Comments on: Is it time for SAP to try open source?

Although it posted strong earnings, the German enterprise software maker is looking to cut costs amid tough economy. Adopting an open-source model could help.

[dahowlett]

@matt - that's about as likely as me winning the Lotto Millions. SAP sells around $1 billion in Oracle DB a year. Its customers want it so even though they've got MaxDB (it's integral to ByDesign) it's not on the map for big sales. Also - note Apotheker's position on OSS - no money in it. That's where his attention is focused right now.

As an aside, I"d certainly welcome Alfresco being put to good use. Great product, great people.

[pantologist]

Dennis is too kind.

1st. SAP IS AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN an open source company. You buy the software, you can see, edit and modify the source code anyway you want. Unfortunately, that ability has been abused by system integrators and created an awful mess for customers. You could argue (quite effectively) that being open source actually CAUSED product quality to decrease rather than increase.

2nd. No CIO on the planet would download an ERP system for free on a website and goof around with it before spending a few million dollars on buying one. SAP gives away developer versions of just about all its Netweaver stack for free on its SDN community for the geeks to play with, just like every other tech company.

3rd. This is one of the dumbest posts in the history of journalism. You have made every one of your readers dumber for having read this and illustrate why you have no idea how the software industry works. Another bang up job from CNET.

[hymanroth]

Why can't you disagree without being offensive? The impact of your first first two points was actually neutralized by your last remarks. This isn't mySpace. Either debate properly or don't.