On Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 11:29 AM, Roy Vestal wrote:
Most of the OSS world is volunteer. I agree this disconnect is there, but
how do we circumvent it? I know there are a lot of projects on sourceforge,
freshmeat, and /., but for those of us that are not programmers, what can we
do to help?
I don't have a good suggestion here, as I don't have much faith in *most* people to put the common good somewhere in their priorities.
Why not make it part of the agreement that the "generic" code/scripts used
will be property of the author (consultant), but the use and proprietary
information is property of the client and cannot leave there facility as you
have stated?
I've tried something like this in the past. In my experience, lawyers are a big part of the problem here. Most lawyers are not computer savvy at all, and recoil at the idea of sharing anything that a contractor has developed. Their own greed is short sighted, as it ultimately leads to higher costs for their clients.
I've been able to get some things changed in contracts, but it usually relates to payment terms, termination clauses, etc. Intellectual property rights are a tougher nut to crack.
I'm not a consultant by any means, but from what I've heard from the guys
I've spoken to, their clients seem eager to have OSS solutions and it would
appear to me they would like to help in providing the solution. Dunno, just
trying to think outside the box I'm not in (consulting).
Eager not because it is open source, but because it is a free license so the solution can scale without additional licensing costs. Tracking your licensing obligations in a Microsoft shop can just about be a full time job, so legitimate businesspeople are relieved to have an option that removes this burden of software auditing from their shoulders.
I've not gotten the slightest indication in most cases that the Open Source aspects of Free Software are in any way a motivating factor. I mean after all, what is an accountant going to do with the source code to the Linux kernel? A doctor? A real estate agency? They could care less about the source.
--
C. Magnus Hedemark "From the Fury of the Norsemen please Deliver us, Oh Lord"
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