[TriLUG] Open Source Propaganda

[Rick DeNatale]

On 4/19/06, Scott Chilcote <scottchilcote at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Mark Freeze wrote:
> > We are trying to answer questions like the one asked by our CEO last
> > week.  We had just shown him our new SugarCRM database and he said,
> > "That's great!  But I can't understand why anyone would write a
> > product like this and then just give it away..."
> >
> > Does anyone have any good sources for the 'theory behind' open source,
> > or open source practices?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Mark.
>
> Hi Mark,
>
> If you look closely at the phrasing of the question your CEO asked, you
> can see that it builds an unnecessary fence around the answer.  "Why
> would you build a wonderful product and then just give it away?" serves
> to throw you into a defensive posture, with the likely outcome of
> looking foolish.  It is much more of a statement of opinion than a
> forthright question.

Yes, I read the same thing into the question.

Perhaps one way to answer it would be something like this:

"That's a really good question, I wonder why companies like IBM,
Novell, ... have decided to produce major software products as open
source?"

And arm yourself with a little googling on the open source
announcements and strategies of these companies, these came from
googling "ibm open source" and are a tad old, I'm sure you can find
more recent references, since IBM has continued to be active.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3499276
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1750358,00.asp
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2860394,00.html

WHY do companies like IBM pursue an open source strategy?  I can think
of two reasons right off the bat.

1) Open source and open standards go hand in hand.  IBM gave up on
trying to forge de-facto standards some time ago, and now heavily
participates in open standards to position themselves against those
who have taken up the banner of proprietary technology.  Open
standards tend to go hand in hand with open implementations of those
standards.  This is true not only on open source based platforms like
linux, but also on top of more closed platforms like java, hence
open-source extensions like eclipse and OSGi.

2) More pragmatically, open source software is starting to take market
share away from closed source software, and there is an "if you can't
beat them" effect.  Formerly closed heavy-hitters like DB2 are being
open-sourced, at least in some versions and environments, in order to
compete with the MySqls, and Apaches and their ilk.

3) In the long run, revenues will come from consulting instead of
products, this cleary seems to be the long term strategy of IBM.
Meeting the broad requirements of the user community just might be
more efficient by building an open source community of developers and
extenders than by building and maintaining large in-house product
development staffs.

But that's just my opinion.

By the way, this reflects user benefits of open source rather than
attacking the CEOs question, but I ran across this interesting little
tid-bit yesterday

http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/opsys_aadechghcd_ae/

--
Rick DeNatale

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