Sunday, June 24, 2007
Is Open Source Dying?
I really hate when bloggers only link to articles without providing their own insights, expose gaps nor provide solutions. Figured one dimension that is worthy of further mention is why enterprises whose primary business model isn't about technology aren't contributing...
Lawyers in corporate America don't give a crap about Lennon or the nobility of Open Source. They do care about defending their enterprise and base all judgements on the legal notion of precedence. The problem with open source (at least within the United States) is that no court case has made it through where one party sued another for usage of open source. The question of intellectual property, especially when it is from a community with no clear identified owner is somewhat problematic.
Open Source adoption and participation can be increased one-hundred fold if some freakin lawyers were to get off their butts and start suing contributors with deep pockets. Of course we can all predict the legal outcome in terms of not only who would be the real winner (lawyers will get lots of fees for pioneering) in the legal sense but also the value it brings to others.
What if employees from Sun Microsystems such as Pat Patterson, Don Bowen and others were to get Sun to create a stupid little company that then immediately took all the IP and attempted to sell it as their own or at least use it within their own product where Sun immediately launched a lawsuit against them and didn't compromise forcing a judge to make a decision / ruling.
This would do more for open source that a bunch of boneheaded bloggers babbling about harmony...
| | View blog reactionsLawyers in corporate America don't give a crap about Lennon or the nobility of Open Source. They do care about defending their enterprise and base all judgements on the legal notion of precedence. The problem with open source (at least within the United States) is that no court case has made it through where one party sued another for usage of open source. The question of intellectual property, especially when it is from a community with no clear identified owner is somewhat problematic.
Open Source adoption and participation can be increased one-hundred fold if some freakin lawyers were to get off their butts and start suing contributors with deep pockets. Of course we can all predict the legal outcome in terms of not only who would be the real winner (lawyers will get lots of fees for pioneering) in the legal sense but also the value it brings to others.
What if employees from Sun Microsystems such as Pat Patterson, Don Bowen and others were to get Sun to create a stupid little company that then immediately took all the IP and attempted to sell it as their own or at least use it within their own product where Sun immediately launched a lawsuit against them and didn't compromise forcing a judge to make a decision / ruling.
This would do more for open source that a bunch of boneheaded bloggers babbling about harmony...
