Open-source community hits back against SAP

TechWorld.com - Open-source advocates have lashed out at SAP AG after a senior executive's "bold and ill-informed" criticisms.

Shai Agassi, SAP's head of product development and technology, had said last week in a presentation that open-source represents a kind of "IP socialism" that kills innovation. Agassi later downplayed the comments, saying they had been reported out of context.

Agassi -- the first non-German member of SAP's executive board, and a prodigy said to have programmed his first computer at the age of 7 -- made the remarks at a talk at the Churchill Club in Sunnyvale, Calif., moderated by The New York Times' John Markoff. The interview appeared in several press reports, and an audio file of the talk was distributed by CNet Networks.

Agassi said SAP approves of some aspects of open-source, such as the ability to tap into the work of many developers and the ability of users to view source code.

But he heavily criticized the "rebel" and "IP [intellectual property] should be free" aspects of the open-source movement. "IP socialism is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society, and we are an IP-based society," he said.

Agassi attempted to lighten the mood by joking about his attempt to install a Linux desktop, but his discussion characterized open-source as fundamentally opposed to intellectual property protection. He argued that innovation happens only when it can allow private companies to profit.

"If there is no way to defend IP, there is no reason to invest in IP. If there is no reason to invest in IP, we don't get focused efforts going in any direction at all," he said. "If you look at what is the most innovative desktop today, if you look at what Vista is copying, they're copying Aqua." Aqua is the user interface of Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system.

"Innovation happens when you come in and say, [Steve] Jobs, 'Forget about all these vectors, we're going to pick this vector and go in that direction, and why? because I said so,' " said Agassi. "That is only protected by protection of IP. There are areas where you commoditize, but at the areas of innovation, at the frontiers, you have to have IP protection."

Some industry observers said Agassi's argument was extreme, pointing to counterexamples such as HTML and TCP/IP, which don't incur license fees.

Dave Rosenberg, principal analyst at the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), said the remarks amounted to "talking smack" about open-source. "SAP's Shai Agassi was at the Churchill Club making very

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