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Open source as a bargaining chip

By | November 8, 2006, 10:14am PST

Summary: The big moves by Oracle and Microsoft, along with the newly-announced decision by Adobe to open source some code, has customers of all sizes asking the same question. Is this real?

Nancy PelosiThe big moves by Oracle and Microsoft, along with the newly-announced decision by Adobe to open source some code, has customers of all sizes asking the same question.

Is this real? Or is open source just being used as a bargaining chip? Is this a sea change in software company attitudes, or is it like free shipping on overseas orders?

This is a valid question. Open source is not just a feature of software. It represents a completely different way of doing business.

Open source is a set of values, not just a value proposition. The values of openness, transparency, and consensus are extremely difficult to implement, especially if you're accustomed to control.

Compare it to our thoughts on Congress changing hands. There are warm words about working together, but for now they are just words.

So on this question, at least, my advice is that you be a Republican. Take to heart that old Reagan-era saying. Trust, but verify. (Isn't Adobe based near San Francisco?)

 

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Do you believe the big vendors' words on open source?

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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983.

Disclosure

Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.

At the present moment I run only a personal blog in addition to my ZDNet open source blog.

DanaBlankenhorn.Com has the subtitle The War Against Oil. In the past I have used it to write about political history, e-commerce, personal matters, some ideas related to open source, and The World of Always On, which is the idea of using sensors, motes and RFID to turn WiFi links into platforms for applications which live in the air.

My IRA account at Schwab holds a few tech shares, most notably some Intel and Applied Materials, but there are no open source companies in it. I don’t even own any CBS stock.

Biography

Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for nearly 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the Interactive Age Daily for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age's "NetMarketing" supplement, and dozens of other publications over the years.

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jducoeur 9th Nov 2006
I think this is a bit too one-size-fits-all. None of the big companies are going to be *truly* committed to open source -- they're all afraid to give away the family jewels. But some are more probably more sincere than others.

Really, you just have to look at business plans. I'm fairly suspicious of anything coming out of Microsoft: since they try to make revenue off almost everything, they're unlikely to be willing to open-source anything that they consider especially important. (My rule of thumb is that, if MS open-sources something, it means they do *not* consider it a significant project. It's still sometimes useful to me, but I assume that they won't be supporting it.)

OTOH, Adobe's giveaway of the AVM makes excellent business sense. To them, players are always loss-leaders -- they're actually making their money off the creation tools. If they encourage more people to use the player technology, that just creates more opportunity for such tools. Yes, it might mean more competition for them, but Adobe has enough of a lead in that field that they're probably reasonably confident that they can afford it. So I suspect they're quite sincere about it.

I don't know if I'd quite use the term "bargaining chip" -- I just don't think it's quite the right metaphor. Certainly, all of the big firms are going to use the approach a bit cynically, and they're only going to do it when they see it as being in their best interest. But that doesn't make it any less useful to the public when they do so, and it doesn't imply any overt quid pro quos...
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poll
bensond 8th Nov 2006
The latest results of your poll, when I voted, were yes 100%, no 9%, bit of light relief after listening to the US election news bandwagon happy
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It's a win win....
viking386 8th Nov 2006
This announcement is a win-win for the IT industry and consumers because it will provide greater choice and peace of mind: greater choice to deploy the best of open source and proprietary software side-by-side, and peace of mind with respect to liabilities resulting from intellectual property protections.

The announcement demonstrates that more business and government agencies are looking to a combination of open and proprietary solutions and companies must wrk to offer interoperability solutions that enable customers to deploy open source and proprietary software more efficiently and addresses the IP open source issues that customers were most concerned about.
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Some of us take a very cynical view
jplatt39 9th Nov 2006
I don't believe this demonstrates more than an abysmal ignorance of the Open Source movement. To my mind the key piece of Open Source software was always GCC. The number of places it penetrated by 1989 was really amazing. Certainly LAMP is important but GCC showed both superior technology and that the open source model was workable.

However seriously we take M$'s attempts to extort money from Linux users, and there is no doubt that over the short term it will be successful, this seems to be a very clear signal that support for Office products in Linux will be entirely contingent upon their keeping the source code to themselves. Since that isn't likely to happen, we could possibly see the litigation we haven't. Moglin has already been to the Novell offices in Waltham to discuss it.

Ellison clearly assumes that you can distribute open source products without taking the same responsibility you would any other product, when it clearly warns both users and distributors in most products that the person responsible for installing the software is solely responsible for the consequences. This does not bode well for his efforts, and all he can do with his verbal blasts and shabby treatment of his suppliers is adversely affect their reputations. Thus even as he is selling Linux he's trying hard to make his distribution a defunct product.
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Its about license fees
mashley@... 8th Nov 2006
The MS/Novell announcement opens the market for additional MS products (Office for example) to run on Linux - that's what I think MS is going to do. At a minimum this allows Microsoft to get a license fee if the customer is going Linux anyway, and puts a smackdown on Oracle and RedHat.

Read more on my blog if you are interested at http://www.theconvergingnetwork.com/2006/11/kinder_gentler_open_source_mic.html
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There's no single answer
jducoeur 9th Nov 2006
I think this is a bit too one-size-fits-all. None of the big companies are going to be *truly* committed to open source -- they're all afraid to give away the family jewels. But some are more probably more sincere than others.

Really, you just have to look at business plans. I'm fairly suspicious of anything coming out of Microsoft: since they try to make revenue off almost everything, they're unlikely to be willing to open-source anything that they consider especially important. (My rule of thumb is that, if MS open-sources something, it means they do *not* consider it a significant project. It's still sometimes useful to me, but I assume that they won't be supporting it.)

OTOH, Adobe's giveaway of the AVM makes excellent business sense. To them, players are always loss-leaders -- they're actually making their money off the creation tools. If they encourage more people to use the player technology, that just creates more opportunity for such tools. Yes, it might mean more competition for them, but Adobe has enough of a lead in that field that they're probably reasonably confident that they can afford it. So I suspect they're quite sincere about it.

I don't know if I'd quite use the term "bargaining chip" -- I just don't think it's quite the right metaphor. Certainly, all of the big firms are going to use the approach a bit cynically, and they're only going to do it when they see it as being in their best interest. But that doesn't make it any less useful to the public when they do so, and it doesn't imply any overt quid pro quos...

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