Chez Blog

Open source and the corporate elephant

More and more open-source developers these days are employees of companies, paid to work on open-source projects, rather than independent programmers doing it for fun. The change raises issues for projects, programmers and employers alike.
 
A number of corporations are moving into the free software arena, and this has resulted in legions of programmers, paid by companies, moving into free software communities, Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems said Friday at FOSS.IN, a conference on free and open-source software in Bangalore, India.

This development has thrown up questions about how open-source developers on corporate payrolls can protect their freedom and rights from the demands of their employers, and resist corporate influences that may run counter to the free software community’s interests.

At the conference, an employee of an Indian government lab complained that his employment rules require him to turn in to the company any software developed by him, including what is done outside office hours.

In this context, Danese Cooper, a member of the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), who also advises Intel on its open source strategy, dedicated an entire session Friday at the FOSS.IN conference to outlining strategies employees can use to protect their autonomy from the “corporate elephant” that is both powerful and resistant to change.