Can European software giant SAP survive in the modern world? Will the company foster innovative new ideas or squash them?
The president of the technology and product group at SAP, Shai Agassi, recently dismissed open source software as "socialism" and stated that open source software was more likely to cause problems than solve them. Chapter 10 of The Pebble and the Avalanche, "Marx, Lenin, and Gates: Failed Counterrevolutions," discusses in detail the relationship between open source software and creativity.
Open source software is revolutionary because it breaks apart the old infrastructure that supported the development of software. By way of analogy, the "free range" programmers who develop open source software are healthier than the programmers who work in factory "cubicle farms."
In the same article, Agassi also dismisses his competitors at Oracle as a bunch of pirates — and also declares that software code should never be rewritten! SAP is fighting hard against the adoption of open source software in Europe and recently formed an alliance with Microsoft to lobby against adoption of open source software by European governments. In short, Agassi is pushing his company's party line by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt ("FUD") against Linux and open source; but regardless of whether he truly believes what he's saying, if SAP's response to modern developments is counterrevolutionary warfare, SAP will join Microsoft on the scrapheap of history.
Topics: · business · creativity · intellectual+property · open+source
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