This is old news, I’m surprised that it’s getting rehashed. Nonetheless, it’s worth pointing out that there are a lot of voices within SAP that are saying that open source is a meaningful trend and real opportunity for us. It’s unfortunate that the whole debate around open source gets hung up on IP when two facts cannot be overlooked, the first being that nobody is giving up their IP when they go the open source path (licensing implies ownership) and secondly that the software industry is increasingly pivoting not on proprietary IP but the community that a company builds around their platform.
Shai is not oblivious to either of these trends, and from my own standpoint I think driving commodization of everything below the application layers is a trend that is only being accelerated by open source at this point in time, and ultimately it’s a good thing for SAP. The application layer is another beast altogether, I’d give it 3-5 years before we have to cross that bridge because outside of Sugar there are precious few open source applications that I’d look to as true competitors near term.
The knowledge and content management categories are an exception to the above comments, and if the market really does drive collaboration apps as a major growth segment then I think we’ll have a tough competitive challenge on our hands because the open source solutions in this area are very solid.
The Stalwart: Open Source as IP Socialism:
One of SAP’s (NYSE:SAP) executives has let it slip that he perceives the open source software movement as IP socialism.
http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/05/10/open-source-as-ip-socialism/
