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
"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.
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.
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
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 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
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
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)
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 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
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.