Slashdot Mirror
VA Linux to Sell Proprietary Version of Sourceforge
Cassivs writes: "There's an article claiming that VA Linux is planning on selling a proprietary, closed-source version of SourceForge, SourceForge Enterprise Edition. See the letter to SourceForge members assuring them that VA Linux will continue to provide free hosting/etc. at SourceForge. They will also continue to maintain a GPL version of the code, SourceForge Open Edition." VA is Slashdot's corporate parent.
This really isn't a big deal. Linux/dot-com company sells new product. Where's the story? The only reason this got posted is because hundreds of readers would have moaned and griped if it didn't, saying "slashdot is censorware!"...
As a side note, does anybody know of any companies that are actually using sourceforge enterprise for interenal development?
Juiced? Or Not?
A closed source version of an open source community? Quite the oxymoron.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
There is nothing wrong with selling value added extensions, as long as they aren't violating the lisence on the original body of code.
The idea has always been pay for people not software.
Custom modifications and services are the only way Open Source will survive.
Free as in Freedom not Beer. Get it.
I can't see why a company may want to deploy sourceforge on site. Maybe I never worked for a big enough company but unless you have hundreds of projects I can't really see why one might one to have sourceforge in the office. Even when I worked for my biggest ever employer they had some sixteen distinct projects and that was a company with well over a thousand employees. Where's the selling point?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
In a recent meeting with some VA Reps, they mentioned that a closed-source package of Oracle hooks would be coming out in the future, at the request of many of their large customers.
This was, of course, an answer to our question, "when will you support Oracle?" I felt funny asking that question, but OSS be damned. Oracle has it over any other database when it comes to performance and management.
Got modded down - well i thought you could leave it alone but then again who knows - it might have been offtopic there but i have been seeing the misinformed stories all day
Reposted in CORRECT FORUM
the end of the world as we know it
Actually the story says that VA linux is going to sell some investigate ways to make some money from their software development and thus build some applications that move in new ways - this is perfectly reasonable as their employees have mouths to feed.
I quote: (lifted without permission but maybe this wil stop the register being slashdotted)
SourceForge is the new ERP - VA Linux
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 24/08/2001 at 07:49 GMT
Barely six weeks ago VA Linux Systems was an open source hardware vendor. Now, the company is undertaking a Napoleonic retreat from the hardware business and it's doing the unthinkable: adding proprietary subscription software to its open source software flagship SourceForge.
VA swallowed charges of around $230m in the last quarter - $160 million coming under the category of "impairment of goodwill and intangible assets", and almost $70 million as a one-time charge - contributing to a net loss for the quarter of $290 million as it liquidated its PC manufacturing and sales businesses.
Costs will continue to affect the bottom line for two further quarters, said VA. Its Japanese subsidiary will continue to sell hardware, the company said, but that amounts to chump change.
The new software-only VA expects to make an operating lost of $10 to $13 million on revenue of $3 to $4 million in the forthcoming quarter. With a cash pile of $83 million, that gives the company as little as six months to ramp revenue, or else seek new investment. VA said its burn rate will continue to decline, suggesting that more layoffs are to be expected.
But CEO Larry Augustin is bullish. He says there was no competition for the distributed code management system SourceForge. Current development processes and tools haven't kept pace with geographically dispersed or ad hoc teams, according Augustin, who predicts that the impact of SourceForge could be as great as ERP or CRM.
Typically VA deals with in-house developers using a range of tools (it cites Borland, Rational and Microsoft as well as GNU tools). The company emphasises that seeks to complement rather than supplant existing tools.
VA is gunning for $600 revenue per seat per year - it claims that buyers typically see a return on investment within six months.
Augustin talks of adding "proprietary software features and functionality" to the subscription version SourceForge. That VA is looks at the software-hoarding model to save the business is an irony a few will savour, but we guess that by now badly singed VA investors will simply be hoping it flies. ®
IN OTHER WORDS
They are not 'going closed source' they have had a subscription service for some time - the code is well developed and they are looking at new areas like ERP - they have a right to do it and if they dont they may very well be down the tubes.
From someone who works in MIS and who's company has just spent AU$20 Million on SAP let me tell you that this is a field where some competitors would be good - there arent many new products that ar worth buying and three companies have it tied up - SAP, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards.
And no - no company in their right mind would ever buy a free GPL erp system - these systems are the heart and sould of a business when you implement them - they do all payroll and accounting functions etc and no one would trust a product without a company with cash and controlled development backing it up.
I have been accused in the past of defending MS - so it might seem strange for the people who can't see past the MS sucks argument to defend an open source company but im not that narrow minded.
VA Linux have not sold out the GPL - they are simply running their free software projects and at the same time trying to make enough money to survive and build a new product in the meantime.
And you can only attack them ?
Christ have you stopped to think what this means if these guys get this right - ERP's are run on Windows or Unix Platforms - what this might give the world is a stable lower cost ERP alternative that is built on linux.
The problem with free sourcing applications like this is that VA would be expected by their clients to do all the development work but by the brethern to give everyone that work for free and thus give competitors the chance to profit off their hard work when they adapt the code and havent got to pay for the development.
Open source does not have to mean free IMHO - devlopment of corporate systems costs money - but maybe VA can start the ball rolling and we might win a few of those corporate file and app servers and some corporate desktops.
So please no more meaningless VA have sold out posts - its boring and innacurate and they are only being posted here because they own Slashdot and your trying to be smart (and failing)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
this was the only plausible reason for making proprietary extensions - to provide 'embedded' interfaces proprietary software. Of course you have to make the interfaces between these extensions and the GPL SourceForge 'clean' in licensing terms.
Otherwise - if VA had really been converted to proprietariness - they'd have just re-licensed the whole thing.
Some reps from VA came by and gave a presentation at my company regarding this product about 2 months ago.
Its actually pretty neat - they'll set up your own internal sourceforge on servers in your organization. And while they are doing it, they'll customize it so that the backend works with all of your already establised CM and problem tracking tools.
The idea is that even if your company makes closed software, you can benefit from a structured way to share code within the company. They can even close off portions with restricted access, so that classified projects (I work for a defense contractor) will only be available to the developers working on it.
The product the and the services they bring with it are really amazing... if I was in charge of such things here, I'd switch over ASAP. I really hope they make a go with this.
_sig_ is away
Sourceforge is a marvellous thing for developpers and it helps a lot the free software community.
However, Sourceforge is very buggy. Sometimes the CVS server refuses authentication. Sometimes, uploading new releases is impossible. Sometimes, I have to authenticate dozens of time. And it doesn't like Opera.
Maybe VA should fix Sourceforge before selling it.
{{.sig}}
The V is getting a little to big, time to move on people.
It does promise good times ahead though!
sig sig sputnik
In my opinion, this is a good sign for companies in the future. I mean, we have a company demonstratably commited to open source able to or trying to make some money from their open source. I hope they succeed.
/.
To me it shows that they've understood how to make a living out of the free software fad, and are showing others how to make dollars out of the service industry. Good for them, and I truely thank them for what they've given me in the past, in the form of sourceforge.net and sites like
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
First of all VA may have asked the authors to sign over copyright to them - as the FSF does. It's believed by many that this makes it easier to defend against GPL violations. I don't know whether this has happened or not - but I'd guess not.
Simply charging for distribution of GPL'd software - is not a violation of the GPL. The only possibly violation would be whether the 'extensions' together with the GPL'd stuff constitute a 'derived work' or merely an 'aggregate work'. That's what I meant about 'clean' interfaces.
My guess would be that we're talking about stand-alone programs which can be called by SourceForge with specific command line flags, input files etc. The fact that they are really designed to be used with SourceForge doesn't matter so long as they can be seen to be distinct programs.
From what someone else said - it looks as though these extensions are actually doing is talking to Oracle databases. So they have to make these extensions separate and proprietary in order to be able to interface with Oracle and not violate the GPL on the core software. It's a compromise based on the fact that their large customers want Oracle integration.
A leading "Open-Source" company is taking the work of the "community", repackaging it into a closed-source product and selling it corporations and government as a proprietary product.
It is news because it highlights the death of the "Free Software" large-scale business model.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
That is one of the things I really agreed with as a business model that gives back.
Make the most current version closed source and binary only, then each time a new version is out, put the last one into an open source license.
Everybody wins. Sorta like how patents were SUPPOSED to work.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
as long as the base is free and open (I.E. the main program and all the protocols and file formats) then the programs built on top of that base can be either open or closed, it does not matter. what is the one reason that MS is hated?
because they place a barrior to entry to compete with their products. if windows, the protocols, and the file formats were all open and under the GPL and they sold word and office as a proprietary tool, I would have no issues with them, however, the barrior to entry is huge because they don't let anyone see anything.
that is why Linux is so great, everything you need to compete equaly is available free and open. the sam priciple applies to sourceforge, the base system is open and free, this allows anyone to compete in this arena, VA is adding extentions to the system that are proprietary, to add value that is exclusive to VA, another company can come along and take the base code and add proprietay extentions on it to make its sourceforge have features that are exclusive to that companies product. nothing wrong with that, just let the market sort them out.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
While its admirable for a company to strike out for new business, its probably time for the VA execs to fess up to the reality of it - the negative momentum on earnings is too much for the stock to bear. Once LNUX inevitably goes under $1, the dilution of the stock will bring the market cap to ridiculously low levels. Once the market cap gets under $80 million, the assets of the company are valued more than its valuation as a publically traded company (I believe VA has $83 million cash and securities).
Why not just sell off the assets and simply redistribute the funds to shareholders? Really, this isn't a slag on the company or its employees - the math is simply against them. Morningstar has given them five more quarters and then they predict it is all over for them.
I can't figure out why companies insist on spending every last dollar when its obvious that it isn't going to happen.
I understand that you were not saying there is a conflict with the GPL.
I just don't see the slap in the face. The GPL built a robust code base that will be adequate for 95% of the people that use the software.
We don't know what the nature of these custom modifications are. They may be something so specific that they would not have generated enough interest to be included in the main body of work.
They may also be interfaces to proprietary systems (like SAP) that couldn't be developed without a change in the license.
Now if the modifications turn out to be something that the general user base could have used and they end up being kept proprietary, then it will be a loss.
I think we have to see how some of these mixed mode projects pan out before we will know for sure. But if companies don't try and discover some profitable synergy between GPL software and other lisences, then we may see a plunge in the availability of new software under such a lisence.
I am going to reserve judgement and see how they handle this situation.
Have a nice day.
Well I found out about sourceforge last week. The funny thing is a banner ad at slashdot tipped me off. The company I work for happens to be in the market for collaboration software. Unfortunately, I was too late to throw this one the bucket. The decision had already been made for another product.
After talking to a sales rep from VA Linux on the phone the advantage of buying sourceforge is support. Which I'm sure is the same reason businesses buy RedHat. Time is money to business and I know first hand we cannot be down from a bug in software or at the mercy of newsgroups for technical support answers. What I found really interesting is VA Linux no longer sells hardware, but they do still provide support. Anyway, good move VA Linux. I really appreciate the open source collaboration sourceforge provides and I think its a great move to supply the same great tools at a price to businesses for proprietary development. Lets hope their stock prices reflect this decision.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
The people controlling the site are the people who hold the pursestrings.
People are free to change their mind of course, but it does not help your credibility when you turn away from a license or a philosophy that is espoused as the only righteous and moral path by the "community".
What is hypocritical is that employees of VA Linux, namely the editors of this site, constantly and consistantly challenge the validity of copyright & patents as it pertains to "bad" organizations.
Will those feelings change when VA feels the need to defend it's intellectual property? How about when Slash become a proprietary product? You better believe it.
Feel free to moderate down to -1 Troll. I don't agree with the hivemind, sorry.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
SourceForge doesn't contain any code borrowed from other GPLed programs, does it? If it does, how are they going to get away with this? Am I the only one who sees the irony in a "Linux" company violating the GPL?
... or did you think support was just about staffing a helpdesk?
sf itself is collection of PHP scripts which interface to various tools -- most of which are not GPL'd -- including PostgreSQL, CVS, ssh, Amanda, etc. There's a page listing the various tools they use. sourceforge as a broader concept is a service, kind of like rackspace.com for your software.
sf is almost certainly not closing the source of the version they sell to companies, though they probably do restrict its distribution. What they are doing is charging for custom modification, such as working with existing project and QA systems. These versions are not distributed to the public, and thus are considered "internal". And it's perfectly within the spirit of the GPL, because there is an otherwise very functional core that is actively developed under the GPL, and not under the complete control of VA. This is that support model that Open Source folks have been going on about
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I don't think that will ever happen, mind you. But if it did then fork it and do your own. In fact the same thing goes with SF. IF you want to write the interfaces to rational, pvcs , and open it up. Go for it. Have fun. This is part of what open source is all about.
Honestly, sometimes I think that 99% of open source software is the willingness to do the work. I don't want to sound blasphemous, but it's just software. Anyone can write software and release it. And , looking at some of the code (oss and proprietary) just about anyone has.
Chris DiBona
(speaking for VA)
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.