IBM Exec Bemoans Lack of Industry-Specific Linux Apps

Ian Lamont writes "Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards, used his keynote appearance at LinuxWorld to complain about the lack of industry-specific open source apps. Despite some encouraging signs in the educational field with Sakai, Sutor said that he was 'tired of waiting' for specialized applications to appear in other sectors, adding that the proliferation of different licenses — and changing legal requirements for using the same software over time — is holding some businesses back from using open source applications."

Re:Just a thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://happypenguin.org/show?OpenGTA

i dunno

[nawcom]

but I think a company could get open source programmers to work on open source industry-specific apps by *shocked* paying them for it! I sure as hell would take time out of working on my own apps to do contract work for IBM, as long as a check is coming to me in the mail. No money? I'll just continue to put my heart into my own open source applications. Heh, no, I did not RTFA yet.

Re:GPL not strong enough.

[smellotron]

I believe the GP is referring to another company developing extra features for in-house use, then distributing the app in-house. AFAIK the GPL licensing requires the company's developers to provide the source modifications to the company's users, but the company as a whole can keep those modifications private.

Re:Very true

[segedunum]

We are a 95% Linux site- servers and clients, and it is nearly impossible to find industry specific Linux applications. The kicker is- we would be happy with even CLOSED source, commercial applications.

For industry specific and niche applications it is doubtful whether you will ever get a set of open source applications for a lot of set purposes. What is required are reasonably straightforward development frameworks for application developers to pick up, create a wide variety of software and be able distribute those applications easily to you. Linux and open source software has various parts of this in place, but the main problems aren't being solved. If we get that then maybe open source developers from the Windows world will chime in as well and create a snowball effect.

What is needed is a COMPELLING, modern, cross-platform, open-source, GUI, business application development environment. It is 2008.

It has one. It's called Qt (yes, it works everywhere well on Linux, Unix, OS X and Windows), it really works and it even has a modern desktop environment developed with it called KDE with frameworks being developed that are trying to solve some of the more pressing problems we've had for years - easy desktop scripting and development, easy installation, integration of the OS with the desktop etc.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Linux companies seem to be fannying about with stuff that isn't going to work or move forwards this side of the next ice age.

INTERNATIONAL Business Machines

[sjbe]

They really do not hire any Americans in significant numbers.

Yeah funny how a company called International Business Machines which operates in 170 countries and gets 63% of its revenue from outside the US [ibm.com] would even think to hire someone anyone but Americans. I can't fathom why they want to hire locally in BRIC [wikipedia.org] countries where IBM's revenue grew 26% in 2007. Apparently no one informed IBM that they have a responsibility to only hire Americans who know little to nothing about the countries where IBM is seeing the highest growth.

I cannot explain it but over the last several years I have yet to see an Indian developer who was trully creative and innovative.

Right, because a nuclear power like India with a billion citizens must not have a single creative person. I'm sure all the incredibly talented Indian engineers and doctors I've personally met must really be from somewhere else. After all, according to you they have no imagination or creativity if they are from India.