Re: CMU faculty/COSI: Adopting and Using Open Source Software

Tony Wasserman wrote:
> People:
> 
> Thanks for your comments about the COSI Conference.
> You are correct in observing that most of the conference
> speakers have corporate affiliations.  That is because
> I have a specific goal in mind.  Let me explain....

First of all thanx for your time and apologies for my rumbling in. 
Nonetheless i would like to reflect some more on your explanations inline.

> There are lots of conferences where the true believers

Is it necessary to be a "true believer" in Open Source? i think not. It 
is rather all about understanding. Making believe in Open Source gets 
you into trouble sooner or later. Pushing people into the "believer" 
corner is slightly unfair tactics because you take away their credibility.

> meet to discuss open source.  Personally, I go back to
> the development of Berkeley Unix, and distributed my
> own research team's User Software Engineering distribution
> as open source (BSD license) in 1981.

Kudos to one of the old heroes. No offence meant. :-)

> Among my goals for this conference is to address the
> IT directors, the ones who are spending billions of dollars
> on proprietary software.  They don't understand the open
> source movement and don't want to have open source
> in their shops.  Of course, they already have some, but
> they probably don't know it.  I have talked to some of
> the largest companies in Silicon Valley, and they actually
> have policies that forbid the use of open source completely.

Which is not a big surprise. The concept of Free Software does not fit 
in with a business model that is centered on selling packaged and 
artificially limited numbers of software use licences. They must deeply 
fear Open Source until they have found and adopted another way to earn 
money. Before being able to learn a new busniess model they will have to 
learn how Open Source works. And i 'truly believe' that it has to happen 
in that order. :-)

> If you want to get a message to them that open source
> is safe to use and that it is a good business decision,
> I think that the best way to do that is to have that message
> presented by people from companies who have had
> significant success with open source.  The focus of the
> speakers is not to sell anything, but rather to talk about
> how they evaluate, adopt, use, and support open source.

This is the place where companies and people get mixed up. My concern 
was regarding corporate involvement. Not the people. It is fearful what 
corporations tend to do to people. As true believing corporate paranoiac 
i have found collaborative development models (Free Software) to be the 
only chance for small caps to survive at all. More so it seems that any 
single piece of software cannot be developed by more than a few handful 
of people anyway. You do not need a large corporation to create 
GNU/Linux. And you do not need any money to use it either. So in the end 
OS gives the power back to the people. If i understand you right you are 
all about people too.

> Without going through the credentials of each speaker,
> I would point out that the whole conference is aimed at
> showing attendees how they can successfully bring
> open source products into their companies.  Since you
> mentioned Oracle specifically, I can tell you that my
> reason for inviting Wim Coekaerts includes his own
> significant contributions in the Linux community
> (Google him) and his knowledge of how Oracle runs

Who is Google?

> a very substantial portion of their own business on Linux.
> It's true that Oracle also makes money from selling
> its DBMS and its applications on Linux, but that is
> not the point of his talk.  Stormy Peters, from HP, led
> the team that put together the policies that HP uses
> to bring open source into the company and to include
> it in its products.   Many companies are worried that
> their own proprietary software will be compromised if
> they allow open source into their shops; she can tell
> them that they can do it safely.  And so on.

Conceded. Good people, good talk. Hopefully it will help to get your 
message accross.

> I am involved in other projects that are intended to help
> businesses feel more secure in their use of open source
> software and to be able to assess which open source
> products are mature enough to be used in their businesses.

These are two very different things. "feel more secure" translates into 
"believe" or "make believe" - see above. "assess which" is something 
different altogether. It can be done for free, public, proprietary, open 
source and any software. Assessment just might be a lot easier for Free 
Software products than closed ones.

> If we all want open source to be successful in the broadest
> sense of that word, then we have to go beyond the existing
> open source communities, universities, and research labs.

Conceded again and thanks for the support. The "broadest sense of the 
word successful" might be somewhat stretchy though. Why not just let 
people understand it.

> That's what I am trying to do here.  I hope that you will
> take another look at the people and the topics being
> discussed.   As Roger Essoh noted, we have to convince
> businesses that the TCO with open source products is
> lower than that of proprietary products.  I think that the
> program I have assembled is aimed directly at that issue.

Yes. But is the TCO lower? It might not even be true. At least i have 
read exactly the same amount of papers stating either one or the other. 
Bend the numbers to whichever need. There is no definition of TCO that 
would be accepted from both OS critics and supporters. So this again is 
thin ice.
The advantages of Open Source are inherent to collaborative development 
and use. i would rather describe it as an evolutionary process of how 
mankind manages knowledge. TCO is something very much more short 
(corporate) sighted and might - if the software is well applied also be 
lower with Free Software products. But does not have to. Nothing is so 
smiple that you can't mess it up.
Even a lower TCO does not excuse from thoroughly understanding software 
processes though.

Trouble is that you have exactly one day to convince people of what you 
want to get accross. And you have great people who additionally wear 
greater corporate badges. So in the end probably i am just envious of 
you being able to resort to such high seducers to get your message 
accross. :-)

Whish you all the best & thanks for your time.

> Thanks for reading.
> 
> Tony Wasserman
> Professor of Software Engineering Practice
> Carnegie Mellon West
> 
> _____________________________________________________-
> 
> At 07:26 AM 7/25/2005, Essoh Roger wrote:
> 
>> Arnulf,
>>
>> I agree with your comment...
>>
>> The best way according to me, should be the creation of a network of OSS
>> evangelists.
>> Profile, people working in/with Corporations and open source specialist.
>>
>> I can understand Oracle strategy.
>> Use Linux is an easy way to show open source flag into a commercial 
>> model.
>>
>> The real challenge for open source "fans" and "not fans" is in your last
>> sentence.
>> In fact the war "if I can say that) is away, the war is not based on the
>> technology but on the way to show why OSS TCO is better then the others.
>>
>> Finally, according to me, Open Source is a strategy the CIO can deploy 
>> or no
>> into the Information System.
>>
>> Best,
>> Roger Essoh
>>
>>
>> -----Message d'origine-----
>> De : community-admin-yzvPICuk2ADJNcJ45EAw5ze48wsgrGvP@public.gmane.org
>> [mailto:community-admin-yzvPICuk2ADJNcJ45EAw5ze48wsgrGvP@public.gmane.org]De la part de Arnulf Christl
>> Envoyé : lundi 25 juillet 2005 15:55
>> À : cosi-FRbg9EKgv2H2fBVCVOL8/[email protected]
>> Cc : [email protected]
>> Objet : [F/OSS-Community] CMU faculty/COSI: Adopting and Using Open
>> Source Software
>>
>>
>> Hello,
>> referring to the program of "Adopting and Using Open Source Software":
>>  > http://cosi.west.cmu.edu/conference05
>>
>> It is disappointing to have a list of the who-is-who large corporations
>> that do not further the empowering effect of FLOSS but rather tend to
>> cannibalize Free Software (even if the *people* involved try not to).
>>
>> In our eyes "Adopting and Using Open Source Software" should at least
>> shed some light on community effects, power of disruptive technology and
>> inherent potential for minorities (financial and other).
>>
>> It is a long standing joke that Oracle is Open Source because it runs on
>> Linux. What has to be done is enlighten people about what this strange
>> thing Free Software is all about. Don't let commercial interests
>> obfuscate the idea before it has been thoroughly understood. If your
>> interest is to attract commercial players then show them how they can
>> fit into the system without trampling all over it.
>>
>> Best,
>> _______________________________________________
>> Community mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://opensource.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/community
> 
> 
>