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convincing management

 
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I'm a big fan of open source and have leveraged various projects successfully in the past. However, we have new management that is, how should I say, hesitant to use open source. Basically the powers that be fear someone will file a law suit against us and either extort millions or force us to shut down a critical production app.

Given that kind of environment, how do I argue in favor of open source? Does anyone have any advice on how to sway management? Thanks,

NT
 
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One of the things I tend to do to convince management is to find a commercial product (the bigger the company the better) that is currently using the open source project that I'm interested in using. For example, let's say you want to use Eclipse RCP as the basis of a new commercial app. Then it would be easy to argue that WSAD (which is Eclipse under the covers) does the same. There are probably better examples but that's usually a way to start. Either way it is still beneficial to pass all OS licenses through a corporate lawyer ;-(
 
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One option is to point out that open source has its OWN set of high-powered attorneys -- check out OSI. IBM is known to defend open source because they would also have to pay.

Simply put, the more and larger companies using a piece of open source, the less likely someone will attack it -- because more and bigger companies means more money and larger legal teams to defend and countersue.

It's also important to note to them that the bulk of the patent suits result from someone using a product (that in most cases was not open source to begin with it) as a basis for a proprietery, for-profit system.

Due to the nature of open source, few products fall into this area. There's no profit to be made in suing someone with no assets.
 
Nate Schutta
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Thanks, I appreciate your thoughts! One thing that we have been trying to do is point out the differences between the various licenses. Right now there is an *unspoken* policy of absolutely no open source (though the don't currently have a problem with JUnit, Maven, Ant... never mind that our primary tool is based on Eclipse!) however we are trying to make someone (anyone!) understand that Apache and GPL are different. While the general council may not like GPL that shouldn't prevent us from using projects that have a license they can live with. Thanks again, I appreciate it!

NT
 
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My approach is to start using open source in ways that does not affect the runtime of the application. This enables management to get comfortable with the quality of open source. ANT, JUnit and Eclipse are all great ways to start.

But the real issues today seem to be with indemnity not quality of open source. In order to provide indemnity you may have to find a copy you can pay for open source. Along those lines, not all companies you pay will provide indemnity. For example, we are using he enterprise version of RedHat. However, we had to purchase it from HP because RedHat would not provide indemnity. In order to use ANT and JUnit we are going to have to use WSAD in order to get indemnity from IBM.
 
Nate Schutta
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Quality definitely is not the issue - its all about indemnification. Ant, JUnit, Maven, etc are OK because they are just development tools, if we had to stop using them they "wouldn't affect production apps" (though one wonders what the impact is when a suite of 1300 tests cannot be used because someone makes some claim against JUnit!)

I understand purchasing from a given company in order to get indemnification but how do you find out who will indemnify you for a given project? For example, say I want to use Digester - is there a relatively simple way I can find a company that will offer indemnification (and won't charge an arm and leg?) Thanks for your thoughts,

NT
 
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Originally posted by Nate Schutta:
(though one wonders what the impact is when a suite of 1300 tests cannot be used because someone makes some claim against JUnit!)


If that happens, you just convert them into TestNG tests
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