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

[Rob Crowther]

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
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