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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
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
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
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.
Well, yeah, but the good companies charge for support as in, "Here, let me help you with that personally", not as in "Here is a manual. Teach yourself."
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
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.
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!"
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
Apples and oranges, kiddo. The book is covered by copyright; the techniques for using a software product are not. This is equivalent to including an NDA with a fiction book stating that you won't describe the plot to someone else.
Finding God in a Dog
Paying for support is fine. Paying for a manual is fine (even in electronic form). But, having to sign away your rights to share your knowledge with other users is an entirely different matter.
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...
Anonymous Coward wrote:
"They do however refuse to give you free support, unless you cough up some money - which makes perfectly sense to me."
The problem, as others have pointed out is NOT that they sell the manuals. It is that they forbid you to pass on information that you obtained from the manuals.
RMS started the GNU project because NDAs on software made it impossible to "help one's neighbour." NDAs on documentation, Gawd help us, are no different, so this is certainly contrary to the spirit of free software.
Once again, not because of sold documentation, but because of the NDA attached to it.
-Gareth
Perhaps the next book he releases will be available as a free download, then. Or perhaps not.
It's painfully obvious that "free" and "open" are terms better applied to other people, especially when you're trying to pay the bills.
Or you happen to be comfortably funded by MIT.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Completely agree.
The alternatives of paying for support
are:
1) To sell proprietary product, which is
worse.
2) To go out of business (essentially to have no product at all).
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.
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.
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
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.
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