Big Enterprise Open Source Tactics Questioned
June 5, 2011
The H Open asks, “Time for Amazon to Pay Its Dues to Open Source?”
We are starting to lean in the direction of agreement with writer Glyn Moody’s question. Big companies are more flamboyant than Lady Gaga when it comes to their open sourciness.
Moody opens with a reference to Google’s successful Summer of Code program, which funds student developers who write open source code. This is an example of the right way to approach the open source community. If you take, you must give back. Not legally, but morally. And in the interest of public relations.
Apparently, Amazon doesn’t share this belief. The article goes on at length about that company’s weak return to the open source community. It does acknowledge a small, old contribution to source code from 2004. Moody is disappointed in particular that Amazon has failed to release the source code for the Kindle.
In summary, he writes:
Like Google with its Android system, Amazon too has a Linux-based product that promises to turn its market completely on its head. . . .Amazon’s contribution to the open source world seems pretty minimal. That’s not only ungrateful, it’s unwise. It’s in Amazon’s best interests that the projects it depends on thrive: the better they become, the better Amazon’s infrastructure and products will work.
Amazon is taking an interesting path in open source. We’ll see where it leads them in the long run. Our hunch is that the path will head toward the walled garden in the hamlet of Profit.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2011
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