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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?"
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.
"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?
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.
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 by "get it" you mean that they will come to learn how users of Open Source software refuse to pay for anything then yea, I bet the'll "get it".
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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!
Except that you paid them for that service. If I'm a contractor and someone pays me to come in and install/troubleshoot/fix software and/or document for them how to do it again, I am certainly going to expect that they will not then release all of my work publicly (and I'll write the contract to that effect).
...
... your version of open source spirit/ethics/morals is different than everyone elses. This person's version is more capitalist, yours is more socialist. Neither is right or wrong.
/.ed so I couldn't check) then nothing is stopping everyone else from grabbing it and starting a separate free support site. Hell, depending on the license you can fork it off and start fixing things, too.
The only difference here is that:
* The support provider is the -author-, so they definitely know their stuff (not always a given).
* The package doesn't get free support from the author beyond bug fixes (which if you look at the number of open source packages out there, is definitely not a unique condition).
It's an Open Source package
If it's covered by one of the standard Open licenses (the site was
I'm not saying I like the methodology, but hey, if everyone dislikes it who is using it, it won't be hard to start a new support forum or develop something else to replace it.
-that's- Open Source spirit (to me).
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
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)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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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.
"OK. Give me all your art for free. You must also provide step-by-step instructions on how you created the art. "
.AVI if you pay me $5."
That's already what I do. I create art for people to view free, and then I critique their work so that they can improve their skills. If somebody asks me how I did something, I tell them, even provide a tut as necessary.
But if I were to produce artwork for this community and then be close lipped about how I went about making it, I'd be a real ass. I wouldn't be providing a service to anybody. "Here's something neat, but you can't get any use of it. Sorry. I'll tell you which codec you need to watch that
Sorry, but if you're going to contribute to a community, you have certain obligations to fill. It's one thing to sell information on techinque, it's another to charge for basic use of the product. That is not ethical and it's counter productive to the community. If everybody makes an obscure interface for their app just so they can make a few bucks on a manual, then who's going to adopt it? What'll happen is you'll reach a point where paying for the documentation isn't the issue, but rather how useful is it if nobody can make sense of it?
"OK. Give me all your art for free. You must also provide step-by-step instructions on how you created the art."
Go to CGTalk.com. People do that today. They create artwork, then they share their technique with other people so they can learn. It would harm the community if everybody was to say "I'll tell you how I did it, but first go to paypal.com..." It would probably stall to the point that the community dies out.
Free Software is in a similar position. You all want the government to replace proprietary software with the Open Source stuff, but if lack of documentation gets in the way then you're leaving a door open for somebody like Microsoft to come in and do it right.
I don't think this is a matter of obligations like that other guy does, but there is a matter of maintaining intergity. If Open Source is an unprofitable model, then that will forever be a sticky note in the goal of replacing proprietary software.
If that's not your goal, then that's fine. But if you're going to release undocumented software, don't expect a flood of people to come in and start using it. Do expect somebody else to come along and do it better.
"Derp de derp."
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.
I would state that more assertively. It's exactly what should be done, and the folks operating the alternate support site should be the ones to get the $50.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
"THEN USE SOMETHING ELSE!!!!!!!"
You mean like the reasonably priced commercial program that is documented properly? Okay.
That's an excellent use of time - spend your own time redoing stuff someone else did for the sole purpose of giving it away to be able to laugh at people stupid enough to try to charge for support for a product they're already giving the source code away for.
You must place absolutely no value on your own time.
creation science book
Their is a problem with creating your own documentation. The code "owner" can change at will. You may have difficulty keepign up if he believes the documentation is his source of income.
JBoss (www.jboss.org) the open source J2EE Application Server is like this. I do not agree with it. If you want to sell documentation, write a book. The "API" if you will should be freely available. If you dont think so, then you must agree with M$ obfuscating its own APIs...Which I do not.