Bigamous contrition and open source faux pas

I'm on a flight to LGW, and have had time to finish (yet another) Anthony Trollope novel - Dr. Whortle's School. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself once I've finished all 47 of Trollope's novels - I think I've read 45 or 46 of them already. It will be like closing off a great friendship. Trollope, like Mark Twain, is one of those people that I wish I could have shared a dinner with. He's so funny and sometimes acerbic in his analysis of the customs and attributes of his Victorian society.

One of which - the propensity to gossip and slander - he rebukes in Dr. Whortle's School (in reference to an unintentionally bigamous marriage of Mr. Peacocke, and the fall-out that ensues when the neighbors find out). Like any good book, this one had me wondering if I, like Mr. Peacocke's Victorian society, am a little too hard on people/companies at times.

So, for the moment at least, I'm determined (resigned? ;-) to be nice.

Take Shai Agassi's recent comments about open source. If ever someone gave opportunity to "make a man an offender for a word," Shai did. His words come across as somewhat ungenerous toward open source, and make SAP appear to be a bit naive in its understanding of open source.

I don't believe either is true.

I think Shai's comments simply reveal the ongoing internal battle that any successful software company must have. Microsoft is undergoing it now, and the company occasionally emits moments of brilliant apprehension (e.g., Jason Matusow's exceptional OSBC Boston keynote - should be out on IT Conversations soon), sometimes counterbalanced by equally goofy anti-open source vitriol. (However, you may have noticed, as I have, that the vitriol is subsiding, on average, and a fairly sophisticated approach to open source is emerging, befitting the collective intelligence of a very successful software company.)

It's the same process that Novell went through, and is only just now getting its feet under it, so to speak, to begin growing again. I lived through that experience at Novell - helped to foment it, in fact - and understand just how hard it is to change a company's culture, business processes, and business model.

In light of this, we should be apt to be generous with SAP and Shai. Take him (and the company) on the balance of his/its relationship with open source (Linux, MySQL). Help them find reasons to want to do more. It's a tough road for any successful proprietary software company. But Shai's comments, more than anything else, make me think SAP is actively trying to figure out how to work with, rather than against, open source.