Stuart Krivis wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Jun 2006 17:47:40 GMT, "billwg" <billw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >From the article:
> >
> >"IBM will open-source a core portion of its upcoming "Jazz"
> >collaboration platform and then build commercial software on top of
> >that."
> >
> >Now I'm not one to throw stones at open source,
>
> No?
>
> >this is exactly what the open source folk fear the most, i.e. someone
> >takes an open-source initiative, say the "core portion of the upcoming
> >"Jazz" collaboration platform" and then builds a proprietary commercial
> >software product on top of it. IBM is getting the open source
> >enthusiasts to work diligently to give IBM a leg up on things for free.
> >
>
> This isn't that different from Oracle running on Linux.
>
> Besides that, when you hear about IBM or Sun opening some software up
> to the open source community, that doesn't mean that IBM or Sun then
> sits back waiting for the community to do all the work. IBM isn't
> foolish. If they want to use the Jazz platform to build products upon,
> they're definitely going to pay developers to work on it. The
> community will then work on whatever parts interest them or they're
> best suited for. (And will probably take the software in directions
> unforseen or unpursued by IBM.)
>
> So the community gets the Jazz code. That sounds like a good thing.
> I'm sure there will be people who build on top of that and open source
> the results.
>
> IBM gets some help, they get more people involved, and they might even
> get some fresh ideas out of it.
>
> This is all about the fact that it's possible to open source software
> without putting yourself out of business.
>
> I think that we can say that open source isn't going away anytime
> soon. There's a huge body of very useful code out there. So you can
> either hope that open source will go away, or you can embrace it. MS
> wants it to just go away. :-)
I've got to say, this kind of thing does make me uncomfortable.
Charging for a service or a product, fine. But combining open source
with proprietary... I don't like it. And I don't really like Oracle
running on top of Linux either really.
But Stuart's right - the big companies aren't going to put in the big
money if they can't make a buck too.
I just hope IBM keep feeding the open source forge, that they don't
plonk their proprietary thing on top and then stop developing the open
bit. There's money to be made in open source. I hope they don't
forget that.
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