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Matt Asay on the Status of OSS
OSS_ilation writes "An interview with OSBC director Matt Asay at SearchOpenSource.com gives some insight into where open source software (OSS) has been, is today, and where it hopes to be in the future. A common trend identified by Asay in the interview is that OSS has become very profitable. Asay also touched on the hot-button issue of where the GPL is headed, as well as how open source vendors shouldn't let high download rates give them a big head about the real validity of their projects."
Can anyone shed some light on Matt Asay's credentials and achievements? Has he made any significant open source contributions, be them in the form of code, documentation, icons, etc.? What is his background, and past involvement with the open source community. His name isn't one that rings a bell, so that's why I'm wondering who exactly he is.
Is he a master contributor such as Bruce Perens, or is he more of an Eric S. Raymond?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
You may be taking the wrong lesson from that exchange.
how to invest, a novice's guide
Who cares? Free Software in the 1990's and 2000's has revitalized the hobby of computing and programming. If you are in development for the money, your in it for the wrong reasons. You won't last.
He didn't spit on anybody's face. He just admitted that he was tired of giving away his software so his competitiors could put him out of business. He was trying to run a business (not a charity) off of OSS. The OSS services people get away with murder by charging for their services. OSS developers get murdered if they try to charge for their work. Doesn't anybody realize the obvious OSS double-standard here?
There's a difference between OSS and FOSS!
Uhh, the VAST majority of the nessus work was done by Tenable. I doubt I would call it "spitting in the face" of anyone. Also, the GPL does not allow Tenable to use code that has been contributed from third parties in future-closed source nessus. Only code that Tenable owns the copyright to (which happens to be something like 98% of the nessus code). All of the contributed code will not appear in closed-source nessus. So, I daresay that Tenable is spitting in the face of anyone.
I really hope the Gnessus project rethinks their name, as a fork they should really try to take a different name so as not to confuse users. Also, I'd hate for this to cause trademark/copyright issues down the road...
spitting in the face of all those who helped the project thinking it was free software
What kind of help did these people provide? Presumably if it were code, they would have something to say about Nessus going closed source.