Bug hunters, software firms in uneasy alliance

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You're Half Right

You wrote:

>Because a proprietary products is the intellectual property of
>a commercial busines, the larger these businesses/companies
>are, the more they will have a hidden agenda for the
>management of discovered flaws.

The problem is not the proprietary model, it's the BIGNESS of the company that politicizes the flaws and subordinates quality to the politics of perception. In fact, it's the dilution of the intellectual property interest that drives the product quality south.

That's the reason why your argument about open source holds any water at all. The proprietary interest of the highly focused, dedicated coder in the intellectual property he invests in the code he writes is the very element that engenders its quality. It sure isn't the money he makes, which in most cases is non-existent. The fact that intellectual property is mismanaged by large corporations does not constitute an invalidation of the concept of intellectual property itself; it's essentially the very basis of your argument.

When you work for a corporation, you're usually required to surrender all your natural proprietary rights to any of the intellectual property you develop during your term of employment. That sucks. In other words, in most cases, the corporations have appropriated the intellectual property of their workers without proper compensation, which makes it more like plunder than property. When you remove the "property" aspect of the product, those who create it no longer have a proprietary interest in it. The reason you've got corporate crapware is NOT because it's a proprietary model at all; rather, it's actually the antithesis of a proprietary model.

Open source appears to be a superior model by comparison, and I will admit that in some ways it is, but that's only because the vast majority of commercial software is developed by companies that don't recognize intellectual property; they simply force their employees to surrender it to them in exchange for a paycheck. The company is gambling that its employees will write some very valuable code and they won't have to compensate them for it based on what it's worth. If businesses ever manage to get their heads out of their butts and develop TRUE proprietary models with rational and moral compensation structures that reward those who create valuable, high-quality products, open source will wither into obsolescence.

Why? Because the people who develop open source software will realize that they can get a much better deal by working for a company that rewards them for the value of their intellectual property, rather than essentially forcing them to fork it over in return for a paycheck. The deal is simple: if you write code that a lot of people vote for with their wallets, your monetary reward reflects that valuation. That's a REAL proprietary model -- one in which the dedicated people who currently write open source code will exchange places with those who currently seek a corporate environment that promotes and rewards mediocrity with a false sense of security.

Posted by: native alien   Posted on: 09/06/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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