Erwin's StarOffice Tango

Erwin's StarOffice Tango
Erwin Tenhumberg's Insights into Open Source and Dancing
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Mittwoch Juni 01, 2005

"IT giants accused of exploiting open source"
I just found this article:

"Jesús Villasante, the head of software technologies at the EC's Information Society and Media Directorate General, said that big companies such as IBM, HP and Sun are just using the open source community as subcontractors rather than encouraging the community to develop independent commercial products. [...]

Baty did not respond directly to Villasante's comments, but said that companies such as his have a responsibility to contribute to the open source community. Sun contributes to a number of open source projects, including the open source productivity application OpenOffice.org."

Since I'm working on OpenOffice.org, live and work in Europe (Hamburg, German), but am paid by Sun Microsystems (not by any government!), I thought I should comment on the article.

Sun is contributing code, money and people to many open source projects like OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris, GNOME, Mozilla, etc. In case of "my" project OpenOffice.org, Sun is still the main contributor. Most developers are still paid by Sun.

Many government authorities are now deploying open source technology including OpenOffice.org, which is great. However, if any of these governments accuse companies like Sun to exploit the open source communities, I have to ask them how many code, money or people they have contributed to the various projects. Why are not more government employees writing code for open source projects? Why are not more government representatives joining committees like the OASIS OpenDocument TC? Why are governments buying open source solutions from vendors who are not paying the salary of any open source developer? Why are goverments not sponsoring more development projects?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing the use of open source by governments! I'm also not questioning the need for more volunteer participation in "company-founded" or "company-led" open source projects. However, people who accuse companies like my employer for exploiting open source communities should at least make sure that they themselves are acting as "role models".

Large IT vendors as well as goverments should equally contribute to open source projects. Thus, it should be a "give and take" for all parties.
( Jun 01 2005, 11:47:20 AM CEST ) Permalink

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