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Linux Router Project Dead
An anonymous reader submits: "The Linux Router Project is no more. This single-floppy distro was a great tool for building a number of simple super-low-cost network devices. The maintainer has a lot of bitter words about its demise, and it is sad to see it go."
However, it is explicit in the GPL, you release your stuff under it and on the one hand you can build on the work of all the others before you by incorporating any other GPL stuff, and on the other hand you really do lose control of your own code. That's the deal to get access to the growing body of great works that are available in the GPL already.
Reading between the lines, this guy is tired of not having enough money to get by, and the whole goodbye message is mainly a plea to some company to set him up with a job to keep it going. I can very much understand that and I hope this comes true for him, and it might if some companies are actually reliant on his code. But because of the inherent loss of control, its very difficult to translate even a great GPL project into a paycheck.
I can see where he's coming from, but after reading that text I don't feel sorry for him at all. It sounds like he's just thrown all his toys out of the pram because no-one will pay him to work on his own project. I'm sure everyone here would *love* to be paid to do their own thing, but this just isn't going to happen!
Get a real job - in computing or otherwise, and if you want to write a "router on a disk" in your spare time, then go for it. If you don't want to, let someone else take it over.
...or does his list of features that would have made the next version so amazing (e.g. all new shell, all new scripting language, etc.) read a bit like "all new wheel, invented from scratch"?
Maybe it would have been great. But all I see is him claiming he was going to throw out most of the core utilities. This in and itself doesn't make anything great. It's only great if whatever replaces them is so much better that it was worth the effort doing it. Otherwise, it really is just reinventing the wheel.
Perhaps I don't have enough perspective on the LRP to understand why this is such a big deal, but reading the page leads me to believe that the LRP had become one of those projects that was much, much more ambitious than it needed to be. Projects like that will always have a hard time surviving. Sure, it's tragic that programmers have a hard time finding work, and that companies who freely sell and profit from Linux have a hard time "giving back" to the open source programmers who made it possible. On the other hand, I find it difficult to morn a project that, so far as I can tell from what little I see on that exit letter, was something that was neither practical nor maybe even particularly necessary.
-Rob
...but why is this guy releasing a GPLed system and then moaning that it isn't making him any money? Of course companies aren't going to donate a whole goddamn salary in exchange for your benevolence; their shareholders certainly didn't invest in them because those companies are altruistic. Some companies donated some equipment and even some substantial sums of money and that's something to be grateful for. But as for Embedix being based off LRP? Well, sorry mate, they are quite within their rights. Read the GPL -- you don't see Mr Torvalds screaming at them because he feels he's owed something for using their kernel do you?
/. stories are anything to go by (hmm...) so I'd fully agree with this guy if he wants to change profession or at least hunker down for the time being; doing what you love these days can be a painful exercise. And, though I use a more general purpose dist on my border server, the LRP does look like a very useful system and must have been quite an asset for Linux at the time (I wouldn't be surprised if most of those "You can't make NT do THAT on a spare 386 can you?" chants originated from this project).
;)
Look don't get me wrong, the computing economy sucks these days, yeah. Workers are treated like crap if
But come on man, if you're reading this, don't blast so many people on your way out who, if anything, were more generous than they needed to be. Well, except Caldera. *wink*
And don't complain if you're not making money because you're giving your only product away. Like the adage about the tramp who wants God to make him win the lottery, meet him halfway and buy the friggin ticket
I always thought this would be a good idea. You'd be able to use things like samba with the extra disk space that a cdrom provides.
I'd tend to agree.
It's never a good idea to kill off a project (programming or other) when you're emotional about it - you'll always manage to say something that will come back to haunt you, or people will get entirely the wrong idea about you...
Better to chill out, get out of the house, go sit on a beach for a while with a beer in hand, and when you're all mellow and relaxed, write something that's perhaps a bit less melodramatic.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Sounds like this project died from success. LRP hit a point where nobody was needing to scratch an itch anymore and development came to a halt. So the guy embarked on some wierd non-unix offshoot and found zero interest in that (duh!) so he is dropping out.
Perhaps it is time to let someone with an interest in maintaining the current codebase take it over. Doesn't sound like it would take much effort at this point other than backporting the occasional fix for an exploit.
Democrat delenda est
Since when does six months of labour constitute a "life's work?" Hell, if I thought the last six months of my labours constituted my "life's work," I would be pretty pissed off, too. That said, Mr. Cinege will be getting no sympathy from me. I run at least one GPLed project, and I don't run it hoping and dreaming that somebody will come around and give me $100,000 for it.
How much more do I have to say before it becomes obvious that expecting this (and "punishing" us by not releasing what you *have* done for another developer to persue) is about the least mature thing I have seen from any developer *ever*?
If this is how you approach life, it's no wonder people are in no hurry to give you $100,000, guy. But all that aside, what entitles you to $100,000, when so many more competent and qualified developers go unpaid? what makes you so much better than they are, Mr. Cinege?
Mod me a troll if you must. Whether you want to admit it or not, "Dave" is being as unreasonable as anybody I have ever seen before. That sort of logic will not get you far in the business world when you want to put food on the table and pay the rent. There's nothing more to say.
I've seen a lot of programmers/sysadmins leave their jobs after 4-5 years. This high turn over rate is driven not only by the age discrimination, but also high rates of burn-out among programmers. It's similar to the financial consulting market, where people are worked to death until they get sick of it and leave for another job that's less stressful. Sure, the pay is good, but quality of life suffers. And with the tech downturn, they pay isn't what it used to be either.
What I hate is the current business mentality of "let's burn out this bunch of programmers since we can hire fresh ones out of college next year." It diminishes programmers as disposable labor. Hopefully now that the boom is over and the market isn't flooded with new programmers, this attitude will subside. I hope.
Anyone else want to comment on this?
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
I agree with nearly everyone here. It's time for the Hackers quote:
"Yak, yak, yak. Get a job!"
It reminds me of the developer of the compiler LCC who got really pissed off that no-one was buying his pay-for version. I emailed him, and pointed out that either he was doing LCC because he loved to write it, in which case money was a bonus, not a necessity even if that meant writing it in his spare time, OR he was just writing it to make money, in which case: deal with the harsh reality, you can't make a living off it, do something else.
I belive that advice would serve this guy well too.
graspee
i don't have much sympathy for this character. thinking that people owe you things is a dangerous way of thinking. blatantly disregarding possible negative outcomes of license choice is even more foolish.
the childishly worded tell off doesn't help. oh yes, we will burn with desire, and the world will indeed be desolate without your new shell.
i think that anyone who cares about Free Software should be offended by this.
in short, good luck with the job thing, and take the necessary steps to avoid having the door striking any part of your body on your way out.
-=tonyt=-
A single floppy distro for network appliances is actually a great idea. Write protect the floppy, run with no hard disk. This way even if it does get cracked, all you have to do is cycle the power - there is no way for it to get 'infected' with anything.
I don't think it matters so much whether it's based on *BSD or Linux or runs ipf or iptables, or which you or I prefer. Those are minor points. The main thing is that by limiting it's size and making sure that it can run entirely in memory with no writable storage attached, you have an enourmous security benefit. Not only can't it be infected, it's also a lot easier to audit, it doesn't have space for all sorts of cruft like any of these systems leave on your HD after a typical install - just the essentials.
Floppies are unreliable? Sure they are. So what. You keep a disk image on your workstation and make a new one whenever need be. When the floppy goes bad you'll notice the next time you boot, and replace it. Big deal.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
This guy went into it with the wrong frame of mind.
He EXPECTED something for his work!
If your going to start up something in GPL and release it.. don't EXPECT anything more than a "Hey thats cool" e-mail in return..
If by some chance a company decides to hire you cause its a good product then GREAT, but don't winge because father christmas forgot you.. jeez
having said that.. its sad to see it go.. but meh.. what am I going to do about it..?
Nothing... I used it for two days then dumped it for a better product..
Them's the breaks..
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
I must agree that the list of features for the new version sounded like a hugh leap wherein the yeild would have to be unusually significant to justify the effort. I personally need another scripting language like I need another nose.
/etc/init.d/network restart, and Voila!
/.
As for the particularly necessary part. I would have to argue that LRP was extremely useful in helping Linux penetrate the embedded systems market. The original idea was to get all the cool features of the kernel and just enough OS to be useful on a floppy. Once someone got it working, and working well, it was suddenly very easy to offer your [insert generic internet object] with routing/firewalling/web-based configuration stuff. All you really had to do was add one of the many excellent tiny webservers, and a pile of cgi-scripts to generate the config files from the forms and call
Getting a barebones-but-configurable linux out there spawned piles of projects for embedding it, like remote data collection, PDA O/Ss, net-boot computers, and piles of 'reuse' projects for PCs that couldn't/wouldn't have a hard drive in them.
In summary, I don't know what his latest rev. would have contributed, but LRP was the start of something cool that we now seem to take for granted. Me more than most people. As I hit submit my old 200Mhz/hard-driveless/cdromless LRP router (up for 4560h now) will pass the packets to
You dont want to go on cause your so short on money or what ever, thats fine, its your call. BUT...
someone else should pick up where you left, I suggest posting the project for adoption if i may say. You do wanna see your baby live, despite the fact you cant feed it, dont you. So i suggest you document the thing really good, as to make it easier for the next generation of coders to do a good job.
The lunatic is in my head
Most people would speak differently to their friends about problems at home than they would to USA Today.
He ended the project. People coming to his website may want to know why. He's telling them. It's a single page of text. That seems pretty reasonable to me, since we've all seen worse. The guy didn't mean to impose on you.
I can't begin to count the number of people who write nasty "why's he making such a big deal about this" posts in response to some poor person who put something up on a webpage that gets ten thousand hits a month which attracted the interest of slashdot. It's like being angry that your neighbour is saying boring things to his wife on their patio again.
"Since when does six months of labour constitute a 'life's work?'"
Actually, it is more like 6 YEARS, which is a significant time spent on a project. And ya, he does come off as a bit pissy, but ya know what, cut the man some slack... He spent a long time doing something that(even if he shouldn't have) he thought would lead to an income, or atleast, he thought it SHOULD lead to one given the interests corporations have had in his project.
It is GPLed software, and that is how it goes sometimes, a company can 'steal' your project code and not hire you or pay homage to your hardwork, that pissed this guy off.
Man...I thought that guys good bye letter was pretty annoying, but then I read your post and it really put "annoying" in perspective.
Give him a break. He obviously cared about the project and has had to call it quits. He used his own site to vent a little, so what?
And there are many of us who live in reality (or at least I think we do, but who's to say, really?) that make good money AND are appreciated.
If you want to make money, find people with money, find out what they want, and make it - the faster the better.
If you want to have fun, find something you want to do, and do it.
Pretty hard, eh?
It's not uncommon for me to GPL a "commodity" section of my codebase. (I prefer LGPL) and much of my codebase is similarly licensed. Others come along, use my stuff, and improve on it, and I get a free ride on their improvements.
However, there's plenty of my stuff that nobody's gonna see without signing an NDA first.
Busines != Pleasure. Get used to it.
Use your open source stuff on your resume. I've donated alot towards the documentation of PHP-GTK. It's on my list of credentials, all right, even though I didn't do it for money.
But for god's sake, if you give something away, forget about charging for it!!!
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Running a successful free software project buys you many demanding "followers" and then you have to choose: You can become a disliked "capitalist" by rejecting feature requests unless you're getting paid to implement them or someone else volunteers to implement them. Or you risk losing momentum by saying no whenever you feel you can't justify the amount of work. Or you are a "nice" person and answer support requests, implement feature requests, fix bugs and generally do everything your "followers" demand from you -- and burn out.
There are people who can't say no. A programmer who doesn't get paid for his open source work has more important things to do. And thus, for a volunteering open source programmer, nothing is as important a character trait as being able to say no. Otherwise you end up having to say no to the whole project, and for a person who is used to caving in to external demands that must be a terrible situation.
These people are responsible for many great free programs. But at some point they realize that they can't justify the dedication they put into these programs and since they don't know how to continue working on them with less dedication, they end the project. It is important to realize that as long as they are with the project, these people are the most dedicated open source programmers, therefore they don't deserve your "no sympathy" ranting. He is now in the state of mind which you demand of him. He is now at the point where he actually realizes that putting food on the table, that paying the rent is more important than pleasing many ungrateful "followers" and that the project is not going to pay his expenses. He values his dedication to the project with the payment for a qualified full-time job. That's not your judgement to make. He can't get in return what he expected, so he finally says no. His gain is many people's loss, so there will be a lot of bitching.
It's sad for me to see another fellow programmer throwing their work away because of the frustrations like this. So here my take on money and open source mainly for other programmers on /.
I have looked at pro's and con's of different licensing for my own programs and here's my conclusion. If you are a programmer (eg, you are/will make your living on coding) don't release your program under the GPL or any open source software when you first release it. Why?
1) Because you aren't going to get that much code contribution anyways. The majority of your contribution will come in the form of bug reports whether your program is closed or open sourced.
2) Your time is worth something, the GPL essentially says it is worth zero. The GPL is great for hobby programmers, it's like gardening. You give your produce to friends and get bragging rights.
3) Employer don't care whether the software on your resume is open source or not as long as you wrote it.
3) If you want a way for people to contribute code, code in modules instead, and/or release an open sourced plugin SDK instead. Keep control of the core code. Dual licensing does not do this.
So when should you release it as an OSS? I believe when the project is worth zero. Because then it won't hurt you (emotionally or financially) to release it for free under the GPL.
Is it really all that bad? Fitting your OS onto a floppy disk no longer seems terribly important to me. A year or so ago, I built a complete, self-compiling LFS system that would fit onto a 64 meg flash drive. That's a *complete* system, including C libraries, compiler, LVS load-balancer, etc.. With hardware getting faster, larger, and cheaper, being able to fit things on a floppy doesn't seem quite as important.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
That way, other people could still get the code, but at least he could re-incorporate all of the changes to date into a new propreitry system, and start charging for it. Whether people would buy it or not is a different story, but if he made changes people really wanted and they weren't in the free BSD-licensed version, he would at least have a shot of making money from it without depending entirely on donations. (AND there would still be a free version). Of course, this is Slashdot. People here are convinced the GPL is better for some reason.
Maybe some people like the GPL because, say, they understand it, unlike you?
Any code he wrote himself and which was his own code he can re-release under any licence he wants, even if he already released it GPL. The GPL does not stop you from releasing your own code under any other licence; it can't. It can stop you from releasing code incorporating somebody else's GPLed code, but then again that's the point-- to protect the original author from having their code used in a way they don't want.
It's disinformation to suggest that if somebody releases their own code as GPL, they can't later release it as something else. It's poor thinking to then take that incorrect assertion and use it as a basis for attacking the GPL.
-Rob
Just as I wondered how the Internet was supposed to generate money, I ofen wonder how Programmers in the future will expect to be paid.
Although I agree that open source software is better, and I enjoy using and working on it, are we all just enabling large corporations to make loads of dough off our work while we starve in relitive obscurity? Are we acting in our own self interest when we basically work for free and allow anyone to use the fruits of our labor?
I wonder if this is the end of programming as a career that you can live off of. Garbage men don't go pick up garbage for fun in their spare time, the problem is programmers enjoy what they do and don't think of the economic consequences of doing so.
Someone please explain how programmers will make a wage they can live off of in the future. I've heard a lot of pie in the sky types of explanations (as I did about the Internet). Sure I believe that companies can make money off of open source, by selling supported and packaged "solutions" but that doesn't mean they need to pay the people who created the software they sell.
I think its time for us to start working in each other's interest. It seems that programmers are the new exploited class, and perhaps it is time to organize for better labor conditions and stop screwing ourselves over.
I like open source, but sometimes I secretly hope for it to fail. Otherwise, I fear, I will be working at MacDonalds, coming home to do my real work for free.
You complain that you could find no one to contribute, "Untrue to the opensource dogma, actually finding people to contribute work to a project is a task in and of itself." And that you weren't even recognized for your work, "Acknowledgement and referral would have at least been acceptable."
In this, you have wronged the hard work of people that have contributed to, improved, maintained, and taken leadership of something you started. The failings you've claimed are a reflection of yourself, not the community. Whatever is going on, you need to be significantly more honest with not only the community, but significantly more honest with yourself.
When I said "use it commercially" I meant "make money selling it under a commercial license". To make money with it, they need to modify it ("add value") and the GPL forces them to make their diffs available under GPL as well, which basically means someone will send the diffs to me and I may incorporate them in my version, making their added value available to everyone.
So the fact remains, if someone wants to make money selling my software (and I'm not talking about Red Hat or other distributors of my software here), he needs to talk to me.
Also, I wonder what you mean by "poor". I have a nice little family, can pay my bills, and get paid doing what I like to do -- what more could I possibly want from life? I don't have to be a millionaire. To me it's more about what remains when you die, and when I die, I will leave some offspring and some (fine?) free software behind. What (besides some mediocre slashdot trolls) are you planning to leave behind for future generations?
I think most of you are missing the point. It's not necessarily that he was expecting this project to yield an income, though it would be nice. It is that he thought his expertise in computers and routing should yield an income, which honestly is not too much to ask of the world, and sadly is not the case these days.
His tale of lengthy unemployment when he is clearly very skilled is all-too-common. Anyway he has decided to switch jobs, and likely won't have time to mess with LRP (or the inclination after being burned so badly by his chosen career).
He spent a long time doing something that(even if he shouldn't have) he thought would lead to an income, or atleast, he thought it SHOULD lead to one given the interests corporations have had in his project.
Here's the crux.. and many MANY programmers just for some reason cannot grasp the concept...
If you GPL it, you should be doing so out of the desire to give back to the planet. Linux certianly didnt release Linux as a "I'm gonna get rich off this!" and he certianly isn't bill gates because of it. John Hall isnt in the kernel for the Money and glory...
When a project goes to pot because of reasons OTHER than the GPL and most everyone leaves it, the lead developer usually get's really pissy, and i can understand that, but they either never understood the GPL or they forgot why they GPL'd it in the first place.
Dont forget why you GPL'd in the first place. and do NOT be bitter when "suprise" corperate america sodomizes you.... as no company can be trusted for any reason... they are ouyt for one thing, profits... not for advancing the common good.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The entire article is just a big whine. Yeah, so nobody paid you to write the code for your little pet project. So what? Who cares? At some point, programmers need to face the real world, and realize that a little bit of economics comes into life some time. Most people can't just sit on their asses writing code that other people percieve as being free for their entire lives. You can certainly try, but it's not likely to work. As much as I'd like to make a living writing sci-fi novels, it's not like you can just sit in a corner and do your thing and get away with it. Unless you're a complete genius. And, apparently, this guy isn't.
I have a nice little family, can pay my bills, and get paid doing what I like to do -- what more could I possibly want from life? I don't have to be a millionaire. To me it's more about what remains when you die Well said! *tipping hat*
Plenty of people are posting that this shows something about the difficulty of open source or Linux development. It really doesn't.
Projects die and people burn out on all platforms.
It's bitter when it happens to you, but it's part of the game.
80% of small businesses fold without the first two years. It's even higher in IT. I suspect the numbers are similar for projects inside big companies, though the failure can be covered up. Even within Microsoft, over 50% of projects are reported to be cancelled before release, and many people burn out after a few years. It might not make Slashdot headlines but dig around enough in people's blogs and you'll find all the same depression and disillusionment and sorrow.
Hell, it could have been even worse if it was a commercial/closed source project. The guy might have lost a lot of money, rather than just feeling he wasted his time.
The one good thing about open source is that when a project shuts down, it doesn't have to die. Other people can restart it or fork it perhaps some time later. I think this is some consolation.
Also, I wonder what you mean by "poor". I have a nice little family, can pay my bills, and get paid doing what I like to do -- what more could I possibly want from life? I don't have to be a millionaire. To me it's more about what remains when you die, and when I die, I will leave some offspring and some (fine?) free software behind. What (besides some mediocre slashdot trolls) are you planning to leave behind for future generations?
Many here could only dream of being so rich as that.
Oh, please, $100,000? For half a year's work? If you're worth that much, you'd have started your own business already based on this software.
Actually this project is more than 6 years old, highly popular, and useful to quite a few people. Usually LRP is mentioned to anyone who wants to set up a cheap Linux router. It is sad to me that a programmer capable of writing stuff like this is unable to find a job right now. That is mainly what his complaint is about.
The funny thing is, I had just looked at LRP as an option to dump on a machine just a month ago, and didn't use it. It was still running a 2.2 kernel, and I wanted to use iptables. I had also looked at the last release date which was I think over a year old (can't check - the site is /.ed)
There have been lots of security issues over the past year in various items related to the kernel and other packages, and it's hard for me to believe that LRP has been invunerable to any of them. Why would you use something that doesn't get maintained? IMHO, LRP died long ago, it just didn't get burried. It was a rotting corpse on the street.
As far as I am concerned, Linksys killed LRP. Their
little boxes were/are cheap and flexible. (Well
semi flexible - not much compared to a Linux box.)
All of those dates seem to be just before the dot-bomb crash, or at least before the economy started the bulk of its corections.
But it's still sad to see it go.
LordBodak's journal.
You seem to be implying that the author couldn't charge for his GPLed program. The author can sell their gpled programs for as much or as little as they want. Yes, somebody could turn around and give away your product for free, or sell it themselves for slightly cheaper. But, if you are actively develop and release good and solid updates, at least one person is going to have to buy it from you every time to get the updated source code. Whats more, if people make updates of their own the author can include them at no extra cost of time or effort on his part.
free software isn't free as in free beer, nor is it free as in freedom for users. the software itself holds the freedom and everybody else has to deal.
Yep - and when a 4-port router is selling brand new for around $60 at Amazon, why the FUCK would you EVER think about using some old 386 with a noisy power supply and four shitty old 10M network cards?
0 00 04SB92/qid=1056370819/sr=1-10/ref=sr_1_10/103-4168 134-5126211?v=glance&s=electronics
:-)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B
LRP hit a point where it simply became completely irrelevant. "Failed to progress" as an obstetrician might say
OK, so it is tough luck that your GPL project didn't bring you wheelbarrowloads of cash
If that's what you wanted, you played in the wrong court.
OK, so it sucks that you can't find a job in your chosen profession (I know, I have been facing the same problem, and have been delivering packages while I SHOULD be examining packets. Do you hear me bitch about it? Only when I am drunk and/or trolling on slashdot *grin*)
but then to turn around and kill the project dead, saying 'I got a new version but I am not gonna share/release it because you owe me and I am a bitter man'???
Dude, get over yourself!
I don't know how complex this LRP is but I hacked together a debian box with three network cards and had it up and running as a router in 30 minutes, and for the last 3 YEARS it has been running uninterrupted.
Did I expect payment from my roomies for enabling them to access the internet?
No, but it did earn me massive kudo's (and, unbeknownst to them, the right to ipchains -j DENY any kazaa session other than mine *g*)
But I digress.
Release the code, drop those bitter feelings and your next job interview might actually go well.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
I can understand his frustration and disappointment in his employment difficulties, but he's venting in the wrong place. LRP did not cause his problems (and evidently can't solve them, unsurprisingly).
It seems like he's being childish in declaring the project dead and refusing to release the new stuff just because he can't or doesn't want to continue. He could have simply declared it unmaintained, leaving it open for successors. He does have the right to shut the project down, but it's wasteful. Maybe he never grasped the concept that Free Software is intended to be owned by anyone and everyone, even if it was started by an individual.
Reading Dave Cinege's sad words on linuxrouter.org does not reflect a fundamental flaw of open source development any more than hearing a friend agonizing about breaking up with his girldfriend reflects a fundamental flaw of love.
I hate to point it out, but his personal domain is 'psychosis.com'.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Wow, "soveirgn citizen"? Has this guy never heard of the concept of a social contract (if you don't like the laws, you're free to leave, otherwise you gotta obey them)? No wonder he can't get a job, employers don't want to hire someone with a felony conviction which he probably does not disclose on job applications (despite the law that says you have to,) considering his insistence that it technically "didn't happen" (even though he was convicted.) This guy looks like a complete nutcase to me, though the fact that there are tons of postings about him on alt.activism.militia probably prove this beyond the shadow of a doubt anyway. He seems to me like someone who wants to give nothing yet get everything in return, and sorry bub, that ain't the way the world works. Well, I mean, he can always move to a cabin in the woods, but then he'd have to move out of his parents' house..
The Open/Free Software movement is not about making a living creating software. Unless you are a government dependant employee or student (the same thing for many), Free Software is Part-Time-Software. Some choose to be Professional Software creators to make a living. It is still a noble profession regardless of what one may read on /. or in marxism class.
Researching a cure for cancer is a life's work. Taking Linux and trying to build a free Cisco router out of it is a hobby. If you're really that into making routers your life's work then go apply for a job at Cisco (or Juniper or any other company that makes them). Sheesh, this guy makes me feel like I'm over the hill at 27. Time to call it quits, I'm not a millionaire, my life is a complete failure. *rolls eyes*. ;-)
Ok, sure I feel sorry for him, BUT...
You should build GPL stuff either to scratch your own itch or for the pure fun of it. You release it as GPL in the hope that others will improve your work and in THAT way you get something back.
Sure, would be nice if companies gave more back. On the other hand, if Redhat gave out jobs to everybody who wrote something included in their distribution, they would have hundreds of thousands on the payroll.
There are tons of things I'd like to write and get paid to give it away. If I want to do that, I'll have to find a company who'll do it.
Also looks like this guy bit off more than he could chew. A new shell? To do right, that's a tough job. A new packaging system? It's hard for one guy to change the world. Linus was lucky. Not everyone will be.
It is simply easier to run down to Circuit City and pick up a Netgear or Linksys Appliance for less than a hundred bucks. For that I'll get a little appliance that I can plug in somewhere and utterly forget for the next however long it lasts.
The project is a victim of its own success.
I for one, wish him the best of luck and a new job.
Newsfollow.com
So exactly what the hell have you been eating that takes more than a 'few thousand dollars' a month?
Basically, those little things are fine for little home networks where you want to share your cable / dsl modem over a few PC's, but that's about it. Those SOHO "routers" are not 4-port routers by the way. They are basically a 2 port router with a built-in 4 port hub (or switch). BIG difference.
Finally, why the FUCK would you think that anyone is going to use any LRP type distro on an old 386 with a noisy power supply and 4 shitty 10M network cards? Maybe they will run it on an Openbrick or some little box with this chip in it.
I don't know all of the details here, just what he posted on the LRP site but...
If you are doing this type of thing with the expectation of making a living then you are running a business. If you are running a business then you had better take care of business. This means taking care of a bunch of things that geeks donâ(TM)t like to have to worry about.
It is tough. I'm a geek and I love what I do but I am always juggling my dreams and intellectual interests with the demands of life. My wife and I aren't super materialistic but we have a fairly nice house, like to drive reliable cars, etc. It all takes money. Not a lot but enough that it doesnâ(TM)t just happen by accident.
There are a lot of intellectually challenging things that I would love to do but I can't figure out how to make it work financially. In a lot of ways I respect his ability to forego financial gratification and pursue his dreams but I do think it is foolish to pour time into a project without some sort of plan for taking care of you. If you arenâ(TM)t attending to your business nobody else is going to.
He should have at least had some sort of business plan or plans that would result in him meeting his other life goals in addition to his intellectual pursuits. Thatâ(TM)s just the way life is whether you think it is a good thing or not. Pretty much everyone else on the planet is doing the same thing.
Free software isnâ(TM)t really free. It takes people who have invested a lot of time and money in their education, computers, electricity, a roof over your head. This all adds up.
So, I guess this sort of thing happens all the time. Geek enjoys programming and computers wants to leave his/her mark on the world. Works on project at the neglect of other things, then gets pissed off because the other things werenâ(TM)t taken care of.
You have to be willing to work with other people and do what someone else says to have a job, those aren't skills this guys has in great quantity.
At least it's GPLed, even though he didn't find a successor, someone else will take it over.
Tell me, please, how the GPL differs here from any other free source license. With all of them, anybody can make changes. Whether GPL, BSD or public domain, you have allowed others to make changes to your code base. The only difference I see is that with the GPL, you get to see their changes. The others all hide it under the rug.
Seems to me this says a whole lot more about you and what you want to know than it does about the licenses.
Infuriate left and right
The biggest mistake I made when I became a consultant was to not learn about business before I took the plunge, and to not adequately take care of my business once I committed to it.
I became a consultant because I was a good programmer, wanted to be my own boss and wanted to work out of my home, not because I had any love of or aptitude for business. The importance of taking care of business has been a hard lesson to learn.
There is bookkeeping, accounting (two related but different things), tax filing, sales, marketing, contract negotations, billing, and, uh "encouraging" the client to actually pay, collections when that doesn't work, and time management.
None of these come naturally to most geeks, not even when you're a skilled and talented programmer.
I guess this Dave guy just tossed an Open Source project out into the wild and expected the checks to start appearing in his mailbox. Even under the best circumstances, it's much more complicated than that.
I started my consulting business full-time on April 1, 1998. I'm only just beginning to get a handle on the business issues.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Dave, I think some of the other folks have it right.
LRP is useful, and made a huge contribution to bringing Linux to the embedded world. Had it not been for LRP, it is possible that MS would have hooks in far more software than it does, via CE, and Linux wouldn't be making nearly as many waves as it does in business publications.
However, you cannot let something like this turn into something that consumes all your time and energy. It cannot be more than a hobby, unless you have some way ahead of time to convert it into money.
My guess is that you spent a lot of time working on this, and expected to be able to "cash in" the fame at some point to get a decent job (with Caldera or whomever). Not unreasonable, and a lot of GPL folks feel the same way. But it's a bad market for tech folks right now (or at least less good than it was), and it didn't turn out that way. Even Linus, who has a tremendous amount of fame stored up, worked for years for Transmeta and on other things before actually becoming bankrolled by a company.
You can *always* get a job. It may not be a great job. It may pay $30k. It may be working at a Babbages. If you have technical skills, you can at least put food on the table. You may be better off lowering your standards, getting a job that doesn't pay too much (and thus eating and having something to do all day), waiting out the recession, and then run out and look for a better job. There are a lot of folks that can't find a decent job now. That's just part of tech life right now.
Thank you for your code.
Finally, you should take the people poking on you here only semi-seriously. Slashdotters love actually being able to affect something by typing, regardless of the actual impact. If it's to piss some guy off who is already pretty upset, then they'll do it.
P.S. From a technical standpont, I agree with a few other people -- I think your final set of ideas may be too ambitious to do well. It takes a tremendous amount of work to write a good interpreter and good language, and the same goes for an OS and support utilities. I'd hold off on that, since it's such a huge project. It may be good if you're willing to wait until retirement or something like that, but in the meantime, it's a tremendous undertaking.
May we never see th
From the perspective of an employer, when you hire someone you want the benefits to outweigh the costs. If the person is brilliant, but odd, and you can afford to sit them in a corner and their demands are limited (I worked with a few older guys who had gotten donuts every Monday for about 20 years until the previous CIO had cut them off for "costs savings" and they were very, very bitter about the damned donuts -- I got the present CIO to make a line item for the donuts and the COBOL productivity actually rose 10% and stayed up -- no shit) or workable (a friend at TI knew a brilliant firmware guy who would only work at night, and TI put up with that for 30 years, until the guy retired -- no, he had no medical condition, he just liked to sleep during the day). And that is when times are rough too -- as long as the demand is not too expensive and the person is productive. If the demands get bizarre, if the person is less that stellar in terms of output, and if they make everyone angry, during the best of times when the labor market is seriously tight, they will be employed, but that will end as soon as it is more affordable to find the equivalent number of less troublesome individuals who cost less in aggregate than the one prima donna. I have been there, man -- I have had to work with these idiots who though that they were God and it is a real pain in the neck. And when the market turned, they were out, and to a man they always wanted to pull down the temple when they left. They always tried to log in after being disusered, they always emailed people from home to talk shit about the company, they always had exceptionally hostile exits, and it always involved security. And time went on, the world did not collapse, and so on. The reason that this irritated me a lot was that as the "most mellow" sysadmin, I usually get to deal with these people (and marketing, but that is another rant), so I have got to see what they are capable of in terms of code and output. And a lot of it is not that good. Whereas someone solid who has a reliable output 85% of where the "genius" is winds up doing better because they a)make constructive comments to fix dumb ideas (as opposed to telling everyone to kiss their ass and calling them morons), b)present suggestions to management in a way that gets accepted (as opposed to reinforcing management's view of systems people as emotionally unstable idiot savants), c)come to work on time, d) play well with others, e)make meetings go fast as opposed to giving speeches the whole time, and f)meet deadlines because they tend to understand that sometimes "good enough" is just fine. Again, you are getting the perspective of an old sysadmin, but I have seen the same things from MVS through Linux and the people and code changes but the attitudinal issues seem to be quite stable -- I remember tortured geniuses doing mainframe assembler 20 years ago. They were also easily replaced with (often older) programmers who would do 85% of what they did, but would make it in every day and would get along with people. Judging from the "kiss my ass" letter at the web page, I have worked with this guy's relatives from the Prima Donna tribe before. If work is that painful, find another job. He may enjoy plumbing a lot more.
I am sorry if I sound callous about this, but this is a career for me, and I like to do it well. There is a lot of satisfaction in doing my job well. And people like that make it a lot harder, and they do it on purpose because it makes them feel good.
As I see it, the issue isn't whether he devoted 5 years or 5 months or 5 hours. If you write code under the GPL, you know going into it what the terms are. If you happen to garner fame, fortune and super-models hanging on your arm, then great. But that was never promised. FWIW, I write and release code under the GPL because I get a real sense of pleasure and satisfaction in knowing that something that I wrote is being used. It's not for the fame, etc. (Though any super-models are welcome to contact me...)
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Not my post, but what the guy said seemed reasonable. So either I have a 5th grade education, or you seem to be trolling yourself. Either way, it's an interesting thread, so it would be nice if you actually would breakdown what you call his "FUD."
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
There _are_ places, true--but not usually where money is at a premium.
From a business sense, the LRP doesn't work anymore. Getting a free PC that consumes 30-100W of power constantly and is more likely to break (not to mention taking up a fair chunk of real estate) is very quickly outstripped by a tiny solid-state box running on 6W. Power costs, reliability, and size considerations all favour the dedicated router.
Now when you start lookng at a larger and more powerful router, using an old PC makes lots of sense--at least two of the three considerations mentioned (power, size) become about equal, and the PC is probably more configurable with the right work.
Then you get into the questions of initial cost (PC wins!) and ease of maintenance/use. The LRP attacked the latter issue very successfully, but also (from what I remember) limited the 'power' of the router to do other tasks. If you want to build a dirt cheap router from a PC that can do all of the whizz-bang extras (DHCP, DNS serving/forwarding, QOS, IPSec authentication, etc. etc.) then the LRP isn't the easiest or most effective way to build it.
PC-based routers? They definitely have their place. The LRP however, is getting squeezed out of its niche.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
> Who would you rather higher:
Someone who can spell, for a start, but anyway:
> 1) somebody fresh out of college, with a glowing recommendation from his professor?
- can see a tough project through to fruition
- clear mechanical ability
- recommendation from someone with something to lose
> 2) somebody who dropped out of college, but has been an active participant in some open source projects?
- can't complete a big project
- *may* have some programming skills
Re your point about looking "at what the guy is doing", are you for real?? Don't you think a firm can do that ordinarily? Talk to profs, sports coaches, previous employers?
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Dave,
I read your rant, and you're complaining about people not sending you money.
OK, you claim to have received about $100,000 for the LRP over 6 years.
How much of that have you sent to the kernel, GCC, and BusyBox authors and contributors?
Seems like you're bitching about people "making money off your hard work", while you're guilty of doing exactly the same thing.
While he did a lot of good work, and spawned some nice projects to pick up the path he doesn't have to whine about it.
Seesh, it was a 'free' project.. only a fool would expect it to 'put food on the table'.
Its all part of the deal of donating your time to the 'cause'.. its a DONATION.. nothing more, nothing less. Be thankful for the complements and loose change people send you. ( and get a real job on the side to support the family during the project ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, your point is valid; of course he could be right... and he could be wrong.
The problem is one of public perception, which, like it or not, we must take into consideration. Any entity that does business with the general public depends on the goodwill of that public for survival; to say otherwise is to deny reality. Unfortunatly, Mr. Cinege apparently made his political views a large part of who he is, and what he does... and opened the door to criticism as a result. Business is business, and it really should be kept on that level to avoid the unnecessary consequences of fringe political advocacy.
Yes, he could be right... but he drew his criticism with his own radical statements, and has called the validity of his views into question in some people's minds, because they are considering the source. They see the messenger, rather than the message. Unfortunate, but such is human nature.
A raving, drooling, psychotic nutcase could be spot-on, but nobody listens to such a spokesman, so the intellectual battle is lost before it's even begun.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Depends what you mean by worse. This guy seems pretty annoyed about what happened while his stuff was under GPL. I fail to see how it would be worse if he wasn't made aware that his code was being used.
More to the point, most people who put stuff under a BSD license know what that entails. (There are a few notable exceptions, the WINE fiasco coming to mind.) Anything I do is BSD-licensed, and I'm fine with the consequences.
Let this be a lesson to everyone -- you should consider the ramifications of the license you pick before choosing one. If you don't want people to use your code without making a monetary contribution, the GPL (or BSD license) is not for you.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The GPL is very pragmatic: you take whatever GPL'ed components you need in order to solve your own problem and you are encouraged to contribute whatever you developed on top of them back to the community. That's all. If you don't have a problem to solve, you shouldn't be using GPL'ed code in the first place.
If you want to develop a new system from scratch and then make money with it, by all means, get some investors and try to sell the result. Personally, I think the market value of a system like Dave outlines above is pretty much zero, but that's between him and potential investors.
He's just ranting that the computer industry didn't make him a rich man because of his contributions to the open source community. But if he were making contributions to the open source community with the intent of getting rich, he had the wrong plan. It can happen, but it hardy happens commonly, and that should never be the motive for getting into it.
His final "news" entry is conflicted and inconsistent. He's mad about the open source community not paying his bills for him. He's mad that companies used his software without giving him a job -- as if they had that obligation. He's mad that he never saw the true value of his own project -- so what is he blaming other people for?
Sounds to me like he's just pissed off, and is desperately looking for anyone but himself to blame.
GPL kills any oppurtunity for revenue. It does, however foster a fantastic community, but as a business plan?
GMAFB, If he wanted to make dollar one, copyright it. It would have protected him against all the crap he's complaining about.
GPL, you can't have your cake and get paid for eating it too.
The lesson to learn in all this is never do anything for free if you want to make money. Get the money first, and if you don't get the money, don't do it. I've done a couple of freeware projects, and the only ones I've been content (not happy, just content) are the ones I did for fun with _no_ expectation of getting anything, not even a thankyou. These are incredibly rare. On the Internet where everything is for free, you're nothing special.
Mr LRP should be happy he learnt the lesson now. Others (myself included) have wasted years on projects we've kept putting effort into on the basis that one day that time and work would somehow pay off. It doesn't.
Always get the money first. And if you do it anyway, don't secretly yearn for anything in return, because you won't get it.