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Having watched -- from the inside, for a while -- another major corporation increasingly leach off of open source (taking much, giving little -- practically not

Having watched -- from the inside, for a while -- another major corporation increasingly leach off of open source (taking much, giving little -- practically nothing), I'm just adding my voice to this perspective. I'm not inside nor advanced enough to have a... really well-informed, well-grounded opinion, perhaps. But, I've seen enough of corporate behavior, across multiple substantial corporations over extended periods of time, to speak to that. Even their "charitable giving." Even if is starts with or has components of genuine good will, by the time the suits, PR folks, and bureaucrats get done with it, it's pretty damned self-serving.

MrTonyD 11y ago
I was part of the team choosing charities. You might be surprised to hear that we evaluated all our giving for ROI (measured in columns of print or TV time and the equivalent cost of purchased time. We also considered audience - and overlap with purchase influencers.) In general, the decision was simple - are we making more money than we are spending on the charity.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  I'm not surprised one little bit.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    Me either but if the charities where good ones then it seems like a win-win to me. It's not that different than celebrities endorsing a charity for "free", they give up some time which gets positive PR and the charity gets the benefit of raising against their events.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      It's definitely amoral. But it's also highly inefficient - it means that if everyone takes Oracle's approach then only charities with high levels of positive publicity get charity dollars. Those charities who cannot generate lots if positive press can't help fund important research. Ironically sometimes research that crosses into another field and benefits another bug if research bring done.
      - noir_lord 11y ago
        Agreed, not saying it's an ideal or even warranted approach but it's also not a net negative, companies don't really have to do anything at all if they don't want to, though in the UK we have this concept called "Corporate and Social Responsibility" but afaik that only applies when you want some kind of funding/grant that is partially public sector. You could (and people do) run a company absolutely ruthlessly applying only the metric of "What is the absolutely best way to make money". Capitalism isn't nice it's just relatively efficient compared to other systems.
      - MrTonyD 11y ago
        Personally, I was asked to submit suggestions of charities to Larry. But it was made clear to me that there had to be some benefit - preferably large ROI, since small ROI wasn't worth Larry's time. And, while it was possible to occasionally ignore ROI, there had to be a good reason to do so (in particular, if I could find something that Larry personally cared about or had the potential to have large ROI soon or influence a particular CEO who might be a customer.) So when I made a list of charities I thought were worthwhile, I couldn't justify submitting any of them to Larry. So I never got more involved with our charitable giving. What could have been the opportunity of a lifetime simply left me more jaded about our Capitalist system.
merb 11y ago
Actually giving something back is really hard in the open source space. If you don't create your own open source project you will have a hard time to integrate into another open source project.
dave2000 11y ago
Not to defend oracle, but if you use software legally - subject to open source or whatever licenses - then the question of whether or not you are a leech isn't relevant to anything. You'd not base any decision on it; it just doesn't matter. Someone is providing something for free, and you're using it. As intended. re: charitable giving. If they're giving, they're giving. Doesn't matter what the motive is. "huh, they're only funding a cure for cancer/starving kids/etc because it looks good". So fucking what? What are you doing to help those charities? Typing is easy, huh!
blt 11y ago
Isn't this "leaching off open source" part of the proposed business model behind open source though? If you think Oracle is making too much profit from open source, aren't you supposed to start your own company and undercut them? I'm not defending Oracle's activities ethically, but it seems a bit naive to expect corporations to show anything less than the most despicable, profit-seeking behavior allowed by law.

MrTonyD 11y ago

I was part of the team choosing charities. You might be surprised to hear that we evaluated all our giving for ROI (measured in columns of print or TV time and the equivalent cost of purchased time. We also considered audience - and overlap with purchase influencers.) In general, the decision was simple - are we making more money than we are spending on the charity.

chris_wot 11y ago
I'm not surprised one little bit.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  Me either but if the charities where good ones then it seems like a win-win to me. It's not that different than celebrities endorsing a charity for "free", they give up some time which gets positive PR and the charity gets the benefit of raising against their events.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    It's definitely amoral. But it's also highly inefficient - it means that if everyone takes Oracle's approach then only charities with high levels of positive publicity get charity dollars. Those charities who cannot generate lots if positive press can't help fund important research. Ironically sometimes research that crosses into another field and benefits another bug if research bring done.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      Agreed, not saying it's an ideal or even warranted approach but it's also not a net negative, companies don't really have to do anything at all if they don't want to, though in the UK we have this concept called "Corporate and Social Responsibility" but afaik that only applies when you want some kind of funding/grant that is partially public sector. You could (and people do) run a company absolutely ruthlessly applying only the metric of "What is the absolutely best way to make money". Capitalism isn't nice it's just relatively efficient compared to other systems.
    - MrTonyD 11y ago
      Personally, I was asked to submit suggestions of charities to Larry. But it was made clear to me that there had to be some benefit - preferably large ROI, since small ROI wasn't worth Larry's time. And, while it was possible to occasionally ignore ROI, there had to be a good reason to do so (in particular, if I could find something that Larry personally cared about or had the potential to have large ROI soon or influence a particular CEO who might be a customer.) So when I made a list of charities I thought were worthwhile, I couldn't justify submitting any of them to Larry. So I never got more involved with our charitable giving. What could have been the opportunity of a lifetime simply left me more jaded about our Capitalist system.

merb 11y ago

Actually giving something back is really hard in the open source space. If you don't create your own open source project you will have a hard time to integrate into another open source project.

dave2000 11y ago

Not to defend oracle, but if you use software legally - subject to open source or whatever licenses - then the question of whether or not you are a leech isn't relevant to anything. You'd not base any decision on it; it just doesn't matter. Someone is providing something for free, and you're using it. As intended. re: charitable giving. If they're giving, they're giving. Doesn't matter what the motive is. "huh, they're only funding a cure for cancer/starving kids/etc because it looks good". So fucking what? What are you doing to help those charities? Typing is easy, huh!

blt 11y ago

Isn't this "leaching off open source" part of the proposed business model behind open source though? If you think Oracle is making too much profit from open source, aren't you supposed to start your own company and undercut them? I'm not defending Oracle's activities ethically, but it seems a bit naive to expect corporations to show anything less than the most despicable, profit-seeking behavior allowed by law.