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.'"
Maybe I'm missing something, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
fedora core - redhat enterprise linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The hand that feeds them (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Everyone for themself (Score:5, Interesting)
But what would stop you getting the sources, incorperating their improvements into your code, adding a new feature that people will want, but not enough people to justify the company developing it, and releasing it yourself, for free? Or even just taking the Open source code and releasing it for free, changing for support? Then the company is left changing for the same (or less featureful) product you are now giving away.
Open source cuts both ways. They can base their commercial app on your code, but you can base your code on their commercial app.
Swings and roundabouts really.
Re:Everyone for themself (Score:3, Interesting)
The BSD people are very aware of this, and work their collective behinds off to keep software free. But it's a trap for the unwary.
Remember! BSD = sharing is not theft, GPL = not sharing is theft.
Socialist vs. Capitalist Temperment (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's leave aside the fact that this paradigm has always been a crappy one. You can't look at this situation in isolation. It makes a difference for example what the laws are and who, in practice, gets to make them. It makes a difference what the labor and widget markets are like, and whether the skills needed to compete really are commodity skills. It makes a difference how the boss treats the workers in general.
Leaving aside the fact that such a paradigm pretty much leads to pointless arguments based on incompatible assumptions, the the fact that it does incite these arguments is instructive. How you react to it depends on whether you are socialist in temperment or capitalist.
The Socialist temperment in its extreme form automatically looks for an fixates on anything smacking of inequity. The Capitalist temperment is quick to dismiss the possiblity that inequity can exist; any economic transaction is in their view tautologically fair.
Breaking the Code (Score:3, Interesting)
He Said:
He Meant: He Said: He Meant: He Said: He Meant: He Said: He Meant: He Said: He MeantOr am attributing to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity?
Re:Getting sick of European leaders trashing Ameri (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm also getting sick of people on Slashdot trashing America.
I'm also sick of people on Slashdot trashing Slashdot (figure that one out).
There really is nothing quite like sitting at dinner with an American girl explaining to her dining companions, all or almost all American, what a bunch of heathens we are, and how much we could learn from those overseas. What really bothers me is that this is intended to somehow exempt them from judgement. Americans explaining how dumb their countrymen are really do not sound any more intelligent for having done so.
Re:Bah to your 'Hmph' (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Inverse (Score:3, Interesting)
And that's why companies are going to run screaming from the GPL.
Not sure if this is FUD, so someone more knowledgable, please step up here.
From what I have heard ESR/RMS are considering requiring companies who derive revenue from GPL'd code (Amazon & Google for example) to provide a revenue stream back to the authors. This is a terrible idea... it sounds like a way of limiting the usage.
If so, I think the "Free" might go out of "Free Software."
Open Soiurce gets what it deserves (Score:3, Interesting)
Open Source was a reaction on the, from an american view-point "too business unfriendly" Free Software, to get acceptance from and win supporters among businesses and thus make the free software more popular and ubiqous.
However in taking the descission to promote the licenses this way, one did not only distance oneseleves from the idealistic Free Software advocates, but also from the leftists, who, in the rest of the world aren't as few and unimportant as in the US. I think that one could argue that this descission was taken on a bit too US-centric arguments.
Re:Bah to your 'Hmph' (Score:4, Interesting)
I can only guess that you where not around in the 80s. Not all software in the 80's commercial or shareware. There was also a ton of FREE SOFTWARE around before RMS started his religion. Think GCC was the first free c compiler? Look up small c sometime.
RMS didn't change the world. The real truth is if it was not for Linux there is a very good chance that RMS and GPL would be a footnote.
Re:I HATE KWord (Score:4, Interesting)
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!
I hate the software and avoid it because it crashed the first time I used it. And again. And again. It crashed whenever I wanted to change the typeface in a document. In other words, I had to conciously try to avoid the problem area every time I used the damn thing and it *still* crashed.
That was a pretty fundamental bug to have slipped through testing. What did it say about the rest of the product? Not something I'd want to have to rely on.
It was the equivalent of coming to a job interview with ketchup stains all over your shirt. You can change the shirt if it affects your ability to do the job, but the fact you didn't bother in the first place gives a bad overall impression of your attitude/abilities.
You know something? If I had a good reason to, I'd probably have given it another go by now. But I have OOo, MS Word and LaTeX, and I can't be bothered. Yeah, I'm human; KWord failed me repeatedly when I didn't have time to waste, and unless there's a compelling reason to give it another go, I'm not wasting time with it.
Large corporations and capitalistic imperfections: (Score:2, Interesting)
With mounting pressure from M$, or SCO, or any other company that feels wronged by people "giving things away for free" they will fight against the opposing buisness model with tooth and nail. OSS simply does not have the capital to take on software patents, accusations of stolen code, etc. when they come along.
OSS can take care of a lot of things very quickly. It's model for developing software and man-power availible is simply mind-boggling -- something no corporation could even match. There is not a company in the world that could pay to employ the amount of man-power OSS has on constant active reserve.
But let's face it, in this day and age it's simply not the ideas you have, and the things you can do; it's the money you have. It is unfortunate, but we see it in every walk of life in first world nations: second rate products are allowed to flourish and become main-stream consumer goods due to the capital the company that produces it has (*cough* microsoft *cough*). Mean while these companies will use their capital to destroy their competitors by any means possible. OSS is an easy target because it has no ready reserves of $$. You can always insist that somewhere buried in the kernel is an offending bit of code, or that microsoft was the first to develop a certain code declaration or algorithm. Of course everyone knows that is crap -- but who has the money to back up that fact?
When it comes right down to it, these companies like IBM, HP, and the like are absolutely needed to protect OSS from the imperfections of our own society -- so that OSS is less political and more development. The OSS model works great, but it can be eroded by capitalism on legal grounds unless somebody does something.
With all of that said, I would like to thank all of the large companies who work with OSS to keep it alive. Companies that work for people, and not for a corperate board, are few and far between; it's always nice to see something good done with money and power.
Selling stuff is unpleasant (Score:3, Interesting)
Marketting, sales, accounting, payroll, tech support, and business administration are all full-time jobs that developers don't want to do, and all of them would be necessary to have a successful commercial product. Open-source developers could do all this extra work, and would either get some money or lose some money. But they could also paint houses if they wanted more money, and it would be more fun, and a less risky and faster source of income.
Re:BS (Score:1, Interesting)
I have never bought ms office LOL. If my boss wants me to work on office docs at home, he better have a MS Office license and CD, unless they have no VBA in them.
I don't install MS crap without a purchased hologram ; ) Been threatened over it too. I just bounce back a "I am calling BSA if you want to go there". My laptop has never had anything closer to microsoft on it than WineX. Wiped the hard drive clean, out of the box from dell. It's never started MS Windows on my watch.
Needless to say I don't do much office work at home.
Never crap where you eat.
l8,
AC
As if (Score:4, Interesting)
If the problem is truly that IBM and the like are selling branded Open Source, and people are buying it, then the GPL will lubricate the production of competitors for 'IBM Open Source.' If this official somehow wants society to realize that IBM software isn't so different from, say, Debian software, well then I hope he's got the cash to market to the purchasing managers.
I contend that the "Open Source Community" is taking itself seriously, which is why more and more of these programmers are becoming subcontractors. Hell, a lot of the kernel work is done by people paid by big companies to do so. If it appears to be a complete mess, its because, in part, it is so. Amatuers and professionals alike can write software; by saying something close to "you want IBM Open Source" IBM is putting its professional word behind the software. Open source is not a centrally planned economny, no matter how many people have told you that the GPL reeks of socialism and that RMS echoes the rhetoric of famous Communists.