SAP Exec Disparages Open Source As IP Socialism 498
FlorianMueller writes "According to a VNUnet report, Shai Agassi, the president of the product and technology group at SAP, disparaged open source as 'more likely to break applications' than to deliver innovation. He also equated the open-source development model with 'Intellectual property [IP] socialism,' which he says 'is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society.' In Europe, it isn't a secret that SAP's management primarily views open source as a threat to its business, and that SAP is politically on Microsoft's side. SAP and Microsoft co-financed certain pro-patent lobbying activities in Europe, and recently co-founded the European Software Association, an entity that is expected to lobby for software patents and against open-source adoption by European governments."
Bogeyman... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, but socialism, in it's most basic form means "sharing." It means looking after your fellow man, particularly those who have nothing. Attach a bearded guy, and a couple of nails and it turns into Christianity.
Socialism (Score:5, Insightful)
If he believes that OSS is "socialist", and also believes that it is a threat to his business, then isn't he saying that the socialist model can come up with a market solution that is more competitive than the capitalist model? I thought to capitalist types that type of thinking was heresy.
It's all nonsense of course. OSS is the open market coming up with the most efficient solution to an expensive problem. Nothing socialist about it at all, unless you believe businesses sharing development costs for stuff that helps them run their businesses is socialist.
Mysql? (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are also a corporation, and pretty much a monopolist riding a one-trick pony. Of course they see Open Source as a threat! And as a competition, they must combat whatever threatens their bottom line.
In other words, they had to say this or something like it, sooner or later. You could say they're legally obligated to.
Nothing new or unusual, in other words. Just the usual FUD. *sigh*
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in many ways you can see that socialism appeared as a reaction versus totalitarian and/or oppresive regimes (yeah, I know this oversimplifies things, don't chew me up for it). So if you see Open Source as "IP Socialism," perhaps you should reflect for a second on why we have gotten to this point.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly, you get what your parents deserve.
Why should I be penalised if my mother is a crack whore? That's not my fault, is it?
Simple fact is, the standard of living/health care/education of 99.9% of the the children in America is not attributable to the children. Children of the poor, are getting punished through accident of birth, not for any other reason.
Re:Why against open? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's even simpler then that-they're afraid someone will write something better, and not be afraid to show it to the world. Is that a threat to their business model? You bet it is! Is that a -bad- thing? Doesn't capitalism eulogize choosing the best, most efficient option, all of the time?
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, I'll give you a polite one: socialism has never existed in Soviet Russia.
Re:Why against open? (Score:5, Insightful)
A Beautiful Mind, socialism and cooperation (Score:4, Insightful)
The general principle is that cooperation can produce better results for everyone than competition. Calling this socialism (which appears to be an insult in America) does not make it any less true.
What we need to consider is when cooperating works, and when it doesn't. For most application developement, giving free assistance to others will not actually result in a cost. They will not neccesarily be competing for exactly the same customers and in many cases, the other party is obliged to offer tit-for-tat cooperation. This means the whole industry moves forward faster, costs go down, and the potential number of customers will go up. Everybody wins.
This does not apply neccesarily so well to the IP based commercial software industry, especially when there is a single company dominating the software. But it doesn't have to. Free software has its place, and can bring benefits.
Eulogize? (Score:4, Insightful)
Come to think of it, you may be right. Modern Capitalism and the way it is curtailing freedom of intellectual property may be in the process of burying the best and most efficient in favor of the most advertised, best funded, most highly FUDded, what have you.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:2, Insightful)
Good grief. R&D constitutes a tiny fraction of Big Pharma expenses, with its bulk spent in "marketing and sales" (and probably lawsuit settlements). Furthermore, the most vigorous expenditures are in "lifestyle" drugs, such as Viagra because these have the highest profit potential. If possible, the drug companies would make no drugs whatsoever, only "remedies" in order to ensure even more profitable marketplace for themselves. The R&D expenditure whining is the most obnoxious and infuriorating of lies put forth by these, what can only be described as, parasites. The world would be far better served if the R&D was done by public academia and manufacturing left to private industry, whereby a horde of makers would have to compete on quality, delivery, packaging and all those other things at which private industry is actually good at.
the difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because, they are human beings. And you too. Because it is the way the world works. Because without generous help from other people you would be nothing. And I'm not talking about money.
That's just going to promote laziness and dependence on me.
No, if you think carefully about how are you in fact helping. Giving an alcoholic money is not helpful in any way, while giving it to poor woman, who has many children and whose husband died is a real help.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
Like, say, orphaned children or the premanently disabled.
You get what you deserve and all in a world where it's possible for an immigrant to this country to become one of its richest men.
This, stupidly, assumes that there is any relationship whatsoever between one's wealth and "deserving" of thereof. By this token a lottery winner or a spaced out on crack hier of a multi-billion dollar fortune are somehow "deserving" of them. Not to mention the impact of one's parents or place of birth, in the choice of which we have all such a great say, no? I see that the vile spectre of Spencer's "Social Darwinism" is about and as lively as ever. All that is missing from your ignorant musings is a mention of "God's hand" being involved in differentiating the "worthy" billionaires from the "worthless" Down Syndrome children. All bow before Divine Greed.
Why should I be helping people who refuse to help themselves? That's just going to promote laziness and dependence on me.
Translation: "I, Me and Mine. Mine. Me. I. Mine. All mine. Fuck off! Its all Mine!".
Re:He got it all wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
The transfer from an industrial society to an IP based is purely based on the fact that the current economical system drives manual labour to countries with cheap labour costs, no unions and poor economies. When we cant have our own industry our only option in the rich countries is to put a pricetag on all our current knowledge and sell that to the emerging economies. We can have them inventing things and selling it without paying us can we. The IP market is more of a defense against the now emerging countries like China. If we cant sell goods we sell ideas, IP and culture to them.
The proper way would be to fix the system so that it isnt that much benefit in putting all the workforce abroad and keep on manufacturing our own goods. Seen from a global non economic perspective its not a good idea to ship things around the globe.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like children of poor families who can't even afford to go to school? Poverty is a vicious circle.
Socialism doesn't necessary have to mean that people are given liquor money. It can also mean free or inexpensive health care, food, schooling and accommodation as basic rights to everyone. Ideally, a social society would only make sure that a) no one needs to die because of poverty and b) everyone has a realistic chance to work their way towards a better life. How do you go about finding a job if you can't even afford clean clothes? It's so much easier to shout "it's their own fault" than to take actual responsibility.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the Russians, under the Soviet rule, had the brains to see through the propaganda.
SAP is worried (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh and open source and free software have nothing to do with socialism and every thing to do with supply and demand...
Does he know nothing about the technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
The socialism/communism argument is bull (Score:1, Insightful)
Free market economics, or capitalism, is founded on the principles of voluntary trade and property rights. If a transaction isn't 100% voluntary on the part of each party, then it isn't an example of capitalism, because it eliminates the principle of mutual benefit which is not only how production is achieved, but how all wealth is created.
My point here is not to convince you of the merits of one system or the other; my point is to show why it is completely ridiculous to associate open source software -- an obvious example of production based on voluntary assocation -- with socialism and communism. Where is the central planning agency? Where is the "right" to initate force? There isn't one. Participants in the open source community do so entirely by their own will, and that is exactly why it works. Property is determined voluntarily, not coercively.
So the truth is the exact opposite: open source software is compatible with and benefits from capitalism, not socialism. If the core principle of capitalism (voluntary association) was eliminated through government, then the open source movement would be eliminated along with it. If government "took over" open source software, running the show thorugh coercive distribution of wealth, it would THEN become socialism, and the voluntary participants would disappear because they couldn't work for themselves on their own terms.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
For larger countries, say Germany and France, it's a disaster waiting to happen-- all the benefits that they dole out have to be funded from somewhere, and when your taxpaying base is shrinking, it's not a good thing. (Of course, knowing France, they'll probably find a way to make the EU pay for all of this.)
Finally, standard of living-wise the US does have a lot of variation but have you looked at the size of the US economy vis-a-vis these socialist paradises you're talking about? This is like comparing a bonsai garden with a forest and saying the forest not as clean as the garden. Interestingly, other large economies (like China and India) show huge variations as well. You might call that a bug, I say it's a feature because those are the areas that'll drive growth in the future.
OTOH, Europe's 'uniformly' high standards (being government-imposed) have had an unexpected side-effect: it has reduced the European private sector's drive to improve. Innovation in Europe happens by government mandate or not at all. This is breeding stagnancy in Europe and there's no way _that_ is healthy for their economy.
Re:He got it all wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
You are absolutely right of course. I would only add that it is also a futile and self-destructive "defense" in a long-term. It assumes, arrogantly, that the others are too dumb to match your R&D efforts or to produce their own culture. I hope I do not need to explain the frightening idiocy of that folly.
What is amazing and depressing to me is the number of otherwise bright people who buy into this IP sham. It is an economic and social disaster in the making, in the name of short term greed of the corporates and their paid-for, albait brainless, politicos.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, compared to the much more sensible US social security system?
The same old FUD from a new party member (Score:5, Insightful)
When will they figure out that "Open Source is socialism' line just doesn't work?
Free and Open Source software is about as socialist as "We The People", or "E Pluribus Unum".
Free software is about a community forming and providing the solutions to their own problems. You know, "By the people, of the people, and for the people".
I guess that SAP has joined with the opposition party. They all speak with one voice. They all spread the same party line lies and propaganda. Their followers believe the lies.
What's more socialist, expecting all of your solutions from big brother named Bill, or developing them on your own? Monopolies are illegal can only continue to exist when government allows them to. They oppose democratic grass roots solutions and try to mandate solutions from the top down. They act for their own interest and not for the consumers. That pretty much describes socialism and closed source software.
Give it up already. Free and open source sofyware is a force of market economics. It is a better way to design, deliver and support software. It is lowering costs and improving the bottom line of the consumers of software. F/OSS is leading the way in the commoditization of software, and the profit margins of the closed source vendors are being threatened.
Too bad!
Compete fairly or get out of the game.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:4, Insightful)
Barrier to entry (Score:2, Insightful)
it's rather "IP communism" not "IP socialism" (Score:5, Insightful)
actually, as a communist i kind of appreciate this kind of FUD.
these people equate free software with communism/socialism as a means of spreading FUD against free software, but as a side effect they make the idea of communism/socialism interesting for people who do not like the idea of "intelectual property".
and the equation is not that far off:
where of course the therm "socialism" is not really exact here because the "in the hand of the public" means in the phase of socialism that it should be owned by the state. where "free software" means not owned by the state but really owned by the public, that is: belonging to anyone who wants to make productive use of it. this form of "free association of working people" is a hallmark of communist socity and not of socialist:
so the SAP Fud is wrong i think. it is rather not "IP socialism" but "IP communism". where the P in "IP communism" is still an oxymoron of course.
A specter is haunting Europe -- the specter of Communism. [...] Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? (from the communist manifesto)
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why against open? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, what were those "bottled water" idiots thinking?
Re:He got it all wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
That is even more futile. If, say, China develops a robust internal economy (which is already showing a great promise) and then limits its trade with, at that point fatally impoverished, USA, where the average consumer would no longer be able to afford even the "Dollar Store" purchases, and instead focuses on itself and its Asian neighbours, how are you planning to enforce any IP rights? Stop Chinese companies from shipping goods between Shanghai and Peking?! Or to France? Japan? Lets not be silly.
Being a large economic power with the best funded army in the world does have its merits.
As a result of all of the IP-economy scenarios the first part of your sentence would be then in the past tense: "A formerly large economic power, presently attempting to reschedule debt payments". As to the second one, you cannot be serious. Are you planning to menace, of all places, China?! With its ability to muster more soldiers then US has citizens and access to nuclear weapons as well as a vast array of armaments, including at this point ICBMs (or what do you think all that fuss about Chinese space program was all about)? I would suggest to ponder the way in which the, far, far, smaller Iraqi adventure has unfolded. In the light of these, the Vietnam war could be considered a brilliant, near-instantenious, all-around military success for the US when put next to what would happen in an engagement with near-future China. Most likely, we here in Canada would have to quickly adjust to a Canada-Chinese border.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:2, Insightful)
No it isn't... but that doesn't mean you're entitled to anything from anyone else because of it. The fallacy in your argument is implied: that somehow everyone should have a "fair" start but, as your example demonstrates this doesn't happen without intervention - and intervention costs money. Money has to come from somewhere and, ultimately, from someone. This imposes a burden on that person due to your condition, arising from a misguided belief that they are somehow obliged to help you.
Some people delight in helping the poor and needy. Great for them. Others would prefer that their money was spent in other methods, as they choose, rather than taken from them forcibly to subsidise the lives of others and meet some arbitrary standard of "fairness".
Ironic... (Score:1, Insightful)
Further, at a seat license of something around $12,000 PER YEAR, the push by company commissars, er, I mean CIO, to make sure everyone uses this wonderful piece of software to justify the promises made to the central committee, er, executive board is only just short of Soviet-like.
Brezhnev would have used SAP.
You bet your ass I'm posting anonymously.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:4, Insightful)
How much of this is a legacy of a socialist leaning system, or continued pains from absorbing East Germany into a new country, or other factors, is up for debate. The fact is, however, that Germany is NOT doing just fine right now.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's important to remember the difference between "possible" and "probable".
It's *possible* a poor immigrant might become rich & famous.
It's *probable* a poor immigrant will have to work 3 jobs, 14 hour days and 7 day weeks - and/or turn to crime - to scrape together enough money to feed himself every day.
"Being employed" is not the be-all and end-all of society.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany has ridicolous unemployment, over 10% on average and well over 20% in some areas. Those are the offical numbers excluding tons of people (for example underemployed, people who've given up getting a job, people who are studying *because* they couldn't find a job, people on different reeducation-projects, people doing 1-euro-jobs, people doing a minijob etc) if you define "unemployed" as "is able and willing to work, but still has no job from which (s)he can live" then the unemployment is easily twice the offical numbers.
Population is sinking, in some districts drastically. Where I live the population has fallen 30% since 1990, leaving literally thousands of apartments empty. One problem is, there's not even enough money to tear down some of the useless buildings.
Savings are across the board. I live in a city of around 100.000 people. It doesn't even have a *single* public swimhall. (it does have a single privately owned "funbath" that receives some public funds) Social Security is definitely in the range where it's "Too much to die from, to little to live from". Huge amounts of money are wasted in a humongous, inefficient, nonrational, surreal bureaucracy.[1] At the same time Germany will break the EU stability pact for the 4th year in a row, and have already announced they'll not be able to keep it next year either.
Most people have had a massive reduction in buying-power over the last few years, and the trend continues. These days they want to increase the VAT by 2-3%, meaning everyone will efficiently get 2-3% less for their money.
If Germany are doing fine, I don't want to know what your standard of reference is supposed to be. Oh, and before you start: Yes I know Germany, I've been living here for the last 4 years.
Socialism ain't the problem though, it's not really defensible to call the current SPD/CDU/CSU government "socialist" even though I guess the SPD is on paper.
[1] Basic problem is, no "amt" is capable of communicating with any other "amt", not even itself. This results in absurdities like when you want to register a newly born child you need to go to "standesamt", get a marriage-certificate for the parents, then give the same piece of paper back to the same person as a proof that the parents are married. The "Beamte" is prevented by law from trusting himself unless he's first printed the certificate out, handed it to you, and received it back. I could give literally dozens of such absurd examples from first hand accounts after less than half a decade in germany.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:5, Insightful)
1st. Year 2003. In my application field, in North America (U.S. & Canada) ~650 start-up were founded. Europe? - 25!
2nd. My company - start-up - has made on exhibit to top 10 european start-ups. How? BY DEFAULT! We haven't yet managed to produce or sell something! It's just there were no other start-ups to compete against.
I'm living in Germany last 4 years - I yet to seen any progress at all. My poor home country Belarus - classified as "poor", "third-world" & "dictatorship" - sees more investments in development than "rich" Germany.
"Stagnation and protectionism" are two words I can use to describe local social and political systems.
And SAP actually is traditional German business working on traditional German principles. IOW. If complete idiot was hired - he will never be fired. (Competence of personel in Germany is really last thing anyone cares about. I'm working for third company and nobody - except staffers - ever looked into my CV.) All bugs are there to stay, since it can break numerous customer applications. 'Customer feedback' is something mythical, non-existent and ignored. Everything what have workaround is considered to be not bug, but feature. Ergonomics (it's over all German) doesn't ring any bells. Thick unpenetratable wall of management, secretaries, sales, service peresonel effectively shields any knowlegeable engineer from ever communicating with customers. And so on. I worked for similar company for some time.
bad analogy (Score:1, Insightful)
Open Source, as well as capitolism, is a highly de-centralized decision making structure.
In that sense, SAP is far more socialist than open source - especially since it is trying to increasingly harness patents.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't share that principle, that's OK. It means that I consider you a self-centred boob, and detrimental to a healthy, fair society, but I don't suppose you care about my opinion on that matter.
But please, please, please don't pretend that there's something "logical" in putting yourself before everyone else, because (despite what the Randroids tell) moral principles cannot be derived by logic -- you always have to start off with axioms that, essentially, define those principles.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:4, Insightful)
Germany's economy is dropping down the tubes.
http://www.willisms.com/archives/2005/11/social_s
Meanwhile America's economy shows the best growth in 60 years.
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20051108-102830-74
Although if we can't get social security under control we could be heading the same place. The problem with things like social security, and welfare is that they remove incentive to work. If you work you make less money due to taxes while if you don't work you get "free" money. Private accounts would put incentive back because the amount of money you put in to the system guarantees the amount of money you get from the system. Right now congress controls the amount you get from SS, and they can raise or lower rates in order to panic people who depend on SS for their retirement.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:it's rather "IP communism" not "IP socialism" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:4, Insightful)
Take also the Semantic Web - our research effort (on which both myself and SAP work) is indeed publically-funded research, but one of the building blocks in OWL, which directly descends DAML - DARPA Agent Mark-up Language...
What I'm saying is that in both areas the government sets the agenda for a lot of research and innovation, the real difference in that in Europea good deal of this is funded for the good of the people (how socialist - bleurgh!), whereas in the US it is funded for the good of the war machine!
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
And you DO know about the baby boomers, right? You know that soon to retire group which will overwhelm the pitiful population growth like nothing else once they retire?
The current system only works if there is either a monetary buffer of stable sustained long term population growth. What is happening NOW isn't important if there is a giant bubble moving through the hose known as your population.
Smoking (Score:3, Insightful)
First, it's usually no 'accident' that people end up with the children they conceived. I'm at a complete loss as to what you could mean by that.
The "accident" is not the children; it's the parents. The only thing that differentiates Paris Hilton from a crack whore of similar bad taste is the parents to which she was born.
Basic economics tells us that it costs nothing, and is basically fair, to let things work naturally, such as families.
"Basic economics" of the capitalist variety tells us, in general, that which rich people wish to hear. It is otherwise just as artificial as any other economic theory.
If you want to do something to change the natural state of affairs, it's going to cost a ton of money, like trying to keep all forests free of debris!
Basic social theory tells us there is a direct correlation between a person's education and their ability to be "successful," by almost any definition of the word. Our education system is structured such that those in poor communities receive poorer education than those in well-to-do communities; and this doesn't even address private schools. Basically, if you are born poor, you are more likely to stay poor.
If you want to do something to help those people, it's because you want to provide them with an unearned benefit to artificially IMPROVE their lot.
This statement is based on complete ignorance. "Those people" are just as deserving as you. Many of them moreso, I'd judge from your selfishness. Success is not measured by a bank account; worth is not measured by a paycheck. If that were true, CEOs would not receive salarys 500 times greater than a corporation's lowest salary.
Personally, I believe the only way forward is to help each other forward, instead of punching the weak in the face. But that's me. I'm kind of an idiot that way.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
To me it seems, one of the major problems in Germany is fear. People are scared. A lot of people have decent money, and if they started spending it, it'd help the economy, which then again would help the job-situation, which would give more people more money etc.
Only it's not happening. Instead we've got two classes of people: those who're not spending because they have nothing to spend. And those that are not spending because they don't know if they'll have something to spend next year.
I freely admit to being in the latter group. My wife and I give out around 2000 euro a month. Our current finances would easily allow us to up that to 3000. Only we don't know how long we'll have jobs, and how the salaries will be, so we figure it's safer to save some.
Thus the negative spirale continues. I guess it also doesn't make it better when the money saved is invested in foreign companies. Our money is mostly in scandinavia, the far east and non-euro europa. That doesn't help the german economy. I imagine there's *many* people like us.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reasons for our current state of "social immobility" are clear. There are systematic forces arrayed against poor people who want to improve their lot in life.
- Weak, half-assed social services.
- Employers who won't pay a living wage for unskilled labor.
- Crappy mass transit that basically forces people to incur the huge expenses of a car.
- Predatory lenders granting easy credit to those who won't be able to pay (and revamped bankruptcy laws that subsidize risky lending policies).
- Sub-standard public education. Public Ed. is mostly paid for by local tax dollars, which means that people in rich neighborhoods get well-funded education systems, while people in poor neighborhoods get shafted.
- Crime-ridden neighborhoods with no jobs and limited transportation linking them to areas that do have jobs.
My challenge to you: Drop whatever job you have right now, turn your back on whatever savings accounts or other means of support you currently have. Then, get yourself a family with two kids under the age of five. Your challenge: You have fifteen years to save enough money to give both your new kids a college education. You cannot use any post-high school education you've acquired so far in your life.
You and your wife both start out as as cashiers for Wal-Mart, but you can take a better job if you've acquired the skills for the job sometime after you started the project. How will you earn enough money to put yourself through the local community college while you and your wife have to support two kids? Will you have the drive needed to put yourself through college while holding down a full time job?
Maybe. It's a tall order, even in the best circumstances this society provides. Even if you succeed, can you credit your success to some illusory "self", without giving due credit to the genes that make you smarter, more resourceful, and more disciplined than many of those around you? After all, what did you do to "earn" the genes that gave you your intelligence? Did the genes that allow you to delay gratification come to you through hard work? What right do any of us have to judge anyone "worthy" of his or her station in life?
Some Slashdotters appear to have an idyllic view of poverty. Wake up, meander over to the Welfare office, pick up your check, buy booze, go home, beat the kids, fall asleep, wake up the next morning and repeat. So far, you strike me as one of those hopelessly naive sorts.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a reason Americans have a huge aversion to socialism and act like it's some huge boogeyman: Because it is. It doesn't work. Take German universities or the economy as glaring examples of that fact.
Re:Bogeyman... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry. All of the illegals are taking care of that problem.