugs" clause, as I call it. If you're curious, here it is: Worst. EULA. Ever. In that proprietary license was all the things that management fears about open licensing forcing them to open up their code, and worse problems, and none of the benefits of open source.

In a manager's budget, developers time are free

[khchung]

Developers, though, end up using open source because of its ubiquity and not using it 'puts them at a competitive disadvantage because their competitors are.'

See the problem here? Using open source give an advantage in the minds of the developers, but not the managers? Why? Because developers' time are free for managers of most in-house IT dept! Developers' salary is fixed cost in the budget, once hired, a manager rarely have to justify it every year. On the contrary, developers viewed as having little to do would have caused more problems for their manager!

So for a manager, a developer's time is a free resource that happens to have a "use it or lose it" property.

Now, give him a choice of (1) buying a piece of software for a given price, (2) use a comparable open source software with a license he do not understand so he can (2a) try to understand it himself and thus open himself to any future problems or (2b) send the license to legal dept and gets charged to his budget, or (3) tell his developer to re-implement the software themselves, no further expense claim or budgeting needed. Guess what a lazy manager will do?

So when the manager chooses option (3), and the developers see months and months of unpaid overtime and endless bug fix headaches coming from re-inventing the wheel, they covertly downloads an open source library and plug it in, with a custom wrapper to hide their tracks. Is that a surprise?

No amount of education will not cause a manager to take any amount of risk choosing open source instead of using a "free" resource to achieve the same thing (a resource that cannot be saved and use later in any case). The developer's time and effort is an externality in the manager's consideration.

The only way you can bring the manager to use open source is to add the developer's time into the manager's accounting, either when developers are "pooled" and any effort spent will be charged to the manager's budget, or when the developers have other things to do so there is an opportunity cost to have them do other things.

Re:managers who set corporate open source policies

[dhasenan]

It's a matter of software licenses. Legal should be involved. And should have a clue what they're talking about. In an hour, they could determine that the people issuing these licenses claim that you can use their software as an end user with no charge and no caveats, that the license only matters for distribution, and if their developers want to use open source tools, no problem, as long as that doesn't get into the final product.

It seems that the managers are not managing

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

To me it seems more that these managers that are afraid of open source are just lazy and don't do what they are paid to do: to manage. Using open source in ones system or taking advantage of it by including it to your own software is not that hard. You just have to decisions. If I want to keep my application closed then I can make a simple rule: no GPL code or if GPL code really badly needed then contact the developer and check if it's possible to license the code in another license. In example in my own company which develops closed source survey research software we follow few rules:

1) No usage of GPL code/software allowed that requires opening up our application
2) LGPL code can be used under few conditions
a) no straight code lifting
b) code is only used via Jars
c) if code is changed, the changes are distributed back
d) include the package with sources that we have used into included directory when distributing the application
3) Usage of code under other licenses like BSD etc.. is evaluated case by case

These are very simple rules to follow and very simple to understand. Of course we could have more rules and more specific rules and guidelines but then again we are small company and we are not that heavy on including open source components to our software: our main work is writing good software not linking all the worlds code to our software. Of course in a bigger company writing rules and guidelines may need more work and more thought, but then again that is what managers and lawyers are paid to do and if they do their job by just shouting "NO!" then they are not doing their jobs.

Is this any different from educating employees ...

[constantnormal]

... on sexual harrassment policies, or export regulations?

One would think that if corporations have no difficulty "educating" employees on interpersonal relationships or export legal issues, that they would have someone from legal get up to speed on the various types of open source licensing and "educate" the managers and developers on the subject, and when it is required to include attribution comments (why not do that ALWAYS? Seems like it would improve the documentation).

I suppose this is what keeps the corporations firmly in the IE camp, with its associated higher support costs.

Switching to use a "free" product like Firefox that works better with fewer problems, and actually tries to conform to a published standard of web interpretation, must seem like endorsing theft -- when in fact, by sticking with a product from a company that is stealing them blind by continuing to sell it year after year with the same litany of flaws and security holes, they are endorsing true thievery, the thievery that comes from knowingly selling defective products.

Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a large (Fortune ???) company and official policy is "no open source" as far as I know.

Unfortunately, one of our group's work products is essentially a OS distribution. We take a base (Unix-like) OS load, add our internal applications that run ALL the time, create install CDs, and send them out to our internal and external customers.

(I'm being intentionally vague here, because I actually like my job....)

Now, I don't know how you do anything modern with a Unix-like OS without open source. Neither does anyone else.

Perl. Apache. Samba. OpenSSH and OpenSSL. zip. unzip. Those are just the ones that immediately spring to mind, and we've been using them all for years as part of that CD.

My manager knows and understand. My director knows and understands. Not sure about my senior director. But there's a real lack of understanding of reality somewhere in our food chain.

But the legal department - who has to review and sign off on things - is probably the most clueless. We're not really a technology company, and it really shows over there.

Shill

[TobascoKid]

Look at the full text from Merriam Webster

2 : to act as a spokesperson or promoter

That still implies payment. Look at every definition returned from a Google define query - each one implies payment.

FUD and bad FUD at that

[Anonymous Coward]

No one seems to realize that the whole ball of crap described by the article only applies if you are a producer/distributor of software. Most businesses are not software companies. They are small businesses reselling retail merchandise and services.

I am a consultant, and I constantly have to explain to every suit I meet, that if you don't distribute software, you can use GPL'd software in your business all you want and essentially never even have to consider the GPL. Run your servers on Linux, use Open Office on desktops, use GPL's utilities and code internally without fear.

I use this example: Since there is no software in a Domino's pizza (and assuming that is their only product and they don't distribute any software elsewhere), the Domino's company can use GPL'd software to run the entire company and every franchise and never have to concern itself with the GPL. If they develop an in-house pizza-business application using GPL, no GPL issues arise unless and until they decide to distribute that software to others. Service industries, like lawyers, janitors, and home inspectors, will typically have no issues using GPL software.

Finally, I know sometimes a company that is not a software company may distribute a piece of software they have developed as some small side-project. If by some mistake they run into a GPL problem, it is easily solvable. Just post the source code.

I don't dispute that GPL issues can be serious with software companies that make a living off of selling software, particularly if you create code with both GPL sources and proprietary source material under a license that prohibits source posting. But for the vast majority of businesses in the world, the article is FUD.

Because of code exposure

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked for many compagnies in a somewhat confidential domain. This means that I use to see almost the same people who, like myself, are jumping from one compagnie to another, as hired, consultant or freelance. Sometimes one of this "community" takes long or middle term responsabilities in a compagnie and get hired at a place which implied management or responsability for some produced code. Some are very good at what they do, or at least are known to be.
        I myself though once that one of them was good, because I heard he did some cool stuff and because I saw with my one eyes some good coded stuff referencing its name as the author. But once, I had to work directly with him, and then I was, to say the least, disappointed by its desgin skills, the guy simply didn't understand basics of middleware design. How could it be that he really designed and coded the previous piece of code I saw? Simple and straight: he didn't. Later, I encountered the real author of the work which impressed me, and this guy had the required skills, what our first intervenant did was simply to steal the original code, jumping from one company to another, working on the almost same subject and re-writting the stolen code in a very directly inspired way, when it wasn't litteral copy.
        The fact is that this is not a so uncommon behavior, in some compagnies I have been considered as dumb when I say that no, I didn't leave my previous work stealling confidential or proprietary stuff like code, document templates or process definition,
and many managers are pefectly aware of the situation. Using free software code may lead a compagny to expose the code of its products, and they fear that another concurrent compagny read their disclosed code and say "hey, this is our original code".
        If you want to make money with free software:
        1- take well-working implementation of something under BSD license,
        2- adapt it to embbeded software, rougly test it,
        3- (usualy ???) build a compagny and sell your library only to big or medium-sized entreprise, presenting you comagny as owning copyrights for the work,
        4- profit!
        This way, you will seduce managers who will be using free software without nowing it, ignorance is a bless, and with a legal fuse in case of problem. In case of problem, just give up your compagny, which, as a moral person, will endorse all the blame, and just build another one.

Re:Because of code exposure

[Anonymous Coward]

what language was this written in?

Re:Because of code exposure

[Teancum]

For myself, I didn't have to steal my former employer's code base. They mailed it to me, after I quit!

Or in one case (a university), I was able to buy my development computer at an open public bid auction (I paid $100 for the whole thing) just one month after I was fired. The hard drive wasn't even reformatted, and the full code base was right on there!

I know that source code security is often a bit more secure than this at most companies, but not always... especially if you worked for smaller companies. In some cases, I know I am the only person who even has the source code at all.

What you are saying here is mostly true as well, and unfortunately is one of the reasons why good programmers can have a hard time finding work when the lousy guys are messing it up for those of us with skills.

This makes perfect sense.

[FriendlyPrimate]

This makes perfect sense though. Business want a paper trail that they can go back on if problems arise later. You may now say "no license is required...it's public domain". But what if 5 years from now, you decide to sue them for copyright infringement? How do they defend themselves without the paper trail? From a legal perspective, it's an order of magnitude easier to go back to the license and show that you're not infringing than to try to prove that your software used to be in the public domain 5 years ago.

Another problem with open source software is that patent liability is placed on the user of the software, not the creator. The SCO/IBM lawsuit shows that. License a piece of Microsoft software, and the patent trolls go after Microsoft. Use a piece of open source software created by Ted in his garage, and the patent trolls go after you.

IBM is VERY strict with open source now. Nobody is allowed to use open source or public domain code in their projects unless it's gone through a very rigorous screening method to make sure there isn't any copyrighted code in there. And they provide a 'whitelist' of software that has been prescreened and is allowed to be used by developers. This list is rather small though. It requires alot of effort to remain safe from a legal perspective, and I doubt that few companies outside of IBM have the resources or expertise to do it.

Re:This makes perfect sense.

[bnenning]

This makes perfect sense though. Business want a paper trail that they can go back on if problems arise later. You may now say "no license is required...it's public domain". But what if 5 years from now, you decide to sue them for copyright infringement?

And how many times has something like this happened? Compare to the number of para-military BSA raids on users of commercial software. If you're going to be paranoid, at least be consistently paranoid.

Re:This makes perfect sense.

[ChameleonDave]

This makes perfect sense though. Business want a paper trail that they can go back on if problems arise later. You may now say "no license is required...it's public domain". But what if 5 years from now, you decide to sue them for copyright infringement? How do they defend themselves without the paper trail?

You're confusing the desire for a paper trail with the purchase of a specific licence. If a company is worried that it will in the future be unable to prove that a given program is public domain, then it can just ask the author of the code to provide a document releasing the product into the public domain.

Look at Wikipedia. It contains thousands of PD illustrations. Each one has a note stating the following: "I, the creator of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law."

When you have this sort of thing for free, it is foolish to buy a separate, specific licence for your company.

IBM is VERY strict with open source now. Nobody is allowed to use open source or public domain code in their projects unless it's gone through a very rigorous screening method to make sure there isn't any copyrighted code in there. And they provide a 'whitelist' of software that has been prescreened and is allowed to be used by developers. This list is rather small though. It requires alot of effort to remain safe from a legal perspective, and I doubt that few companies outside of IBM have the resources or expertise to do it. So, the problem is that the licence information you have may be incorrect. Why does this only apply to FLOSS? If I (a) create a program and release it to you under an expensive, exclusive licence, or (b) create a program and release it to you under a free, gratis licence, why do you need to check that I'm not lying about where I got my code from in case a but not case b? It seems to me that it would be sensible to check out my claim either way.

OpenOffice

[bjackson1]

I work in IT at a medium sized organization. We recently ran out of Office licenses. I came up with the brilliant suggestion to use OpenOffice on non-essential personnels computers who would not be needing advanced features. Essentially on most of these machines, Office was used only to type letters in Word, or perhaps excel.

My employer refused to use it, because as a free piece of software, it would not have enough features, would be insecure, etc.

Well, I decided to repackage it as OfficeLite, I told them it'd cost an extra $15 dollars to install per machine (I did NOT say it cost this per license), and now they love it! They checked it out and thought it was a brilliant piece of software. I have since told them how I duped them, but eh, I get to keep the first 120 I made from it.

Re:OpenOffice

[DaMattster]

Hey man! Nice idea! It just shows the unfortunate number of "Pointy-Haired Bosses" there are out there. I wish I'd thought of that. After all, Open Office is really a feature complete replacement of M$ Office. Either the FUD campaign launched by M$ is so good or our bosses are just too gullible. I leave that one for you to figure out.

1995 called-they want their obsolete managers back

[tomhudson]

"I believe that another important fear is that of disempowerment. Open source is usually free of charge, which means that their budgets and thus their importance decreases."

How many of us read this, and are saying "Hey, if they're worried about the consequences of reduced budgets, they can always throw me another $50k a year ..."? :-)

Its not about budgets, and its not about power - its about managers who aren't really right for the job - because the JOB has changed.

Look at it this way - 1st-rate people hire 1st-rate people. 2nd-rate people hire 3rd-rate people, probably because they're intimidated by anyone being "as good as" or "better" than them.

Any IT project manager who doesn't have a clue about the GPL, LGPL, and BSD licenses should be fired. He or she is obviously not willing to do their homework, and hasn't been, for about a decade.

Additionally, you should probably go up the food chain one more rung and fire whoever hired/manages them. After all, they let this piece of deadwood contine in their slot for god knows how long.

So they blocked sourceforge, and they banned thumb drives, to prevent open source code from "leaking into" the company. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a cell phone with tons of free space - its not *just* for music and videos. And most of us can write a proxy server in one line, run it on our home machine or another server, and get around any site bans just fine.

loss of power

[Anonymous Coward]

management looses control over budget, since open source has no cost or requires purchase order approvals.

it is a loss of power that scares them. all the other details about confusion over costs or how OSS works are just excuses.

management dimly realizes they are not doing their job and it scares them.
they budgets $100,000 dollars for applications and countless more man hours paying staff to configure and manage the commercial shrink wrap application, only to discover their game plan was flawed. how do you think they feel about their job security? and the quality of their decisions?

MOD PARENT -1 FUD

[swillden]

Just listening to all the talk on whether or not Novell is violating GPL (perhaps by simply partnering with another vendor - Microsoft) should make a lawyer's skin crawl...

"by simply partnering"????

You misspelled "by entering into an agreement specifically designed to violate the spirit of the GPL while obeying the letter, so that they could use the threat of litigation to gain substantial control over the work of others".

Now, why would anyone think that such obviously bad-faith actions could get them in trouble?

Proprietary software frightens *me*

[mkcmkc]

I guess I can understand being scared by the unfamiliar, but what really frightens me is proprietary software, or rather the licenses thereof. There's some really scary shit in there about what you can and cannot do, and the penalties for running afoul. Not to mention the stuff (which you may know as "software patents") that you only get to hear about after you're in trouble.

Same idea, different context

[OSXCPA2]

I work as an IT consultant, doing SOX work. I have 'a friend' who is in the same line of work, who recently installed an open-source interpreted language package on his work laptop (they are not locked down, but if you break it or get it infected, you're responsible, and probably unemployed) in order to solve a client problem that was costing the client a fortune in billable hours. When he broached the solution to management (of the consultancy, not the client), he was told that despite the open culture of the organization and emphasis on innovation and efficiency, since this language was not part of the standard load for laptops, it could not be used period, and there was no machanism to get it approved. Period.

Community-built software is not perceived as 'safe' - 'It could have a trojan or virus built into it' is the exact phrase used by Sr. management in their demurral. When 'my friend' suggested that the likelihood of say, the Perl distribution, containing some kind of malicious code was vanishingly small and the code was way too open to scrutiny for such things to get in, and that closed-source firms have a far worse record on the subject of malware than established open-source projects, he was dismissed out of hand.

As such, he is developing his app, on his own computer, on his own time, and trying to come up with some kind of 'sales pitch' to get management to listen. Suggestions welcome - I'll pass them to him, although I'm sure he'll read this post.

Re:Same idea, different context

[Cinquero]

Who do you sue if there is a trojan in some OSS? Who pays for the damages? *That* is the point for many managers to decide against OSS in critical parts of their company. And there is as of yet no OSS solution to that.

Re:Same idea, different context

[The Cisco Kid]

If you really think you get to sue MS if there is a trojan in their software (ignoring for a moment that most of there software *are* trojans), then you have been smoking too much of the wacky weed.

Re:Same idea, different context

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tell them that Open Source is the 'latest' business buzz idea, and that they have an opportunity to get on the bandwagon BEFORE their competitors.

For gods sake, geeks - learn the jargon of another group of workers. They won't respond to geek-talk.

Management is scared

[Anonymous Coward]

As a manager I'm getting a kick out of these replies.

I'll tell you why we are are scared.

1.) If I choose open source products, who is going to take me out to lunch while telling me about said products.

2.) If I choose open source products who is going to shake my hand and tell me what a great deal I recieved and
          how smart I am.

3.) If I choose open source software we are afraid of losing the balance of power in our office to open source
        developers who look like rasputin visiting burning man.

#all above statments are made as a joke, not really a manager/

GNU C++

[Per Abrahamsen]

> Who has looked into that code or used it for anything else?

Lot's of people have looked into and used GCC's C++ and Objective-C front ends...

Just another successful Microsoft FUD campaign?

[walterbyrd]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this before.

The entire scox-scam is nothing but a small part of msft's ongoing fud campain. The entire scam will cost msft well under $100M - pocket change for msft.

Now that the scox-scam is winding down, msft has bought a new bitch - Novell.

Msft message to corrupt users is crystal clear: "F/OSS is a legal mine-field. If you even use linux you risk a lawsuit. If you substantially contribute to linux a lawsuit is nearly inevitable. If you even think about touching a F/OSS produce, you will be legally forced to open all of code." Msft has pounded on that message for years and years. Lots of msft shills scream hystical warnings, all kinds of fake lawsuits, fake studies from msft owned "think tanks" and so on.

I think msft's fud campaign has been smart, and successful.

FUD piece?

[HalAtWork]

Is this a FUD piece? There are some parts of the article which don't make any sense to me and look like scaremongering:

Companies running open source also often make the mistake of thinking they are running a relatively benign, commercial-friendly license like BSD when they are actually using GPL, which has limitations on modification and distribution of code.

Actually the GPL is supposed to NOT limit modification and distribution, because if the person who holds it is trying to prevent modification and distribution, then the license is invalid for them. Why use the word "benign" and "commercial-friendly" together... shouldn't something GPL-friendly be considered benign, since people have approved its distribution (the authors) as opposed to using commercial code which might be prevented from being included in an open source project due to copyright and/or IP? With GPL-code the authors give their expressed permission to distribute it, and you're sure that someone else can't take it and turn it into their exclusive product.

And that's a problem because 10 per cent of open source code leaks out of development and into final product, meaning companies really are potentially at risk from rightfully aggrieved software authors.

Meaning that companies are trying to take GPLed code, close it up, and sell it? Do they think OSS is just a pool of example code they can cherry-pick from?

With GPL 3.0 coming, things ain't going to get any easier - especially for Software as a Service (SaaS).

Why not? GPL3 makes it easier for you to modify (protections so you can run modified binaries on the original machine) and clearer about what you're getting (regarding patents).

Yes, you could call this a case of predictable vendor scaremongering to drum up new business, but don't forget some well known open source cases are already on record - Tivo, Linksys/Cisco, and Progress Software versus MySQL, anyone?

Justice was upheld, and the companies aren't damaged as a result. Isn't it scaremongering to put a negative spin on this?

Another problem: the increasingly distributed nature of development makes bans impossible, as offshore teams and outsourcing partners employ open source.

How is this a problem? They don't cite any examples.

What's creating the confusion?

This article's author?

You also lack knowledge...

[brunes69]

You only need to open up if and when you modify Spring framework with your own code.

This is incorrect. Both Spring and Jakarta Commons use the Apache license, which does not require you to distribute code changes if you change the libraries. You just need to include the license with your binaries and notices that they were modified.

Give it Time

[16K Ram Pack]

I've been developing for about 20 years, and I've seen what happens.

In the late 80s, managers were saying that the PC wouldn't replace the mainframe. Later, there were managers saying that Gateway PCs were not as good as those from the mainframe manufacturer. Then, managers who said that the internet is a toy, and that services couldn't realistically be delivered via a browser.

It's about conservative managers. Typically, what changes their attitude is when a bunch of young upstarts prove them wrong, show that something can be sustained. Eventually, they come around to it.

There are a lot of shills who are spreading FUD about open source software. There were shills suggesting that non-mainframe manufacturer PCs were somehow inferior, and so forth.

The good news is that these guys eventually lose. Their FUD gets found out. Typically, the small companies shift first, with large bluechips moving last. I know a company with a "no open source" rule. At the other end of the spectrum, I know someone in a small company where their experience with Linux webserver, mailserver and firewall means that open source is seriously addressed.

Re:Give it Time

[Frumious Wombat]

I've been programming, personal and academic out to semi-pro (it was and is a component of my job, but not my primary purpose) for about 30 years, and all I can say is, "did you ever use a Gateway PC versus an IBM back in the 80s/90s?" They were inferior, unless by "not inferior" you mean "could be completely gutted and rebuilt from parts you ordered from the back of a magazine". I've retired more IBM/HP/Sun machines due to relatively decreasing performance than actual failure, as opposed to various companies rhyming with "Hell" who seem to add a "halt and catch fire" instruction to their chipsets.

You'll notice that businesses didn't really get enthusiastic about Open-source until companies like RedHat grew to support it via standard commercial service contracts, and behemoths like IBM and HP bought into it and made improvements. In short, until the revolutionaries have been coopted and become part of the establishment, they remain primarily guerillas in the hills. Those managers aren't entirely stupid; when someone is going to blame you for a billion dollar mistake, you tend to act a little cautiously. Big corporations tend to be a touch conservative, which is how they last long enough to get big.

Re:Give it Time

[16K Ram Pack]

Big corporations tend to be a touch conservative, which is how they last long enough to get big.

I disagree. They generally get big by taking risks that pay off. The conservatism kicks in when they get big, and is what ends up destroying many companies.

Re:Give it Time

[Frumious Wombat]

Maybe, and even quite possibly. I still note (and this is said by others), that you can break corporate life-cycles into a variety of stages, where the risk-taking that gets you out of the garage and onto the NYSE is the wrong technique to get you from successful to huge. The problem really comes in when the caution which makes innovative projects run quietly internally until they're ready to be released turns into paralysis which prevents them from getting started at all.

Using IBM as an example, maintaining backwards compatibility with the big iron as machines got smaller during the 70s was a good idea, but intentionally crippling disruptive technologies such as the PC/RT in order to protect doomed product lines that could have been emulated on the newer systems was not.

NMAP

[brunes69]

No FOSS tool that I know of limits what you can do with its output.

NMAP does.

Try integrating NMAP with yoru commercial product. You won't be allowed to distirbute it if you use it's output to integrate into your own stuff.

Check out their wacky addition to the GPL:

* Note that the GPL places important restrictions on "derived works", yet * it does not provide a detailed definition of that term. To avoid * misunderstandings, we consider an application to constitute a * "derivative work" for the purpose of this license if it does any of the * following: * Integrates source code from Nmap * Reads or includes Nmap copyrighted data files, such as * nmap-os-fingerprints or nmap-service-probes. * Executes Nmap and parses the results (as opposed to typical shell or * execution-menu apps, which simply display raw Nmap output and so are * not derivative works.) * Integrates/includes/aggregates Nmap into a proprietary executable * installer, such as those produced by InstallShield. * Links to a library or executes a program that does any of the above

Re:NMAP

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Note that the GPL places important restrictions on "derived works", yet * it does not provide a detailed definition of that term. To avoid * misunderstandings, we consider an application to constitute a * "derivative work" for the purpose of this license if it does any of the * following: ... Executes Nmap and parses the results (as opposed to typical shell or * execution-menu apps, which simply display raw Nmap output and so are * not derivative works.) *

If it went to court they might have some problems with that one. The term "derivative works" is defined by statutory and case law and has an explicit (well, as explicit as any other legal definition) meaning which is why the GPL does not define it. While there is probably no shortage of lawyers willing to argue in support of nmap's position, if there is money to be made, they would have a tough time convincing a court that the output of nmap is a derivative work - it would be somewhat akin to the authors of LAME claiming that any MP3 created with LAME was a derivative work.

Re:NMAP

[Dun Malg]

Yeah.....y'know.... the fact that the GPL doesn't explicitly define "Derivative Works" doesn't give the NMAP folks carte blanche to define it themselves. Despite what they claim, it'd be a tough row to hoe to get a court to agree that parsing factual information from NMAP's output constitutes a "derivative work". They can claim all sorts of nonsense they like. Doesn't make it correct.

Re:NMAP

[Dhalka226]

Despite what they claim, it'd be a tough row to hoe to get a court to agree that parsing factual information from NMAP's output constitutes a "derivative work".

Are you sure? Because it seems to me that you would have a tougher row to hoe to get a court to agree that they are forced to use the terms of the GPL itself rather than the terms that they explicitly laid out for their product.

Are their terms 90% GPL? Yes. Did they add/modify/clarify (depending on your view) a term? Also yes. What makes you think the court's going to say "no no no, this is GPL and you're wrong, sorry" and not "they created their own license, what makes you think the condition is not valid?"

Re:NMAP

[darkwhite]

"Their wacky addition"? Interesting.

Please don't be obtuse. The parent poster was referring to running the program at development time, then incorporating its result as part of the product. The restriction you cite does not forbid that.

Re:NMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think the court's going to say "no no no, this is GPL and you're wrong, sorry" and not "they created their own license, what makes you think the condition is not valid?"

The terms of the GPL are well known, and there is a common understanding that calling out to another program and parsing its output does not constitute a derivative work. This is the view espoused, for example, by the Free Software Foundation, who wrote the license in the first place: see their FAQ, which states that "pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs."

More curiously still, the NMAP license page goes so far as to say that their interpretation only applies when you're distributing the program. Apparently you can sell a commercial, closed-source front-end, but then people have to acquire NMAP separately...? This seems nonsensical: they are saying that mere aggregation of another, otherwise legal program, with NMAP, will cause the other program to infringe the GPL, which is a possibility that the GPL is explicitly designed to rule out!

Nope, I think NMAP's license "clarifications" are self-contradictory, and unlikely to hold up in court.

It's hard NOT to use open source in some domains

[unclepoole]

It's almost impossible to write some kinds of applications WITHOUT using open source software. I'm particularly thinking of geospatial applications, 90% of which depend on the same four libraries: GDAL, OGR, Proj4, and Xerces-C. Similarly, things like Bzip2 and Zlib are a godsend. My company is very decentralized, so I don't know about our open source policy as a whole, but my own group is very open source friendly - we can't compete with the big boys in the industry without it! The basic policy we follow is: No GPL code unless you can execute it as a separate process. LGPL, BSD, and MPL are fine. Anything else, we need to have multiple people check. The main thing I hate is when people make library code GPL for no good reason, like the MySQL driver. Royal pain in the ass for people like us who do government contracting. Which is why we use PostgreSQL as our database backend instead.

Reminds me of when we were kids

[HangingChad]

Open source germs! Open source germs on you! You've got open source kooties!

OSS is best protection for commercial companies ..

[rs232]

I think OSS/GPL offers the best protection for commercial companies. Any closed source company producing a sucessful product runs the risk of it being cloned and given away by you-know-who in the next version of Windows. If you uses someone elses closed developement tools you are always at risk of the upsteam supplier arbitrarily changing the 'licensing' rules or keep changing the formats/protocols in an attempt to keep lockin. Finally you don't really own the product you are trying to sell.

With OSS/GPL you get the benefit of a huge developer community. You take out and give back. You make your money out of selling hardware and support. If the elephant comes after you to 'partner', he can't as there is no product to buy and remove from the ecosystem .. sorry monoculture.

Finally as an end user, once a closed source company has all your records on propriatery formats and your network runs on propriatery protocols, you don't own your own company anymore.

Title of the (real) article is misleading...

[Anonymous Coward]

...executives sweat over the legal exposure caused by developers using open source software

Developers are using open source software mostly everywhere. Eclipse is open source, heck even now Java is open source. Executives aren't scared about developers using open source software: IBM, Sun, Oracle... They're all using, proposing and pushing open source software everywhere.

What executives sweat over, and rightly so, is about developers using open sourced code under a restrictive license. And they should: I know of one (european) company where one of the developer had the habit to simply steal GPL'ed code and insert snippets into the commercial products made by the company. The company noticed that at one point and started to rewrite.

Then, while writing this rant, I realize I had just read TFA (yup, I know...) on that lame 'the register' website, approaching the lowest of all lows you can find on the Internet. The headline is close to an outright lie, like you can find so many in the english tabloids: "Managemement scared by open source". Followed by a misleading summary: "...executives sweat over legal exposure caused by developers using open source software".

Companies are using open source software, developers are using open source software. Managers aren't afraid of that at all. They're afraid of rogue developers stealing open source code and incorporating it sneakily into their product, which is not the same thing (and less "sensational" to write about for the f*cktards at 'the register').

Inaccurate Article?

[jambarama]

This article seems to be a troll drummed up to get page views, or just plain ignorant. My company had this discussion, and we basically agreed that just because we can't *see* the code in closed source apps doesn't mean we have indemnification for bundling it in our software if it violates software patents or copyrights. There is no inherent risk open source puts you at that closed source doesn't. However, there are some risks closed source put you at that open source doesn't. We use both open and closed source 3rd party software in our product, if the closed-source stuff is pulled, bundled with a nasty eula, or no long developed, we're SOL. This has happened to us. However, if the open-source stuff is pulled, no longer developed, whatever, we'll maintain it. This has happened too, and it isn't *nearly* as disruptive.

Using GPL v. BSD licensed stuff can be a concern, but you can work around that (see proprietary drivers and the linux kernel), and it isn't different than restrictive licensing with proprietary stuff--proprietary licenses can require about anything--release your derivative code, pay royalties, or even listen to abba while coding. Not to mention, it isn't *always* a bad thing to release your code. Sure the competitors get it, but if the GPL stuff you are using really gives you a significant advantage, your competitors will have to adopt your model, or try to replicate all of your code, all the while avoiding the copyright minefield that comes with rewriting.

This article seems also to suggest that piracy and overusing licenses is more of a problem with OSS than proprietary. This is almost always wrong, OSS almost always has more lenient licensing policies than closed-source. We moved our CRM from Salesforce to Sugar for this very reason, the licenses were costing us an arm and a leg, and we couldn't configure it to our liking. Now we pay for support on Sugar (which is OSS), and we get better support, save money, and it is more powerful. We're happy.

Let them adapt or die

[alexmin]

If a developer feels that management is not responsive to constructive technical advise then it's time to find a better place. There are plenty of places where her expertise will be greatly appreciated. Doing the best of what you can also means making yourself more competitive thus getting respect and better income potential. Fighting politic battles will only makes you look like an asshole.

Let Darwin law do fighting for your: go work for better place and let old place wither and die.

programmers' personal toolkits

[belmolis]

Whenever I hear about managers anxiety about their code becoming contaminated with open source, I wonder whether they really shouldn't be more concerned about a different source of contamination, namely the toolkits that so many (most?) programmers carry with them from job to job. It seems like just about everyone has a stash of code useful code from past work that he or she draws on instead of reimplementing from scratch. Some of this code may have been copied out of a textbook, journal article, or web page; some of it may be hobby code; some of it may have been written for a project for a previous employer. I suspect that a lot of proprietary code is contaminated with functions that technically belong to the company for which they were first written or to the author or publisher of the source from which they were copied. I wonder if this kind of contamination shouldn't be as much of an issue as concern about open source. As far as I know, no one has gotten bitten by this.

keep it simply stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Management wants to smooth things over. Right or wrong means very little to most of them.

A shop I used to work in wrote custom apps running on Windows. They crowed constantly about being on a "common platform" etc. They also routinely downloaded free software/GPL projects for terrain mapping and OpenGL routines, etc. and copied/pasted them into their apps. Constantly...as in all day long. They viewed OpenSource as being free for the taking.

Management had no idea. The authors of the GPL code had no idea. But the apps went out the door on time, and Management grinned.

Keep it simple, keep it stupid, keep management ignorant and happy. Use the platform of the day, the one they write about in Business 2.0, get the products done on time using pre-tested code.

Sure glad I don't work there any more.

It depends on where you're standing.

[argent]

Actually the GPL is supposed to NOT limit modification and distribution, because if the person who holds it is trying to prevent modification and distribution, then the license is invalid for them.

From the point of view of a company writing commercial software, the GPL does limit modification and distribution, because if they distribute modified GPL software they have to make sure their modifications don't include components that would force them to release their own product's source as "derived works", or else take the plunge and release their own software under the GPL. This is an additional cost and risk that LGPL and BSDL software doesn't force them to take on, because it doesn't restrict you're ability to control the distribution of other components if you distribute modified LGPL or BSDL libraries with them.

Whether or not they should do that anyway is a separate issue. I'm not saying they're right or wrong, I'm saying that if you can't understand the viewpoint of people who disagree with you you're never going to be able to effectively deal with them.

Re:It depends on where you're standing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah I see. Well of course you can't just change a few things, turn around and sell it. Just like others couldn't do this with their closed code anyway... It's a little hypocritical if they want to do that. They should just do a little reading, as they could certainly benefit from OSS without having to rip it off, just like many benefit from closed source software without ripping it off. Instead of having to provide a little dev, they give money in exchange, but they still make money. I wonder why people see more value in giving away dev than money?

Re:It depends on where you're standing.

[Teancum]

There is an issue regarding people who have been "contaminated" with having worked on GPL'd code.... even if just at a glance... and to try and make sure some of those algorithms don't make it into the propritary code base owned by the company

Of course this is an issue if you hire any experienced software developer who has done significant development under any other company's code base. They even know trade secrets (NDAs not withstanding here), and even if they weren't working directly for a competitor, they still have insights from that experience including algorithms either they developed at the other company or techniques and ideas developed by former co-workers.

For myself, as a software team manager, I'm more worried about employees infringing on this propritary software than getting GPL'd software doing cross contamination. Most FOSS developers would be flattered that part of their algorithm has been copied and extended in some new directions... particularly if it was used in a completely different application. They might get pissed if you tried to back-end patent the software afterward, but that is another issue entirely and technically illegal as well.

A GPL'd application generally does not have people with deep pockets that are willing to get involved with an extended legal battle. You can't say that about most major corporations with their private software code base contributed by former employees.

Copyright law power and "commercial" programs.

[jbn-o]

Using an open source tool and modifying it are two deeply different things. No FOSS tool that I know of limits what you can do with its output. OS X is compiled with GCC, but it's a commercial OS, for instance.

I believe it's a function of copyright law, not free software particularly, that gives you copyright power over the work you make. In other words, what you're saying is true but the underlying principle has nothing to do with the GNU Compiler Collection being free software; that same principle applies to proprietary software as well. Apple could compile their OS with a proprietary compiler with no loss in copyright power. I'd imagine that Apple developers choose GCC for the freedoms GCC gives them (NeXT modified GCC to suit their needs), GCC's excellent developers, and GCC's technical merit.

The unusual situation with Bison has been explained elsewhere in this thread and Richard Stallman addressed this issue in one of his talks. I'd be wary of embedded DRM in saved files, but I don't think most computer users have that problem to face right now.

Finally, I think you meant to say "proprietary" and not "commercial". FOSS is commercial software when it is developed as a business activity. What differentiates free software from proprietary software is that users have freedoms with free software they don't get with proprietary software.

Re:Copyright law power and "commercial" programs.

[l0ne]

The problem is, the original poster is (IMHO) referring to the horror stories that can easily be heard, where management will "scold" users that work using FOSS tools because they are FOSS and, in their infinite "wisdom", believe that the FOSS license somehow also applies to the app's output.

Even professors don't always get it.

[Lord Kano]

A year and a half ago, I had a professor state matter of factly that Linux was less secure than Windows because anyone can look at the source code and find exploits.

Involuntarily, I screamed "WHAT?!" He paused and gave me a chance to speak, my response was to take the example of OpenBSD, it's Open Source too(different license, I know but that's not the point) and in the previous 8 years there had been exactly one remote exploit on a default install. Microsoft dreams of that kind of security.

He really had no response for that. What bother me though is how many times did he give that exact same speech to students who didn't know any better and just assumed that it was true because a high ranking professor had said it? So as these people leave college and become managers in IT, they'll carry the misconceptions that Professor Dvorak had placed in their heads.

LK

Re:Even professors don't always get it.

[drsmithy]

Involuntarily, I screamed "WHAT?!" He paused and gave me a chance to speak, my response was to take the example of OpenBSD, it's Open Source too(different license, I know but that's not the point) and in the previous 8 years there had been exactly one remote exploit on a default install. Microsoft dreams of that kind of security.

Your "refutation" - and I use the term loosely - was worthless.

To understand why, consider that MS-DOS has never, ever had any remote exploits in a default install, in over twenty years of use, with a userbase orders of magnitude larger and less technically competent than OpenBSD.

He really had no response for that.

And _that_ is why your Professor was an ass. Not because he took a principle with a certain degree of truth and made an over-generalisation with it, but because he couldn't blow such an incredibly bad comparison out of the water with ease.

What bother me though is how many times did he give that exact same speech to students who didn't know any better and just assumed that it was true because a high ranking professor had said it? So as these people leave college and become managers in IT, they'll carry the misconceptions that Professor Dvorak had placed in their heads.

Anyone who doesn't consider the difficulty (or lack thereof) with which an attacker can closely examine the inner workings of a piece of software to be a potential security issue, is an incompetent fool.

Re:Even professors don't always get it.

[Lord Kano]

To understand why, consider that MS-DOS has never, ever had any remote exploits in a default install, in over twenty years of use, with a userbase orders of magnitude larger and less technically competent than OpenBSD.

Neither has my pocket calculator. DOS is not a fair target for comparison. DOS had no default method for remote connectivity.

Anyone who doesn't consider the difficulty (or lack thereof) with which an attacker can closely examine the inner workings of a piece of software to be a potential security issue, is an incompetent fool.

If it were only potential attackers looking, I'd completely agree with you, but it's not just attackers. It is also people looking to patch vulnerabilities.

LK

Re:Even professors don't always get it.

[drsmithy]

Neither has my pocket calculator. DOS is not a fair target for comparison. DOS had no default method for remote connectivity.

Very good. You're halfway to understanding why your comparison was worthless.

If it were only potential attackers looking, I'd completely agree with you, but it's not just attackers. It is also people looking to patch vulnerabilities.

People looking to patch have zero influence on the additional exposure from people looking to attack.

Re:Even professors don't always get it.

[Lord Kano]

I read through your posting history and it only left me with questions.

Are you a paid Microsoft shill, a fanboy or someone who gets a kick out of being contrary?

LK

Re:Even professors don't always get it.

[drsmithy]

I read through your posting history and it only left me with questions.

Perhaps you should concentrate more on the actual discussion, rather than trying to divine personality traits of someone based on random forum postings.

Are you a paid Microsoft shill, a fanboy or someone who gets a kick out of being contrary?

Why would it be relevant ? What difference does it make to my points ?

However, I generally make posts to Slashdot for the following reasons:

a) I see a factual error that needs correcting
b) I see poor reasoning that deserves criticism and/or requires correction (as in this thread)
c) I believe I have information or experiences that may help others

Re:Even professors don't always get it.

[Lord Kano]

I've ruled out fanboy. You're either a paid shill or you enjoy being contrary.

LK

Re:Even professors don't always get it.

[drsmithy]

I've ruled out fanboy. You're either a paid shill or you enjoy being contrary.

It's kind of hard to disgree or criticise without being "contrary".

That is demonstrably absurd.

[jd]

If Linux had used the BSD license, there is absolutely no way on Earth that SGI or IBM would have ported their flagship filing systems to it. Why? Because under the GPL, it is relatively benign. It can't be used against them in a rival commercial product. Under the BSD license, it could - and probably would.

This is not to say that the GPL is perfect - there is no such thing as "perfect" in this context. You should always use the right tool for the job, if you expect to do the job well. Rather, what I am saying is that the GPL is nowhere near as hostile to business as some make out and in many cases is actually business-friendly. (More hardware companies supply drivers - closed or open - to Linux than they do for any of the *BSDs. Not because there is a problem with the BSd kernel - in some ways it is superior. Nor is it because of market-share - we're talking fractions of a percent for both types of OS in many specialist industries. It is because BSD-licensed code could improve a competitor's closed product and no vendor is so stupid as to do that.)

Both licenses are important, both have probably put some people off, both have indisputedly been seen as attractive by others. So stop dissing something you don't like merely because the other happens incidentally to be good for you. Your understanding of the whole of the industry is simply not great enough. Nobody's is. Not even mine, and I've seen and worked in more sectors of the IT profession than most. Nobody, nobody at all, has the knowledge to say that open source license XYZ has done more harm than good, because nobody at all has seen more than a pathetically insignificant number of cases. All I can do is show that the number of cases where GPL has been a primary positive factor AND where BSD licenses have probably been detrimental is non-zero and is probably not even remotely close to zero. That is enough to blow any anti-GPL argument out of the water.

Exactly the same set of arguments and methods can be used to blow out the water all anti-BSD arguments and all anti-Public Domain arguments. The other licenses probably have something similar but I can't think of any solid examples right now. I can for those three.

Frankly, bitching about licenses is probably the biggest problem with Open Source, as it makes the community look like spoiled children - and how many managers want spoiled children running their IT centers? It also helps proliferate secretive Open Source projects and helps detract from the much-needed community support that any project needs to thrive. I am sick of the trolls, the flames, the bitching and the whining whenever these issues come up. These aren't expressions of opinion - there can be no opinion without thought and the thoughtless have none.

Re:That is demonstrably absurd.

[Teancum]

It should be noted that only among hard core free/open source software advocates does anybody even bother the read the license in the first place to even know what is written in them. Oh a bored lawyer might actually go through many of the other propritary ones, but how many times when you install software on your computer do you simply look at the license and simply click "Accept" without even having read the thing in the first place?

Certainly there are very few propritary software licenses that have had significant discussions about individual clauses, why they ought to be changed, and how they should be changed. For those companies I've worked for, I doubt the software developers themselves had even read the license their software was being sold under in the first place. In one case, the manager who crafted the license for our software merely copied the license from another application with just a few minor modifications for the name of the company and taking out a term he didn't like. Even then, I don't think he even read the complete license that supposedly even he crafted.

The same could be said (unfortunately) even when the license is written by a professional law office.

On the other hand, I can say that I've read the GPL in detail and have tried to understand each seperate clause. And the same for the various BSD licenses, as well as several other FOSS licenses.

Poo

[Hognoxious]

Management 'Scared' by Open Source

Each yard the penguins do advance, PHBs poo in their pants.
At the sound of LOLs and W00ts, they piss their designer suits.

Nice one, Bill

[Bloke down the pub]

The trouble is that answering their question can cost more than what incorporating F/OSS will save.

Perhaps if you were distributing the code. IANAL(IAOSBDTP), but I thought internal use within an organisation doesn't count as distribution.

Re:Nice one, Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

IAOSBDTP - I Am Only a Solicitor, Barrister, District attorney, Trial judge or Prosecutor?

Re:Nice one, Bill

[manyac]

Even google doesn't know what he is talking about...

Re:Nice one, Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, do not know what *you're* talking about.

Re:Nice one, Bill

[Neoncow]

IAOSBDTP - I Am Only a Stupid/Simple Bloke Down The (at) Pub?

Still have to beg to have OSS approved

[Anonymous Coward]

In many places, especially government or large corporations, you have to beg to get Open Source Software (OSS)approved. Often, the IT and Security types see OSS as suspicious "Hackerware", so it can take forever to get approval (if at all!).

FUD Works?

[wardk]

the years of fear mongering is beginning to bear fruit?

Educational campaigns are needed.

[jbn-o]

Then this is no different than any other irrational horror story; we can point blame at both the teller and believer of the story, but we're better off educating people instead. A good educational campaign would ask these managers if they believe every report they write with Microsoft Office is co-owned by Microsoft, thus giving Microsoft the power to change or override anything they say in the report. Or if their proprietary OS from Apple compels them to get Apple's approval before distributing any file they make with it. Nobody actually behaves as if these things are true so it's a very hard argument to make that anyone believes these things to be true.

The manager's "fear" is obviously irrational and their issues don't seem to translate to the real problems of uninspectable, unmodifiable, and unsharable software which they have entrusted to run their business. Perhaps handing their business over to unaccountable monopolists (as all software proprietors are) should be more disturbing to them than software they can shape to meet their needs.

Use PDF

[Alex Belits]

The only situation when Microsoft Office documents (or ODF documents if it matters) should ever leave the computer where they are created is when someone else is supposed to modify them. This should never happen when a document crosses boundaries of organization.

Re:Use PDF

[Presence1]

Yes, it is true that the only time docs should leave the computer on which they were created is when someone else is editing them, but it is also true that the only time you should breathe is when you need air.

Where I come from, people collaborate and jointly edit documents all the time, both within and between organnizations.

I've built several companies where the main product was to mmanage workflow (i.e., joint editing of documents) between organizations. Of course, this involves many more layers of organization and edit control at the document and sub-document level.

Even in companies that build something other than workflow, and don't even need such workflow management tools, people often collaboratively edit documents both within and between the organizations. We often join up with other vendors to make proposals and sales, which requires joint editing of documents. Just this week, I'm sending text back and forth with one of my customers in order to finalize literature for a trade show where we'll be jointly displaying our products (which my company fabricates and his company distributes).

It isn't that PDFs don't have their place. They are great for marketing documents, for position papers, and for contracts being joint-edited between organizations, where it is critical that no edit is overlooked (the PDF forces the other organization to specify all edits in a separate document).

But, to say that PDF is the only format that you need to exchange between organizations is just silly. I hope you don't write code with a lot of such "should never happen" assumptions.

Re:Use PDF

[Alex Belits]

Microsoft Office is the worst format for any kind of organized workflow -- it's designed for random ad-hoc editing, that can only be safely done within an organization. Even ODF is better for that purpose, though usually some other XML-based format is made specifically for those things.

Re:Use PDF

[Presence1]

I completely agree. The ONLY thing it has going for it is ubiquity, or perhaps 'common-ness' would be a better word (to further imply its low status).

Unfortunately, common-ness is sometimes the trump feature, particularly when we are talking about ad-hoc joint editing of transient documents.

I think it sucks. I do and will work fairly hard and spend signifiant resources to implemnt and get people to use better solutions. However, I've learned that it it is best to not throw limitless resources into fighting that battle. Ultimately, at some point it is not worth the costs of the battle.

End-run around "We Own Your Soul" Contracts

[SoopahMan]

Managers who think they can own your soul just because you work for them do have something to worry about in Open Source: If you get your boss to open source the project you're working on, when you quit, it walks with you.

IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

I can attest to this. A while back I was reponsible for putting some open source software into our product. Went completely through the legit route - it was approved by my manager, VP, company lawyer, everything. (MPL/NPL code is perfectly fine in propietary code.)

Turns out later out we are considering using IBM a to be reseller. They put up the biggest stink because of the NPL/MPL code. Yes, IBM, the we-love-open-source people. Right.

Never mind that for years we accidentally linked against a GPL library and cleaned up it out of our own desire to properly support open source. We like open source and we *want* to play by the rules. Hell, we submit kernel patches!

To this did, I don't know if that deal ever went through.

And this is in a company where the CEO is educated enough about open-source to replace all the engineering desktops with Linux a few years back, and uses OpenOffice himself.

The sign of a good manager

[egork]

Compare: "I recently negotiated a licencing deal with for , which i deemed to be the best solution because of "
To: "Well, my IT guys implemented a working system on their own, using some software I can't pronounce and really don't understand." The latter is actually how a good manager should be acting - distribute tasks, set priorities and control execution. Not micromanaging by choosing software etc.. One can not understand everything. However, watching trends and general benchmarks of productivity can help a lot too.

Drop-In Replacement

[snadrus]

SQLite does have a command-line version (if that's how you currently call your DBMS). It also has ODBC drivers (hopefully your app was written with ODBC in mind).

Bad example ...

[Xenographic]

A little reducto ad absurdum here... Suppose I release the following program under GPL:

        #!/usr/bin/perl -w
        use strict;

Does that now mean that any Perl script that "includes" mine is now subject to the GPL? How big does an "inclusion" have to be to trigger the GPL? One line of code? Ten? One hundred?

Impossible, because your example is not copyrightable and the GPL can only attach to copyrighted material (if you don't have a copyright on it, you have no right to make someone agree to the GPL).

Without being exhaustive, your example is not copyrightable under US law because it is both unoriginal and dictated by externalities (i.e. the Perl syntax). If you read the SCO vs. IBM legal papers on Groklaw and find where they discuss how copyrights work, you can learn more than you probably ever wanted to know about such things :]

Now wait one goddamn minute there, bub...

[argent]

There is an issue regarding people who have been "contaminated" with having worked on GPL'd code.... even if just at a glance... and to try and make sure some of those algorithms don't make it into the propritary code base owned by the company

And the anti-GPL extreme is heard from, in a confused and misguided defense of the GPL against something I didn't say, didn't imply, and has nothing to do with the GPL!

Yuo're confusing patents and copyrights here, mate. The GPL has nothing to do with algorithms, and you can't get "contaminated" by the GPL by using algorithms you learned working on GPLed code.

I'm not talking about patented algorithms here, I'm talking about copyrighted APIs. The GPL, in a roundabout way, copyrights the *interfaces* to the code it covers. But that's as far as it goes... the GPL hasn't created some kind of magic backdoor for software patents to infect you.

Re:Now wait one goddamn minute there, bub...

[Teancum]

No, I completely understand the difference between patents and copyrights here.

If you have studied a particular algorithm in detail to the point that you completely "Grok" or come to an understanding of what is a complex process, you are bound to take some of those same ideas into other software that you have written. The GPL in this case has to do with the fact that you can't duplicate an algorithm exactly as it is coded. It then becomes a derivitive work if you are copying the same general structure... and you would pretty much have to if you are using the same algorithm.

Yeah, I suppose that is a patentable idea too, but in many cases what you have written is going to look the same even after you have moved on and supposedly "coded from scratch". This is also why I think software patents are completely stupid. You can use copyright law to enforce protecting algorithms just as much (or better) than what is needed for patent law. And it is easier to establish when something was actually written and to demonstrate if the idea even works at all. Using copyright to enforce algorithms would allow some minor to substantial changes to be considered a completely new idea. With a patent, you don't even need to demonstrate that the idea even works as is described within the patent.

BTW, what I was trying to mention here anyway was a certain school of thought that does exist... not that I necessarily believe this "fact" to be true. Somebody who is paranoid to a fault will be religiously concerned that somehow their software developers have been "contaminated" with GPL'd software, which therefore makes those software developers unfit for writing propriatary software.

From a more pragmatic viewpoint, this isn't nearly so much of a real worry. As long as you have an ethical developer, they will keep the two codebases seperate. Even so, it is very tempting to copy an algorithm you have been a joint developer with that happens to be under the GPL, and then take that same code bit to a propriatary software package that is buried so deep that (you think) nobody will ever notice that it was GPL'd source code initially. In theory at that point, the added code needs to remain under the GPL.

But as I tried to mention (and will again), if you are worried about GPL'd and other free licenses that may contaminate your software base, I would be far more worried about propritary software licenses that would also do the same thing. You might find some way to "undo" the damage of GPL'd software mis-attribution and be able to fix the problem easily and quickly. The developer community may even forgive you. If you tried to do that with propriatary software, you would have to spend the next several years dealing with lawyers and little else.

There's no reason you *can't* do that with FOSS.

[argent]

Well of course you can't just change a few things, turn around and sell it. Just like others couldn't do this with their closed code anyway... It's a little hypocritical if they want to do that. They should just do a little reading, as they could certainly benefit from OSS without having to rip it off, just like many benefit from closed source software without ripping it off.

I liked Kirk McKusick's response to the question, at one Usenix, as to whether he felt "ripped off" because Microsoft was using BSD code in Windows. What he basically said was that he wished they'd ripped off more of it, because it would have made Windows a better product and an easier one for him to deal with if they had.

There's nothing in the principle of freely redistributable / free / open source (or hwhatever the trendy buzzphrase of the moment is) software that says it can't be incorporated in commercial software. Open source and open systems are far older than the GPL... there's a lot of us who were already releasing our software under far more open licenses than the yet-to-be-written GPL when Stallman went ballistic over Emacs and wrote the GNU manifesto. And we were rather bemused by the whole thing. The fact that his ideas and the GPL have become to be identified as the model for free software (that's free, with a small f, not "Free" with a capital F and all the FSF baggage) is unfortunate.