And you thought Microsoft's open source FUD was bad

If we were going to award a proprietary software vendor for the "Worst Open Source FUD of 2008," TeleSoft International, not Microsoft, would take the prize. Indeed, in a year that has seen Microsoft embrace open source to an increased degree, TeleSoft has gone on a full-frontal assault, claiming in a video that open source is poorly tailored to customer needs, ruins their profitability, and delays their time to market.

In other words, TeleSoft is claiming that open source will do precisely the opposite of what companies normally find that it delivers.

Open source FUD

(Credit: Telesoft)

Perhaps recognizing that not everyone will buy into its FUD, TeleSoft claims to support the popular Linux operating system, but with a kernel-loadable module approach that keeps its IP safe from that voracious appetite of IP-stealing Linux. Nice. TeleSoft wants to have its cake ("open source is terrible!") and eat it, too ("but our open source is not so terrible!").

TeleSoft provides protocol stacks to the telecom industry, and from the sound of things it's getting sick of losing to open source. I used to work in this embedded Network and Communications market years ago and open-source adoption was exceptionally high. Threatened by open source's low price and high functionality, it's not surprising to see TeleSoft fight back.

But it might want to use factual information next time. The developers it's targeting with this FUD campaign will struggle to understand TeleSoft's point that "no documentation and quality testing means no guarantee of interoperability." (What does quality testing have to do with interoperability?) They'll scoff at the notion that open source isn't (or can't be) "tailored for [customers'] unique hardware and operating system." In fact, the opposite is, or can be, true.

And so forth. This FUD is egregiously bad. Fortunately for open source, TeleSoft doesn't have a big enough megaphone to spread the FUD very far.

[cdcrowe]

Mr. Asay is unfair in his claim that what we said about open source protocol stacks is not "factual." Specifically: By "no documentation and quality testing" we mean something that open source protocol stacks generally lack -- documented, comprehensive, focused, regular interop testing to verify interoperability with a variety of other devices, softphones, proxies, etc. -- so what we said is factual, and highly relevant to developers pondering the different approaches. And, there he goes again -- open source indeed "can be" tailored to fit OSs that it doesn't currently support -- anything is theoretically possible given enough resources -- but at what cost compared with pre-ported solutions (VxWorks, Nucleus, etc.), so again TeleSoft is factual.

As far as "open source is terrible/not terrible," we differentiate open source products into several classes. The protocol stack class which TeleSoft sells is characterized by the fact that interoperability with implementations developed by others and running on remote systems is a big issue and an area of uncertainly for open source vs. a good commercial stack.

[hank080225]

Mr. Asay is wrong about TeleSoft's supplying open source. Open Source may refer to free open source (FOS) or to proprietary code (like TeleSoft?s products) where the user gets the source and rights to modify and use the code. "Closed Source" code, like the Windows OS, is only available as a binary to most users. Mr Asay seems to be using the term in the more restrictive manner (FOS).

Mr. Asay works for Alfresco, and Alfresco has a paid model. The advantages of their paid version, given on their page, http://www.alfresco.com/services/subscription/ , are very similar to the advantages described in the TeleSoft movie. There are two differences: 1) anyone can contribute to open source, and Alfresco will make money based on these contributions. 2) Customers are less likely to buy support if the product works well.

So companies who want to profit by producing software are in a bind--they can either write solid, reliable code that doesn't have bugs and doesn't need a lot of support and has an up front charge; or they can not charge for the source of thier product but later charge to fix the bugs they and their community add to it.