Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz reports on his recent trip to Brazil, which included a meeting with President Lula, and on the country's embrace of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). He sees FOSS as the road to increasing interconnectivity, and thus, in happy symbiosis, to the sale of more Sun servers, though this economic benefit to Sun is low-keyed in the report.

I have no problem with Sun's going to Brazil and pushing connectivity, nor with its business judgment that making the operating system free leaves money on the table for Sun to reap by selling the other parts of a connnectivity system -- hardware and services. (Greed is good, as Gordon Gecko would say.)

But I do find the moral preening cloying. Sun can argue that open source Solaris is a good platform on which Brazilian software producers can hang proprietary aps. But this report has a different tone, which is that all software should be free. So the bellboys in the hotel should live on tourist tips while writing code at night that enhances the value of Solaris and Sun servers?

Somehow, I fail to see the moral superiority of such a system. I can respect the religious side of the FOSS movement, even if I think they are bananas. I respect the commercial side of the movement, which sees the advantages of cooperative effort to commoditize the operating system and some other programs, while charging for hardware, services, and add-on aps.

But I have serious ethical problems when the commercial wing uses the language of the religious side to sucker gullible young Brazilians into working for free, for the greater profit and glory of U.S. corporations.

As PFF keeps saying on its international trips -- don't defend IP rights for the U.S., for heaven's sake -- do it for yourselves.

posted by James DeLong @ 9:53 AM | International

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