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.
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.
I don't think they're concerned about possible violations, I think that sourceforge and VA are going to do everything in a very straightforward, legal way.
What they're worried about is what sourceforge can talk people into doing. Like signing over their rights to code. There isn't any GPL violation if an author wants to sign his code over to someone else, but all the same it's a loss for free software. They're also worried about the fact that sourceforge seems to have hooked people on a particular development methodology, (and a GOOD one at that) but that now since they're drifting away from free software, they may bring developers with them.
I think that the FSF's concerns are totally valid. I think it's really odd that most of the other posters in this discussion haven't even examined the software angle, and more importantly the freedom angle - they're more interested in speculating on VA's *business model*. Since when did all of the hackers that used to read slashdot morph into business students? (And poor ones at that)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
If this is the case, then why does SourceForge have a job listing on their jobs page asking for a DBA that can "oversee and deploy the transition from Postgres to Oracle"? The listing also mentions "[keeping] the databases functional for the 200,000 users that use the site on a day-to-day basis." Why would a new version of SourceForge, which they are apparently selling as standalone software, already have 200,000 users? The job listing is specifically listed as "SourceForge.net Database Administrator", not "Sourceforge 3.0 Enterprise Edition DBA/Developer" or whatever.
i d=7438&group_id=1#dba.
Doesn't this indicate at least in some way that they're planning on ditching PostgreSQL for (gasp) non-free software?
The exact listing can be seen at http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?doc
This stuff was brought up on the PostgreSQL lists. I'm hoping Tim Perdue will chime in, as he apparently frequents the lists.
J
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
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.
I decided to let go of the wreckage called VA Linux about 2 1/2 months ago, so I'm not involved.
The switch to closed-source and Oracle is a result of the... shall we say... lack of success in the sales department while the open source code was available.
I would prefer a network of sites that hosted a couple of hundred projects each, and had a crosslinked indexing system.
An interesting alternative might be something based on the music distribution software. But does that require that there are enough people interested in the unpopular and new projects? I don't play in that sandbox, so I don't know. How hard is it to find an infrequently asked for title?
Sunsite was the old standby. ftp is basic, but not the same thing. (And that does require central sites.)
The basic flaw is centralization. Sourceforge by being a central point, became a weakness. Any replacement should try to avoid that flaw.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Chris DiBona
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
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