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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 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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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