[Gllug] "Open source has its own problems" - article in Computing

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Rob Crowther wrote:

> Has anyone else seen the article on page 13 of this week's Computing?  
> I can't find an online version of it, but it's written by Stephen 
> Marshall, business development manager, Research & Enterprise, 
> University of Glasgow.
>
> I'm not going to type in the whole thing, so I will paraphrase the 
> major sections:
>
> Intellectual Property - he states that all work done when in full time 
> employment, whether at work or at home on personal time, is property 
> of the employer, the natural conclusion of this is that most OSS is 
> actually stolen from people's employers.
>
> Conceptual integrity - good software needs a single designer with a 
> clear vision, and this can't happen with OSS
>
> Professionalism - he likens the OSS movement to the games industry of 
> the early 1980s, where apparently bedroom coders produced really bad 
> games which nearly ruined the whole industry
>
> Innovation - OSS is mostly just rip offs of proprietary software
>
> Obviously quite a lot to disagree with, I'm going to start with the 
> intellectual property bit - I'm fairly sure that my employer only owns 
> the IP to anything I've done in working ours or on their equipment, 
> because the last time I looked that's what it said in my contract - is 
> there any legislation or court precedent that would change that?  The 
> next two are just laughable - conceptual integrity and 
> proffessionalism is at least as (un)likely in the commercial world as 
> anywhere else, at least in the OSS world decisions are more likely to 
> rest on the technical merits and less likely to be taken for political 
> or financial reason.
>
> In the conclusion he states: "[OSS]'s perceived strengths do not bear 
> close scrutiny, but do highlight current weaknesses in the industry".
>
> Rob

I know others have said it but I will re-iterate.

Normally IP rights are vested in the company you work for if

A. You work in company time
or
B. You use company equipment
or
C. It relates to skills/ideas you gained while working for that company.

Or any combination of the above

As an example.

I work for an investment bank, if I were to write an OSS share trading 
application as a result of ideas gained in my work that would be the IP 
of the company. However if I extend the eclipse IDE with a plug-in for 
PHP at home on my PC that would not. However there is a grey area, what 
happens if I decide to write a multi-platform scheduler and we just 
happen to need one where I work.

As for the 1980's gaming industry. Lots of rubbish games were churned 
out but that was as much the fault of the publishing companies, not the 
developers. Nothing hit the shops without someone agreeing to distribute 
it and yes the big companies of today were those bedroom companies of 
the 1980s. EA Games (although a bigger concern) started on the C64 and 
Spectrum and many others have developed into companies writing games for 
the consoles.

Simon
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