Strategien


Open-source Software

The end of idealism

14.07.2003
Von John Parkinson

Second, a lot of the intellectual property in Linux is actually owned by companies that never officially agreed to make it available under an open-source license. Most obvious here is The SCO Group, which is suing IBM (and threatening to sue everyone else who either distributes or uses Linux) over trade secret infringements. But there are others, including Microsoft, that could do the same if they chose.

Third, "open source" is no more a guarantee of intrinsic quality than "vendor source." By my count, Red Hat issued more critical patches to its Linux distribution in 2002 than did Microsoft for the Windows 2000 Server.

Finally, some behaviors in the open-source community surfaced because of the SCO suit that should give us all pause. The most successful open-source movement prior to Linux was the hacker movement—not exactly the kind of folks that corporate decision-makers want associated with their platform software. Some of these folks (reportedly from the fringes of the open-source community) surfaced last week and shut down the SCO website with a targeted denial-of-service attack that used knowledge of Linux's innerworkings to improve its effectiveness.

Mainstream adopters are generally risk-adverse and like well-established ideas and the products they generate. I firmly believe there is a place for all sorts of options in the technology marketplace, including Linux and other open-source software. Encouraging independent developers is an important part of the innovation process in the software industry; and widely shared, adequately protected intellectual property is a powerful incentive for innovation. Is open source mature yet? Probably not—but it's certainly getting closer.

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