SAP — Open Source Friend Or Foe ? 155
pavithran writes "Does SAP, one of the largest business companies offering software solutions, support FOSS as a movement? Why is SAP looking at closed and open source in a similar way? This shows lot of ambiguity in SAP's attitude towards open source software. I found an interesting article in Linux Journal on whether SAP is an open source friend or foe, by Glyn Moody. Here's a quote from the article: 'For an outfit that calls itself "the world's largest business software company," the German software giant SAP is relatively little-known in the open source world. With 51,500 employees, a turnover of 11.5 billion euros ($16 billion) last year, and operating profits of 2.7 billion euros ($3.8 billion), SAP is clearly one of the heavyweights in the computer world. Given that huge clout, SAP's attitude to open source is important; and yet it is hard to tell whether it is really free software's friend or its foe. ... A company that wished open source well would back these ideas. One that really supported free software would also fight against software patents. So, while SAP's involvement in Eclipse and investment in open source companies is welcome — and pretty self-interested, it has to be said, given that it presumably hopes to make a profit on them — it's not really enough cancel out its unhelpful attitude and statements elsewhere. If it wants to be a serious, respected player in the world of open source, as befits its size, it must do better.'"
Re:It's pretty simple (Score:1, Informative)
But the nice thing with SAP is that you can look at the code. They ship their sources to all the customers. I know many so called big open souce supporting companies that don't ship the sources of their products.
OpenERP (Score:3, Informative)
Nice true open source alternative to SAP:
http://openerp.com/
Re:It's pretty simple (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed. You don't want to look at your code. ABAP gives me a headache, and the way SAP designs their code.... I guess I'm just not smart enough to follow what's going on after the 20th INCLUDE within an INCLUDE within an INCLUDE. It's poorly documented, and usually the comments [in the code] are in German.