(letter published in the Financial Times September 25, 2008 as a comment to SUN CEO's thoughts in the same newspaper September 17)
Letter from Mr Per Werngren.
Sir, No one would disagree with Jonathan Schwartz (Personal View, Digital Business, September 17) about the broad benefits of open source and his call for free labour from software developers as there is a lot of profit-grabbing to be had from hardware, consulting and servicing companies like IBM and Sun.
Mr Schwartz, though he favours cashing in on “free software” phenomena, has failed to appreciate the thousands of businesses like mine that build innovation and depend on proprietary software. He seems to forget the positive impact intellectual property rights have had as a driving force for innovation and wealth creation through the centuries. Many of the “monolith” companies today have been built on intellectual property rights including Sun Microsystems.
Small software developers around the world without the vast revenues of Sun are not very keen to “give it away for free”.
Per Werngren,
CEO, IDE AB,
Stockholm, Sweden