SAP's Agassi denies anti-open source remarks

SAP has responded to a report on vnunet.com that attributed some controversial statements about open source to one of the comapny's executives during a speaking engagement at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

As vnunet.com reported last week, Shai Agassi, president of SAP's product and technology group, was criticised last week for comparing open source to "IP socialism", among other statements.

In a blog posting entitled 'I Love Open Source - Really!' Agassi described vnunet.com's reporting as "wrong" and argued that his quotes were taken "out of context".

"As I look at the posts and blogs out there that have come since my statements at the Churchill Club on [Wednesday], I get the impression that there are zealots so committed to the open source movement that they will pick a fight with software companies just for the sake of the fight," Agassi wrote.

In direct communications with vnunet.com, SAP claimed that the coverage offered an unfair representation of Agassi's viewpoints.

Agassi said at the speaking engagement that the ability for users to see the source code was good for debugging purposes, but that the company had learnt in the past 30 years that adapting the code did not provide users with any benefits.

Managing and maintaining custom code is generally considered to be more expensive than so-called shrink-wrapped software.

Agassi also questioned the ability of open source to innovate, pointing to the fact that Apple's proprietary OS X, not Linux, is currently the most innovative desktop operating system.

"I think Shai got a good point there," said Josh Greenbaum, a systems analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting. "We do not generally download open source software to be on the bleeding edge of new technology innovation." 

It is unlikely that open source applications will become a large competitor for SAP's high end applications any time soon, Greenbaum argued. There are not enough developers to give such a movement the same kind of momentum that Linux enjoys.

In the meantime open source enterprise software developers like SugarCRM mainly target the low end of the market, competing with Salesforce.com rather than with SAP.

By far the most controversial of Agassi's statements made at the Churchill Club event was about the need for intellectual property (IP) protection.

Referring to the open source movement, he said: "IP socialism is the worst that can happen to any IP-based society. And we are an IP-based society. If there is no way to protect IP, there is no reason to invest in IP."

In his blog posting Agassi reiterated that statement. "The one thing we do not believe in is the attempt to kidnap the whole open source topic by the 'socialise IP ownership' movement," he wrote.

"We have seen in the past that extreme socialism does not lead to extreme goodness in any area of our lives, and IP ownership is no different."

Agassi's description of parts of the open source movement as "IP socialism" caused widespread condemnation from bloggers and the open source movement.

The wording reminded the community of a highly controversial statement by Bill Gates earlier this year on Cnet when he compared public domain activists to communists. 

Florian Mueller, a German activist fighting software patents and founder of Nosoftwarepatents.com, believes that Agassi's remarks demonstrate SAP's ambiguous approach towards open source software.

SAP is a very vocal supporter of software patents in Europe, where open source backers have spoken out against them.

"Loving open source and lobbying for software patents simply doesn't mix," Mueller told vnunet.com in an emailed statement. 

He added that the repeated comparisons between open source and socialism are "an offensive generalisation".

"There are only a very few people who oppose the notion of IP as a whole," said Mueller. "The vast majority of us who fight against software patents are not socialists. We actually had to defend the free market and our own intellectual property against the lobbyists of SAP and others."

• Silicon Valley Sleuth: And now SAP loves open source?
• Next page: What are others saying about Agassi's remarks and his blog posting?

Below are selected excerpts from some blog postings based on both vnunet.com's original report and Agassi's reply.

Jeff Nolan, SAP Ventures 
"I'm certainly not going to pretend that I can speak for Shai, but his comments in the full context of the interview were certainly not as hostile to open source as the pull quotes that I have seen [in the vnunet.com story].

"The IP issues surrounding open source are legitimate but I would not go as far as equating them with socialism because even in open source IP is treated as property that is owned and licensed.

"The industry is evolving hybrid licensing models that accomplish much of what open source set out to do while also rewarding companies for investing in real development."

Dave Rosenberg, principal analyst with the Open Source Development Labs 
"Shai Agassi responded on his blog and in the media to my post (and others) last week regarding his comments about open source. I took his advice and went back and listened to the ZD podcast to make sure I wasn't overreacting. I was able to find all of the quotes I used from the VNUnet article and they weren't out of context enough to alter their meaning, contrary to what Agassi stated.

"SAP runs on Linux, uses MySQL, and invested in Zend, and yet fought for the EU patent directive. Is SAP a study in contrasts, or opportunistic? Hard to say.

"I think the point Agassi was trying to make is that software or any IP based commodity needs to have a leader (a commercial entity) guiding and supporting it. That notion has been proven right by SAP and wrong by Apache.

"I should have chosen another word than fool for Agassi. He's a really smart guy and someone future business leaders should learn from. I just think his perspective is skewed and one-sided. Oh well, I am over it."

Anti-software patent activist Florian Mueller at NoSoftwarePatents.com 
"After listening to the MP3 recording of that Churchill Club meeting, I think the vnunet.com story is accurate. The recording vindicates the reporter, not Shai Agassi.

"You can't love open source and lobby for software patents at the same time. Loving open source and lobbying for software patents simply doesn't mix."

Jason Brooks, analyst, eWeek Labs 
"I know it's popular to point to the free and open source software trend as a new red menace, but can anyone explain to me what open source or free software actually has to do with socialism or communism?

"Developers, or the firms that employ them, are free to license their works in any way they see fit. If these individuals or groups use the code of others in their works, they're required to abide by the licences under which the developers of those borrowed works released their code.

"Did the writing of that sentence just evoke a Karl Marx cackle from beyond the grave? Is Lenin now grinning underneath his waxy coating?"

More blog postings on this subject can be found using blog search engines such as Technorati or Ice Rocket.