A think tank's view of free software [LWN.net]

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 18:26 UTC (Wed) by hans (guest, #148)
Parent article: A think tank's view of free software

The other top-level sponsor, naturally, is Novell; the remainder of the list is NEC, Unisys, Jasper Soft, OpenLogic, and SugarCRM. Not the most community-oriented bunch one could have come up with.

Okay, in my opinion, this comment borders on dishonesty. True, the sponsors may not be the first names you think of in the FOSS community, but some of the participants, such as Eclipse, IBM, MySQL, O'Reilly, Sendmail, Sun, and Trolltech, to name a few, have significant stakes in free and open source software development.

I'm not a big fan of the shenanigans that Microsoft and Novell have been pulling lately. I recently sold my Novell stock, which I had bought after Novell's acquisition of Ximian, because I just don't trust Novell anymore. But on the other hand, I don't think this commentary does a fair job of dissecting this report. Some of the comments in it are pretty asinine, true, but many of the worst comments come out of the brainstorming sessions. Brainstorming sessions often create a range of interesting ideas, not all of which are necessarily valid. Those ideas aren't meant to have the same weight as a well-researched report, but that context was basically jettisoned in the commentary. The commentary also ignores positive comments such as the following from Tony Perkins:

The cost of starting an Internet company plummeted by over 80% from 1996 to 2004. This trend was largely enabled by open source software and powerful, cheap hardware.

I'll just finish my rant by saying that I think that this report is interesting, perhaps even in the ways its authors intended. Although its sponsorship is questionable at best, and it's not as one-sided as the commentary seems to suggest. And I definitely don't think that this is in the same league as some other Microsoft-sponsored FUD reports.

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A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 18:42 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (4 responses)

A lot of the companies Jon mentioned, like SugarCRM, should not really be referred to as Open Source at all. They use badgeware licensing.

Bruce

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 19:12 UTC (Wed) by hans (guest, #148) [Link] (2 responses)

Okay, let me clarify what I meant. I am in no way defending the sponsors of the event. However, I do believe that the commentary is misleading in that it ignores the fact that there were a large number of non-sponsoring participants who, in fact, are very much FOSS companies. There is no indication from reading the commentary that any other companies are involved other than the ones listed.

I don't think Jon intended to mislead anyone, but the phrasing of the commentary was nevertheless misleading, at least in my opinion.

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 10, 2007 4:25 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] (1 responses)

> I don't think Jon intended to mislead anyone, but the phrasing of the commentary was nevertheless misleading, *at least in my opinion*.

Given that it's fairly clear that the sentence as written was an expression of editorial opinion, is it asking too much that you settle at "I disagree with you" without feeling the need to call LWN's editorial integrity into question?

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 10, 2007 15:21 UTC (Thu) by hans (guest, #148) [Link]

Given that it's fairly clear that the sentence as written was an expression of editorial opinion, is it asking too much that you settle at "I disagree with you" without feeling the need to call LWN's editorial integrity into question?

No, in this case "I disagree with you" would not suffice. I don't disagree mainly with the opinions expressed, but with the presentation of the facts. Others may disagree that the presentation of the facts was misleading, which is why I added the phrase that you emphasized. But that is not the same as saying that I simply disagree with the editorial opinion.

Should I have used the phrase "borders on dishonesty", even though that was used in the original commentary? Probably not. Although that was my initial impression after reading the report and comparing to the commentary, upon further reflection I believe that it was a reckless accusation. But that does not negate the substance of my original criticism.

However, since I did not intend to start a flame war, and have neither the time nor the energy to maintain one, let me just leave it at this: I believe that the commentary does not live up to the excellent quality and high standards that we've come to expect from LWN content.

Okay?

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 19:53 UTC (Wed) by mattflaschen (guest, #45185) [Link]

I think this should be emphasized. The key line in the report for me is: "This makes OSI the official keeper of the open source brand. However, many in the commercial open source world believe that their needs and concerns are not adequately represented on the OSI board." I interpret this (based on this report, but also the OSI mailing list traffic of late) to mean the group of companies approximately equivalent to DLA Piper and the Open Solutions Alliance (http://www.opensolutionsalliance.org/) may be considering co-opting the Open Source Initiative (and thus the Open Source Definition)'s role in arbiting the meaning of "open source". Already, SugarCRM and other companies are describing the MPL+Exhibit B license (e.g. http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/SPL) as "open source" even though it has not been approved by OSI and on the face seems clearly non-compliant. I would ask that people use open source to mean the licenses (http://opensource.org/licenses/index.html) approved by OSI. Remember, we're the market they want to decide.

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 19:26 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

> some of the participants, such as Eclipse, IBM, MySQL, O'Reilly, Sendmail,
> Sun, and Trolltech, to name a few, have significant stakes in free and
> open source software development.

IBM is less attached to its FLOSS product line than to its closed product line. Its representants typically only use the FLOSS part to pimp the expensive closed variants.

Eclipse is a consortium with a lot of big business members not especially attached to open source.

Sun is embracing open source because the market is forcing the move. I doubt the people Sun would send to a "business think tank" are especially attached to Open Source (more than to the old S for share Sun party line). Even if they were they'd auto-censor themselves, fearing to frighten potential customers.

The others are smaller fishes.

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 20:51 UTC (Wed) by hans (guest, #148) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not so much concerned with why the entities I listed contribute to FOSS (or FLOSS) as I am with the fact that they do, indeed, contribute. If market forces are driving their moves, that's perfectly fine with me.

Just out of curiosity, what companies' participation, if any, do you think would add legitimacy to a forum such as this? RedHat seems like an obvious one, but who else?

A think tank's view of free software

Posted May 9, 2007 21:31 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

A company may have a few or even many developers contributing FLOSS code and not push FLOSS in business forums. You have several levels of communication:

1. developer communication: everyone will say they're bullish on FLOSS because that's a good way to attract talented developers, get contributions/partnerships, earn goodwill in customer development teams
2. internal communication: what a company thinks of itself
3. business communication: what its salespeople think will attract customers (buzzword-of-the-day)

In a business think tank you do 3. Very few entities will thing the FLOSS song on this stage. It requires an internal FLOSS commitment (2) even pure Linux players (Caldera, Mandrake) have been known to forget (another example is Novell betting the farm on Linux then doing its recent PR disaster)

Red Hat is certainly one of the few companies that integrated FLOSS from 1. to 3. Mysql is so associated with LAMP it's probably aligned too (but it's a minor player, and I never saw one of their reps). SUN is the big guy closest to Red Hat, though it pre-dates FLOSS explosion, has toyed for years with somewhat-open, and its salesforce would probably need a few great years to be convinced the new SUN FLOSS stance is meaningful (profitable). Also SUN is rather smaller than its main competitors.

The plain truth is FLOSS hasn't succeeded as a business message the way it has succeeded as a developer message (yet). Even a pure tech player like BEA is still at the "mixed source" stage.

Now there is a *large* difference between being skeptical of FLOSS as a business value and writing the kind of hatchet job this report is. It's pure vendor spin and was written by whoever paid most to assemble this "think tank" caution.