Open Source: A Bad Fit for Corporations?
November 9, 2015
I read “Corporations and OSS Do Not Mix.” The write up fooled me. I thought the approach was going to be that proprietary software vendors and open source code may find themselves at odds.
I was wrong.
The article explains that open source software and commercial organizations bump into licensing issues and some real world hurdles. The article states:
the joy and enthusiasm that I had when I started working on open source has been flattened. My attitude was naïve at best – this is fun and maybe I’m helping some other people do good and have fun too. This is also how a lot of my friends presently view their projects.
The list of challenges ranges from the selfishness of the commercial enterprise to dumb requests.
I also noted this passage:
Open source software is full of toxic people. This certainly shouldn’t be a surprise at this point. I would guess that it is safe to say that pretty much every person (including myself, I’m certainly not exempt from this) has had bad days and reacted poorly when dealing with the community, contributors, colleagues, etc. These are not excuses and these events can (and often do) shape the behaviors of the community and those observing it.
The article includes a list of positive ideas.
My hunch is that search vendors with proprietary software will become aggressive disseminators of the anti-open source possibilities of this write up.
That’s what makes search and content processing such credible business sectors.
Stephen E Arnold, November 9, 2015
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One Response to “Open Source: A Bad Fit for Corporations?”
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The article talks about how some corporations are just ‘takers’ without giving anything back – they expect the author to fix bugs for free, immediately.
This isn’t how to use open source – and it’s certainly not how we’d advise any company considering it to behave.