Hi,
yesterday I was at a presentation by Libelis[1] about their JDO[2] implementation. Since JDO is a specification which can be implemented by many parties, other implementations, including as Free Software, exist.
For Libelis these projects are direct competition. This is also true for projects solving the problem of object persistence in a way not conforming to the JDO specification. The most prominent such project at the moment is Hibernate[3] which is Free Software under the LGPL.
The speaker from Libelis yesterday had much to say against Hibernate. Since it's no implementation of the JDO specification, he called it "proprietary", meaning not conforming to a "standard". Being a project with dedicated and visible people he talked about a "guru problem". All in all he didn't say a good thing about a Free Software project that is a direct competition to the product of his company.
Of course there were other Free Software projects he liked: Ant[4], Tomcat[5], and XDoclet[6] all didn't have the problems Hibernate had for him. Although all three being Free Software projects he didn't mention the problem of them being "proprietary" or the "guru problem". Since they are no competition for his project and since he can use them for his own work, they are welcome.
You may have already noticed that I totally disagree with the attitude of this person. He clearly was no part of the Free Software community, only taking and using the projects he estimated as useful while at the same time badmouthing projects that are a competition to him.
I think this is the way business people think about Free Software: Take as much out of it as possible without giving anything back. Fight all Free Software that dangers your business.
This sucks.
Regards Lutz
[1] http://www.libelis.com/ [2] http://java.sun.com/products/jdo/ [3] http://www.hibernate.org/ [4] http://ant.apache.org/ [5] http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html [6] http://xdoclet.sourceforge.net/
On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 08:52:10AM +0100, Lutz Horn wrote:
I think this is the way business people think about Free Software: Take as much out of it as possible without giving anything back. Fight all Free Software that dangers your business.
I am a business person, I know many business persons and I disagree.
Hi,
Am Di, den 03.02.2004 schrieb Bernhard Reiter um 16:35:
On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 08:52:10AM +0100, Lutz Horn wrote:
I think this is the way business people think about Free Software: Take as much out of it as possible without giving anything back. Fight all Free Software that dangers your business.
I am a business person, I know many business persons and I disagree.
Let me clarify: business people who want to sell non free software think the way I described. They only contribute to the community as long as their business with non free software is not endangered.
Lutz
On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 10:39:47PM +0100, Lutz Horn wrote:
Am Di, den 03.02.2004 schrieb Bernhard Reiter um 16:35:
On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 08:52:10AM +0100, Lutz Horn wrote:
I think this is the way business people think about Free Software: Take as much out of it as possible without giving anything back. Fight all Free Software that dangers your business.
I am a business person, I know many business persons and I disagree.
Let me clarify: business people who want to sell non free software think the way I described. They only contribute to the community as long as their business with non free software is not endangered.
This makes more sense. Naturally there is a clash of interests. And it should be pointed out when it exists.
Especially companies like HP and IBM that want to protect their proprietary business should take more criticism from the Free Software community.
Usually they get good press, though they strongly press for software patents and treacherous computing!
Lutz Horn wrote:
I think this is the way business people think about Free Software: Take as much out of it as possible without giving anything back. Fight all Free Software that dangers your business.
Let me clarify: business people who want to sell non free software think the way I described. They only contribute to the community as long as their business with non free software is not endangered.
While what you say, with this clarification seems certainly true (based on my experiences as well), it seems that more businesses in the world that use software are not in the business of selling software.
I would be even willing to wager that most software produced by businesses is not intended to be sold, and is instead used only in house.
I think, as many of us our developers or closely related to developers, that we get too narrow focused and start to believe commerical software vendors are the cornerstonre of the software industry. But as I indicate, most companies that use software, and even a great deal that produce software, would only benefit from using Free Software and giving their software back as free.