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Red Hat to Coax Code Contributions From Companies
Stony Stevenson writes "New Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has hit out at enterprises, bemoaning that billions of dollars are wasted each year because 95% of companies won't share code.
Speaking at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco, he said his company must take a larger role in urging enterprises to participate in open source projects and, in some cases, coax code contributions out of companies that have made in-house improvements. He now feels Red Hat should lead the way
'It should be part of Red Hat's job to define development in a new way, and get companies to work together' on shared projects, he said. The joint development projects would be designed to cover non-competitive parts of an industry, with individual companies still focused on their own competitive business applications."
My first read of the title was WHAT? Code for coaxial cable? Me no get it.
http://www.press.redhat.com/2008/03/19/source-code-for-red-hat-certificate-system-released/
... than the code produced by most teams.
Re-use is not just about shoving code on a server and letting people copy it. You also need design, documentation, comments, testing, and ideally some level of support.
A lot of in-house code comes with none of these and as a result is worthless.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I think Red Hat has no right to attempt to coax or coerce companies into giving away code.
This is a straw man argument. The article said "coax." The summary said "coax." You added "coerce" which is not something anyone had brought up. In principal it is no different from saying that Redhat has no right to attempt to coax companies into giving away code or molest children.
If OSS is the future, then it will happen, with or without Jim's little tantrum.
I strongly disagree. Microsoft spends a lot of money convincing purchasers that they are better off buying all Microsoft, proprietary solutions. At the same time, not a lot of people making purchasing decisions understand the OSS business model and how it can save them a lot of money. Providing a voice that explains and advocates this method is very useful.
It is ridiculous for a CEO to attempt to paint his company as some kind of inspired model upon which other companies should remodel themselves.
He's not "painting his company" as a model. He's advocating an alternative development method that differs significantly from classic economic models. Redhat has done well by being a contributor to that model. That is not ridiculous at all.
Aside from being futile, attempting to turn the Old Establishment around does nothing but hurt the nascent organisations that will make up the New Establishment by casting doubt on their methods and making them look like they are non-viable without the support of the Old Establishment.
Old Establishment, New Establishment?!? Redhat is simply talking to companies, whether new or old, and trying to sell them on a cheaper way to do business that also helps undermine software lock-in strategies. OSS is, quite simply a feature of software, that many do not appreciate the advantage of. It needs to be explained, like most other new features consumers are not used to using.
I can see Ballamer[sic] right now, in a room full of beaureaucrats[sic] saying "See? OSS is all about getting handouts to survive." Furthermore, it is brining[sic] wolves in amongst the lambs.
In such a meeting, Ballmer is a salesman, and most companies don't trust salesmen. Microsoft already tries to paint OSS as something that is risky and unusable to big business, but not too many people are believers, given that IBM argues the opposite.
If Jim wants to make a difference, he should fund new development from emerging pools...
There is a lot of software in use today which is used in various niche applications. Quite often such software is custom built for a company, and their competitors also use custom built software. This software is not really a point of competition between these companies, just something they need in order to do business. What Mr. Whitehurst is saying is that Redhat can be more proactive in going to these companies and getting them to open source this code and allow all the companies that need that niche application to share the development costs, rather than each of them paying to develop their own version. This leads to many advantages for the companies including: lower overall development costs, more competitive bidding on development, and standardization within the industry for interoperability. Further, getting some of this code open sourced gives Redhat (and other such companies) a way to undercut proprietary software developers when providing custom coding, support, and added services.
There are plenty of companies already doing what he says, he should be happy for that and encourage those already willing rather than attempting to project an agenda onto those it does not suit.
I think you're still missing the point. This is about evangelizing OSS as a way to cut costs for companies that currently don't understand or contribute to it. There is a huge, potential market for OSS development and a lot of closed