IT Giants Accused of Exploiting Open Source 511
An anonymous reader writes "A top European Commission official has accused major IT players such as IBM, HP and Sun of using the open source community as mere subcontractors rather than encouraging them to develop independent commercial products. Jesús Villasante, head of software technologies at the commission, said: 'The open source community today [is a] subcontractor of American multinationals. Open source communities need to take themselves seriously and realise they have contribution to themselves and society. From the moment they realise they are part of the evolution of society and try to influence it, we will be moving in the right direction.'"
The Inverse (Score:5, Insightful)
Errmmm.... No. (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, but no. The *real* moment OSS will be moving in the right direction, is when the OSS movement works out that source is nothing, operational hardware is everything, and getting that hardware into the hands of people who will use it is more important than any and all of the above.
OSS means Hardware Rules.
Hmph (Score:5, Insightful)
People write code because they enjoy it.
99.9% of the time what they do has no meaningful impact on 99.9% of existance.
People who write code because they think they're going to change the world never do.
--
Toby
Open Source Community Likes This (Score:4, Insightful)
When you write software for pleasure, you like others to use it.
When others make loads of money from it, the feeling is mixed.
Everyone for themself (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone who contributes to open source has their own adjenda. Private individual programmers may just love using the community software, business may just love the low price tag. Who can complain when everyone (open) wins?
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The hand that feeds them (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, although the multinationals do have a lot to thank the OSS community for, I think the OSS community has a lot to thank the multinationals for in return. Take Open Office, where would that project be without Sun buying StarDivision in 1999 and open sourcing StarOffice 5.2 in 2000?
Personally I feel that the current relationship is symbiotic and works well. Sure in the future the OSS community should probably become less reliant on the multinationals, as long as they don't bite the hand that's fed them.
basically for the programmer... (Score:3, Insightful)
The side effect is that the code is also usable by third parties, even competitors (remember who ships samba with their unix products, or who ships linux with their hardware).
Its not exploitation... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bah to your 'Hmph' (Score:5, Insightful)
Richard Stallman might disagree with you.
Re:Toby the Spoiled Brat (Score:2, Insightful)
1) It shows they have the concentration to sit through several years of education, so there's less chance of them quitting within a few months
2) It shows they have learnt basic software engineering skills that many geeks do not learn by themselves, such as UML.
Re:The Inverse (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The Inverse (Score:5, Insightful)
oh dear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The hand that feeds them (Score:2, Insightful)
At least if the effort had gone in to KOffice there might be a windows version by now I suppose. Not that I run windows, but for any Office project to suceed it's a vital part of the market.
Getting sick of European leaders trashing America (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, open source has impact; in another way... (Score:1, Insightful)
My best example is Sun [sun.com] with their Solaris OS [sun.com]. Another example is their OpenSolaris [opensolaris.org] approach.
Now, I only know of these two from mind because I happen to like Solaris. But there is more; like Microsoft [microsoft.com] which is considering to open some of its code.
And all of this has been set in motion by the Open Source idea, and the way its being promoted (like Linux, *BSD, etc.).
"Open source is a complete mess -- many people do lots of different things. There's total confusion today," Villasante said.
But isn't that also just the beauty of it ?
Re:Toby the Spoiled Brat (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice so they can safely be dead wood/office drone, they might even fit in a japanese company if they stop breathing
2) It shows they have learnt basic software engineering skills that many geeks do not learn by themselves, such as UML.
Yeah... it show they passed the test... not that they understood the questions
A matter of participation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Inverse (Score:2, Insightful)
No. Companies that distribute software built with modified code must give it back. Companies that use the code or even modifiy it and use it internally only need not give anything back.
That's one thing that is going to change with GPL v. 3.
The words of a bureaucrat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bah to your 'Hmph' (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, without Richard, we'd be stuck in the 80's or early 90's where all software is commercial crap, shareware crap, and all of the power over computer users would belong to big companies - forever locking them in and controlling their computer usage.
I'd say he changed the world more than say, a random prime minister of some country did.
Re:The Inverse (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source is the ultimate communist and ultimate capitalist tool.
On the one hand, successful open source development relies on the nature of man to contribute to a work without expecting a return - doing it just for the good of the community.
On the other hand, the GPL/LGPL/etc make it plain that, while you can sell open source software, you must also make available the source code, and anyone who purchases it now has the same rights as you do, and can give it away.
Communism: The community helping the community, for the sake of the community. Capitalism: The perpetual search for the cheapest solution.
on the other hand... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ask the OS developers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Getting sick of European leaders trashing Ameri (Score:4, Insightful)
They can't expolit me ... I'm in a UNION! (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe Villasante should get together with Enderle and decide whose FUD to believe.
Re:The hand that feeds them (Score:1, Insightful)
Intelligent Design (Score:3, Insightful)
How can you get anyone on the right, or the left to agree with you? ;o)
The overarching assumption of our time is that all change is the product of, and requires intent; if the intent is not in man, it must be God's. In our post-Christian [European] era, that which is not the product of the 'will' of a corporation must be that of a state entity, or else explicitly goodwill of a collection of individuals.
Natural selection is not part of such thinking. Emergent behaviour is perceived as the result of as-yet-unseen forces.
The power of FOSS is the is delivers results beyond that of the intents of the participants. The commoditisation of software spreads technology further afield. The availability of soure code does wonders for software development everywhere. By increasing the availability of resources everywhere, so must more can be down, so that the comparable harm to 'incentives' becomes a joke.
Yet the 'outcome requires intent' mentality means that the world moves steadily toward ever-stronger intellectual property regimes, and that the opposition, insofar as it comes from politicians is hopelessly idealistic, since they fail to grasp why FOSS is so very pragmatic.
Re:The Inverse (Score:3, Insightful)
A: A fascist who thinks he's an economist.
-Old Joke
I'm not sure how one can compare anything as democratizing as Open Source with a system as control oriented as Communism. Propriety software is a much better fit for Communism than Open Source. The great unwashed users of proprietary software have little say or ability to alter second rate software from the unresponsive bureaucracies deep within the Kremlin of Redmond. Transparency and flexibility are traits found in free markets and free software, not the Gulags of proprietary licenses.
Re:Getting sick of European leaders trashing Ameri (Score:1, Insightful)
All nations are essentially corrupt and only looking out for themselves. The amount of damage that they are able to do is proportional to the amount of pull they have on the international scene.
It's easy to look at a country like Belgium today and marvel at its high average income, its low poverty rates, etc, etc, but one doesn't have to look back very far into history to find times when Belgians commited atrocities in Central Africa (ones which most Belgians I've spoken to seem to forget about when they are lecturing me on the idiocy of American foreign policy). The fact is they didn't commit these atrocities because they were at one time a less enlightened more barbaric society; they commited them because they could, because they had the power, money and ability to lay waste to whatever lied in the path to their resources and riches.
Yes, compared to the world the US commits more crimes via their foriegn policy, but it's only because they have the opportunities to commit them. When the US has fallen from its most-powerful-nation-on-the-Earth status even if Switzerland takes this position I guarantee they will become the biggest assholes on the planet.
Re:The KDE runtime (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I enjoy my linux desktop best when I use wmaker or enlightment. But I will load Firefox and konqueror and not
I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
All of our transatlantic problems are because of that simple quandry. Europe sees that America's trade policies are trashing its way of life. But Europe doesn't have to follow them. Europe doesn't have to have giant economic growth and doesn't have to try and become a unified alternative to America. Those are European decisions, not American ones. IF Europe wants to have a slower economy and fall behind economically but have more social stability, then let it.
What I hate is blanket statements. Americans are a bunch of heathens that should be more integrated with the world. Americans don't understand foreign countries. Americans are stupider than their more civilized European counterparts. I mean, America has more people in more countries, both in businesses and in the military, then no nation in the world has ever had. America leads in many areas of research, has a robust economy, and yet, we're "stupid".
Look at how much Europeans trash Texas. I'm no fan of that whole Southern Texas thing, but, if Texas were a country, it would be comparable to many European States in terms of economic activities. It's certainly larger!
Re:The Inverse (Score:3, Insightful)
Communism != Planned economies. Just because the Soviet Union and other states had planned economies it doesn't mean that you should confuse the two. Marx believed that true communism would mean that the state would eventually wither away...
Re:The Inverse (Score:3, Insightful)
That's one thing that is going to change with GPL v. 3.
If that's true, all the Linux servers in the company I'm working for are going to be replaced by BSD in a matter of days.
Re:The Inverse (Score:3, Insightful)
Requiring payment even from for-profit uses of GPL software goes against freedoms 1 and 2 [gnu.org]. RMS is nothing if not consistent, and he has never expressed dismay at people making money off of free software before.
Re:Bah to your 'Hmph' (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever pays the bills (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Inverse (Score:2, Insightful)
open source is a methodology for creating information, which is an entirely different class of capital than that treated in classical economics.
Re:The Inverse (Score:1, Insightful)
Funny. I like to think capitalism is denying the reality. You know it's only a theory, a mind-game, right? It's not like it's "out there in the world"..
Open source on the other hand, and for those who practice it, is to giveth so that you can receieveth. Somebody embodied such values perfectly 2000 years ago..
It has NOTHING to do with "markets", or Microsoft, or ideologies, or justifications, or rammifications, or even be nice! or anything! Now, that's politics.
Even if you give more than you receieve, your faith is so that you know it's all perfect. It's just natural, and the ballgame is always changing..
Re:The Inverse (Score:3, Insightful)
Feudalism is better for the haves, because insures they'll always have, that why the successfull tend to gravitate back towards a feudal system. Capitalism on the other hand insures the possibility of upward mobility based on merit rather than position, so the have-not's tend to gravitate towards it.
Feudalism tends to self-destruct, especialy when the "annoiting" runs out, just as european feudalism self-destructed when people finaly rejected the churches "annointing" of rulers as the will of god, our present industrial feudalism will self destruct as the "annointing" of government protection of patents and copyrights run out.
The Inverse of Inverse (Score:1, Insightful)
If I change some programs on my Debian-installations, wouldn't it be counter-productive to:
1) Withhold those changes to myself so that next time I do apt-get, I have to merge my changes with the main tree? Effectively having to maintain my side-fork?
2) Potentially miss out of improvements and bug-fixes from others?
You can always find egotistical reasons for doing good, but of course the Best is to do good just because that's natural to you. It's human and quite natural to share. We've just lost contact with our humanness if it doesn't seem so.
You may call such protections an extension of various natural right to expression, but it takes laws and good, transparent enforcement of them to corral the market and the Invisible Hand and make OSS work.
Not quite. The aim of copyleft (GPL) is to abolish copyright. RMS has stated this many times over, and he's right. Free software is a response to the unnatural laws of copyright which says it's bad to share information. As if somebody can own information.. When these laws go away, there's no need for copyleft, because nobody can now stop anybody from DISTRIBUTING information as they see fit. They will be free to do what is natural to humans: share and enjoy life.
If RMS had not had many bad experiences with proprietary software, he might just have found a better job or watched TV or something. His statements are based on experience, not just airy ideas. That's partly why the Free Software movement is so successfull as it is. It has direction and power because somebody knows where we should be heading.
Re:Bah to your 'Hmph' (Score:3, Insightful)
So what? The GPL is a hack of the copyright system and a brilliant one at that.