Slashdot Mirror
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."
What happened to all these sponsorships?
No wonder he didn't get a job.
;)
The point about GPL is that you can't get ripped off. If they rip you off, you can force them to release their derivative work also as GPL. If he chose the wrong license, he got what he deserved.
I put my embedded work under GPL and actually managed to get some funding. If it's GPL, people have to talk to you to use it commercially, you know? That's the beauty of GPL.
Anyway, I can't say I found LRP to be as great as this guy actually thinks it is. And this childish "look what you missed" bullshit is not going to get him anywhere either. The world is full of companies who are not making any money, Caldera and Lineo being two very good examples he cites himself. Don't expect them to pay you if they don't have to.
So far, almost every company that hired has tried to rip me off in the end. That's how it goes. So choose wisely, chose GPL.
BTW: A new init system? Got one of those as well... I even wrote my own libc. And you know what? People are helping with the projects, in fact, many people are helping me with the projects. Feel free to look at all the names in the dietlibc CHANGES file! I think it's how you treat people that makes them help you. If your code is readable and you treat people well, they will help. You won't get big front page articles on Wired, but you'll create a damn good project, people will know your name. And you will get invited, too! Meet me at Linuxtag 2003!
...and it was actually my greatest hesitation to updating the site instead of just dropping it off the face of the earth.
I guess every dreg and their ugly mother will crawl out of the wood work to find fault with something I did now. Have fun wasting your key strokes.
But I felt I owed a 'what happened' to the people out there that loved LRP for all it really was: Compact, Efficient, Powerful, and most of all a Unique Operating System.
But just 3 hours after I finalized the last update?? Jeez...I guess people are just dying to find anything to submit. It's always interesting when your apache processes jump from 5 to 152...
Dave
This is far from the first. And yet the loudest announced. Most projects go into hibernation, with the primary maintainer spending more time on projects relating to money, food or entertainment. It is easy to see projects in this state, just check freshmeat for the latest updates. I have used projects dated from 1997 without current development...:)
It is the developer who schedules work time. It can not be the internet at large that dictates the time spent on a GPL project. If you as a user do not like the developers schedule, contribute to the code. Provide feedback. It is easy to see projects go into hibernation due to a perceved lack of interest.
GPL Projects have a certain ebb and flow. This is healthy. If we fight to keep every started GPL project alive, every user and developer would be fighting in the scrap yard. Though it is sad to see some projects march to the horizon.
LRP has been an outstanding piece of software. I have used it as an emergency router and recovery disk. I really hope the project will recover and the developer will get a proper job using the skills he enjoys.
I don't think, according to the GPL, it's that easy to just close your GPL'ed source. Does the GPL state that if you (completely) own the code, you are free to chance the license at any time?
"now what company would want to hire a guy which calls his customers idiots???"
You obviously have never been in a meeting with the senior management for any large tech corporation, have you?
Or, you could just ask anyone who has/had to field tech support calls from their own customers. Customers, for the most part, don't know what the fuck they are talking about when it comes to technical matters. Slashdot users are not your atypical customers, trust me, you folks can at least figure things out provided you're given the right bits of information to work off of.
In addition to all of this, what the fuck does the programmers opinion of the customers even matter? Is the customer *ever* going to have to deal with the programmer in a support situation? In a corporate environment I would highly doubt it.
Hell, I would let the guy have a HUGE poster in his cube that said:
"The customer is wrong, bitch!"
So long as he met his project targets and his code worked well.
Now if the programmer goes public with his sentiments that the customers are idiots while working for my company then his opinion becomes a problem because it is now a PR disaster that has to either get spun somehow or I now have to punish him somehow in a public way so it looks like I am giving a shit about my customers opinions (even if I agree with my employee that they are idiots...but they are the idiots who eventually pay both our checks).
So yeah, basically, the problem is customers are idiots whom you have to keep around otherwise you're out of a job at some point.
Unless your the CEO or senior management and then you just fuck over your lower pleeb employees but sucking your fat golden parachute out of the company pension fund or some equally horrendous lack of moral pulchritude.
And people think I am too pessimistic/sarcastic for someone who is 27. To them I say, work in the tech sector for the last 10 years and try to not turn out even MORE sarcastic/pessimistic then I. If you do find someone who turned out less sarcastic then me, he is lying to himself and therefore ergo must be in sales. Bastards.
Check out his old comment here. Good ol' Dave seems to have some issues.
Ah, my happyness at graduating (even with honors & a masters) in a couple of years is growing by the day. Is it true that there are no longer jobs out there for CS grads? Or is this just one big fat lie told by previously overpaid Americans?
We use LRP a lot with WaveLAN's here in Lithuania. Well, one thing is that floppies don't break (often) in harsh conditions, i.e. -15 degrees celcius in some attic under the roof the anthena is fixed. Nothing else can survive that- HDD drives fail for sure. 2nd- price. why buy a cdrom (or cdrw) drive for a 50 USD worth old computer (usualy used for routers here), when floppy can do the job for free.
Besides changing floppy disk is easy and quick if your access points are in the same town. Floppy is used only during boot time, and lasts for months or years. Oh- and you can do some fixes/upgrades remotely when you have floppy. So you would need CDRW otherwise.
--Coder
Everyone's slamming you right now for some reason, so I figured I'd throw in my opinion, which is that I'm sympathetic.
It is true, the reason to start a "free collaborative work" or whatever you want to call it, is for fun. However, as time goes, it is easy for the project to become more important. By that I mean you have a lot of users and developers, and it seems to take more and more of your free time. You then conclude that the project is an important part of computing, and must be completed. That is, it has moved beyond the hobby phase. Folks are using your project in real businesses, users are using it for real uses. It would be a sad state of the human race if such a useful project were not to finish, and so before the green alien in the flying saucer has a chance to laugh at humanity, you fart in his general direction and press on. Your project is now more important than your real job. You contribute a valuable effort to society, and you're broke off your ass. WTF?
Folks will tell you that this is because you made a stupid decision of participating in a "free collaborative work". I don't think this is true. It's wonderful to begin a project to scratch an itch, and in the beginning you weren't hurting for cash, so it's all good. Fine, they will then tell you that you made a stupid decision to continue the project, to waste all of your time on something when not enough is coming back to you in order to sustain it. Well, now you have given up on the project, so you will satisfy these critics. You are finally 'sane', now get a real job, right?
Wrong. At least I'd like to think so. Maybe it doesn't make economic sense, or maybe it doesn't fit with typical capitalist society, but this is what I see: I see a useful project dead. Certainly the project was useful for people, otherwise it wouldn't piss you off that no one is returning the favor. So now this project, which is surely useful, has been discontinued. Someone else could pick up the project and continue, sure, but would they be any more successful?
If you ask me, "that ain't right" (to quote Chris Rock from "Head of State"). In a better society, this useful project would be sustained somehow. I don't really have a solution for you. All I can say is that I understand your pain, and there are others out there that feel the same way, too. Unfortunately, the green alien is laughing.
Usually I hate pontificating about things I don't know enough about... ...but asides from this guy suffering from lack of commercial abilities to market his work, and being struck with a terminal case of second-system syndrome, wasn't he struck by the dreaded binary modules Linus loophole?
Meaning, lots of embedded work takes place as modules to odd devices. Companies he complain about like Lineo, Caldera and Embeddix have success by working with binary modules, what is much more difficult for an individual without the resources to develop something in-house without community participation or without credibility to sign a NDA.
Or am I just smoking?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
The main one is that they are desperate not to get involved in any sort of money-laundering or porn scam - to the point that a single complaint (even anonymous) can get an account (potentially containing thousands of dollars) "frozen" until you prove your innocence; sometimes they just won't give a reason, and your money is just locked for months while they perform their own investigations.
The second is an extension - paypal reserve the right to pull cash directly from any bank account or CC you give them if (in *their* opinion) they are justified in doing so. you get no appeal from them and there is no regulatory body to complain to (paypal are careful to stay outside of the criteria that would make them a regulated bank; they are simply "agents" for the financial transactions, although exactly how that works if you have $20,000 in their possession (paid by your customers but not forwarded to you) for months at their whim is a little difficult for me to figure..)
There are other issues (like the privacy ones) but those are the main two.
-=DaveHowe=-
It doesn't take much more than a fifth grade education to understand the distinction between public and free software. I won't bother with a detailed breakdown of your FUD, I'm sure you've got the necessary skills to look up the GPL or read commentary about it. But fundamentally, your idea that only proprietary software can be commercial is retarded.
:P
I dunno. His argument sounds alot more reasonable and reasoned than your off-the-cuff rant.
I suspect if you replaced his use of the context free with the context public, his argument will still hold true.
Let's try it shall we?
Yeah.
It's constantly amazing to me too how many of the Gnu-Uber-Alles folks don't really understand that they are [placing their work in the public domain] and can not reasonably expect anything in return. Not a salary, not an occasional trip, not even acknowledgement. [Public means public], you can't expect jack in return. Those are the terms you choose when you use the GPL!
Feeling otherwise really is just feeling proprietary, like the fruits of your work is your property and you can expect something in return. Sorry, that's not what the GPL is about, the GPL is about giving up any control you have over how the result is used or how (or whether) you are compensated (beyond the GPL). The "[publicdom (the grammar fairy just died)]" isn't for the creator of the new work, [it] is for the users to not owe you a damned thing in return.
Works for me!! Especially about the users not oweing you a thing. Morally they might do... but legally?
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
Sounds like the guy didn't have enough business sense. You can certainly make money off GPL stuff. Just offer a support contract. If you make a great product, you won't even spend much time supporting the product.
If he could offer something extra to these companies that his software alone couldn't, I bet they would pay him (quite) a few bucks.
Stop the brainwash
Well, whenever you place anything on the web, it should always be with the full expectation that the whole world can read it. You wouldn't buy an outdoor advertisement---even one placed on a lightly traveled road---to communicate to a small circle of friend, would you?
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
It's constantly amazing to me too how many of the Gnu-Uber-Alles folks don't really understand that they are giving their work away for free and can not reasonably expect anything in return. Not a salary, not an occasional trip, not even acknowledgement.
You are quite wrong about that. Giving away code means gaining fame - that is, if the code is good. With enough fame, you can write your own ticket.
In today's world, fame is bankable, make no mistake about it. Now, take note that this only addresses the money factor. Giving away code - good code - has many other benefits:
- Gain respect from your peers
- Social aspects - make useful contacts, meet like-minded people
- Improve your skills
- Take advantage of the debugging/design power of peer review
- Forestall possible attempts by others to patent ideas you've discovered independently
- People will send you free computers
- If you're good enough, expect to be invited to join organizations, speak at events, etc - it's fun.
And so on.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
That answer is in Don Lancaster's "Incredible Secret Money Machine":
(1) start writing magazine articles, all along as you go. Get those magazine articles published in a journal [that's pay right there.]
(2) All along, as you produce magazine articles, make sure your magazine articles give away real secrets, but not the most valuable ones -- just hint at where the answers are for those. That's your advertising. When companies call with questions, CONSULT. [More money].
(3) Not all your eggs go in one basket. Teaching at a community college can be very helpful. [More Money!] Watch where the market takes you, and work first on the stuff that pays. [That's where the money is].
(4) Live cheap, not expensively. Don't get an expensive studio -- use a shed. Every dollar saved is like $2 or more, earned, when you count taxes, expenses, and whatnot. [Like more money]. Also, no SB loans! [Unless you want to work for the bank, and wind up homeless].
(5) When you have enough magazine articles, rework slightly to make uniform and publish in book format. More money.
That's all I remember offhand right now, but that's the gist of the book. My experience is that insofar as I follow that formula, it's a pretty good formula. I'm not able to follow it 100%, but you won't be able to either. This is just a general roadmap.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The fact an author retains copyright is what gives the GPL teeth.
Actually, to anybody who's read both the GPL and the relevant case law, it's blindingly obvious that the GPL is in effect a declaration of abandonment of copyright. Start with Bell v. Combined Registry and work your way up. You'll see that the courts have upheld that releasing your work with no intention of asserting your copyright is tantamount to waiving that copyright. When you put something under the GPL, you are effectively telling people that they are required, under very broadly defined circumstances, to distribute your work indiscriminately to all who come asking for it. This is the exact opposite of what copyright law says. Copyright law says that nobody is allowed to distribute your work to anybody at all under any circumstances. The GPL says, under these broadly defined circumstances, everybody is required to distribute your work to everybody else. Therefore putting your work under the GPL is effectively equivalent to saying, "I waive my copyright over this work."
If copyright is what gives the GPL teeth, it better get fitted for some dentures. The instant somebody tests this in court, the GPL is going to fold like a house of cards.
The developer of the Linux router project covered many of you bullet points on his site, with an obviously different spin.
It sounds like this guy got all of the publicity and free computers that he wanted, but he STILL wasn't bringing in enough money to pay his bills.
His example is a good one to remember when deciding whether or not to open source your software projects. If you don't have enough money to eat or pay rent, NO amount of coding skills or respect from your peers is going to allow you to program for a project that isn't bringing in any revenue!
I think that everyone can agree that this guy seriously needs a day job. He should work on the Linux Router project in his spare time, but make sure that he has the money coming in to pay those bills.
Hopefully, some Slashdot reader can provide him with a position.
Most of the information and development was on the unofficial c0wz website (those involved with LRP know which site I'm talking about). But that site went down around the time LEAF started. Every once in a while I run accross an old mirror of the c0wz website, which still has the best collection of networking links and information IMHO.
One thing people don't realize is that if they don't have the time or energy for a project, they need to hand it off to someone else. Otherwise everyone will jump ship and start a new project (see LEAF) and leave the original developer with nothing more than a dead project and a few memories. When something a popular as LRP dies, it's not because of a lack of interest from the community, it's because of a lack of interest, direction, and leadership from the original developer. The LRP would continue on if the original developer would learn to just let go...
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
It is the same guy. He has been a nutcase for years. If I had realized that Dave 'kill a cop' Cinege was the force behind the Linux Router Project, I would have never used it. He was the first person I encountered on usenet that convinced me of two things:
1 - He is more than a little unstable.
2 - The internet can be a dangerous place.
Don't worry Dave, if you can't find work then someone, somewhere is holding a padded cell just for you.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
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 may work at McDonald's anyway. This economy has been rough on everybody but I'll point something else out. As a user, I've come to heavily distrust vendors who can send BSA goon squads after me and use EULAs and no end of weaseality to pull software from under my feet if I piss them off. If I don't piss them off in particular, they are always looking for ways to raise the rent. I avoid proprietary software vendors because I don't trust them anymore. The parameters of trust are such that to regain mine they might as well go Open Source.
Proprietary software may be a moneymaker but not from me. Read any good EULAs lately? I feel like I'd have to be off my rocker to buy into a deal like that. Its like a record company contract for the masses.
Write-protecting the floppy will not necessarily prevent it from being overwritten. The write-protect tab simply tells the hardware that it shouldn't write to the disk, and generally operating systems (as they should) honor this. However, an attacker could potentially get around this.
I heard of one company that had a Web server with a CD-RW and a CD-ROM drive. The site content was on a CD, and they moved it to the CD-RW drive when they needed to update it, then moved it back to the CD-ROM drive for normal operation. I always thought that was a great idea (provided you have easy physical access to your servers).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I agree with you 100%. It is VERY important to keep the cash flow side of your life in mind when you are going to write code and GPL it. To me it seems like the *only* component he was missing was the mechanism to turn a profit on his work(I know, duh, but bear with me). He apparently never looked at himself as a vendor. I bet there could have been money to be made in selling prebuilt systems or selling his knowledge via some kind of support channel.
I use LRP as my router/firewall to connect my home network to my cable modem. One MAJOR problem I have with it is that I can't get my home -> work VPN connection to setup through my LRP box. After much googleing I have found that it is possible, but the mechanism to do it is sufficiently beyond me and my wife would not appreciate hours and hours of down time while I fiddle with it. I would have gladly payed for a preconfigured floppy, CD, flash drive (preferrably flash drive because it's just cool!) to get me going...
It's too bad really, LRP is VERY god at what it does. I for one will miss it.
Please be patient, I'm a work in progress! --Alan Jackson
yes, now that linux has caught on, big corporations are contributing (!!!), but they live by and clear the same rules. but linux is as much about community as it is about computering.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
pedro, there are places where LRP or, for that matter, any floppy-based router distro pays off. Starved schools, starved hospitals, SOHO/Small Business sites etc are great candidates for this. In the Third World, it pays off even more.
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
Thats the reality of the situation, and a further reality is that if people don't have to pay, they won't. I am a very firm believer that the OSS community will shrivel up and die if they succeed in making all software free. I have no way of actually knowing but my gut instinct is that the majority of OSS contributors fit in a few small classes, people learning to be programmers to get a job in industry, those currently in industry that do it as a hobby, and those that retired from industry and do it for fun, and teachers (who make money teaching people to program to go into industry). I think that if all software were to become free the monetary incentive to make that software would shrink to the point of not attracting good programmers, the industry would die, and the majority of contributors to open source would have to get real jobs like plumbing and checking groceries. Until that day we live in a utopia where everyone helps everyone out because we all love each other, OSS can't be successful or it will die.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I can see perhaps one way he could have made money off the thing, and that would have been to collaborate with some hardware folk and come up with a more cheap dedicated router, same as the other router companies, put his distro in there, made it rugged, cheap, functional. Or gone to an embedded full distro, something that was secure in spades. People "out there" are certainly aware of security, they just are overwhelmed with how to go about it without become a full time security guru. It's a huge potential market, but I'm not seeing any major effort from any camp any place to provide it. Even the big computer vendors still don't get it, they have employees deal with their security, and wouldn't miss a thing if their box got borked, they have thousands more avaialable, whereas joe homeowner/user or small business guy is just...stuck. There just isn't a security first easy to use distro, not from anyone, open source, closed source, semi open and closed, you name it, none of them deliver.
Note, not saying it is entirely probable, but perhaps one avenue he could have explored.
As to the economy, yep, sucketh. I've had the same job over 4 years, I liked it, but it's time to move on, the boss gradually upped my workload and kept dropping the pay until now it's almost zero pay. One reason is that he as a businessman is a one trick pony, he is losing his shirt with his one type of business, whereas the new guy I'm going to work for runs 5 different businesses, all different from each other. As a consequence I've been looking around, I found this other job, pay might be very low, but the job itself looks more interesting, I get more on the side,and the provided tools are better. It will require an expensive move for me, but oh well, stuff happens. I do estate management/groundskeeping/maintenance. Physical labor, that's what makes me cash, hard work, mostly outside, dodging yellow jackets, chiggers, copperheads,poison ivy, humping rocks, running stinky machinery, fixing everything that breaks, a hundred and one jobs, for pretty dismal cash compared to salaries I see bandied about on slasherdotted. To ME, anyone who makes ANYTHING sitting around a climate controlled office is skilled and lucky,BOTH, so don't expect it to last forever, those sorts of jobs are sought after, and surprise, humans in other nations will do that work for less than you. They are also over valued almost every place, that's why cash keeps tightening. The US in particular is full of those sorts of jobs now, no wonder the economy is crashing slowly. Without some sort of locked down monopoly, it won't last and it couldn't have lasted.
Where the rubber meets the road, wealth has to be physically wrested from the ground,manufactured, and that's it. Bits and bytes need to be turned into something useful,by themselves they are bits and bytes and now the planet is awash in them, they are not as valuable as in the 60s and 70's and 80-s when few people could create them and there was more of a monopoly in their creation. IP styled work is the work that leads to the possibility of work that leads to wealth creation, it's a side issue. Anyone making full time check at that is lucky, as it's obvious it's shifting to off shore and becoming just a regular ho hum job, not an uberjob, and that's because it went from hundreds of people doing it one generation ago to now millions and millions with millions more school kids entering the market to "do it", to have a climate controlled office job of some sort.
I can have a huge stack of tools, they do nothing without picking them up and using them. Same with software, same with any other sort of job like that, someplace humans have to do the other work that provides goods and services. It's one way to get cash back out of the economy, you get it from people who have more than you but are unable or unwilling to do a lot of labor for themselves. And that's it, you have to provide something of value to get something back. As it becomes less valuable you'll get less pay. With software, downloadab
Under broadly defined circumstances, yes, you are. If I write a program and put it under the GPL, and you take a copy of that program and modify it, your modifications HAVE TO BE covered by the GPL as well. You get no choice in that matter. That means that if you choose to distribute the modified work in binary form, you HAVE TO distribute not only your own sources, but MY sources as well.
In other words, the GPL says that, under broadly defined circumstances, the recipient of a copy of a work MUST distribute that work to EVERYONE who asks for it. This is precisely the opposite of copyright law, which says that except under very narrowly defined circumstances, the recipient of a copy of a work MUST NOT distribute that work to ANYONE.
Ergo, the GPL is effectively an abandonment of copyright.
So if I give Cmdr Taco a binary of GPL code, I am only required to give Cmdr Taco the source if he asks.
Go read the license again. Unless you distribute your sources, and the sources of all of those from whom you derived your work, with your binary, you are REQUIRED by the GPL to give that source to ANYONE WHO ASKS FOR IT.
You can ask me all you want, but there is nothing in the GPL that requires me to give you the code or binaries if you ask.
GPL section 3:In other words, if you don't distribute your source to everyone who gets your binaries, then you must distribute your source to anyone who asks for it. At no charge, too.
This also means that, if I use GPL code at work and don't distribute it, I am not required to give any of it away.
Right. Under very narrowly defined circumstances, you are not required to distribute the sources. Under all other circumstances, you are required to distribute the sources. This is precisely the opposite of copyright. Which means putting your work under the GPL is effectively waiving your copyright. And the courts say that when you waive your copyright, either explicitly or implicitly, it disappears.
So basically none of the GPL'd software out there is copyrighted any more. Which is good, because it means you can do whatever you want with it. It's in the public domain.
That's bullshit. Copyright laws say that distribution requires a license from the copyright holder. Usually, this license is granted in exchange for money. The GPL grants it in exchange for the promise to keep copies and derivative work under the GPL. With a bit of effort, even you should be able to fit the thought that asking for money is not the only way to "assert your copyright" into your head.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
" A new shell (no bash, no ash, no sh at all!) A new shell scripting language A new (universal) packaging scheme (would retrofit other OSes) A true application management system A new core process management system (No 'init' here...) " When you set out to change this much you're bound to run into frustration. Start small, release often.
TT
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.
Apparantly, he missed this whole 'community' thing that we've all been enjoying so much. He wasn't selling his product, he was giving it away. As another poster said, 'live by the gpl, die by the gpl'. He's giving his work away for free, and he shouldn't expect it to lead to anything. If he was doing it for personal gain, he was doing it for the wrong reasons.
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.
It's not stealing. Once again, he gave it away - as he had to. He chose to work on an open-source solution, and he came up with an open-source solution. The rules of the game he was playing said that anyone could use his solution free of charge, and they did. There's nothing wrong with that. When I write software, I don't expect to be put on a pedestal, even if I do think it's really good. If someone wants to use my code, that's enough of a thanks for me, as it shows that they think I did a better job than they can. Make no mistake though, I don't think I deserve anything, and no one's 'stealing' my code. It's given freely, with no strings attached.
Apparantly, that's an idea that slipped this guy's mind.
--Dan
This has nothing to do with his ungrateful followers or who he implements what for. This has everything to do with someone acting like the world owes him a living. I don't care what the heck you do, you can't put something under the GPL and then whine when you don't get paid, whether or not my grandma is using it or some huge company. As has been said before here, the GPL is a double edged sword. Would the LRP have been known at all if it wasn't GPLed? Could he have even made it without existing GPL code? Maybe not. Should he have any expectation of his mentioned six digits for any of this work? Of course not. If you're a programmer or an artist or a biochemist or whatever, if you make something free you cannot expect to get paid for it. You can quit working on it, blame your users, blame your lack of time, I don't care...but don't act like you're getting screwed out of money, and don't act like a bratty child going on and on about all the great stuff you supposedly did that no one else will see, because you got no money.
No it's not. When was the last time you paid your rent in fame?
Agreed. Additionally, fame+money is very rare in society. Most millionaires are savvy businessmen almost no one has never heard of, and, quite honestly, most millionaires are simply regular people who had unique insight and were willing to take a risk. Fame equals money only in the eyes of the likes of CNN (movie deals for Jessica Lynch...blecch), which applies to only a small number of people each year.
Truth is there can be only so many famous people, before the "audience" becomes saturated and looks elsewhere. If there were 500 "boy bands" instead of several, would the phenomenon of "boy bands" have ever occurred? (whether they should have been successful is for another thread at another time...)
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
The thing you can get from doing GPL'd work is a reputation, and that can be a very valuable commodity. If you go into an interview able to say that you contribute code to the Linux kernel and Apache on a routine basis, you're going to look like somebody who can actually do the job. Not only that, but the employer could even go look at the work you did, which is likely impossible with closed source software you would write for a regular job.
More and more, I suspect these kinds of credentials are going to get you further as a technician than a college degree is. Who would you rather higher:
1) somebody fresh out of college, with a glowing recommendation from his professor?
2) somebody who dropped out of college, but has been an active participant in some open source projects?
Sure, the first one has a degree and a recommendation, but it's unclear how well that translates into actually doing a good job as a developer. On the other hand, with the second one, you could actually go look at what this guy is doing. You can check mailing lists from the project and see how he interacts with his peers. Is he condescending and aloof, or does he do a great job of collaborating? That's probably more effort to research a job candidate than one would want to do at the initial interview, but if they've got it narrowed down to a couple of choices, it can certainly help give a hiring manager confidence in their decision.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I can name two projects off the top of my head (JBOSS MySQL) that both turn a profit and both are open source software.
Can you support those claims with some evidence?
I went and looked at the My SQL press releases. While they claim to be "successful," they never claim to be profitable. In fact they're still looking for rounds of outside investment, an unusual act for a profitable company. Since they're privately held we don't have access to their finances, but they haven't claimed to be profitable.
JBoss, the services company, is also privately held, and does not claim to be proftable.
(My hat's off to Red Hat, though, for finally coming up with a profit that can't be dismissed as tweaking the ledgers!)
If you think the only money in software is selling the binary, you are again, lost. Try getting some free support on MS windows or MS office, etc. Try getting some free training for windows or office, etc.
Services due to their non-scalability -- whcih is a way of saying you have to pay for headcount per dollar earned -- is inherently less profitable that software sales -- which due to the economies of copying don't require headcount per dollar. Services don't provide the necessary financial oomph for the development of original software.
Tim
Nope, that would be a lot of us. I paid off a house and two cars and set aside a decent amount for retirement, paid off my student loans, paid off my parent's debts, and killed my siblings school loans as well. And when I was out of work for nine months, I got a killer tan and a CCNE and all three Solaris 8 certs and brushed up on my scripting because I had 18 months of cash in the bank at that point any my monthly total needs were about $1300 (no debts, no real needs). I felt bad for the people I had worked with that whole time from '96-'01 who lost their homes (several) and who had real major money problems, but I really felt like saying "What happened to the money!" They were making what I was! They went on great vacations, bought cars and boats and guns, and got some huge homes. I paid off an old truck, bought and paid off a new one, and paid off a $120k home (in Dallas, that is not too bad, either), and then worked on student loans for three people and my parents house note and car notes and covered all of them. I didn't blow it -- I didn't buy a $450k home, a Corvette, two Suburbans, a bass boat, vacation in Hawaii, collect guns and go hunting in Alaska, and so on. And I am really damned tired of hearing how much the bust sucked -- no, people who don't save money suck. When I am rich, I will go to Hawaii, hunt in Alaska, get a bass boat, and have a dozen Suburbans at my 5000 square foot house, but last time I checked I was still a poor redneck, so I will vacation in Ft. Worth, repaint the rowboat, hunt close to the Red, and change my own oil, and I won't complain when the economy lets me put away $200k and pay off the debts of my whole family.
... and then it goes DOWN.
And, damn it, I know other people who came out of that boom with $400k in the bank, no debts, and and so on, too, so it is not just me. It is a business *cycle* folks -- it goes up
He may do well as a plumber. We need more of them.
The days when people didn't take free software for granted are gone. And that's too bad. Some people just think that somehow they are entitled to Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, Perl, Python, etc, etc. And I bet they claim to be "open source supporters" without ever contributing a line of code, just by virtue of using Apache or something.
On the other hand there is a definite trend developing where people who are able to write software are much more cautious about giving it away. And I actually think that's healthy, because contrary to what some may be delusional about, existence of free software is not a fact of nature, it is a result of someone's hard work and generosity.
And don't buy this bull that writing free software pays in fame or whatever. I have little respect for people who say things like this.
grisha.org
I think that the reason for the GPL not to be challenged in court is that it's a lose-lose proposition for the challenger:
If they lose the case, they should stop distributing GPL software without source code
If they win the case, the GPL is invalid, normal copyright still applies, and they have to get the author's permission (probably the one they are suing), to distribute the binaries.
Indeedy. I used this one for over a year, on an old P120 that had only a FDD and no hard drive. I've since switched to a full linux distro to handle my routing/firewall needs, but mainly because I also use samba/etc and like the idea of a centralized server for my network.
Leaf is great if you're got an old machine sitting around (I think even a 486 will work nicely) with 2 NICS. Whip out that old computer from the attic, build a boot-floppy, and then stick those vulnerable windows boxes behind leaf - it kept me safe and sound for over a year.
> If you are a great coder, have good business sense, and good people skills and money takes a back seat to other things....then the GPL can be a good thing.
Or perhaps you may want to use SleepyCat license, which makes a bit more business sense than GPL in many cases.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
LEAF and the literly dozens of other off shoots used the LRP os as their base and then added enhancements mostly via the way of application specific extenstions. I've yet to see any major revamping of the OS itself by anyone else...only upgrades to newer componets. (kernel, busybox, etc...)
My discontent with all of them is LRP had a modular packaging system, and instead of re-releasing the the whole works with a specialized purpose, they could have released *packages*! This would have greatly help the progress of LRP itself.
You will notice there is no 'LEAF OS'. There are like 5 sub-versions on a LEAF site based on the original LRP OS.
For the most part they did the equivelent of re-releasing Debian instead of creating a '.deb'. Saying LEAF or any of the other direivatives continued the work of LRP is like saying, Tivo continued the work of Redhat. Their goals were very specific, LEAF in particular, to maintain a firewall on a floppy. LRP, name aside (it WAS to be renamed), had the goal of becoming a next generation, general purpose OS, with a highly refined and embedalbe micro core.
Dave
At least with the GPL the author will be acknowledged (in the code) and the source code will be distributed.
With BSD-style licenses, commercial companies can use your code without having to distribute the source. Your hard work can then be used by a company to profit without any acknowledgement of the true author of the code.
I have been thinking about this issue somewhat, and personally I feel that open-source development is, from the point of view of the community, much more valuable than closed-source development, and should be rewarded accordingly.
I am currently researching the cost of a model for basic income which would, in its final form, make it possible for people to do either paid or unpaid work and still make a living.
Basically there would be little difference between being a low-paid programmer and being an independent open source developer.
Some information on this is available at this site (btw, for some reason this site does not show right in mozilla, opera or konqueror. It works with links -g after hitting backslash. Any ideas?)
I think citizen's income would increase the rate of open-source development significantly, and people working in low-paid, unpleasant jobs would get paid much, much more...