Slashdot Mirror
SourceForge Drifting
Zocalo sent us a story running at FSF Europe talking about SourceForge's Drifting. Talks about the fact that they are releasing a closed-source version of the code commercially and various copyright related things. Obviously VA owns both SF and Slashdot so I'm skewed, but my personal opinion is that VA is doing what they need to do to make a buck while still providing the SourceForge.net website to the Open Source community. And I think their decision to sell a closed-source proprietary version of the code would be hypocritical, except that they aren't a 100% open-source company any more. And *that* is the part that makes me the most sad.
I would like to point out that despite what's said in the drifting piece - Sourceforge.net does run on Free software. Sourceforge 3.0 Enterprise Edition has non-free components to it, the major part being the access into Oracle.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
It doesn't appear Slashdot has much to do with the open source community lately either. If it really makes you sad, consider what blather makes headline on Slashdot. I don't mean this as a troll. I'm honestly disappointed over the last few months about drift on Slashdot too.
Step 1: Start an open-source based company
Step 3: Profit!
Apparently Step 2 is "completely change the business model of this corporation so that it may actually make money."
Bitter pill to swallow, but giving away IP just doesn't work.
Considering that no one is exactly sure if VA can make it as a business selling proprietary extensions to Source Forge has anyone thought about what will happen to Freshmeat and Source Forge if (or is it when) VA goes under?
I know that a couple of projects have started mirroring their Source Forge content in case anything happens but are there any credible replacements being worked in case both these extremely useful sites lose their their parent company? Specifically are there any sites that are viable replacements to either Freshmeat or SourceForge? Currently we have multiple Linux distros so the death of one, two or more companies in that area would be sad but not devastating on the other hand the dissappearance of VA considering how much of a central repository for Open Source apps SourceForge and Freshmeat have become would be devastating.
Yes, open source as a hobbyist development model can and will persist long into the future, and I'm sure that there will be fun and exciting products as a result of it.
That said, now that the heady, greedy days of the dot com boom are long behind us, it's high time to re-evaluate the position. Money isn't growing on trees and being plucked from the asses of VCs star-struck by that beautiful three-letter phrase (IPO, IPO, IPO!) so much that they can overlook that little thing called "a business plan."
Internet advertising is the redheaded stepchild of the marketing family. Old media ads have no need to justify themselves with inanities like "click-through"; they know their demographic and their real estate is mindshare, that precious commodity which they assume that they're purchasing with their ad dollars, regardless of whether or not this purchase translates into a product purchase immediately or down the road. The internet is a fickle bastard: people gravitate towards the warez model of "buy none, get one free" and so there's the propensity towards stealing everything we can. To wit: the inevitable linking to archives.nytimes.com anytime they've got an article up because registration is such a chore, but if you were to ask the average Slashdotter how they feel about someone using "their" resources without registration (think Anonymous Cowards here), one would instead getsthe impression that merely providing a name and e-mail address is as simple as could be. Hmm. To wit: proxies, ad-killing bots and specialized hosts files that insure that our precious bandwidth isn't eaten up by ancillary ads that might keep the sites afloat, but then again if we don't click on them and buy something might not even if we do see them. Hmm.
Ah, open source. Communism reborn, and who can hate that? Not the watered down Leninism that the Soviet Union ran through in short order, but honest-to-goodness communism. Take what you need, give what you have. Beautiful. A touching sentiment.
Also impossible to be a commercially viable entity when human nature comes into play. If we can get our content ad-free we will, even though it means economic hardship and possibly the closing of the sites we visit and love (or love to hate, as the case may be) and if we can get our software cost-free, without the dirty stigma of clicking through porno banners to find the 3rd word of the 4th paragraph to get entry to L33t b0b'5 h0u53 0f w4r3z, all the better. I whip up a weekend project that is derivative but I'm proud of and off to Freshmeat with you! Maybe even Sourceforge! Take it! Share it!
I'll pour a few hundred hours of blood, sweat and tears into it! Shiny new! Everyone wants it! It's hot!
But how do I parlay it into a commercial venture when everyone can get it for free and fix it up as they want? Hmm.
Open source is a lovely idea with lofty goals, and as long as talented, motivated, intelligent programmers buy into it, it will generate impressive results. Unfortunately, there's a very finite number of talented, motivated, intelligent, ascetic programmers out there who will buy into it.
OSDN's changing business strategies faster than you can say "we're a B2B play now!" (read: brushed up that resume yet?). If bigger ads or a subscription service to a website who doesn't give a whit about the quality of its journalism and doesn't know the meaning of the word "editing", relying on constantly inflammatory agitprop to woo its readership are the order of the day, then I'll just stick with Ars Technica, The Register and memepool (topical, informative, and normally journalistically objective sites), thanks. Slashdot's been a fun little ride, and like many other things, peer moderation was a sexy little idea, just unfortunate in that it pretty much disintegrated into ugly mob rule groupthink. Scene, not herd.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
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?
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
If people out there take serious issue with Source Forge's turn to the proprietary, then take the last release of open source code and start your own Source Forge. I mean isn't that supposed to be one of the magical things about open source, that folks who want to go proprietary cannot because the community will hijack it.
Of course if you want to set up your own Source fFrge you have to have the money to run all of the servers, bandwidth, etc. Don't have the cash? Well I guess that's what Source Forge was running into as well.
Personally I think that Source Forge being open source itself was cool but rather secondary to the fact that source forge provides a great place for people to collaborate on projects. If they have to close the source to make it financially feasible to continue to provide the service, so be it. Which would be worse for the community: Source Forge running on proprietary software or Source Forge shutting down?
Unless the FSF is going to fund an open alternative to Source Forge they should get off their high horse.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I think most all who read slashdot aren't 100% opensource anyway. If VA needs to sell something to exist by all means let them! encourage them!
Companies are like people, they may have different sides without being untrue to any.
Organicsculpture.com
God, just take a dual PII-400 w/ 128mb of RAM running NT4/IIS/Exchange - and tie a rope to it. Tie it to sourceforge.
With an anchor like that - they'll never drift!
[Connection closed by foreign host]
I think it is a greate idea. That way, they can sell the software to corporations that are geared toward corporations, yet still run open sourced version just for the comunity. This way there an income from sales, advertisement & training through open source community. This is a win/win situation for company.
I wish more companies would do that.
Note that the FSF, which does like all things free, is more concerned about the possible GNU GPL violations that might be occuring, and "appropriation" of contributors' work. While I'm not an GPL-junkie, this does seem to be a valid point from the FSF, with SF walking a thin, grey line.
I'd love for VA to make available a usable enterprise version of Sourceforge...and is seems they finally have. I want to put one of these boxen up in my own outfit, but doing so with the free version of sf would have taken more time than my development project. Since we have a budget, I'll be more than happy to support VA and purchase SFEE when our project load gets high enough to justify the expenditure.
I just wish they'd lose the Oracle bit...I just can't see the need.
I am not going to say it is unfortunate that this about money. I work in the medical field and I not going to say that making money off of treating people is wrong because I have see what happens when you get healthcare for free.
I think that we are seeing a serious progression from the idea of "free" as in "free beer, just keep tapping the never-ending keg" and move more to the idea of OpenSource. The Source and How it works is there and you can, with enough motivation, change it.
I've already read one post that likened like a very expensive gift to the OpenSource community, and expensive means money. And When I mean money and mean YOUR money, and MY money is what it is going to take. (I plan donating money to openprojects.org as soon as they start taking donations again).
I think that VA really did spend an enormouse amount of money on this community and while we shouldnt necessarily start paying them for it, we should really realize that this philosophy will require real sacrifice (YOUR MONEY) and I believe that will be a Good Thing. As we get older, a lot of us will start making money and be able to meaninfully contribute and support a cause that we are proud of, and I think that is really neat.
anyway, Sorry for rambling and thank you for reading
Sigs are dangerous coy things
Their total revenue for the quarter was $15,981,000, while their Net Loss was $290,118,000. They lost 20 times what they made. That is simply pathetic. If they're going to come out of this, they've got to do a MAJOR turnaround, and as much as I'd like VA to succeed, I don't think selling SourceForge is going to make them 275 million a quarter. I feel bad for those who bought LNUX in the $300 range.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Assuming that there were others that contributed to the source base, wouldn't VA be required to get some sort of license agreement from them ?
I've never set up a network the size of SourceForge before, but what are the costs involved if you have a small, dedicated staff? Is is small enough that a government might be willing to help? I mean, free software is reaching a point where it can be considered a true public benefit. Can anyone think of governments that have given grants to this type of project in the past?
Last post!
is this not a clear indicator of the danger of placing all our trust in one party? even as tremendously altruistic as VA has been toward the free software community in the past, SourceForge is ripe for a single-point-of-failure disaster. Suppose MS buys VA, what then?
given the communal value of a SourceForge type repository and development nexus, wouldn't this be a fantastic application of peer-to-peer technology? a distributed system capable of these services would be invaluable. I won't pretend it would be easy, but if the will is there it could be done.
Think about this, many companies are restructuring and are figuring out ways to put themselves in the green. I really care about VA because I am a stock holder. I want the name changed to VA Software, I want them to make money and I want them to host slashdot, freshmeat and sourceforge. Now what we should be worrying about is whether these sites stay free. I think selling sourceforge is an excellent move on behalf of VA. So I wouldn't be complaining, you still have your job, unlike many who don't, because of these hard economic times. VA will figure something out and I as a shareholder am happy with these new changes. Closed Source development environments can benefit with a system like sourceforge, it increases productivity and really it doesn't cost that much. peace
Obviously you didn't delve too deeply into Linux based on your paragraph about what Linux lacks support for. You say "Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc", but ALL of these points are wrong (even in the kernel version you were using).
Journalling file system: ReiserFS
memory protection: has been in since 0.x days. A kernel panic is a bug, not a lack of a feature. Also, the VM in 2.4.9 wasn't exactly stable. 2.4.14 is.
SMP: My experience is that SMP in linux works better than Win2k.
And don't think I am saying this because I hate MS products. I don't. I use Win2k/Exchange for my home network, and Win2k Pro on my laptops. But if you are going to pick on Linux, try finding something with a basis in fact.
So, who's with me in starting a new SF project called OpenSF. We'll reproduce the funcionality of any proprietary extentions in SF Enterprise and do it under an open license...hell, we'll even be using sf.net to do it. :)
That'll teach 'em.
ÕÕ
Hmmmm. They have $80M in the bank and a burn rate of $10M/qtr. I sure hope your code is better than your math.
Simply put, it will not be possible to sustain even a medium-sized software shop on a product such as SourceForge. On the low end you can get away with simply using CVS or CVSWeb, and on the high end I suspect customers will be suspicious of VA's long term (and even short term) viability.
VA simply has too much negative momentum at this point to save itself. While it is not their fault that the stock price was overvalued so greatly, they are nonetheless injured by the steep selloff. That coupled with a complete loss of vision at the company probably means the gig is up. I give them eighteen months.
So where can I buy a set of CDs of SourceForge?
It was sad that it didn't work.
But unfortunatly it seems that opensource can't survive buisness. People simply don't seem to be able to live on OS thay pizza man doesn't deliver in change of code.
Opensource workes when alot of people take some of thair free time to work with somkething thay can get use of and that thay think is fun working on. But then when thay have to go to work/school or gets bored thay must be able to jump off whithout the project droping dead, other people must be able to take it up. This is achived through well planed goals, beutiful code (comments and such) and systems like Sourceforge.
Then we get to the hardware problem. Can openness also be achived on hardware. Yes I think so. Opensource community should take a look at peer-to-peer community (pro:most people are the same already:o) to create an system for sharing bandwith and harddrivespace that has an interface like Sourceforge. Bandwith is brought by the community for the community. Then when companies like VA goes under the system will lose a heck lot of bandwith but it might still be there.
If you can't do Real free software, don't do it at all. VA is so far sold out that it no longer deserves the trust of the community, but not sold out enough to make it in the corporate world.
Both CmdrTaco and Hemos had some good words to say about all of this.
We have seen empires rise and fall in just a short while. We still have some time to see if the open source model will succeed or fail.
VA is doing what it needs to do to survive. This is a good_thing(tm) in my opinion. What is important is they are still giving back to the community. Such is most likely the future we will see. Large companies using and benefiting from those open source works and while be it their base product(s) may not be free in whole, they will provide some method to repay the community as they can.
There will never be one path that all places take. I'm certain there will be some organizations that will survive and profit by completely open source. There will also be those who give back in other means and there will be those will simply give.
Before you ask if corporate welfare is the right path to take, ask yourself what are the goals of many projects. A great deal of effort is to simply produce something others will use and the benefits of having someone else assist in this is definately in line with that idea.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Seems like the beer flowed pretty freely, alright. SF has been a great resource. A profit model wont save VA, but might plug a few leaks and let them float awhile longer. I also would be willing to pay a user membership fee in SourceForge. (Clearly, developers should get free access)
But asking for copyright from the developers of SF itself seems a bit, uh, misguided.
People, the problem here is not that everybody will feel bad about SourceForge (the site) containing non-free components; if you feel that it's OK and that it really doesn't matter then the FSF Europe article is not really aimed at you (well, it is in the sense that it tries to explain why it is a Bad Thing(tm)).
The problem here is with people that hosted their free software projects in SourceForge (and we all are in debt to VAfor that) not only because it was a very good platform to host a project on but also because it was free software... if the version of the software that is used on SF.net is not free software than it raises several problems for some people (myself included).
I hope this is not the case, but there seems to be a trend on releasing free software, make ppl use it extensively and then close the source when tested. I'm not saying that SF is one of those situations (VA maintains a free version AFAIK), but still, ppl are nowadays more aware of this kind of drifting, and that makes them suspicious.
People seem to forget that the FSF/FSFE view on things is pretty clear and documented... I don't know why people seem surprised when articles like that one are submitted. I for one totally stand behind Loïc's words, and share his concern.
Having one of the most known free software development centres running on a proprietary version of a platform isn't really very flatering for free software as a whole... 'see, they don't even use their free software to host their bloody code!'-type of comments come to mind.
fsmunoz
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah I guess they didn't steal enough property, they didn't take away enough basic rights and freedoms, they didn't kill enough people.
Trolltech got themselves on the good side of Open Source developers and yet is making money becouse of the dual licence of QT.
Why could you not apply the same thing to SourceForge? Make SourceForge GPL when you use it to make GPL (and other fsf aproved licenced) apps, and closed when you want to use it for closed apps?
It seems natural to me. Am I missing something?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Suppose they could instead give the specs to VA (and thus us) in a sourceforge-like environment. VA could charge lets say half of what it would normally cost them.
- What does company X get out of it? It gets the job done. They get *great PR* with the linux community.
It seems that VA has dished out lots of free beer. I wouldn't mind working on a project or two to help them out. It's the least we could do.What does VA get out of it? They charge for being a gateway between the community and company X.
What do we get out of it? We get OSDN. Sure, we already have that but as things are, it wont be forever. Plus, these projects will be released GPL?, so everyone benifits.
That's a very interesting idea. I'm just wondering how well development efforts can work without keeping the project somewhat centralized. Imagine for a moment a world where the Linux kernel doesn't have Linux and thousands of people are all releasing their own little patches to the code in a thousand different places. Seems like total chaos.
I do a lot of development using tools like CVS and even with a small team you can occasionally have problems with people forgetting to check in and causing conflicts. A massive web of people all working on their own tangents would turn that into utter chaos.
Seems like maybe the secret is some sort of very robust diff and dependancy tracking tool. If each patch could keep track of what patches it is dependant on, then when trying to apply a patch, it could inform you of dependancies it has an automatically get those patches. Of course I don't think this scales too well. If each patch has to keep track of patches it is dependent on then over time the patch files turn into huge lists of dependancies followed by a snippet of code.
I like the concept but I don't know if it's feasible...
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
However, the overall picture is still grim. Looking at the cash flow from operating activities (minus 19M) and the current assets-current liabilities (97M - 33M) of 64M means about 3 quarters more before LNUX runs out of cash, assuming that the company gets no more financing. These are not numbers to warm a skeptic's heart. I like Slashdot/SF/etc as much as the next guy, but I'd update my resume if I were you.
Seems to me I've heard this particular set of agitprop from the poster (dave-fu) before... (regarding the merits of Ars Technica, the Register, and memepool and the shortcomings of slashdot).
And branding what goes on here as inflammatory agitprop is particularly ironic considering that's how the post above comes off....
I don't for a moment believe that any particular evolution as it relates to Open Source is inevitable. The evolution of Open Source in the first place was not inevitable, nor is its (alleged) demise.
The problem with interpreting trends in real-time is that we miss the historical sweep of the trend... missing the forest by seeing only the trees. We can imagine a hundred different fates for the Open Source movement, but in order to get an idea where it is really headed, I think we should be looking at other trends in our society. Yes, momentary events like 9/11 have redefined civil liberties and how we live day to day life a bit, but the world overall seems to be headed towards greater degrees of freedom and towards a more option oriented society. (Yes, you can pull out counterpoints, but I see these as bumps in the road... utterly contestible I realize!).
More choice, not less. Sure, the idea has resulted in a lot of failed business ventures. THIS IS COMMON WITH ANY FIRST WAVE BUSINESS. Early adopters tend to take a beating. But if the idea is basically appealing to people, in the long run some variant of it will probably fly. Good software for free and a chance to get your name in the geek equivalent of lights (main coder on an Open Source project) is a powerful motivation for a growing class - the technos.
Predict the demise of open source and the unviability of any kind of free software development and you may find yourself in the same boat as those who said man would never make it to the Moon, that man would never fly, and that the Titanic was unsinkable.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
This is getting completely out of hand, from the GNU/Linux thing (what else is that if not an attempt to control your own idea?) to the willfull exclusion of users who need or want to run binary kernel modules. Bah.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
but I noticed this weekend that current UID's are up to fifty million plus
Uhhh... they're just above 500k, dude. Try reworking that math.
Plus about 100k are trolls, 200k no longer use their accounds, and of the 300k left, only 100k actually post, the others just made accounts to save their browsing of articles.
And selling those subscribers is selling them to email spam. What would Taco rather do?
Get money and spam his userbase (knowing they'll never return, but he has his money!), or die honorably?
That's a question will have to see the answer to....
I dont understand why VA sold off their hardware (server) division... This was the only money making part of the company.
:)
Hope they sell SourceForge - since good projectmanagement is very important, I'll count on them!
Never seen your sig, -1 boy.
Sorry if you take offense.
But you ripped it off from South Park just as I did, so go ahead and blow me.
Software should cost money, Im not saying how much, but whatever somone is willing to pay. I love linux i like microsoft. Developers should get paid, although if they WANT to give their time consuming work away for free then thats their non sense !
I could swear at least until a month ago there used to be a 2.5 and 2.0 release avalailable.
Does anyone know where to get it now, and why they it's no longer on the project page?
---
WTF is an 'instant gratification war'?
Yeah, that is a puzzler. VA made really good high quality servers; they beat Compaq and Dell by a country mile. It's not as though they had to compete on the cheapest rice box disks, cdroms, and floppies. VA made professional equipment, not game machines for Harry Homeowner.
Worse, VA will probably go out of business soon. I've been worried about this for some time. I run downside.com, and have a good record in predicting which dot-coms are going to tank. For some time, I've predicted that VA will tank. From an investor's perspective, that already happened, the stock is down over 99%. VA is still losing money and almost out of cash. Something very bad has to happen.
If there's no good backup, the failure of VA could take down much of the open source movement with it.
There's no guarantee that someone will want to buy VA at any price. Many, perhaps most, of the money-losing dot-coms that have gone under haven't been bought out; they've been liquidated outright. If the business model is a failure, buying into it at any price is a lose.
Free Code (aka Libre) doesn't necessarly have to be Free of Charge (aka Gratis). Unfortunately, Open Source (as well as GPL) tie Gratis into the equation. This is sad since it really limits the possibilities.
You can have Libre while charging users for use of your code. The cost for this is a not for profit central administrative authority (registry of deeds). I've written about this at Distributed Copyright an in particular; I wrote up a refined version of the idea in a letter to Judge Jackon. If you think central adminstration is bad... this is what the copyright office is. So, it's possible. Just a bit of will power and some start-up funding. The organization could have a very strict charter (so it's scope can't creep) and could be given the right to impose a small surcharge on sales to break even.
Thus, if the SourceForge fellas wanted to move forward to make money, that's great. However, they don't necessarly have to become "proprietary". Too bad it's always seen as a white/black proposal.
Clark
First time I read this I could've sworn that he said 'screwed' instead of 'skewed'.
People I work with have been in contact with VA regarding deployment of SF Enterprise Edition...
The cost comes out to ~ $300K/year for 900 users... Not very economical, expecially considering I have an 80% functional install running off of the last (GPL'd) release - v2.61
my $.02
You have to ask yourself, how does an open source company make money? If you are giving away your code free of charge, where do the profits come from? Selling cds? Okay, that will generate a little income from the 2% of your userbase that do not have a cd burner. Ads? Now you can keep your website running. Donations? Is that really enough to support yourself as well as a family (in some cases)? I think this was actually a good move for VA. They can generate money while still giving to the open source community.
I expect to be modded down or to a troll/flamebait. I don't care, do what you must
-dk
Open source is great. I fully support companies opening the source to products. The only problem is, when you have a company running a large open source service such as SourceForge, which currently has 29,275 hosted projects and 291,392 users, it starts to cost money. You have to pay for hardware, electricity, bandwidth, staff, all the computers they add to the Compile Farm..
If they can sell proprietary, closed-source extensions to businesses and keep SourceForge running, I consider that acceptable. It's better than the alternative, which is to have a SourceForge that's a drain on money.
VA dropped Linux from their name, dropped their server line, and is no longer fully about open source, but at least they're keeping SourceForge running, one way or the other.
The open source utopia reminds me of "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx. It resultet in Communism, which is a great way of life, if it was at all possible. It's about everyone being happy and sharing (open source). But we know how North Korea is doing, do you remember Sovjet and Cuba? It's just as bad as depotism or the French monrachies before the revolution.
What you have to ask yourself if you would accept open source/communism ideas in your daily life. Do you want to slave 12 hours a day and have the same living standard as someone who is just playing around all day (I rather play all day myself, but nobody is paying me for that)? Think about it some, what is the purpose of free software really?
I think it's a good thing that vA can make some money, they need it, we all need more companies that makes money and gives us jobs and thus feeds us (most of us are involved, or will get involved, in the software business). As long as they give proper support and doesn't stop anyone else from doing a similar system.
Does this mean I hate all free software? Hell no, not at all. I love to see people doing all this work, having fun (the only reason to do something for free), sharing. It's great stuff, and to all who does that, my deepest thanks. If others can make buisiness out of your work it helps us all in these sad times. I just wish that those companies could be nice and send the authors a little gift or two.
I also don't have anything against closed source, as long as they give good support. A lot of very specialist software would never be made unless it was paid for. In some cases it would be no sense in keeping the source closed, in others it would be essential to survive as a business, both are needed.
So what is the bottom line? Jump down from your high horses and write lotsa software instead, do what it takes to make what you want, and make money in any way you can (but be nice) and have fun. Let the best software prevail, try new business models, never stop evolving. If one close sourced project can fund another open source project, isn't that a good thing?
I think that maybe the open source community should look at the possibility of using peer to peer methods to distribute many popular files and updates. For example, when you download a new kernel using it, your system automatically become a node sharing the kernel or at least parts of it. From the reading I've done on Freenet, it may be a good base for this sort of thing. This approach would cut down on the need for open source projects to have a large amount of available bandwidth to share popular offerings. If it were shipped with Linux and other free *nix distros so that it could be turned on with easy graphical configuration, the network could become very efficient. I would just be concerned about abuse. Perhaps it could be made so that you have to approve keys for each project that you wish to make available from your machine.
Yes, SourceForge has a right to develop their own version of the engine, and then sell that product.
What issues here is, they are defeating the idea behind what they are supporting AND THEY WANT TO TAKE OWNERSHIP OF FREE (BEER) CONTRIBUTIONS!
Justen Stepka
VA's annual report makes much of the "quarter-million" developers currently using Source Forge - which it turns out are mostly the users of the public site. Since the public site is a great benefit for free software, what does it matter if Source Forge itself is free software? That's like saying, "I won't go to a church built of bricks, but only one built purely of faith." Would there be a point of having a second public Source Forge - say, the way there is a point in having slash/code clones? For what, Windows freeware? And is there any point in having Fortune 2000 companies be able to get the latest Source Forge free for their internal development efforts?
... what's not to like?
The current program: get large firms to pay for it, let the open community make wide use if it, use the open community's experience to help hone it and market it
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Yeah thats right slashcode which runs slashdot may drift soon too
they did it to sourceforge
I bet they'll do it before they fix the bug that results in not displaying an article's year in search results
If VA is in such dire straights, what would happen if VA goes under? Would they sell Slashdot to someone? What becomes of all of the personal information I've given here? What becomes of the vast amount of great, and not so great, commentary that has taken place here and is freely searchable? Should we be concerned?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
They are doing what they have to do to make a buck. You can't fault them. Most software would be developed better in the open enviroment, but if that is your only method of distribution, you most likely wont make money. I disagree with one fellow's comment on giving away IP however. IP has a pretty broad definition, and to many companies it means generally anything that can't be reverse engineered. Like NVIDIA and their chips...there really isn't much we can learn from the source to their drivers except how the drivers work and how to program the card...yet the stuff that being stolen would hurt them, such as how the GPUs work can be reverse engineered. :-)
Now how would NVIDIA lose money by giving us the programming spec? Maybe I'm wrong about learning about the GPU from the driver ( I doubt I am ) but even so the chips can still be reverse engineered...hell they tell us how they work, all we are missing in the schematic!
Derek Greene
What is the problem? Ok so VA is charging for a product... Open Source is about free speech not free beer!!
So what if VA want's to turn a profit. Good for them. They aren't 15 year olds working out of their parents basements. They need to make a living & running the OSDN has got to be frightfully expensive. Some one has got to pay for it. Servers cost money, bandwidth costs money, and no amount of pleading is going to change that.
But even after all that, and all that awful capitalism, VA still donates huge amounts of money to the operation of OSDN, so that Software Libre can continue.
NO ONE ever complains when IBM spends huge amounts of money on promoting and developing Open Source. Why do they spend all that money? So they can make even more... yes those evil bastards that have given us so much support actually expect to make money, for shame!!
Kudos to VA!! It's an excellent business model! They show off their software as the largest CVS repository in the world, and then sell it to corporations that want the same abilities. All at the same time giving back to the OS community.
So stop whining and lend a helping, or at least an applauding hand to VA, because they give so much back to us, there benefit is ours as well.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Has he issued any press-releases yet? He's usually so vocal ;)
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
We often sit here on our high-horses looking down our noses at non-free software... but think about it for a second. With the exception of RedHat, how many companies based on open-source software have managed to be profitable? I know I haven't really heard of any. You can not make money off of software you give away... you need to provide some additional service or product that you can't just get off the net for the cost of several hours of downloading.
Free is all well-and-good... and it works for people doing smaller projects on their free time, where they're not expending millions of dollars on development, equipment, network maintenance, high speed connections and all the other expenses a company like VA has.
I support the free software movement and community... I think it's a great effort and may someday prove to be viable economically, but in today's market it really doesn't work.
If close-sourcing SF and selling it commercially is one of the things VA has to do to make some money to continue to provide us with the resources we take for granted (OSDN, Slashdot, Freshmeat, ThinkGeek etc...), then I say let them do it. Still got a bee up your bonnett? Then take the 2.5 code and refine it and deploy your own system for project management. Don't attack a company for doing what it needs to do to stay alive.
-Z
I would say that VA has it's problems. Like any .bomb company in the last 5 years, they grew too big and too fast for their own good. The bean counters sit down and take a look at what they have and realize that a site like SF hosting almost 30,000 projects and supporting almost 300,000 users isn't making any money. Really? Wow. What a revelation.
/.?) might be affected by the VA fallout. Let's face it, they hurting in the financial area and I'm sure that's not helping morale. I doubt they're sitting in board rooms saying "We'll support open source even if it kills us". No. If the boat begins to sink, the first thing to pull is SF. I mean, how much bandwidth and server space can it be taking up?
Good for them to fork a version of their system and build a corporate version and good for them to those that purchase it. However, I doubt that even that is going to help their bottom line much. While the service is something useful for a collaboration based methodology in the corporate environment, it'll be a hard sell to companies that are already hooked into high priced alternatives like LiveLink, etc.
What I am concerned about is that SF (and perhaps
I am concerned as a developer because I host a half dozen or so projects on SF and to see them vanish would be a little devastating. My advice for anyone who uses them, mirror your projects and don't subscribe to the "all your eggs in one basket" theory.
liB
They burn $290M last quarter. I sure hope you code better than you look up stuff.
yea I'm posting this as a A.C....
here is a question? what happens when your internet developement site closes the doors? the fact that so many projects would have to scramble to find a new home if sourceforge went under would suck. still it would be better then if it was a project from some of the other opensource ripoff sites. i can only assume that when a site like asynchrony.com folds all that source code will be sold/lost with the company. right with all your project information.
don't get me wronge. i love sourceforge. but if i had a project on that website i'd be looking for other hosting and getting hard copies of all my project/team member information. i would also start making sure i had a place as a second home page for my projects. just incase.
if i was on asynchrony.com or another such profit site (most are gone now) i would give up now. mainly because they own your code and if you tried to take your project and sell/host/rewrite it your self they would rape you with lawyers .
After visitng linuxworld and drilling their sales reps we came to the conclusion that Sourceforge can't compete with free alternatives. (by 'we' I mean the software Co. I'm working for)
Bugzilla/bonsai/tinderbox provides a more complete solution. We were even able to modify the trio to deal with java, our many different build scripts (make is rather lacking for java), and our test automation.
What we found was that Sourceforge provided discussion groups which we got using exchange or INND, bug tracking which wasn't nearly as feature rich as bugzilla, and cvs integration which bonsai provided just as well. It was still lacking the automated builds, and by the time they got back to us after linuxworld we had allready deployed the bugzilla solution (partly thanks to some nice debian packages put together by Remi Perrot).
One large drawback is that bonsai relies on glimpse as its fulltext indexer. Glimpse used to be free but since then has gone commercial. We were, however, able to find some old glimpse source (which may have been GPL or artistic license - perhaps we should redistribute the old code as GNUlimpse).
We have made our own tweaks to bugzilla/tinderbox/bonsai and contributed a few of them back to the mozilla developers (in the future probably all will be recycled into the public implementation).
I see some posts from people who are basically asking, "What's the big deal? They're just doing what they need to survive."
The fuss is that for the last few years ESR et al has been CathedralBazaaring (if you'll pardon my verbization) this idea that Open Source software actually makes MORE economic sense than closed source software, because you get the benefits of the "community". Source Forge has basically rejected this idea, and said "screw this ivory tower theory, it's not working and we need to make money".
I'm not ready to declare the experiments a total failure. I believe Stronghold does pretty well with their commercial version of Apache (not sure though), and IBM is certainly putting a lot of effort toward open source. Of course, IBM is hoping to sell hardware, so it's not quite the same.
In fact, ESR has been pretty quiet lately. Considering he was a board member of VA, has he put out any opinions on this move to closed source? Has he resigned from the board?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
My name is Patrick McGovern and I manage SourceForge.net. I wanted
to take a moment to address the issues that Loic raised in his
recent article.
As a background: SourceForge.net is a website within the
Open Source Developers Network (OSDN), owned by VA Linux Systems.
SourceForge.net provides free hosting for Open Source software
development projects via its web site at http://sourceforge.net
and http://sf.net
SourceForge.net, OSDN and VA Linux systems are committed to the
Open Source community. Two years ago (almost to the day)
SourceForge.net was started to provide a way for Open Source
developers to collaborate with each other and make great software.
This mission has not changed. Today VA spends a tremendous amount
of money and resources to provide excellent service to 30,000 projects.
Loic brings up a number of points that are simply not accurate.
* SourceForge (not SourceForge.net) is a collaborative software
development platform. The SourceForge software originated as the
foundation of the SourceForge.net service, and is now the basis of
a number of products offered by VA Linux Systems. SourceForge
Enterprise Edition is the commercial product released by
VA Linux Systems last week. SourceForge is a software platform.
* SourceForge.net is a service provided freely to Open Source
software development projects. SourceForge.net is not running
the SourceForge Enterprise Edition software. SourceForge.net is
a web site, which provides a service to the Open Source community.
* SourceForge.net provides free hosting for Open Source Software
development projects. SourceForge.net is not now, or nor has it
ever been, exclusive to free software -- we accept hosting requests
from projects licensed under any OSI-approved Open Source License,
and projects whose licenses have not been directly approved,
but comply with the OSI Open Source Definition.
* Data Export: The ability to export data from SourceForge.net
has not changed. There is no conspiracy to 'lock projects in'
to SourceForge.net. Every project has the ability to download
a nightly tarball of their CVS code. If people have any concerns
about their code, we recommend they set up a cron job to download
the latest version. Eight months ago we did have a XML API that
allowed project admins to download bug report data. The API broke
earlier in the year when we enhanced the SF.NET code (version 2.5)
to include the tracker (a tool that unifies all 'ticket-related'
systems). Until recently, we didn't receive a lot of interest from
the community to re-introduce the feature... so we have been focusing
on other aspects of the site. We are now re-examining the issue.
In the mean time, there are third-party programs which will collect
the content directly from the site and extract that data.
* Mailing Lists: One area we concentrating on, which Loic alludes to,
is mailing list archives. This, historically, has been one of the
weakest areas of SourceForge.net. We are currently working on a new
solution, which directly integrates the mailing lists with
SourceForge.net, as opposed to Geocrawler. We have just entered the
initial beta phase for this project. It is still being worked on,
but you can see it here in action:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=27464 (look at the last
four forums). We are essentially using the SourceForge Forum code;
the same code base that has been available to the community for
some time.
--
Developers are choosing SourceForge.net because of the excellent
resources and service we give the community. The site is currently
growing at over 60 new projects and 700 developers a day. We just
added new personnel and purchased 70 new servers to make sure we
retain our excellent quality of service. We have added new download
servers to make sure the community can get Source code as fast
as possible. We have been adding additional hardware to
the compile farm. (OS X systems were added last month).
Finally, SourceForge.net is a free service. It's a service I believe
greatly enhances the Open Source Developer's ability to write and
release great software; and have it seen by a lot of people. If you
feel that SourceForge.net is not for you, that is okay too. There are
alternatives out there, and it's better to host your code where you
think you will be the most productive.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to write me:
pat at sourceforge.net
Thank you,
Pat-
Patrick McGovern
email: Pat at SourceForge.net
Director, SourceForge.net
29,000 projects are currently being hosted on Sourceforge. Okay, a lot of those are vaporware, but I think it's fair to say that there are at least a thousand interesting and valuable projects there. It would be a huge loss to the open-source community if all of these projects were suddenly homeless.
Sourceforge has done more to increase the sense of community among open-source developers than any other site. Whenever I want to find out if someone is developing source code that does something I want, where do I turn first - Freshmeat? Nope, Sourceforge, because it's so convenient and standardized. I know how to navigate Sourceforge quickly to download the latest release, browse the CVS archives, or check their bug reports - whereas all non-SF projects have these things in very different places, if at all (how many other projects have a working CVSWeb up and running - not many!). Hosting a project on Sourceforge makes it convenient for developers to examine what you're doing and join in, which is what makes open-source work.
I never would have joined if Sourceforge was not free, but if it came down to paying a subscription (in order to host a project there) or letting Sourceforge die, I would pay for it in a second. If they have to do this, it would be nice if they set up a system for micropayments - so grateful users could easily donate a couple of bucks to keep their favorite projects on Sourceforge.
Not to mention that they only had $60 million in cash back in July. They surely have even less now.
Seems to me there is more than one drift occuring here. There is no denying that most open source companies have seen the writing on the wall and started developing viable business plans. This, as many have pointed out here, is to be expected.
The other drift that I am referring to, and it may not be a drift, but just a plain and simple prejudice is among the "Open Source" community. Everytime they hear the word "proprietary" they think of Microsoft, Packard Bell, or some other "evil" company.
Here is a question. A lot of the hardware that we use today was developed by people in their spare time. Should this hardware be free?
If you agree that it should, then answer this,
where do you think inovation comes from? A company has to make money in order to exist, and to develop new products.
So, if you have a problem paying for "Open Source" software, don't buy it. Find the base source code that the "proprietary" company used, and develop your own.
Also, in talks with one of the sales droids at VA - They were asking for a signed NDA before they could discuss features/changes in the Enterprise Edition...
This may be different now that SF Enterprise Edition is out, but it strikes me as a bit fishy for a supposed open source company...
There is also no upgrade path from the 'free' versions that were available before to the new SF enterprise edition...
comments?
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
After all these years it seems that CmdrTaco is seeing that making money on opensource requires some dificult dicisions and not all that is wanted in a perfect world are actualy possible. It's a shame that everytime Caldera (a company that has always done excelant work and produced a fine product) seemed to breath, Taco had a snide remark that helped anger the masses against them. In reality, Caldera has done nothing different than any other Linux company. However, there marketing and they way they have portraid themselves has not been optimal and that has lead to some of the confusion.
Opensource is a great development model but it makes commodities of the software that is developed through it. Money cannot be made easily on a commodity unless you somehow monopolize the market for that software. I think this is a good thing for such software as OSes as they are as the air we breath - you cannot use a computer without them. However, it means that money is very difficult to make off them. Toco, unfortunately seems to want to critisize anyone who really tries to do so. And in his zelocy, finds it a difficult position when the company that owns slashdot tries to do the same.
Toco needs to pull the mote from his own eye before he pulls it from others. We're all in this together - there shouldn't be camps of zelots on the same side of the fence bringing infighting to opensource. I congradulate any company that has tried and will continue to find ways to make money with OpenSource! I hope that the many companies that intend to place part or all of their business in the OpenSource arena will find success and that we, as the OpenSource community will rally and support rather than point fingers and build animosity and anger.
Whats up next? LinuX?
So what should we do? Fork like: cdrecord-dvd-patch or OpenGFS ?
I'm running a SF hosted projected for nearly a year now, and I can say that tech support has largely dropped the last months. I'm waiting already since june to be able to create my projectname-cvs mailling list, I've already downloaded their PHP source and pointed them at the bug line... no success :( However one cannot really complain about a free service.
But after all it's still fantastic, a free web server, a CVS server, mailling lists, forums, bug trackers, with CRON jobs! Additionally it's the only free service I know of that allows me to upload and execute CGI scripts on their servers. Even if setting this all up at your home machine with a (very week) permanent connection would take you weeks. Beside I like to turn of my machine in the night because of the noise. Not to mention what a dedicated server would cost, then free programming is suddendly an expensive hobby.
From my past experience in industry one somehow smells struggling demises. How the hell should the change in the name to Source.NET bring anything? just anything? This just reminds me of dilberts pointy-hair bosses.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
So, let them sell their system with proprietary extensions. It doesn't affect the GPL version ( hey, maybe those extensions will *sometime* be GPLed also ). It allows them to keep running the site.
But, here are a couple of sugestions to them, if they care.
So, them you allow people to give donations to their favorite projects. Anyone could give 1 buck to their favorite project or even pay the 5 bucks and that project would be hosted nicely for 3 months. Just another way to get some bucks.
If no users give some donation, them the developers would pay the bucks that are missing.
But of course, you should allways keep implementing new stuff on the system, specially those that now are being selled as proprietary extensions.
If the system sounds sexy enough, people will go for the payment/donations.
The biggest projects wich have biggest "fans" also have biggest bandwitdh waste, so people would not mind paying some bucks for it. I guess.
I'm not the first to mention it, but this bears repeating: this isn't a sign of VA * abandoning their ideals; they are doing the best under the circumstances. It's really a sign of them struggling for their lives in a hostile environment.
The recently posted their quarterly income statement, and my analysis is that it looks very bad. They posted a net profit of negative $290 million. Most of that is imaginary money, so let's look at the rest of the figures to get an idea what is actually going on.
To project the long term viability of the company, we will look at the burn rate, and try to extend that against their short term assets, accounting for any factors that will change their revenues or expenses.
The balance sheet shows that their current assets continue to drop. Particularly disturbing is the continued drop in cash and equivalents and short term investments. These have gone down by about $17 million, indicating that as their burn rate. Inventory has also decreased, presumably as they sell off what remains from their hardware business. This provides a revenue stream that has basically finished this quarter. Since the $8 million drop there is about half of the total revenue, we can expect revenue next quarter to be about half of what it was this quarter.
Long term assets are also dropping. Reductions in long term capital are likely due to exiting the hardware business and getting rid of associated facilities. They are also writing off huge amounts of goodwill and intangibles. Neither of these is important, since the money was already spent and does not affect their long term viability. The only thing to note is that the poor economy now means that the money spent acquiring these assets is not giving much of a return, and they would have been better just sticking it in the bank.
Although their liabilities are increasing, they do not explain why, categorizing the increase as "other liabilities". We can't factor this into any calculations directly.
It appears that the current burn rate is $17 million per quarter, against reserves of about $97 million. With revenues expected to fall to half of the $16 million they are now once the remaining hardware inventory is sold, we expect the burn rate to increase to $25 million. At this rate we can expect the company to survive four quarters, just one year.
In that time frame, there really isn't anything that we can expect to make them viable. Revenues from SourceForge On Site will likely ramp up, but that will be a slow process that can not offset much of the projected loss. Further, aggressive cost cutting measures will reduce the burn rate, but it is unlikely they can cut it enough to survive long, particularly with the conflicting goal of building the SourceForge brand and ramping development and sales.
I really don't see a future for VA. Look for them to sell off unprofitable assets (likely including Slashdot, unless the changes Rob discussed can make it profitable). Developers with projects on SourceForge should make offsite backups just in case they remove it suddenly and don't give developers sufficient time to withdraw their code. Think also what the rush on the site will be when they announce its closing and everybody tries to checkout their projects at the same time.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
IMHO SourceForge is the most dynamic idea-platform for parsecs around, if not in the known universe.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind has become the main focus of my Lebenswerk or life-work since 18 July 2001 when the AI Mind project was cleared on SourceForge for go-ahead to the coming Technological Singularity.
As of this morning on Mon.12.NOV.2001, there were 369 Open Source projects in Artificial Intelligence on SourceForge. In my self-appointed but arguably well-deserved role as a purveyor of AI theory (see Nanomagazine interview), very truly yours Mentifex here has been working to draw all the AI projects together under a common theory-umbrella -- not forcing the Mentifex theory down anybody's throat, but offering the Theory of Mind as something to react against and improve upon. Just today the Mind-to-C liaison page was updated with links to some of the pre-eminent AI-in-C projects on SourceForge.
If SourceForge were to fail, it would be a sad day for the future of all humanity.
I think ALL your days are numbered! :-D
From hearsay about a PostgreSQL to Oracle port, I previously assumed that it was just for SFEE at companies where they were already using Oracle. However, that job description really does look like a transition of sourceforge.net away from free software.
I see nothing in Pat McGovern's post denying such a transition.
Most ironic is the part at the end of the job listing: "A plus if you understand what the Open Source community is all about!"
That's part of the problem with Open Source Development. If sourceforge can't make a buck from donations they have to do more Capitalistic things.
But really they've become pickpockets. All that stock market fraud crap, etc.... They may have (most likely) started with high ideals, but, all that high $$ living that goes with being paper billionaires, has turned them into, well, pickpockets. Trying to lay claim to all the code that others have worked so hard on. sheesh.
/. to M$. /.asp? What a wwworld. It's in the manual. Greed/fear reigns, before the big changelog.
They shouldn't have had such overpriced hardware, for one thing. Now, nobody needs them. Maybe they'll sell/give
The following post isn't meant to be a flame. I'm just sharing what I knew to be true about my own experiences with VA regarding System 12, the embryonic form of what later became SourceForge. Hell, we even came up with the name "SourceForge" back in May of '99..
To quote from the article:
Finally, VA Linux[1] has become rather underhanded in their attempts to grasp exclusive control of contributors' work.
What sold VA on our idea, originally, was that the company was ultimately going to be in a position to assert a great amount of influence over the design of people's apps in the end. In the months prior to System 12's inception, I was asked by Trae McCombs to provide what amounted to a "proposal" he could hand to the people calling the shots, to justify setting up a box for us and others on the team to work with. The details of that proposal went something like this:
System 12 was going to offer "components"... Nice bits and pieces of graphics, sounds, and code that could be fused into pre-existing Linux apps, and perhaps more importantly, used to build new ones from scratch. The idea was to make the Linux developer community dependant upon System 12. Originally, the primary benefit of this was that all Linux apps would have had a similar behavior and appearance, and i'm sure we'd all agree that such a thing was good--But later, a more interesting benefit emerged, in that we (as System 12) and VA, as our parent, would be able to dictate how people were to develop their apps by controlling the components these apps relied upon. We didn't want to view the project that way -- Asserting control was a secondary benefit. VA viewed it as a primary benefit.
Needless to say, Management at VA apparently liked the idea. They liked it enough to set up a dual P3/500 with 50GB of space on it, sitting on a wide open T1. An enormous machine by 1999 standards.
Essentially, VA would have been able to express their desires as a company via your apps. To this day, VA views SourceForge as a tool to advance the interests of the company. Suppose your code relied upon a component provided by System 12. At any point, VA could alter the structure of that component so as to make your code behave nicely with VA-produced software (ala Internet Explorer & Word), or more amusingly, run a banner ad at the bottom of your apps. This was our idea, and its the idea we sold VA on. System 12, the base predecessor to SourceForge, was designed to exert a measure of control over the direction of Linux application development, SO AS TO BENEFIT THE COMPANY. We wanted to become powerful enough as a central development resource that VA would have some interest in hiring us on as permanent employees versus community volunteers. That never happened. We got shoved off the map before we knew what hit us.
Rather than letting us continue development, they essentially co-opted us, and put pre-existing VA employees on the task of developing the idea. "Grow the garden to attract the bunnies, then lock the gate to the garden and sell rabbit meat." The gate got locked a month or so ago when VA announced they're moving SourceForge into proprietary waters.. Soon, (if not already) VA will trying to co-opt those who participated in the garden. I tried to warn you guys, but nobody listened. I got called insane instead, for suggesting VA had something other than purely altruistic motives. I used to be just as big a flag waver as you when it came to VA, but I learned my lesson fairly early on in the game. I'm afraid the rest of you are just now getting a taste of the same lesson we learned.
To milk the community for the gain of the company was part of the plan from Day 1, folks.
You would be VERY wise to move your project and your work off of SourceForge as soon as possible.
Bowie J. Poag
The game Hattrick (www.hattrick.ws) is a free game where you could "support" the game by buying a little extra statistics and the ability to monitor other teams. It won't give you any advantages, but it's a way to show that you enjoy the game and want to support it.
Couldn't a similar model work for sf.net? I know I would pay a (modest) fee for the great service they provide.
That being said, I think that taking someones contributed code and put it into your own propriatary version and sell it is not very nice. It's profiting on someone elses work.
Haeger
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
I've been using sourceforge for 3 projects, the first I joined about 1 1/2 years ago. My experiences have overall been good, the worst part is getting setup in the first place. Once you've got the repository setup, and your local client (a real pain in windows environment) then everything works beautifully.
Sourceforge introduced me to CVS and now I convince others. (little and big) This is one of the true beauties of the Open source model, in my mind. It's the best education system around.
The open source utopia reminds me of "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx. It resultet in Communism, which is a great way of life, if it was at all possible. It's about everyone being happy and sharing (open source). But we know how North Korea is doing, do you remember Sovjet and Cuba? It's just as bad as depotism or the French monrachies before the revolution.
Those all used force to make people give their stuff away. Nobody likes being made to give stuff up, so of course no one's going to motivated to work well under Communism. Free software is entirely voluntary. If you're coding to make a profit, you're right that there probably isn't much in Free software for you, but if you're coding for the love of code (the way the best software always seems to be done, whether Free or not) you ARE making a profit: other people see your program and "Hey neat program, by the way I wanted this feature so here's a patch to add it..." you see your creation grow.
What you have to ask yourself if you would accept open source/communism ideas in your daily life. Do you want to slave 12 hours a day and have the same living standard as someone who is just playing around all day (I rather play all day myself, but nobody is paying me for that)? Think about it some, what is the purpose of free software really?
People who had to slave twelve hours a day had to do it because their stuff was being taken away to give it to the goof-offs. Software is not food. If I eat your food, you can't eat it. If you give me a copy of your software, you still have your copy and nobody lost anything. It was because the stuff was taken away that they had to slave 12 hours to get more, with Free Software nobody has to slave twelve hours for anything because nothing's been taken away.
Please don't use the Free Software/Communism analogy because
1. It's wrong (see above) and
2. That is playing right into Microsoft et als' trap: "Communism" is already a negativly charged word in the public mind, and they'd love to have such an easy way to discredit Free Software "You don't want <product>, it's done by a bunch of commies, buy our product and support Capitalism" BOOM ideological biases kick in and the user buys without even thinking about technical quality.
______________________________________
Ever notice how fast Windows runs? Neither did I...
I'm sensing two camps in the anti SF.net group
s /moorman/precision/etc/etc." This camp is riding off of the first group's complaints, and are promoting every Joe and his mother host their own full-service development setup. If these people think they can provide the excellent quality of service that is scalang like SF.net, then, well, go try it out. Most of us are extremely pleased with the QoS that SF.net gives us.
The first camp is the gung-ho FSF group, who are somehow complaining about SourceForge Enterprise edition even though it's not what drives SF.net, and about how VA is plotting behind everyone's back to keep Free software locked up. Note that only the original author is truly in this camp. This camp talks about there beeing Freener pastures over at Savannah. From Patric McGovern's replies, I hope that those listening to this camp realize that these accusations are unfounded.
The second camp is the "I don't like SourceForge because of its look/feel/security/bugtracking/forums/mailinglist
As a Free Software and Open Source advocate, I have not yet seen any legitimate accusations of SF.net, just FUD.
As long as you don't distribute that work, you can do whatever you want with it, even linking it to proprietary code. Obviously you can never distribute it like that. But if the distribution occured only after the publication of the paper, then there's no problem whatsoever.
A few questions:
1) I thought the company was no longer "VA Linux Systems," as it had dropped the word "Linux" from its name?
2) From several articles written by Bowie J. Poag I gather than the founding of SourceForge was not quite so happy as you seem to indicate. His allegations are that VA requested that he work on such a project (at the time called system26), but that VA appropriated his work and turned it into sourceforge.
[For those who don't know, Bowie J. Poag is the main force behind Propaganda Desktop Graphics, which used to be the main feature of VA's themes.org until Mr. Poag deliberately destroyed the site in protest against VA's actions (it took VA about 6 months to put the site back together again, minus Propaganda, which is now at the new location linked to above).]
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I am not a programmer, though I do understand formalized logic concepts. I love free software for a lot of reasons, especially the ideas it promotes in a broad cultural sense.
I am about to make a gross generalization but I do not intend this as an
insult--it is one observation based on reading forums such as Slashdot, and
I have possibly formed a flawed opinion. Here we go, the problem is: programmers
frequently do not spend the time thinking about their work's place in our world.
While fascinating things are taking place as a result of present-day technology
and its realm of specialized languages, programmers tend to (and this is useful
for good programming work I think) focus their attention on close-range,
mechanical details of problems. But this type of attention is not
enough when considering how the programming activities and results affect our
society.
I think there is essentially a struggle in our cultural psyche these days over
emerging dimensions in thinking--and it heavily involves the notion of
"property." The legions of free and open source programmers began something
that, while it may have certain pragmatic features in programming and possibly
even business, is much, MUCH more significant toward human expression and
creativity. Unfortunately, I rarely ever see/hear discussions from programmers
about how their methods of work and culture affect such changes in our broader
culture and thinking.
Listen, every time the issue of free (and open source) versus propriety software
arises, why is the discussion about whether or not the business model works? Why
is the discussion about which method produces better software? It's not
difficult to come up with arguments for each side; actually I've read TONS of
articles over the years about both. I'm not suggesting these things shouldn't be
discussed, but I do believe they are being discussed to the point now of
drowning out consideration of other, likely more important issues.
Let's say that (without going into tons of detail because it will take me
forever and you probably already are noticing the effects of my coffee) we all
agreed that a future of free software is necessary for promoting free human
expression in a variety of creative forms (things like artwork, writing, and
music). If that is the case and that is important to us, shouldn't we
examine where our priorities are? Do we make a buck at the expense of our free
expression? If we limit, to an extreme, our ability to express ourselves, will we
lose the ability altogether? Suppose we would. Stand back and look at the way
our world would be, consider all the implications this would have on our
culture. Not a quick look, not focusing on a few details--a slow, enduring,
inclusive look.
Anyway, if we don't want to our culture to colonize and imprison its own
thinking, we ought to consider free software's worth in more expansive terms
than whether or not it allows for a successful business plan. And if we then
still want to consider business plans, let's do it. If I need my house painted,
I can pay a painter for his labor. I don't purchase the set of methods for
painting my house. While many open source/free software companies have failing
business plans, perhaps the plans are failing because the current (proprietary
software) industry is flawed, not because the plans are bad. Of course I
wouldn't recognize the flaws in the industry if I just focused on the
details--I need to think about it in a much greater context.
VA has been a powerhouse in the Linux community for some time. I hope they do what it takes to shed liabilities in order to get back in the black. As much as I hate to see them crop off open projects and open-source programmers, they have to do it in order to make it through these sad financial times.
I remember a day when VA Linux just sold hardware solutions.... if going back to that will save them then I'm all for it.
As for SourceForge, methinks it's a great idea... I hope it continues but only time will tell.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
bye bye sourceforge open source
the bean counters have arrived and closed the door
Brian Valentine is dancing and tatooing butts...
...
no more opensource sourceforge...
2.5 is last 'stable release'
must reinitialize reality parser...
merging with ILLOGIC MODULE.
merging with SHORT SIGHTED MODULE.
done... begin reprocessing of issue...
processing...
processing...
processing
incomplete data, include KNEE-JERK-REACTION MODULE. Must be told what to do... interfacing with NON-CRITICAL-THOUGHT MODULE.
processing...
processing...
processing...
solution reached... treat issue with complete disregard to long term reason. Allow theory to disregard reality and history. Be more interested in policy and means than results and ends. EOF
...as long as it's an open-source company that makes it. I still remember the criticism that Novell was subjected to, for not open-sourcing NDS. That's called hypocrisy.
Sigged!
No what you are sad over is the fact that in 6 months time you'll have to get a real job somewhere. Good luck. Unemployment is heading up not down
If a person bought something based on technical merit alone wouldn't that result in them buying Microsoft also?
You may want to link the original article posted in Advogato: here.
FSFE is providing also French and German versions with other translations (Spanish/Portugese/Italian) in the way.
For this discussion let us assume that everybody's preference can be specified by a utility function. This is not as restrictive as it might appear initially, but to explain it would lead us far into game theory.
In game theory it is well known that the optimal strategy for individuals (Nash equilibrium) is often not optimal for society. By this we mean that there are other strategies under which everyone is better off. Unfortunately the optimal solution for the society is often not equilibrium if each individual optimizes his own gain.
This is where Capitalism works brilliantly. If people can exchange their possessions in a market place, they can choose better strategies by dividing the profit of the exchange among them. If all information is complete and if all exchanges are instant with zero cost, the market would be the perfect arbitor of every action in life. The fact that advertising is a big business proves that this is not the case.
Many of the remaining problems can be remedied by having laws and taxes and other instruments of govmnt that alters the payoff functions of individuals. Copyright is one such example where government force is used to change the payoff's of individuals, as it is deemed to be beneficial to the society. Developed societies are getting better at this throughout the past century.
At the time of Karl Marx, the situation was much worse. Some intellectuals thought that the cause of the discrepency between individual optimization and society optimization lies in the difference between the utility functions. They thought that if private properties were banned and if the society owned everything, then everyone would make their decision on what is good for all.
This would not work for many reasons. The major reason is that decisions are based on marginals (what you can change) instead of totals (what you already have). Even if everything is owned by society, working for one's own profit is still more profittable than working for society. So Communism could never ever be a working solution, even if it were established without all the other negative associations it has had attached in practice.
Now back to Free Software. The mechanism invented by RMS has nothing to do with removing private property. It is a mechanism for altering the dynamics of individual exchange imposed by copyright laws. It is less intrusive to the market place than the copyright laws themselves. It is believed to have the effect of encouraging behavior that would benefit the whole society.
What we have seen in the poor financial performance of many Open Source companies is an indication that the exchange mechanism is still not good enough to reward behavior that is good for the commons, assuming we agree that OSS is good on its own right. It is merely a reflection on the fact that Nash equilibrium is generally not global optimum, unless the exchange mechanism is fine tuned in a very clever way.
The following dichotomy is false: Suppose some one writes software that does not pay enough, then either
1. The software is useless, or
2. The society needs radical change like banning markets.
What history has shown is that the best progress are not those that force people to change or even abandon their utility functions, but evolutionary progress in the mechanism of exchange that results in payoff functions that tends towards global optimization.
To equate GPL with communism is either naive, ignorant or worse. It is no more valid than associating copyright or social security or national defense with communism.
That's assuming IP even exists.
There is only copyright, mark, and patent law. IP is a misnomer, a hypocrisy, and a deliberate lie.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Isn't the fact that they're not an open-source company anymore the hypocritical part?
Take a look at how much software has come out of publically funded universities and research groups. A lot of free and open source software has come, and continues to come from, people who get paid for it.
Universities and research groups are expected to produce knowledge, businesses are expected to produce profit. The two words ('knowledge' and 'profit') are not interchangeable.
I never would have joined if Sourceforge was not free, but if it came down to paying a subscription (in order to host a project there) or letting Sourceforge die, I would pay for it in a second.
No animus to the original poster, just an observation spawned by his comment:
It's very interesting how many times in this discussion, the quotation above appears, both openly and subtly. "I'd never *pay* for something like this, but now that it has proved it's worth I'd willingly pay..."
Anyone know the story re: move from Postgres? (Not guesses.) thanks.
"Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design
So it is 500,000. Must pay more attention next time. Still it doesn't change anything. 500,000 is a respectiable number, that plus 4+ years on the net.
Even if only 100k actually posted, I think the number is smaller, that doesn't matter. What matters is the number of people that read slashdot.
As for spam, if you used your real email address to register, well i guess you know better next time. The real mystery here is why was my orginal post labeled a troll? Just another case of a moderator with his head so far up his ass....
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I work for a company that has installed SourceForge locally. This is a great tool and has really been an asset to bringing the open source philosophy inside corporate walls.
However, to actually get the system up and running was no easy task. And if you ever look at/monitor the "Offsite" forum on SourceForge you would see this.
The code has glaring omissions that can only be intentional roadblocks for anyone trying to run the code. At the core of the system are a database back-end and a plethora of scripts. The source comes with no information as to how to tie these scripts together (crontab) or no information about how to get the database in a working initial state.
The only logical conclusion is that this was the equivalent of a shareware version to whet the appetite of would-be customers. The fact that SF was going closed source came as no surprise; it simply was the next step towards removing another alternative to paying for support.
Stop using such a gay license.
GPL is the only free way to go.
As such, it's perfectly valid and reasonable to say "this open source stuff isn't allowing me to compete in this capitalistic market!" The context would be something like SourceForge, since for industries less about software authoring, the "open source stuff" can still be a way to cut costs and own outright the means of data processing instead of renting it (say, from Microsoft.)
However, the problem comes when people don't even think to ask any of the other questions: foremost, I think, would be
Is this capitalistic market itself imposing power relationships on me that aren't to my interest?
THAT is the relevant question. Look at the big picture... look at the types of power relationships that exist among vendors, users, developers... it may be that Open Source never does make a sensible business model, but in a world where 'sensible business models' amount to serious power inequities between players and a Darwinian reduction of industries to only the most aggressive, restrictive players, is a business model really the thing to want? If that is the game (and with Microsoft being found repeatedly totally guilty of power abuses and wrist-slapped cautiously, I suggest it is), is it even proper to consider only how best to play that one particular game?
Microsoft knows what it's dealing with when it makes Open Source and the GPL in particular, public enemy number one. These are not effective economic weapons- they are effective specifically at breaking the hold a restrictive vendor exerts on its victims/developers/customers. If you can have ownership of your own software you can't be armtwisted- you are immune from power abuses.
This is in a context of business, again, and power abusers have the most effective business model IF most people are subject to their power. People using open source or developing it may never, ever have comparable economic power or competitive business models- but they can wield a 'spoiler' effect, allowing others to bail out of the proprietary sphere if it's getting too restrictive for them. This is what threatens Microsoft, not some notion that Red Hat will end up with a billion dollar war chest.
And it is right for this sort of thing to frighten power abusers- because it is in fact antithetical to their primary business model. If they were just selling service and quality and working hard it'd be another story- but the winning strategy has been to twist power relationships for all they're worth, and that is precisely what is threatened.
How does all this apply to VA and SourceForge?
Well- they have a choice, though it may be already made for them. They can go the one way- keeping open, and losing in the marketplace but enabling a wide spectrum of 'spoiler' projects that keep proprietary software in check. Otherwise each project will have to maintain its own web presence at its own expense, as I do (Mastering Tools). Or, they can roll the other direction, increasingly twisting power relationships to compete in the marketplace on the marketplace's own terms (even if those are set by hardcore libertarian ideology and best illustrated by Microsoft). If they do that, though, Free software itself is a threat to them, because it destabilises power relationships and makes it possible to avoid lock-in.
It sounds like they're doing the latter. Pity- I guess they felt they had to grow grow grow, to compete in the marketplace and maintain stock valuation. Unfortunately, for them to take this approach is antithetical to free software itself, so I would say they are fucked.
SourceForge, was designed to exert a measure of control over the direction of Linux application development
Thank you for pointing out how the Open Source Develepment network had NOTHING to do with Open Source and EVERYTING with Linux and the explotitation of linux developers
SO AS TO BENEFIT THE COMPANY
SourceForge Copyright Assignment
..thyis is grand treason
Thank you for your interest in contributing software code
to SourceForge.
In order for us to include the code in our product, we will
need you to provide us with the rights to the code.
By signing this agreement, you, the undersigned, hereby
assign to VA Linux all right, title and interest in and to
the software code described below, and all copyright,
patent, proprietary information, trade secret, and other
intellectual property rights therein. You also agree to take
all actions and sign all documents (such as copyright
assignments or registrations) reasonably requested by VA
Linux to evidence and record the above assignments.
Sounds like they are trying to rip off every project
Trying to get the developper to hand everything out to them on a platter then having them turn around and sell your work without you having any benifit in it..Time to leave SF and get ALL projects elsewhere..
This is an attempt at robbing all the work everyone has done !
Treason and theft.That's what it's amounting to.
Community, get your head out of your ass.... I think VA has all the right to sell a propietaryly enhanced sourceforge -if they will ever sell one- I sell the Open GPL'd version so shoot me, why is it allway a problem with someone when somebody else (especially the one that is putting the money where their mouth is), tries to make a buck.... butt out guys, leave VA alone...
I even support them for good and hope they keep afloat forever. Themselves have made more for OSS and Free Software (grab a gun and shoot me if you want) than any other company (COMPANY, i said).
Thanks VA and I hope we all have a great future out of the stuff you guys did and will keep on doing.
Alex Borges
NO SIG
Moderators, please mark this self-promoter down as a troll. All he does is post comments that plug his silly little project.
Click on his user id and check out his recent comments. Ridiculous.
I work as a consultant for several corner whorehouses, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open ass community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open ass based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the endurance of the open ass ho's.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major whorehouses(5000+ nieces) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate OpenWhore into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive whore off was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 OpenWhore, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the TightWhore boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of sucking and fucking
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having trained whores myself in LA for the last 8 years doing clitoris level training. I don't believe in vagina training because contrary to popular belief, clitoris level can go just as low level as vagina and the newest clitoris training generates whores that are every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure my whores from scratch and even used an optimised version of the vagina training course to increase the execution speed of the whores. I integrated the 3 whores I had trained into the whorehouse, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive... We all know that OpenWhores aren't even close to being ready for the normal man, but I had heard that they were supposed to perform decently for men with tiny dicklets. The 3 whores all started choking on the cocklets immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in a big-dicked environment. After fucking for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced vaginal panics caused by binding constipation and an Apache man's salty load! Granted, the Apache man always shoots an exceptionally big load while most other men have much smaller loads. Not to mention the fact that the OpenWhore training material itself lacks any support for any type of backdoor activity, preganancy protection, SMF (symmetric multi fucking) support, etc, but I thought that since OpenWhore is based on such "old" technology that they would fuck with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to retrain them with TightWhore training to make sure it wasn't a "hardware problem" with the girls that was causing things to go wrong. The whores instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the whorehouse with just one TightWore doing more work than all 3 of the women trained with OpenWhore.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending OpenWhore anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of OpenWhore training to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for."
As things stand now, I can understand using OpenWhore in academia where boys are so sex-starved they wouldn't care if they got off on a corner of desk, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby whore training system, TightWhore is your only choice.
They'll be having problems with Oracle every night as well. The difference is that with Oracle, you expect to have to have a dedicated DBA on-call 24h, and compared to all the other costs involved in deploying Oracle, you probably don't care. With open source software, you expect something better.
blogger has announced the blogbuddy project, which is on SourceForge, and do you know how many regular download-happy kids can test it out? very few. it's only designed for people who regularly use it to navigate
FWIW, most of that is a one-time expense do to cutting hardware business and staff.
Step 1: Start an open-source based company
:)
Step 3: Profit!
Okay, how about doing this in true open source fashion from them folks. Just an idea, probably won't ever happen.
First off, what Sourceforge has today is a unique combination of services that nobody else I know of has. Sure you can buy web hosting and even FTP serving pretty cheap, but not with full cvs, bug tracking, and built in message boards. Certainly they also have the mind share out there as the place to host an open source project. For all the downsides, this should be a powerful combination.
In my mind, they should do everything they can to keep the tools used on that site open source. At the same time, they should be charging a nominal fee to those folks wishing to host their project there. Heck, it wouldn't have to be much. Figure it like this....
29,275 projects now hosted
$10/month for each project
$5/month additional for mailing list
$1/month for each person authorized to commit code to a project
Let's figure that they only retain 2/3'rds of the accounts in doing this. Of these, let's say about 1/3 add in some features of some sort. The mailing list thing was simply an example.
19,321 projects left
6,376 add in about $7 in features
$193,210 in hosting charges
$44,632 in feature charges
$237,842 total billable each month
$2,854,104 billable annually
This in my mind is a win win for everyone. Sourceforge charges a very reasonable fee for services, and they can show the project off as a profit center, all the while selling their proprietary version on the side. The dead projects that have long since lost developer interest vanish, or are picked up by someone else. Heck, if a project is truly interesting now we'd have a way to get non-developers involved by helping fund their hosting!
At this point though, Sourceforge is probably thinking that if they even charge a fee as low as $10/month they'd lose all the perty market share. I disagree, if for the unique services they provide alone. In order for this to play, those services and bandwidth need to keep themselves to very high standards.
I just know someone is going to find something wrong with my math
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
what the hell are "YHBT" and "YHL"?
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/61/6386.html
The CEO of this business is making a very large sum of money by continually selling his shares.
Note also that he's excercising options at 0.02 a share, still way below what they cost (1.60 or so) at the moment - and so far as I understand options, those options were given to him by the company, so the company has to buy those shares for him, and sell them to him at 0.02 each.
In turn, this suggests that the IPO initial offer price was held artificially low, with two effects: that the company did not raise as much initially as it might have, and that all those who had a stake in the initial offer could make enormous profits, irrespective of whether the company ever made any money, and indeed at the company's expense.
Hmm.
The fact is that the SourceForge.net phenomenon has focused and fueled open source development. By providing developers essential and basic resources needed for development, the Bazaar gained a meeting place, somewhere that anyone could pitch a tent and set up shop.
SourceForge itself is just one of 30,000(?) projects hosted. If VA Linux believes it can keep SourceForge.net alive by closing and marketing SourceForge itself, more power to them. If those who contributed to its development feel differently, they have the right not to assign the rights to VA Linux. But does this help or hurt the open source movement?
Come on, lets do what it takes to let them be a viable business. Do you really believe it was purely greed that made them invest capital and creativity to make SF what it is? They're among the early believers, and I think this is still true. And no amount of excellent code from Savanah, etc., will make up for the loss of the monstrous server farm and support VA contributes if good ideals (free software) are taken to irrational extremes (not letting VA make a profit without crying "traitor!").
Incidently, the company I work for has just set up a sourceforge site based on the early 2.6 releases, which now hosts all of our IP...and it rocks. This same code was the seed for Savanah (right?).
SourceForge (not SourceForge.net) is a collaborative software development platform.
SourceForge.net is a service provided freely to Open Source software development projects.
The new name SourceForge.net, and the logo with an enlarged dot and a "net" bigger in point size than the "FORGE", remind me too much of Microsoft .NET. Are you porting it to Mono or something? I would have called the code SourceForge Engine and the site SourceForge Projects in keeping with the general policy of following trademarks with a generic noun.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How the hell should the change in the name to Source[Forge].NET bring anything?
Perhaps some association with Microsoft, as I remarked earlier?
Will I retire or break 10K?
In that case make your own site to howst your own projects. What's the big deal?
War is necrophilia.
Okay, so maybe VA is scrambling to become more profitable before the bankruptcy folks come a-knockin' at the door, and getting a bit desperate in the process. And if VA goes then Sourceforge, Freshmeat, etc. fall with it.
So - why isn't IBM making an attempt to set up an alternative? They're already spending a billion dollars pushing Linux, so hosting an alternative to these popular Linux sites would be a drop in the bucket. Furthermore, they'd get the PR and name-attachment coup associated with being the 'Linux-friendly' company.
If IBM sets up an alternative (and we know IBM isn't going anywhere anytime in the near future) they'd almost automatically inherit the user/developer base of Sourceforge et.al. if VA did go under. It'd be the easiest thing to do for the developers and users - just migrate to the IBM almost-clone.
I doubt the FSF folks would approve, but IBM stands a much better chance of being able to adequately fund the operation in an economic downturn than any FSF offering would.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Don't tell me you completely thought of that on your own without ANY connection being made to the "underpants gnomes" episode of SouthPark!
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: Watch it if you see it on ComCentral sometime. Towards the end of the show the boys find the secret headquarters of the gnomes and ask them what they plan on doing with all of the underpants. A gnome explains they are a corporation, and shows the 3 steps of their business plan:
This episode first aired at LEAST a year and a half ago, so don't go claiming credit for every instance you see of it on the net, jackass.
-O.K.all startups "drift" as they redefine their business plan and try to create a solid revenue base. For example, remember priceline.com's foray into grocery shopping? Happens in traditional brick and mortar establishments too. Clearly the point to take home from this is that(and yes, mode me redundant if you must) that there are no legitimate revenue models associated with F|free software. Well, not unless you are ESR or RMS in which case you can make about 10k per speaking engagement.
F|free software is a personality cult which results in harm for its adherents.
anything this hypocritical will implode upon itself, like the soviet union.
the real question is, where will cmdrtaco work?
will he write a book?
Does Jesus advise you to badmouth other peoples volunteer efforts instead of pitching in to help? Perhaps you can ask him for advice next time. Say to him. Jesus is it right to critize the savannah project? Is it better for me to say bad things about them even if they are not true or to help them? Jesus should I start my own project where people with other licenses can host their own projects?
I bet Jesus can give you some good advice about these things. I am sure he cares deeply about software licenses.
War is necrophilia.
A couple of things.
1) You are a liar. Or maybe you are ignorant. Either way I don't think jesus would approve. The savannah project does not limit itself to GPLed products. They accept just about any open source licence. Your criticims are based on lies and ignorance.
2) If in reaction to the "stigma" of GPL or by your personal hatred of RMS (a man you probably have never met) you decide to write closed source software or software which does not somehow qualify for hosting on savanah keep this in mind. It's their fucking server, it's their fucking bandwith, it's their fucking software, it's their fucking labor and you are entitled to NONE of it. NONE. You hate them and yet you expect them to donate their money and time to you to make your life easier. I don't think so.
Here is my advice to you.
Get off your ass and build a server. Go write a great application which duplicated all or most of the sourceforge functions (sourceforge has the stigma of GPL remember). Then go buy some bandwidth and then invite people to host non GPLed software on it. Make sure RMS has never come close or breathed on any software hosted on your platform because you would not want that evil GPL mojo getting near your server. Then not only will jesus love you but you will have the right to point and crtitise the savannah project.
Until then shut up and sit down.
War is necrophilia.
When you first sign up, they force you to agree to a little-known clause in the contract agreement that states that you'll cover all their legal bills if they get sued because of your software.
Now why would I host somewhere and potentially double my legal fees if my software ran into (for example) patent problems? I'd just host it my own damn self--it's not that bloody hard to do! What value does SourceForge have to anybody but those who can't or won't host their own software? Seems to me like they're just another Freshmeat with the code sitting right there instead of at the end of a link.
" right, because nobody has the right to criticize in your wonderful utopia"
No just you. you don't have the right because you are an ignorant liar. I hope you see the difference between critism and lying.
BTW It's impossible to mock Jesus. Jesus does not exist. Some people think he exists even though there is no evidence for it. They claim that he is GOD ALMIGHTY ALL POWERFUL BEING THAT CREATED THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. You think an entity like that cares about posts on slashdot? That's funny.
War is necrophilia.
This is stll being labeled at a troll. Would someone please fix it.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.