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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.
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.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
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...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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.
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).
Only incompetent management and lawyers.
Okay I digress, most management and lawyers.
People make money out of others ignorance.
People make money by adding value to others.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
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.
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.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
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.
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...
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
"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.
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."
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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.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
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.
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.
Firebug. It will make your jaw hit the floor.
"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.
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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.
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