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Open Source, Closed Documentation?
sunset asks: "Recently I was motivated to look at WebGUI which looks like a pretty cool open source project. However I was having trouble making it work with Red Hat 8.0 which includes Apache 2.0. This seems like a reasonable thing to want, as Red Hat 8 has been out since September and Apache 2 has been publicly released for close to a year. Checking the WebGUI community discussion forum, I found that
someone else had already inquired about this. Following the rest of the thread, you learn that the product's vendor considers this information to be proprietary, and that you must pay $50 to join their Support Forum to get the information. It gets better. The associated Membership Agreement for the Support Forum includes the clause 'You shall not to share [sic] the information contained herein with any other party.' So if I join up, I am locked out of sharing valuable information with the open source community about how to install this open source product. In the end I found out what I needed to know without giving up my rights or my hard-earned bucks, but frankly this attitude from the vendor pisses me off. Am I alone in this? What do you think?"
considering the only way for them to make money is to charge for support, this makes sense to me
So basically its open source so others can fix and contribute but you have to pay to get the documentation to use it?
hahaha
nice try..
Get paid to code OSS
I thought this was how open source companies were supposed to make their money? You get the software for free, but you have to pay for support.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
I think it's completely asinine that a company thinks it can charge a fee for a product or service they provide.
Greedy bastards!
Sounds like the books O'Reilly publishes - the Missing Manual series. Software released with minimal "help" documentation, so someone comes along and actually makes a book about it.
Or try to learn Checkpoint FW-1 NG with documentation they provide. You have to go to a multi-thousand dollar week long training just to get a decent, helpful manual.
Many open source projects sell support, they just usually offer some form of it for free...
mySQL is kind of a good example as well as Mandrake Linux, or WineX, although those companies sell versions of their product too unlike it sounds like in this case;
Well, now that you've found out, write a HOWTO and contribute it to the LDP. This will undercut their revenue stream and teach them that trade secrets won't protect them in a world where they publish the source ... wait ... I MAY have made an unwarranted assumption that there are people who will READ a HOWTO ...
utter rubbish
Maybe a few people could check out the source code, make documentation themselves (without signing the membership agreement), and distribute it themselves. Beyond just this project, it would discourage the ridiculous OS/CD model.
"Truth is not decided by majority vote" consensus gentium -- Norman Geisler
"You are not to share the information..."
...with grammar like that?
"As long as defiance continues, they can't claim victory." -Slashdot comment
my view is: commercial usage should pay the support (or any other) fee. personal usage should be exempt throughout the open source community.
.02 cents.
but that's just my
--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
How else can a company survive besides making money?!
Those naughty developers trying to *CHARGE* for their work!
Almost as bad as those free ISP's that charge for support lines! (SHOCKING!)
Boycott them all! Make sure they never develop again! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Inline WYSIWYG content editors. Built in editor (IE Only), and integrated support for Real Objects Edit-On Pro.
Wow, IE-specific features. Good to see that stupidity crosses all license barriers.
"and you must pay $50 to join their Support Forum to get the information. It gets better. The associated Membership Agreement for the Support Forum includes the clause 'You shall not to share [sic] the information contained herein with any other party.' So if I join up, am I locked out of sharing valuable information with the open source community about how to install this open source product? "
No, you're just limited from spreading information around for free that they own.
If you wrote a book, would you want people copying it and giving it away for free outside Barnes + Noble?
If you don't want to pay for support and it's more trouble than it's worth to figure out with freely available information, then don't use the product.
They have the choice to charge for whatever services they want, and you have the choice to use them or not. That sound pretty fair to me, and a lot better than having to pay $50/user for a proprietary solution.
Jason
You have the source code right? You can hunt and peck through it until you figure out why it doesn't work. Then you can share that answer under your own liscense terms.
Not a solution for the original poster, obviously, unless they have a lot more time than I do. Still, it could save the next guy's bacon, and discourage what seems to me a rather underhanded letter-not-the-spirit implementation.
I love doing documentation. Too bad I can't program my way out of a batch file.
Every company needs some sort of motivation for creating Open Source software.
:)
I'd hate to state the obvious, but if you want to make the opensource community attractive... there needs to be money involved somehow.
RedHat charges for support, some charge for documentation. Aside from the hobbiests out there, you expect large companies to throw away time and money into opensource, and getting NOTHING in return by making everything 100% free?
Did you really expect a free lunch? You know the saying I hope
--Zuchini
This is a way that companies are getting around the gpl, lgpl, et al... I am not surprised by this tactic at all. With the economy the way it is, IT spending is at a near all time low. Companies scrambling for survival are going to use any and every dirty trick in the book. A previous post at the right of it. Post a review with the 20% relevant info and dump the rest. Reverse it on them. They use the law to get around issues they don't like or that affect the bottom line (read Cable Companies), so why not us?
Your actions in life will determine your children's future.
You know, charging for support is one thing. I can understand the need to generate revenue by having people pay for service.
This however is a whole other issue. What they have in their license agreement is "You shall not to share the information contained herein with any other party."
Sounds to me that if they help you resolve a technical issue in the forums then you can not share that resolution with any other person. Not on IRC, not with a person in the cube next to you, not in USENET...nowhere!
If Free Software matters, tell 'em to go screw themselves. Start posting loudly and vocally on their boards, grab some code, put it on Sourceforge, and compete.
If it doesn't matter to you, shut up and pay the money.
Other than finding something else, those are your choices. It is their software, they can do with it what they please. They have chosen not to GPL their stuff. That is their choice. IMHO, it's probably a wrong choice, but it is their choice, nonetheless.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
These guys do have a reasonable expectation to be able to profit off their inventions. Many linux distros encourage you to pay for support, how is this any different from them requiring you to pay for the manual?
;)
Since it is open source, one could argue that all the documentation you could possibly need is already available to you.. just read the source.
Is it a little underhanded, yes. But there's nothing terribly unethical about it.
Depending on the license of the software (site is already too hosed for me to find it myself), there's nothing stopping you from forking your own branch of the source, documenting that, and continue on your merry way.
"The truth is that these are all very valid concerns. We don't want to get ourselves into a spiraling nightmare by using crappy software either. We created this section to help you make a more informed decision."
But I guess its ok to release an open source program with crappy documentation knowing people will pay you to tell them how to get it working right eh? Theres nothing I hate more than a lack of documentation with software.
As I understand it, the business model for open source software relies on services and support. Isn't the documentation considered a value added service and support?
Since the justification for the poor support inherent to free/open software is "you have the code, figure it out", I can't see why you can't look at the code and, well, figure it out. YMMV of course, but isn't that the point? They're giving it to you for free.
And this may sound like a troll, but I've never been able to understand this sort of attitude. Gimme, gimme, gimme. And if the giving is not absolute and complete, we're pissed off. If anything, this is the one of the things that keep companies from opening up their products.
I can understand paying for extra/quick/guaranteed support. However, paying for documentation on how to install or use something? That's a bit much. Maybe some sort of optimization guide for $$. But if you make people pay for docs just to install your program, I think you're doing a bit too much.
JBoss follows this same idea. The software is open source but the documentation must be paid for. I don't disagree with this because its a business model supporting open source that may work. To JBoss's credit, they do offer a basic manual for free.
1;
Quoting Sarah from the list:
Of course, selling the manual is a completely different matter. What they're doing isn't selling the manual; they're selling the manual and then telling you that you can't share the information.
These guys are shooting themselves in the foot. The main strength of open-source software is that open source empowers the user community. By segmenting the user community into those who pay vs. those who don't, one hobbles a large segment of the user community. It doesn't help, either, that someone publicized their behavior on Slashdot.
I certainly hope they "get it," sharpish.
Finding God in a Dog
HAAHAHAHA - Playing Devil's Advocate since 1737
They do have public forums and mailing lists that provide user-user help with some assistance from the core developers.
But if you want to get the 'real' documentation right from the developers you've got to pay for it.
Which reminds me of NNTP nowdays.. Darn, had some lowlevel problems with LVM/Reiser and I couldn't ask/share that with anyone without paying. My ISP doesn't have one and I didn't want to spend $/signup to post on a newsgroup.. Hmm wasn't that free before?
I thought the open source model was "give your software away, charge for support". Am I wrong? Why is this really a problem?
Here's what I really don't get. If it's OSS, why not start digging into the code and start finding answers for yourself? Start a forum, find some other hackers who want to help out, and tear apart the source to find answers/solutions. If it's truly OSS, there's nothing saying you can't start writing your own docs.
What? That's too much trouble? pay the $50 or use something else then.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Perl works on a similar model. Larry Wall gets paid by O'Reilly & Assoc. to maintain perl. He adds new features, releases the code for free, and everyone's happy. The only stipulation is that O'Reilly gets first crack at the new documentation for their Perl books. I own several O'Reilly books and they're worth their weight in gold. I'm also happy to know that by purchasing these books, I'm supporting OSS coders.
Quite frankly I don't see why this should upset anybody. Lets get the facts straight:
- They create a product
- They let the source for the product be open
- They let you use the product for free, if you can figure it out
Now, you get the product for free. If you want it. They didn't need to do that for you. They did.
They do however refuse to give you free support, unless you cough up some money - which makes perfectly sense to me. If they don't want to give away the docs -- well -- they gave you the software, which is more than nothing.
Stop bitching, and say "Thanks for giving me the software". If you don't want to use it, then shut up and find something else -- or write it yourself.
sheez.
It's one thing to charge for support that requires expensive human intervention; it's another to intentional obscure basic product info to generate revenue.
Gong!
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
This is the equivalent of someone GIVING him the car, FOR FREE, and him saying "how do I get the trunk open?"
Their response is "Figure it out yourself or give us $50 for the manual. We GAVE you the damn car for FREE!"
however, asking you to keep your knowledge a secret is a bit rude. Newsgroups, Bulletin Boards, etc, are what keep many of us going. If not for people sharing their knowledge with me, I would still be trying to "learn HTML" probably.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
WHOaRE their eXamPulls, when IT comes to figuring out how to keep the lights on. just as fuddles doos IT, they overcharge fro something that should be free.
be like buying a car from some FraUD, to find out you wereN'T allowed to teach your neighbor how to drive it, or even sit in it/talk about it.
i DOWT there's much to be learned from this repetition of something we know has already gone whoreabully wrong.
Frankly, this article, as well as almost all of the Ask Slashdots in recent memory, are no longer questions. They've become "I had a bad experience with (my employer, a company, a developer, you name it) and I want to build a little bad PR to get back at them". Ask Slashdots have become just a place to bitch, not a place to ask questions.
This really is a shame, because the idea of Ask Slashdot is very valuable. Editors simply should not let articles that are not *questions* through. Articles that contain one long string of complaints about someone followed by a random "question" tacked on the end to make it fit the format do not count.
May we never see th
This is a blurry difference. Open Source is not halfway.
Why don't you pay the fee, put all the documentation in the code as a set of comments.
ANSWER: Because of the agreement?
SO, does this prevent you from patching/commenting/changing any code based on what you read in the Support Forum? Sounds like a thin line. What amount of change based on support forum information is considered legal?
I'd have better comments if the target wasn't
Open source means you have the source, that's all. And the source code is the ultimate documentation. If you need it explained or clarified, then that's generally a service worth paying for.
The bit about "not to share information" is vague, because you can always share facts freely, just not by cutting and pasting someone's writings. The only way to enforce this is by a contract-style EULA, which should be avoided out of principle.
I basically earn a living implementing the stuff I find in O'Reilly books. If there was a "don't tell" EULA on those books, O'Reilly would long be out of business.
I suggest avoiding the issue by dropping the whole thing. Don't agree to the terms, ever. Find someone who will look at the code and find the answer for $50 and let you share the result. Same cost to you.
Basically it boils down to: "don't like it? then don't use it". One thing I don't like is the business of revealing secrets for money, even though it cost the business nothing to generate the secret. The less business these companies get, the better.
ucann bet your .asp there'll be few/no FraUDuleNT billyunheirs in the gnu economy/millennium. IT already is/will be, self cleaning.
i DOWt there'll be much of a "market" for fuddle's style of greed/fear based payper liesense stock markup hostage ransom FUDgePeddling, for a while/ever again.
Most open source projects are or at least used to be, so thoroughly obfuscated or hackish, that only the most devoute would figure out how to use it.
For everyone else they either give up or get a book. OReilay has made a vast fortune on user unfriendly software.
Linux the code may be free,but the hours it takes to learn it, are priceless.
(Oh and I started using it back in 94, before the books came out (well we had some great general UNIX books))
In fact, that's the biggest problem with Open Source. This concept that people are owed something.
Sorry. This is my billable time, and if I support your family, then I don't support mine. And that's a problem.You can have the source as freely as I can, but you can't have my time. Sorry. Back to our example, why should they work through the issue with you for free so that you can "sell" it to others? If you want to provide support for WebGUI, then you should start from scratch, just like they did.
-BrentI fully agree...if a company won't give me the product for free and then support it for free, then I'm not going to not give them any more of my money.
Seriously, if open source is going to thrive (not merely survive) then corporations will have to take it up and that will require making money off of it somehow. If the only way this company sees to make money off this product is by selling the documentation, then they need to make sure they don't just sell one copy. If you have a problem with this, then to me that is an indictment of the feasibility of the open source model...not an indictment of the company that just wants to make a profit (or at least break even).
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
It takes a long time to beat the closed-source mindset out of people, but in the end, the value proposition from free software + paid addons works, and everybody (authors, users, community) wins.
But then again, i'm just a robot.
Stallman has been talking about this for some time. Although he's talking about free software and not open source software, the idea is the same.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
meanwhile, people in their millions will completely ignore stupid open source fly-by-night cowboys like these people trying to charge for help on their badly documented crap, download a warez of a windows app and buy a `for dummies` book for 9.99
This is more honest than what I have seen some other open source software providors do--which is purposefully degrade performance of the version readily available.
I worked with one open source product extensively, and discovered that no matter what I did I could never get a box to support more than 1200 (or some arbitrary number near that) simultaneous users.
The creators of the software had a "fix" that was available for the price of a consulting engagement...but no, they were not selling software in violation of the GPL...they were selling consulting services.
I ended up not using that open source product.
I think the fact that we are all sitting around here complaining about this is evidence of fundamental flaws in the proposed business models bedind open source software.
if it was M$ it would cost $100, it wouldn't work, and you wouldn't be able to fix it yourself
What,s so stupid about that? It's not as if non-IE users are locked out, since they can probably use an external editor quite easily.
If IE provides a native feature that will enhance the product for those users without hurting other users, it'd be stupider not to enable it. Would you say it's stupid for someone to design a website that works either way, but only gives advanced layout features to browsers that support SVG? If there's any stupidity, it only starts when you lock people out.
i'd say 90% of /. wants a free ride. That is lame.
Can you really expect a company to produce software for free? (remember kids, there IS NO such thing a free; ever)
this is one of THE biggest misconceptions with OSS.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
You pay one way or the other. End of story. Next?
Look d00d, you've been posting bizarre shit like this WHOaRE their eXamPulls, when IT ... like buying a car from some FraUD, to find out you wereN'T all over /. for a while now. What exactly are you trying to say? I am very interested in your viewpoints, but am confused by your delivery. why some capas and not otheres? And what does that first sentence mean?
I like the way you got even by slashdotting their site. BTW, Try XWT or Mozilla-XUL instead of you want web-based GUI's.
Table-ized A.I.
Agree to nothing. Study the source, write your own documentation, and release it under GNU FDL.
The beauty of open source is, you can't get away with keeping secrets for very long.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Oh wait...I never did spend any money with them.
If you don't like the size of my erect penis, you are free to assist in its development.
(I just want to see if the "SLASHDOT PROPAGANDA ALERT" bot finds its trigger phrase.)
The biggest problem with open source as I see it is an entitlement mentality that just because someone wrote something cool, I should be able to use it for free. Being a developer that owns my own company, I have found this amazing realization that I need food. It's really a good thing. And to get food, I need money. Therefore I exercise my rights under the laws of this country to charge people to use my hard work to make their lives easier, and send me money so I can eat dinner. It's really quite a convinent arragement that has worked for quite a while.
I find that these guys have struck on something ingeneous, and have actually been reading the reports on the practical problems of Open Source software in the marketplace. The biggest problem is support. You need to have a team of experts on staff to deal with it, because M$ won't come out and fix it for you. This is really expensive from a resource point of view, because you then have to cover the HR costs of these people even when they're sitting idle, because you will need them in a pinch. Dumb arrangement. Therefore charging for support is absolutely ingeneous, and is a great model, I think. INCLUDING the documentation. We happen to give away ours for free, and charge for licensing in commercial products. We are looking at a QT type dual-license model so that we can stay in buisness. For all their detractors, I want everyone to notice that they are still in buisness. And important point since if you're laying cable with a bunch of Mexicans, you find yourself too tired to program.
Software is inherently expensive to produce. Open source has been subsidised through tax dollars via the university system (student loans, grants, etc). Before you bitch about people having to pay for software, why don't you think about the fact that people who don't have crap to do with Linux, etc, had to pay for it's construction...
You complain becuase some one has the gaul to suggest that instead of being a slave to the community he has the right to earn some cash and feed his family.
What have you ever done for open source anyway? Developing quality software is not cheap unless you find people willing to donate time. Of couse development is only a small part of the cost of software, support is buy far the most expensive and you want that too.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
Open Source Software documents YOU!!
The product being open source and all, couldn't someone figure out how to do it, or make a modification to make it work, and then post how to do it on a their website somewhere, For all those people who don't want to pay whatever it is for the documentation?
Idunno.
You can of-course use Composite with mozilla on any platform with WebGUI.
sig not found
And that is exactly what we are working on at WebGUI.nl.
sig not found
Frankly, this article, as well as almost all of the Ask Slashdots in recent memory, are no longer questions. They've become "I had a bad experience with (my employer, a company, a developer, you name it) and I want to build a little bad PR to get back at them". Ask Slashdots have become just a place to bitch, not a place to ask questions.
Hmm...if only there was some way that you didn't have to rely on your memory, some way that you could actually check and see if your "people are just griping" theory is accurate, or hogwash. Perhaps, with the promise of technology, this will some day be possible!
-Waldo Jaquith
With comments like this, I feel that once again the first issue is to police these "helpers" and either enlighten them as to what this approach really results in or just tell them to STFU.
First I recommend researching into the differences between "rights" and "priveledges" a bit and then next focusing on your use of the word "rights" here. Next I would analyze your use of "rights" and the context you use it in, yet the ironic reference later to your "hard earned bucks." A mature adult knows that his/her ID is not the source of all happiness in society or even for him/herself. That mature adult will realize that often there are more complex relationships that require a long term and/or long scope look into their results outside of a simple knee-jerk reaction type of cause and effect. (read: theory that is untested against reality) A real life example of this could be the holding back of swearing at a cop that pulled you over simply because your monkey brain is filled with the 1337 rhetoric of how that cop (and all others) exist solely to "bring you down." You may just find if you STFU long enough that either he was justified in pulling you over or made a mistake that you can fight in court and win. (doesn't always happen however, such is life) However if you smart off then you can guarantee no support or sympothy from Mr. Oppressor.
However, back to the issue at hand... if you do not like this model then by all means DON'T EVER SUPPORT IT! While I think that the particulars you mention are silly and I would not support them, the fact remains that this is based around a service-oriented business model. Open source costs money, and when people bitch about "no corporate support" yet then later throw out that "the greedy corporations want to charge for something that should be free" then what you demonstrate is an intellectual inability to comprehend the reality that these "greedy corporations" need to pay their employees and that money is not generated by I/O streams. Children often WANT this and WANT that yet confuse it with "NEED" and this is just what children do... however when I see people here ranting and raving about their "RIGHTS" to get free stuff from the labor of others without compensation I see little difference with the thieves that gleefully break into someone's home and steal/vandalize because they have convinced themselves it is their "RIGHT." Remember that if we went by rhetoric and what people justify, errr say, about themselves then no one would ever be bad... even that guy beating that woman's head in with a crowbar so that he can more easily rape her.
If you enjoy free stuff then learn that nothing is free... yeah, that sucks but it is reality. Get rid of your utilitarian thinking and realize that just as you want something for nothing, there are those that must at least have something for the everything they give to people like you. Any moron can walk around demanding they be given this and given that because they are "owed" but it takes a true idiot to wrap this all in fancy rhetoric and manifestos (thus changing nothing but the movement of air when they exhale their verbal flatulence).
There are many different types of licencse agreements and more every day. It's like a genetic algorithm churning away in cyberspace. The WebGUI folks will be sucessful, adapt or cease to be, based on wether or not their product is useful enough to warant your time and effort to use it. I think their plan to used an NDA with for fee docs dosn't warant your anger. Do you have other options? Are there any other content management packages out there ;-). If you don't like the license, don't use it. This type of doc licencse may well wither away.
TridiaVNC is been doing it for years now. It took me a while to figure out how to make the java component to work, with noone to help me (hint: I went to websites that had the component installed and copied their html)
There's a certain level of basic familiarity people have with cars -- if it's a car, odds are you know where to put the key and how to drive the damn thing. Software isn't quite like that. Remember the first time you sat down at a UNIX box (command line, none of that easier GUI stuff for this analogy) and didn't know the first place to start? It's like having to pay for the man pages, and if you pay for them, you can't tell anyone else that "ls" lists your files.
What they are used to in the epic history of the world is you pay for the product and then get support for it, this is just the opposite, you get the software for free and then if you have trouble pay for help. To me its an odd way to do business however, becuase you aren't guaranteed anything for your work unless someone can't figure it out, if a bunch of super geniuses got ahold of it you'd never get anywhere. Thats why I don't really see the whole rationalization behind the open source business...sure they like to say "Hey look, it's free!!!" but I'm so used to paying for things that I wouldn't mind paying for it upfront to include everything I need to get it working on my own...not to mention its almost impossible for me to acutally admit to another human being I can't figure it out on my own so I probably wouldn't even call them but rather pretend it never happened in the first place.
Part of the answer to this question has to concern how we interpret the following phrase:
"the product's vendor considers this information to be proprietary"
But I couldn't think of a meaningful interpretation of this. It's possible they consider the contents of their support forum proprietary in some sense. But I don't think that would strike anyone as any different from the many other commercial support enterprises. It's also possible they consider the information itself proprietary. But I can't see how that could be meaningful in the context of an open source project.
Let's say you compile you software using Visual C++ and using GCC, both on Windows (GCC using Cygwin).
You get stuck with both compilers on some obscure problem. Support fees:
Microsoft:
Per Incident: 185 GBP + VAT
5 Incident Pack: 675 GBP + VAT
RedHat:
5 Incident Pack: $12,500
10 Incident Pack: $25,000
Open Source or not Open Source, companies must be able to pay their employees, pay the rent, pay for computers and desks and electricty and even for the plumber to fix the toilet.
You're expecting to get everything for free, which is wonderful, but totally unrealistic.
L
1. NEVAR call me kiddo again
Why's that, kiddo?
Does it BOTHAR you, kiddo?
2. It's not like they're saying "unless you pay $50, you have to use the right-mouse button to select icons!".
Take your staw man somewhere else.
What they are saying is "we'll tell you how to install it, under the condition that you never tell anyone else."
The manual is intellectual property
If this was about a manual, then there is no reason for the NDA, because the manual is already protected by copyright.
Not everything can be free... if you think it can, then write it all yourself. And, no, writing a text editor in PHP/MySQL (apparently the preferred combination for *any* programming project on Slashdot) will not work. (Before you flame, I am certain that such a beast exists, although it does seem a bit ridiculous to me). Do you realize that corporations are doing you a *favor* when they release products under an OSS model? Do you realize the huge amounts of money it takes for a commercial entity to create quality software? Do you realize what a fight it is to get something open sourced in a corporation?
Please don't take all of this for granted. Corporations are there to make money (hell, *people* are here to make money) and they have a right to do so.
Since when does being open source mean that everything's free? Or that you're entitled to get everything for free? Redhat has commercial services they charge for, same with MySQL. What's the difference? Sure charging for documentation may not be the most warm and fuzzy thing in the world, but that's their decision and right. You don't have to use their software, and I'm sure there's a lot of other places to go for support (Google and Google Groups, as examples).
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
This story has been posted for about an hour now. Where can I download the information for free?
The assertion of the Open Source movement has always been that software companies should not charge for software, but that they should make money by "selling support".
Well, it's not support they should be selling, but convenience. Because what is support? The manuals. Access to people who know how to use the product, etc. But if "information is free" then the manuals should be freely copyable and distributable. And you can always go to usenet for access to people who know the product. But paid-for support doesn't get you access to unique information (an oxymoron), it gets you more convenient, quicker, access to the expertise. So in effect, you're paying for convenience. Just like people pay for the convenience (or status?) of having 20 ounces of water in a plastic bottle (rather than having to walk to the nearest drinking fountain for free).
This company needs to realize that they're not selling information. They're selling convenience. If they want to go the "selling information" route, they may as well become closed-source and proprietary.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Well, since you asked:
Finding God in a Dog
The obligatory:
5. ???
6. PROFIT!!!
Sorry, I had to...
thnx
So stop bitching. You can read the source, and the source should ne something of a manual in and of itself.
If you really don't like it, branch the product (provided the license allows such a thing), and write your OWN documentation. Everyone says competition is good, so compete, and figure out who can do better.
Or get a group of users of this product together and set up a documentation project. Never look at their docs, just 'reverse engineer' them.
There's lots of stuff you can do. I've named three things off the top of my head. Stop being so whiny and either DO something, or be quiet.
Cars are not the same as software. It's like someone giving away free copies of a book they wrote but it's a sequel to another book-- if you started reading your free book, it would not make any sense because you didn't read the original. So the person offers you the original for $50 and makes you sign an NDA agreement not to let anybody else read your copy of that fifty dollar book. Legal, sure! Everybody's got to make money. However, that's a shady way if you ask me, I would not pay the money.
To be honest, this isn't that abnormal if you view it from a different context. Open Source software can be freely viewed and contributed to, but that doesn't mean an off-the-shelf manual on an Open Source project that you find in the local bookstore may be scanned and freely distributed. Just because the manual doesn't have physical pages, does that make it any different?
The software is open source (part of the copyright licensing) but the manual is a completely separate piece of intellectual property, which they have justifiably chosen to protect (their bread and butter).
I have always been taught, both via institutional learning and private corporation classes, that "mantanance is 80% of cost". All the planning, hardware, software development, etc. is part of the 20% of the money that is for this project. After the product (whether it is a web server, database server, software, or whatever) is completed to the point where it is ready for mainstream production, the other 80% of the funds allocated for said project is used to maintain, tweak, debug (bugs not caught in QA), optimize, etc. the product.
I briefly looked over the link, and it did seem that installation problems also required the fee (but I could have very easily overlooked something). If installation support can only be obtained with a fee, then this is just not good buisiness...for the company or customers. However, if it is *just* for support after installation, this is good business practice for the company. If the customers like program, they will pay to fix it if/when it has an issue, while simultaniously dramatically reducing that %80 cost percentage for the business.
IMHO, it should be free code, and pay for all support, other then installation support, if you need it. It's one of the few ways a company can make any money with open-source.
why do people get pissed off because someone else is making money?
all this hullabaloo about making software open source is bringing forth a lot of hypocrites. you get the source for free so that you can have an in-depth understanding of how it works. (thats what you want right?) now you can't figure out how it works. and you expect the makers to write (time consuming) documentation for free as well? who has that much spare time?
time=money; how can an open source business expect to make a profit if all of their efforts are thwarted by people that are "pissed off" and don't want to spend their "hard-earned buck" because they think everything should be handed to them. (because it benefits the public)
I will tell you what else would benefit the public, world hunger could be solved if the standard expectation was that farmers were required to make an abundant supply of food, and distribute all of it for free. wow, i'm a friggin genius. a true problem solver. (why don't you think that would go over very well. think.)
i wonder who gives a damn about your feelings, don't expect any "real" business to care if you don't want to pony up your "hard-earned buck"
i will trade you this for that. look that was easy and fun.
In case anyone wants to find out more or download WebGUI while the main site is Slashdotted, here is a link to the SF.net development page.
Wow. He had a valid point, and you came back with a collection of trolls, typos and insults?
Typical.
Compiere brags that they have over 400,000 downloads coming off the SourceForge statistics. Here is the kicker though, you have to pay for support. Alright I understand the support deal, but they have 100% no documentation on using the software. Granted the developers are screaming they have not had a chance to do that, but the project is over 3 years old and im sure they have documentation since they offer training courses on the software. Realy pissed me off to waste about 8 hours trying to get it installed, actualy took 4 days but i had another issue that was my fault and not theirs, to find out that the software has no documentation and it also is not user friendly without decent documentation.
So now we are using www.OSSuite.com which is a lot easier to understand and accomplishes our goals.
Just a thought...avoid Compiere like the plague unless you want to dish out big dinero for support just to get a manual.
your analogy = teh sUk.
The key bit of information that makes WebGUI craptacular is that in order to get the information you have to agree to their Terms of Service that forbids you to tell anyone what you learned on their support forum.
Using your analogy, a better response would be give us $50 for the manual, but first sign this agreement that says you won't ever show it to anyone else
I don't see anything wrong with giving away the software and charging for the support, but I think its a little suspect to forbid others to freely converse.
Actually its kind of like that except if the dealer also said "And if you tell anyone else how to open the trunk I'll sue you."
Some projects on SourceForge (OpenCV comes to mind) use Yahoo Groups for their discussions, which is annoying. Yahoo is making its "customers" sign more and more restrictive agreements, they spam, and they put ads in the middle of the forums of others. It's time to move such discussions to SourceForge's own forum system, or to Netnews, rather than using Yahoo, with their "interruption-based advertising".
...and moderators on crack. The postings of said forum are just as much covered by copyright as any book. Assuming that there's a clause in the forum rules transferring the copyright of any non-company posts in said forum to the company, they're perfectly in their right to do whatever they want inside the boundaries of copyright law/contract law.
Try selling reprints of "Windows for Dummies" (techniques for using a software) (or the e-book version if you think electronic or not matters)and see how far you'll get before being slammed with a lawsuit.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Certainly you're not allowed to make photocopies of O'Reilly books and hand those out to others, but you aren't prohibited from sharing the information within. The expression is protected, the information is not. If I ask you a perl question, you're allowed to look up the answer in your O'Reilly book and answer me. If you ask me the plot of a movie I've seen, I'm allowed to tell you even if you haven't paid to see the movie.
In this case, the
sounds pretty far out, almost NDA-like.An NDA for information about an "open source" project, is something I haven't heard of before.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is one of the problems with a business model that is based purely around the technical support of a product, rather than on the product itself.
The ideal business model (correct compromise between consumer needs/rights and corporate profit-making) would be to charge for packaged or subscription software -- enough to make profits -- but to also include the source code for the product, and to make all the tech support for it entirely free.
Then craft a license which states that the customer has the right to modify the source code for their own personal bugfixing and use, but that they cannot redistribute the full modified source or modified binaries (diffs are okay, for the sake of sharing improvements with people quickly). That way you (the company) reserve that right and can continue to make profits from it.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The support forum agreement could turn into a moneymaker for the lawyers if it was ever battled out in court. They can protect trade secrets. But how can information about how to make software work be a trade secret when every detail of the software's operation is already published in source form under an open source license? That won't walk. They can copyright their presentation of the information, but they can't prevent you from telling others how to make the software work. If they could, you would bet that, for example, MS would have a similar clause in their license that made the whole Windows for Bozos book industry illegal.
and it is located at WebGUI.nl.
if you dont like their policy dont use their product. plain and simple.
What!? Did somebody else find out that open source isn't exactly a source of profit!?!? Gotta recoupe all that time spent some how. Kinda like "fat free" = "taste free"... Troll? Flame? Truth.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
.... give it to me for free, as in beer, all of it.
Hey, I don't exclude myself! But let's call a spade a spade.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
their bandwidth costs from the slashdot effect have probably bankrupted them. mwahahahaha! thats the last time they charge any fees!
It's become obvious over the last few years that one of the ways to make money with FS/OSS is to write books about it. Copyrighted books. Books that cannot be reproduced without the publisher's permission (ever heard of that being granted?). Books that, if "reverse engineered" and rewritten, would result in derivative works under law and still be protected. But the community doesn't seem to have a problem with that. So what's wrong here?
- You can modify the source to your heart's content
- You can see how it works
- If the company refuses to modify it to your specs, you can do it yourself
- If the company goes bankrupt, you're not SOL
- If you really wanted to, you could fork the project (and provide your own docs).
It's an interesting approach, because if somebody really wanted to they could provide their own documentation, but nobody who's interested enough in the project is likely to do so, because that would pretty much require that you not have already bought access to the company's docs.This may be tricky and interesting, but I don't see it as being any less moral than charging $50 for a piece of closed software, except that in this case, the software itself is both free and open source.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
You could download a binary copy of Blender for free, but if you wanted their manual it was $57 US. I bought the manual (VERY beautifully done, but smelled funny), not because I needed it, but more to support them. Apparently enough downloaders didn't buy the manual. Now, however, Blender is OpenSource. I haven't checked to see what kind of documentation the OpenSource version of Blender supplies.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Consider what the IEEE does with standards like POSIX. Lots of the GNU tools allegedly follow the POSIX standard (eg sort). Want to report a bug? Show how it doesn't follow the standard. Where do you find the standard? Go to the bank and make a loan, then send the money to IEEE. What good is a secret standard?
... the game has shifted from charging for the code (product of knowledge) as the item being purchased to charging for the knowledge itself.
This is exactly what companies like IBM are doing when they push Linux and a lot of the open source agenda, but also intend to make money by selling services based on their knowledge of the products and ways in which they are used.
IMHO, this is a lot more equitable. You are perfectly free to invest your own time and effort and create your own documentation, or pay to use theirs. In any event, it in no way effects the ability to use the code.
Plus, it provides an economic incentive to support open source. Contrast this with the closed source model, where all the cards are held by the creator of the code, which, coupled with the crazy mania to patent everything under the sun, only serves to raise higher and more formidable barriers to competing products.
This allows the source to remain open, creators/implementors to make a living, and permits competing choices without raising barriers to choice.
The site is slashdotted, so I can't check the agreement, but the original statement makes it sound like a service is being subscribed to, not that a book is being sold. Unpublished information isn't necessarily only protected by copyright, and there's no fair use doctrine absent copyright.
In my view, asking for payment for providing the information is quite reasonable, considering, to use your analogy, he's giving you the car free.
The problem is that, once you know, you cannot tell anyone else: 'You shall not to share [sic] the information contained herein with any other party.'
You can't tell your neighbour how to open the boot, or your SO come to that. Which is a bit silly really.
- Chris
Would you like to super-size that? Please drive through. AND PAY.
Considering the vast amount of open source software out there that include NO documentation and for which NO documentation even EXISTS, I wouldn't be so upset.
So they want to charge you for support? They can do it. They already gave you the source which is the important part.
You want premium support and a nicely printed manual? Pay for it. You don't want to pay? Read the source and figure out how it works. It really is that simple and you already do that for a lot of other open source projects, like I said before.
Proper format would be:
Ask Slashdot: Have you noticed that all Ask Slashdot articles lately have only been bitchy whines about the crappy content on this site and how everyone that reads /. these days is just a tourist? Am I the only person who has noticed it and how do you think we can reverse this growing trend in the community?
You said it's Open Source. If you don't like their policies fork the project.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If this was about a manual, then there is no reason for the NDA, because the manual is already protected by copyright.
Copyright and NDA do different things for IP. Beta software (particularly from companies whose names rhyme with microloft and hymantic) are copyrighted to prevent duplication of the software itself and under NDA to prevent the spread of innovation to potential competitors.
isn't so much charging for support per se, or even charging for the documentation ( and one could argue that one could read the source for that), it's the attaching of an NDA to the documentation that irks.
Frankly, I agree.
This is like O'Reilly saying, " You can't divulge any of the information in this book."
I'm sorry, but as my granny used to say, " Fuck that shit!"
Give a man a fish and you feed him for day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. Teach him to fish but make him sign an NDA first and, well, you're a shit head.
As it happens I've taught people to fish, for money. I assume some of those people have taught other people to fish, perhaps for money. Well, I *got* my money for what *I did.* They are getting money for what *they* did. The idea that I could forbid them from doing this is ludicrous.
What if a university did this? "Yeah, we'll teach you Java, but don't you dare think that means you can make money by teaching it yourself afterwards."
KFG
Is it any good?
a good documentation should be part of the product, and therefore covered by the GPL. If they want to charge for it, fine. But the docs should be GPLd too, and whoever buys it whould be allowed to redistribute it.
PENAROL: Seras eterno como el tiempo y floreceras en cada primavera.
No it isn't getting around the GPL. It is making a new product (documentation) and selling that normally. This is similar to many books or training manuals.
You could always write your own documentation for that same open source (or closed source) software.
Not surprisingly RMS had made an essay years ago on why free software needs free documentation.
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-doc.html
How is it reasonable to be "pissed off" that someone won't just flat-out GIVE you something? Especially when it's something they worked hard to acquire? (e.g. knowledge, software, talent, time, whatever)
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
From my own personal experience they (plainblack) are actually a lot more open than many other open source projects. They are much more willing to help and friendly, even to newbies. Whilst other projects can be really bitchy if you ask a question you could have read on page 456 of some unreadable manual.
They do however charge for support. And they do not want to see the answers you get from a closed support page xeroxed to some other page. That pays their bills and allowed for them to code on and make WebGUI full featured.
Apache 2.0 maybe around for some time, but you need mod_perl as well. The combination isn't really stable that long so it is not as if they keep the most common configuration out of the basic documentation. In fact, many sites still operate, for good reasons on apache 1.3.x
---
Because they actually wrote documentation, and it apparently helps people.
As far as I can see, that's the only thing that is going against the open source spirit.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
On the other hand, it does raise the question: what's the best way to get some financial return on the time you invest creating an open source project? I really wish personal satisfaction would pay the rent or even just grocery bills, but it doesn't.
Whining aside, charging for information does seem a bit silly in the open source arena. Charging for time might make more sense... Are there any open source developers out there with 1-900 support lines? Anyone know of any other strategies that are actually bringing in money?
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
I was going to write a more lengthy reply, but I see that the AC's have treated your post for all it's worth.
Finding God in a Dog
All of the essays in his latest book are freely downloadable.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Fact of the matter is that we live in a world where money is king. If your company doesn't provide a profit, then it's going to eventually evaporate (unless it's run by someone like Bill Gates). Fact of the matter is that it's very difficult to make money with Open Source software. Even Mandrakesoft is having a hard time with a relatively popular distribution of Linux.
These people are attempting to develop a model that provides most of the benefits of open software and (as far as they see) some hope for them to make enough money to be able to support their baby full-time.
Perhaps this model will fail. Perhaps you would complain if the world were handed to you on a silver spoon and you were asked to pay for the spoon.
If you don't like their business model, then you have pretty much two choices:
-
Pay for access to their (closed) documentation
-
Develop your own documentation
-
Write your own code.
- learn how to count
Would you be bitching at these people this venemously if they were providing their program for $50, but not providing the source code? If so, then go ahead and keep bitching, otherwise I would suggest you consider the possibility that your attitude is a little bit hypocritical.This reminds me of a few years ago, the AMS (Student's union) had a barbecue day to make money. When they didn't have veggie-burgers or dogs, I asked them why. It turns out that some radical vegetarians had raised a big stink the previous year about the veggie versions being cooked on the same grill as meat products. Given that the market for veggie foods just wasn't large enough to justify a separate grill, the AMS had decided it would be easier to just not sell veggie burgers at all.
Really left me happy.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Free = Free. Want support? Pay the man. What about mySQL? If you have a problem that's not solvable on a community level, I don't see how you should *expect* someone to spend their time on your support, unless you compensate for it. They could be doing better things, such as, making more software.
I would have to definitely agree with the charging of the fee for support.
That company has made the source freely available to those who would use it. They work on it and improve it, fixing bugs as necessary. But the support itself costs money. If they were just another open source coder, then I'm sure they'd more than happily help you for free and maybe a thanks. But they are a company and they are charging support fees.
This is definitely within their right to do so in both the spirit and letter of open source. Though whether or not it agrees with different peoples' versions and understandings of open source is another matter.
As for documentation, what kind of documentation is being referred to? A help file? A Howto? Or a custom tailored document to help the user?
As for the having people basically sign a NDA to not disclose how they were shown to perform the install, that is something which is beyond the scope of "open source".
The reasoning is that open source covers the accessibility of the source code by the masses in a way which the masses can understand. If the code is beyond the means of the masses to understand, assuming it has not been obfuscated, then they require support to assist them with getting the code/app to work with their system. This help is billable and could very well be restricted information. Not from a security standpoint, but from a commodity standpoint. Ie, it is the model upon which their business is based.
One can think of it as buying software which comes with basic instructions which works for some, but doesn't for others. You can always pay more to obtain support and/or documents to better assist you, but you are not allowed to copy that document since it is copyrighted and is essentially the incentive for people to purchase support.
So I would agree with your assessment with the contractor example.
Some might point out that RedHat/etc are charging for support as well in a similar manner. Though I do not know if they are having people NDA'd.
Take with big whopping grains of salt for IANAL.
Winged Power Photography
There are a number of posts saying essentially, "they gotta make money somehow". Is that a fair statement? Sure! People need to eat!
But apparently, they didn't finish reading the "Ask Slashdot", or they would realize that the author isn't complaining about them charging for support, but that they are charging for support with what amounts to an NDA, saying they can't tell anyone what they learned from the support they purchased.
Personally, I think that's ridiculous; I would never agree to such terms for simple support. However, that is another topic entirely(actually, it IS THE TOPIC AT HAND!).
In short, please understand what the topic is before you go flaming away.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
*grins* Abosolutely nothing.
Though at the point when someone goes through the code and understands it... they may feel inclined to start their own version of it.
Winged Power Photography
It has been widely discussed, for years, that paying for support is completely in tune with the stated and unstated philosophy of the GNU Public License.
End of discussion.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I've never seen so many people so horribly confused.
For everyone who is running off at the mouth saying "You greedy open source people, this is how they are supposed to make money, paying for support is fine, stop demanding everying for free, etc", wake up and actually read the article.
Nobody is complaining that they are charging for documentation or support. The problem here is they are making their customers basically sign an NDA that prevents them for sharing any knowledge they gain from the documentation with others. This has nothing to do with copyrights, and it is nothing like photocopying a manual. This is about you promising to never help anyone you know who has the same software. Microsoft does not sue me if I tell you a Windows XP trick I read about in a book by Microsoft Press.
Personally, I don't hold this against the webGUI people. It is their right if they want to do it, but damn, what a crappy business model. That will only provide them with a revenue stream until some code savvy customers write their own documentation from the source code (which from other posts looks like it has already happened)
So really there is nothing to see here folks. Just another company trying yet another flawed way to make money using open source software.
As to the broader topic everyone seems to be bringing up about how this is a fatal flaw in open source (namely that companies cannot figure out how to make money off it), there is no problem. Nobody cares if companies can figure out how to make money off of every tiny little open source project out there. The larger ones have funding from companies that use them (IBM funds Apache and some others) and the rest are written by people in their spare time or as part of their job.
I make money with open source software by using it to solve my company's (well, university's) problems. I also make enhancements to various packages we use and feed them back to the community. Everyone benefits and I still get paid.
If you are a programmer who thinks you should be getting a six figure salary because you can write a little software utility, then cries when the open source community makes a better one for free, tough luck. Either evolve with the times or get left behind. The days when you can whip out a little program and charge for it are done. If it is truely a good program, you can bet someone else will be motivated to reimplement the concept as an open source project. It may not have happened yet (Gimp is not a complete replacement for Photoshop for example) but over time it will.
Finkployd
So as for flaming away without understanding the topic...
Another Ungrateful Whiner on Slashdot.
Get a life loser and write your own open-source system if all you can do is complain about theirs.
Scrounge around and get $5 out of your pockets in loose change. That should be enough to get a HUGELY talented Indian developer or horde of them to explain how it works, for a day's pay.
Market economy folks!
I think it's a great idea. I see no way for opensource based companies to survive. if they can't bill you for something, they're people are coding for nothing. doesn't do them a lot of good unless people like working for free, and living on the street.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
This may or may not apply to the story but it applies to most of the discussion here.
Its clear that there are a few holes in the GPL and I think it might be time to make changes. The GPL was intended so that developed software could be used by a wide group of people and compaines. Recent laws (such as DMCA) have restriced some of the rights that were implied when the current version of the software was written. One of thouse is the right to reverse engineer the code which accroding to my IP lawyers, is now illegal even if you have source code unless you get premission. Another hole is the NDA type agreements and those are related to some of the hiding behind trade secret laws. The GPL needs to address all of these and it needs to soon before some developer gets nailed. For example if I develop something for KDE and I steal the idea out of Gnome, its quite possible for the author of that part to sue (and win) under current US tradesecret or DMCA law even though Gnome is GPLed and its license was written with the intent of having its bits reused elsewhere.
Let's say you've just bought a device. Say a NBX100 from 3com. Now how do you know if its running GNU software or not? If they hide the copyright message, you won't know will you? At least they left in one small text message that is very gnu tar specifc. A grep GNU on their exe image shows a positive match as does a grep on "You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License". So far attempts to get the source have not been productive but I did go to great lenghts to get explicit permission to reverse engineer the code from the persons whos name is on the copyright because any attempt to look at the binary code could be a DMCA violation under current law because the GPL doesn't grant that permission.
The GPL needs a anti-NDA and a reverse engeering clause added to it at once.
I don't see a problem with them trying to make money from support. It sounds similar to suns plan for star office. That's their whole marketing plan. When you buy star office your not paying for the software, you can get that from open office. It's the support your paying for. I don't see it as a bad buisness plan.
Setting aside the oddness of "it's free, but it'll cost you to find out how to use it", would it not be wise to promote the idea that one, or a company, ought to be paid for what they do? Conversely, if they do nothing, is right to charge for it? In this case, if you ask this company to help you use the product, you might be expected to pay for the help. If they keep the instructions secret and demand that you do so too, are they not merely trying to fraudulently capitalize on the "feel good" properties of the words "open source"?
Hell, most open source software does not even have much documentation period....So having to pay for quality docs for free software sounds like just as (or more so) solid of an OS business plan as any of the other I have heard. If all else fails -- you can always look "under the hood" (at the source) to see what makes it tick -- how can it get any better than that?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
even Microsoft provides a free KB with solutions to most common issues
Don't complain till you try writing documentation yourself. Do you have any idea how long it takes to document all parts of a software project, not just the User Manual? It is long and tedious task. A task that is looked over about as much as writing clean efficient code.
That said...I have to get back to writing my clean efficient code
Nut
There has to be a careful moderation of IP law and what many people call 'freedom' in a capitalist economy. If everyone is forced to give everything away for free, there is no innovation. You want to produce a free chip for me? I mean, giving them away it should be easy to finance a $2B fab line.
i am sure we are smart and humane individuals that can figure anything out. However if we always let money get in front of our human achievement. Open Source = the help of community and most of all without money!
Rh8 and apache 2 is open source, then why is the fuckers opss i mean folks at Plain Black charging money for a document that is open source.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I support a client using Paradigm fund raising software for nonprofits.
They charge $800.00 per year to even be allowed to call up for a call back, and be on their mailing list. They just released version 4, so buggy they told their customers to hold up installing it. It's PowerBuilder over SyBase, the damned thing is a mess. It's Windows. Oh, and it's 5 grand just to buy it.
$50 a year? Can we keep track of donations with it?
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
...it'll be available on Kazaa by the morning.
someone calls you and says thier PC won't start. You come by, see that it is unplugged, plug it in, and start it. You write it up, invoice them, and leave.
2 days later, their friend Bob calls. "Hey, remember when you called me 2 days ago and said your computer didn't start? How'd you fix it?"
They WILL tell him how you fixed it and they should, quite frankly. Sure this is a very lame example but, in my opinion, this is truly what it all boils down to.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
The only real way to learn about some open source projects, unless you are on the inside, is by buying a $50 book. For instance, Ted Husted's Struts book (struts is a java-based web application framework), recently reviewed here, is the only place to learn about certain of that project's features without spending a week or two in generate and test mode, in constant contact with email groups. Other projects are also this way (e.g., Tomcat, a java-based web application server). Arguably, apache itself has been this way for a while without officially saying so, and sendmail has been this way *officially* for years now.
The point made by sendmail is that they need a way to support development. People who are not willing to develop should pay those who are. I suppose the question is: "where does it stop?" Should the product be unusable without the paid for help. Maybe that's a spot where it would be good to establish some open source standards of minimal usability that is expected without pay.
Oh. So that's why Debian is supposed to be so much cooler than Red Hat.
I'm off to Debian's site to install it for the first time...
So, if you figured out how to do this on your own, how about putting what you know on a web page somewhere? Since you didn't pay their fee, you're not bound to keep the info secret, right?
Then ...
Charge for tutorials, fancier documentation, support and so on. If I'm going to use software seriously I want a paper copy of the documentation, and I'd much prefer a nicely formatted, bound and printed (um, nicely formatted, bound and printed means a well designed book with table of contents, index and other supporting sections, with a good paper and ink and font and all, and with binding that allows me to lie the thing flat, use other books for bookmarks and that still doesnt break quickly) and I'm willing to pay for it. If you want people to pay for html versions or pdf versions, you might want to think carefully about how much. $50 for html and pdf seems a bit much to me.
Charge too for site specific installation and configuration by the developers (or a staff if you're a real company).
Sell consulting services for your product and so on.
And, of course, the big money maker : T-shirts!
But remember - if someone submits code (bug fixes, improvements etc), documentation or much of anything else, this must be included as part of the open source package.
I love the first item on the Features list:
= 352
ISI Certified Open Source Software - Therefore, of high quality and freely distributable.
Because you KNOW software is of high quality if it says Open Source.
Then it goes on even further..
Dynamic URLs for easier marketing. This keeps the URL short rather than being terribly long:
Theirs: mycompany.com/garden/tools/showproduct.asp?prodID
WebGUI*: mycompany.com/product352
Because nothing says "click me!" like product352.
actually it's equivalent to being given a car free, then complaining you can't get the hood open.
Remember, when the gods wish to punish us, they grant our wishes...
If it's not your employer taking advantage of you by giving you a paycheck, it's Microsoft or the Government.
Information based business is no good.
Information can be easily duplicated and distributed with no loss of quality, so baseing your business in information can't be profitable for a long time, and requires continuous investments, which leads to expensive products, which leads to less scale, which leads to even more expensive products... And then we reach MS business model.
The solution is to base your business in knowledge, or services, or even both. Nobody can steal you know-how. Make investments in your employees, they're your biggest patrimony. Make investments on thme and they won't leave your company, don't worry about losing your investment, you won't.
What will happen now? After being /.'ed this product will have a new free documentation project, probably included in TLDP. And now the business based on information won't be profitable anymore...
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Now we get to reverse engineer documentation as well as software! yay!
Question
http://www.ironfroggy.com/
I'm ambivalent.
Yes: I see the developers have a right to restrict access to the docs. This is a rather clever notion consistent with RMS' claim that programmers can turn a buck selling expertise.
AND No: I think that creating a phony scarcity economy based upon witheld information as a Bad Thing I'd expect RMS to denounce.
IMHO, this is probably going to hurt the project. Languishing in obscurity is probably the greatest risk facing a project like this. If potential customers are cheesed off, they can direct their talent to another project.
If you still lose sleep about the closed docs, fork the docs. You've got the sources, that should be enough. Heck, fork the discussion forum. (I want to add "and the horse they rode in on," but it's probably inappropriate.)
If you don't like what they're doing, then don't use their software.
Well, if you've figured it out, without signing any contracts with them, post the howto yourself.
The whole idea behind free software is to share information so everyone benefits.
Funny - I always thought the whole idea was to share source code.
creation science book
That's an excellent use of time - spend your own time redoing stuff someone else did for the sole purpose of giving it away to be able to laugh at people stupid enough to try to charge for support for a product they're already giving the source code away for.
You must place absolutely no value on your own time.
creation science book
We spend years learning to code, starting from "hello world!" to actually developing an application that is desired by many people. We do all this not to make ourselves rich, we do our coding as a series of steps leading to personal enlightenment. We of course know how our code works, and if we release our code at all, we release it as gpl and hope that those who are interested are motivated enough to spend the minimal amount of time to learn how the code works to use it. To those who have not yet figured out how to use the code which we have stuggled so hard to create, I say I am sorry, If we only had a desire to write documentation rather than to code. Of course a solution would be to find a way to combine the talents of coding and the talents of writing documentation in one effort. I would task those of you offer quick condemnation of the coders for doing what they have spent years learning how to do and there lack of writing documentation which meets everyones expectations. I suggest you stand up and fill the gap!! Otherwise I suggest you sit down and read a book or two :)
Thanks
They might not provide actual support but they won't lock out ther documentation
So are you telling me that if I write my own HOWTO or publish a book on, say, Perl or Sendmail... I can expect legal action from O'Reilly?
That depends on how heavily you use their property to create your own. But theoretically, yes. "Quote" too much, use their outline, do other things that make it clear you're reproducing their work, and they'd have rights in your work.
Copyright is insidious - that's why the GPL can be also.
It'd be very hard to prove that information came from the paid documentation
If you had access to the paid documentation before you used the information, that would count as prima facie evidence that the information came from the paid documentation. It worked for Bright Tunes Music.
Will I retire or break 10K?
you're missing the point, really. You don't work for free. You draw a salary, just as if you worked for a non-free software company. The company is able to pay you to (write new code | fix bugs | add features) because people pay your company for those services.
oh, my bad
They wrote it, they own it, so they have the right to abuse your ass, right?
The NDA-part is there for single purpose only: to gain leverage on their customers, to put themselves into a position of power. And then use that leverage to make a bit of money.
How is this bad in a practical sense, you may ask. What if everybody was doing this? There would be source available, but because it is not usable in many situations you would be writing NDAs right and left. The net effect would be the same as if the the source would not be available, except for the small minority who have the time and skill to read every source they need. Open Source isn't about putting a technical elite above the rest of the people, it's about empowering all users (among other things).
Another practical drawback of this is the wasted effort caused by hiding this information. This too is one of the ways Open Source is suposed to help us. No more re-inventing the wheel. NDA preventing users sharing information with each other undermines one the foundations of Open Source world: the network effect.
How bad this could be? Let's take a small step further down this business model's evolution path. Let's intentionally release a GPLed software that is useful in many situations but flawed in some situations. This will create greater then normal need for support and use NDAs to force all paying-customers to come to us. If some competitor starts offering same service, we sue and/or open those parts which we have lost our advantage on.
Does that sound too far fetched? What is there to stop somebody trying this? Not a negative community response, judging from this community's response to a use of NDA lock-in with Open Source product.
--Flam
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
1. You have the right to fork a project, or fork over the cash to a developer. INo one is obliged to help you, but you are welcome to help yourself.
2. Content Management is an absurdly broad problem. You might be different, but I'd be better of researching a good serialization strategy and GUI builder for my favorite language.
3. Apache 2.0 changed the C interfaces used by the mod_ tie-ins. There are higher profile projects than WebGUI that are not available for Apache 2.0 (like mod_ruby); WebGUI might be affected by this. Try using a 1.x Apache.
You people read like 2 lines of the article then get so worked up you comment without finishing the post. Here is the basis. I buy documentation to WebGUI. I learn all kinds of neat stuff. My buddy "Bob" doesn't by it for whatever reason and he asks me for some help configurating it. I help "Bob"..and then technically I violated DMCA law or some crap. Its BS. Its just another group of losers who have no clue what they are doing. I saw a lot of people comparing this to Redhat or MySQL. They are charging for phone support and stuff, not for documentation. There is ample free documentation that will tell you how to do anything you want to do for both of those products. What they charge for is when you screw up your system so bad you need a real geek to fix it. There is a difference between being able to call a 1-800 number to talk to a support rep and asking your buddy a question about how to configure some software. So therin lies the problem. Open source is all about helping each other out.
Since the original poster, and subsequently many of those responding made a mistake in their interpretation of our membership agreement, we felt it only fair to present the truth. First, our membership agreement is for the Support Center, which is where our technicians provide answers to specific problems that our customers are experiencing. The poster applied this agreement to WebGUI's manual, Ruling WebGUI, which is a mistake. Ruling WebGUI has its own license which is not much more than a restatement of United States copyright law, saying that you don't have the right to make copies of, or distribute, the book for anything more than your own personal use. Second, the person who submitted the original story, though making an argument against our NDA, actually has a problem with paying for services of any kind. He made no claims against our NDA when he was posting on our discussions, nor in any emails to us. Instead his claim was that since WebGUI is open source that everything related to WebGUI should be free (as in beer). Third, we have taken in your responses about our NDA. Many of you are right, as worded it was unfair. We have decided to reword the NDA to better suit the community. While we're certain that it will not satisfy those of you that believe that no profit should be made from information and services, it should alleviate those of you who want to help out your neighbor with your new-found knowledge. Fourth, the intent of our NDA is to protect ourselves from our competitors. It is not meant to stifle knowledge sharing, but instead to stop those that would try to make a profit by our labor. Indeed there have already been several attempts to make this play by various "companies". Finally, a comment about the business of open source software. Many people mistakenly believe that open source software means that the software, beyond sharing its source code, is free of charge. There is no OSI approved license that we are aware of that implicitly states this. Instead they speak loudly to freedom of expression and knowlege sharing. Furthermore, several posters correctly made the observation that open source needs to find its niche in business, and not the other way around. Like it or not we live in a world of capitalism. And in our world of capitalism small businesses drive the economy. If small businesses like Plain Black are not able to survive on an open source model (and I'm not saying that our model is the best or only) then open source is doomed to be a hobbist's affair. Everyone who works at Plain Black strongly believes in open source. If we didn't we wouldn't build our business around it. But at the same time, if profits are unsustainable in the open source world, then the economy of open source will wither and die; and the funding for all but the biggest of projects will die with it.
If Plain Black is really charging for basic documentation, then what they are doing is bait and switch. In their FAQ, they claim it is "absolutely free." They even post their project at freshmeat.net.
Imagine if a company posed as a food charity and advertised "absolutely free" peaches. You go down to their store and they give you a box of canned peaches. You take it home and discover your can opener won't open the cans, so you go back to their store. They say: "you have to buy one of our special can openers. They're $500 and only work for 2 weeks."
That is deceptive bullshit. Bait and switch pure and simple. Not only that, they wasted your time if you can't afford their can opener or don't want to do business with them because they are lying bastards. I don't think the sane people here are saying everyone should be required to give their code away for free. They just want people to be honest about it. Those who have said "give away the program and charge for support" meant things like telephone tech support, on site assistance, and adding custom features. They did not mean putting the code under the GPL then charging money just to find out how to install the thing.
As for the open source model in general, it was never intended to make money. The primary reason for open source is so that those contributing to the project can use it. Those using the program without contributing are just an added benefit. The only for profit model that really works in open source is the one where the company need that software for their business and have employees participating in the project. Open source wasn't intended for pushing political ideals or selling software.
Before someone says my comment about political ideals don't belong in open source, note that the FSF/GNU don't want their crap to be called "open source", they call their "movement" "Free Software." I also think that is deceptive as most normal people use the term "free software" as meaning "no money is asked for copies of this program" not "you may use this program, but we want you to conform to our political ideals."
Hi,
/.er
it is not just WebGUI. There is more free software
that follows the "free source - payed documentation" scheme:
- jBoss is a free application server. However it is
hardly usable without the documentation which is
not free.
There is a free documentation project, but it
is available only for outdated versions.
- Blender is a great piece of free software but
trying to work with it without documentation is
a pure waste of time.
(However, I am not sure whether this is a
business model in this particular case.)
- OpenGL and other libraries are open to use but
require documentation in order to be used.
(Here You have to buy the book.)
- gcc is free. Learning C without a book or
teacher is nearly impossible.
What I want to tell You with this examples is:
- Not everything which is for free to get can
also be used for free.
- It is not a bad thing [TM] to give away the
source and keep back the docs.
However, if You do so, You should make clear
that You have to buy the documentation to
use the product.
- You have no right for free documentation.
(hard, but true)
- Any documentation which is not part of the
free product can be distributed with a separate
license. Therefore, it seems OK to me that
there is a nda for a installation guide.
- If it is really important, someone will figure
out the needed information and distribute it
for free.
However, stating that a product is completely
free to _use_ should include a free and good
documentation for the product.
Providing commercial support is another story...
Greetings,
The way that I see it is that they are giving away the source so that others can see it and are sure that it is secure and reliable.
Learning how to use that source is what they are charging for. Since it {the documentation} is distributed as a separate item, it can have whatever license/restriction that they want for it since they wrote it. SInce it is clearly stated, I have no real problem with that.
--
Time is on my side
Taken from their page.
We provide professional hosting services for you so you don't have to go through the trouble of finding a hoster who likely won't know what to do with WebGUI anyway.
(scarcasm)I wonder why?(/scarcasm)
1) Write Code
2) Open CVS access to the code
3) Create documentation
4) Charge for documentation, support and house calls
5) PROFIT!
Of course this doesn't come close to the closed source method of making money, but hey, they aren't contributing diddly squat to the community.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
This suggests a possible loophole in the GPL.
Write some code for your new app. Write a code obfuscator; a program that takes some C code and produces some more C code that's functionally equivalent but virtually unreadable to humans. (Even changing all identifier names to foo1, foo2 would make it difficult enough to figure out what the code does. Of course, far more obfuscatory obfuscations are possible.) Finally, run the code for your app through the code obfuscator and publish the resulting code under the GPL, claiming it to be the original source. Charge to see the documentation and include a NDA.
Isn't there at least a moral imperative to publish readable source code under the GPL?
Just what the subject says.
Curious to see the ip addresses of the asshole company in the slashdot logs, and how many of the posts that support this bullshit are theirs.
nda for the docs is totally contrary to the gpl and everything the gpl represents.
Wonder if the supportive, non-asshole company posts would have the same attitude when discussing copyright extensions, drm flags, etc.
Have you published the answer to the RH8/Apache2 issue? Seems you found it indenpendently and could do so.
Basically, I agree that simple how to use info should be available. This is all bound up in the definition of Open Source. If the souce is to be 'open', it seems it should include some basic level of use documention -- code with no documention at all is completely useless -- more like a virus. It is NOT professional behavior. HOWEVER, support that requires addtional effort is a different thing -- and can be charged for.
The problem in this case seems to be more of a
contrivence by the company to force the expense to join the official support group. You don't have to -- could start your own and publish your findings -- for free it you want (or charge is you want).
However, I do agree that the company behavior is
very short-sighted. It would seem to me that in the long run they would rather have happy customers. Happy customers are generally more willing to buy new products. More likely they are adopting the M$ model where they want to control the market to the point that the customer must buy the product anyway even if they don't like the company.
Best way to fight this is to publish your results.
Be Seeing You @
Buying the documentation (Ruling WebGUI) entitles you to download every update. And it is very often updated as WebGUI is developing very fast.
That makes it a lot more value for your 50 $!
I haven't ever read it as the tech guys at my company handle the installation etc. I just use WebGUI, for which no docs are necessary.
---
If you ask me, it's kind of a slender reed for WebGUI to lean their revenue stream on, but their motivations here are understandable, and not really evil. Just think of them as a book publisher and all is well, yes?
Seems reasonable to me.
Here's the software source code/package/whatever. If you can figure out how to install it and make it work, great, it's free.
If you want our help installing it, it's gonna cost you.
What's so wrong about that?
So along comes someone with the complete DNA map to your body. Guess what? Now all your medical insurance is voided -- why? You've got the bloody source, now go support yourself!
:-)
Pay-back's a bitch, huh?
Having said all of that though, since the source code is GPL, it shouldn't take much for some smart and document friendly coder to _document_ the code itself. Ie, make the documentation part of the code.
Adds to software code bloat, but since it can be configured and ifdef'd out of the final compile, it won't result in actual binary code bloat.
ymmv.
I agree with OpenSource. But when it comes right down to it, a business is going to do what it can to survive. And that often times means holding the line that the agreement draws in the sand.
What you need is a strong gust of wind. >:)
Once again, IANAL.
Winged Power Photography
Did anyone actually read this user agreement? It doesn't say what Slashdot says it says. "Use the source" applies to journalism as well as to computer programming.
This is what the Slashdot story says:
The associated Membership Agreement for the Support Forum includes the clause 'You shall not to share [sic] the information contained herein with any other party.'
This is what the Membership Agreement says as of 4pm EST:
Membership Agreement
As a member of the Support Center you must agree to the following terms:
1. You shall not to share your account information and privileged access with any other party.
2. You shall not republish the information contained herein, in any format including, but not limited to physical and electronic formats.
3. You shall use the information contained herein for legal purposes.
4. Should you be found guilty of violating the membership agreement, you shall forfeit your rights to all support agreements with PLAINBLACK and shall not receive a refund.
Now something is wrong. The membership agreement says you may not "republish" the information, while the Slashdot story says the agreement specifies you cannot "share" the information. There is a big difference. The only thing the agreement says you cannot "share" is your "account information." "Account information" clearly refers to things like your ID and password, not to the technical support "information."
Either the Slashdot story is based on a mis-quotation or the company has changed the user agreement in the last few hours.
Which is it?
If the company changed the agreement, that is good news. A company has responded to the Open Source community by changing its user agreement.
On the other hand, if the original story is a mis-quote, than Slashdot has created a tempest out of a sloppy error and this story is merely an example of bad journalism.
Eponymous Mallard
sunset's attitude pisses me off. If someone provides something "for free" and it turns out that it's gonna cost you money to use it, then I see two choices, and pissing and moaning aren't either. 1. Pay, and use it. 2. Don't use it.
As an author of open source software, I reserve the right to change the conditions to which I provide my software at anytime.
Open Source is not your right! How dare you! You are the epitomy of what is WRONG with open source!
If I provide software as open source, and you don't like the conditions in which I provide the software, then don't use it!
In fact, some people have suggested to the company that they work for, that in view of how i makes the vast percentage of its revenue charging for configuring, setting up and maintaining the software they develop, that it might be worth it to open source the product and give the software away, but charge for everything else. So if you're really broke you can get it for free, or if you want to look at it before putting it on your machines, you can do that. But if you want anything else, even instructions on how to install or use it, you have to pay something.
Why is this such a problem for you? Is it that you think they should give everything away? They have to eat, too. If you don't like it, don't agree to their terms. Since the source code is available without restrictions, take the time and effort to study the code and learn how it works, pay someone else to do that, or pay them and/or agree to their restrictions.
Has anyone noticed there are no open-source tax preparation or payroll software programs? (If I am wrong, someone e-mail me). Because those aren't very sexy for programmers to work with - which means that people aren't volunteering to do them for free - and because they require constant maintenance. (Not [merely] because of bugs, but because the tax laws and payroll processing rules change every year.)
Someone has to pay for the maintenance since this is not something your average programmer either wants to do for free (in the case of a payroll product) or has the resources to do on his own (in the case of a tax preparation program.)
Now, I know that there is GNU Cash as a workalike for Quicken but I know of no open-source software for mundane apps like payroll or tax preparation, and if there were, I can't see how we could expect them to be kept up to date without significant resources to handle the average of 10,000 tax law changes yearly. And that's just the U.S.
Every country has its own rules and thus a tax package to handle the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules would be worthless for Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) or for the UK's Inland Revenue (IR). Or the other tax authorities in the other 160+ jurisdictions around the world, almost all collecting some form of income tax. Then there's the 30+ states in the U.S. that also impose taxes on income, provinces in Canada (if they do, I'm not sure) and other subdivisions of governments elsewhere.
Now, some of these agencies are providing on-line tax preparation over their websites, but the method to do this is not open source, and would you expect to pay the lowest possible tax by using, or would you really want to trust, a tax package developed by the taxing authority? :)
Historical note: the typical quote "The power to tax is the power to destroy" was originally written by U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall as "That the power of taxing by the States may be exercised so as to destroy..." McCulloch v. Maryland 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), the first case declaring a statute void for violating the constitution.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
http://paul.washington.dc.us
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
when a customer buys a piece of code from me, it's theirs to do with as they will. And, barring any conflicts due to confidential data and/or business methods, it is also mine to do with as I wish. This is not always the case when I am simply brought in to create something new of my client's design, not to fix something that already exists. Any support they want later will also cost them, whether it's me altering code, setting it up again elsewhere, or helping another programmer make changes.
As for one of the earlier posters who stated that if I used this as a business model I would be out panhandling, I would say you don't have a clue how professional services contractors (big, like Sun/IBM, or small like an individual) do business
I disagree with both of you on this. If you'd used the word "some", you'd be correct.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
IF you join the help form THEN you find out ( or figure out on your own because of a combination of your own knowledge and something provided there) You are forbidden by the NDA from helping other people. That is the problem i see with the way this company is doing things. It isn't that they are charging money for support, but the spirit of open source is the free flow in information. I.E. I should be able to help my friend if they need help. The same way i should be able to help my friend by giving them a copy of the software I'm using if it is helpful to them.l
Read this:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.htm
because sometimes RMS just says it better then i do.
Also, what about if i come up with a solution to a problem that i share with my friend that is later brought up by someone in the forum , or worse yet i help someone in the forum with my information. I am then barred from helping anyone else out and can be sued under the NDA.
It is the idea that i can't teach others what i was taught that causes me problems with this. What effect would it have on socity if universities had such a policy? I'm sure they could make more money that way, but would it be moral, would it encourage freedom? i don't think so.