26 March 2007 - 23:57"What's really holding back FOSS adoption?"
This IPCentral blog entry is an interesting take on the question of what's holding back free and Open Source Software (FOSS or OSS, you're choice). After attending a private customer council with some of the very big enterprises last week, I'd say this blog entry is at least half on the mark though not wrong headed.
HP, Symas's partner, invited us to participate in an Open Source Advisory Council with around 40 of its closest friends (to remain anonymous for the usual sensible reasons). Several made it clear that they had policies to ensure that no code licensed under GPL came into the shop other than as part of a Red Hat or SuSE distribution. In many, use of GPL-licensed code in development was simply not allowed. The concern about the GPL was shared by most to one extent or another ... not so much for the OS but for adoption of other tools and technologies.
This was an important enough topic that many brought their intellectual property lawyers to attend an all-day seminar presented by HP's top Open Source IP lawyer and Eben Moglen. Eben is a professor at Columbia U. and Director of the Software Freedom Law Center. Eben is, in his copious spare time, managing the GPL version 3 process on behalf of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). It was, apparently, a spirited session.
The anti-commercial provisions of the GPL are perceived to be a threat to Enterprises. These large publicly-held corporations are concerned that inadvertent developer actions could too easily create works which were in violation and would put them in uncomfortable situations. Even a public complaint followed by actions to comply would be considered a serious public relations blow to these very large enterprises.
Only time will tell whether the session helped them craft more GPL-friendly policies. One would hope, for all parties' sakes, they can.
On the other hand, the IPCentral blog entry's point about feature and fitness-for-use weaknesses in many Open Source Software packages are absolutely on point, IMHO. Many projects consider their work "good enough" at levels that do not compete in fit and finish with commercial competitors. That is their privilege but it does inhibit adoption at some level.
Open Source Software packages do not need to match commercial products feature for feature. In fact, one of the potential benefits from the OSS versions is that they are lighter-weight and easier to use. But they have to work and work well.
... Marty
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