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For many companies releasing their code is not something they would usually consider, regardless of whether it offers a competitive advantage or not. It's just
by simias 4y ago
For many companies releasing their code is not something they would usually consider, regardless of whether it offers a competitive advantage or not. It's just not in the culture. They don't see what they have to gain by releasing the code, but they worry that it may create issues if they do.
So basically if you want to convince these companies to open source some of their components "what do you have to lose?" is not good enough, you have to give them an actual incentive. I suspect that outside of places like HN very few people really care about Broadcom's binary blob in the rpi.
- bluGill 4y ago> what do you have to lose?" The problem with this is there are unknowns. Maybe nothing, but if there is something none of us have even thought of that can be a big loss. It is really hard to get past this fear.
- wiz21c 4y ago> They don't see what they have to gain by releasing the code, but they worry that it may create issues if they do. If they don't gain/loose anything but we gain something, I see a net positive for society.
- simias 4y agoUnfortunately that's not usually a good enough motivation for most companies. To be clear, I'm not arguing that I don't think it would be a good thing for them to release the code (I most certainly would welcome a fully open source rpi), I've just been confronted to this mindset a lot at work. Closed source is the default, releasing anything publicly means going through many hoops and levels of hierarchy. If there's no obvious benefit for the company and you don't have insiders strongly pushing for it it won't happen.
- JasonFruit 4y agoMy bet — and IANAL — is that a corporate lawyer looks at the idea and sees no benefit, but an unknown, probably small, increase in potential liability. In that case why would they approve it? They're not evil, particularly, but they are analyzing the situation in terms of risk and benefit. Societal benefit doesn't make their list.
- skissane 4y agoAlso, the lawyer can skim-read the technical documentation, and even if they don't really understand it, they can reassure themselves that if there were any legal issues in it they would have noticed them. By contrast, few lawyers can read code, so they can't give themselves the same reassurance with respect to it.
- wiz21c 4y ago> Societal benefit doesn't make their list. Then I'm happy I'm not such a lawyer.