SAP's skewed open source dogma

Jeff Nolan of Venture Chronicles blog and an SAP executive posted a response his colleague Peter Graf's view, expressed during a keynote at the Open Source Business Conference, that the vast majority of open source software is too immature and won’t have a chance to prove itself, meaning it won’t be a good, strategic choice for enterprises.

He’s [Graf] right about consolidation, but it’s kind of hard to argue that consolidation favors maturity when in fact we’re not doing the consolidating. Maturity requires consolidation but it does so for linear progression rather than the hockey stick companies experience when they effectively disrupt markets.

I think we are being too dogmatic in continuing to assert that the primary IP a software company develops is it’s code. We have done a fantastic job in recruiting developers and ISV’s to NetWeaver, but we’re never going to come close to what JBoss has in terms of numbers or enthusiasm. I just wish we would stop sounding defensive about open source, or even just continuing to deny that there is a real movement here and customers are getting value from it, it makes us look bad.