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The Business Case for Open Source Software
An anonymous reader writes "An InfoWorld blog entry makes a business case for open source software, and attempts to explain the business benefits of OSS to management and business owners. The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys. The article also argues that OSS results in freedom from 'ownership' by software vendors. 'Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit. The BSA even takes out advertisements on Google search pages for and up to $200,000 reward a disgruntled ex-employee can receive for reporting your company to the BSA! That's quite a powerful motivator...'"
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I'll take this as sincere and not a troll.
Get a new lawyer for the company. The GPL states that whoever has access to the executable should have access to the source. You said yourself that you only wanted to release the executable within the company, so the GPL doesn't really apply.
As for gcc, if you modify gcc itself and send out copies of gcc outside your company (which is *extremely* unlikely; if you have resources to do that, you are not in the right field.), then you may have to release source. Otherwise: gcc is a tool to compile a program, just as pencil and paper are tools to write the program. You are not bound by the GPL on what you write. Now, if you link to a library that is GPL (not LGPL) licensed, you have to release source to whoever gets the executable.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
How the hell did your company take the time to learn Linux to such a degree to be able to "modify the kernel code to fit your needs" and NOT know that it had to be shared...
Next question: What type of crappy consulting company do you work for? Just because you didnt work with Linux in the past doesnt mean you shouldn't have already had knowledge of it. We have dozens of clients, not one of them use Linux, and I still know a lot about it and other open source projects... Its your responsibility as a consulting company to about technology.
The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys.
When WGA started up, I started looking at Linux again. Business has some incentive. So does home users. We have 3 machines running Ubuntu now. We have one Windows ME laptop and one MS XP Home machine. The XP machine will be the last to migrate. It's just waiting on a port of Turbo Tax. There is no plans at this time for Vista due to the Anti-Piracy effort gone overboard. I don't buy booby-trapped software. I expect software to just work without complications. Vista is loaded with complications.
The truth shall set you free!
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
the business case for Open Source Software in the enterprise market is already well established. Some reasons: .... (or should I say IQ of the average EDP Manager) seems much higher than elsewhere... so he can't be fooled forever. .doc formats... not many firms have BI or Analytics... so leap-frogging ain't a big issue.
1. The average IQ of the 'EDP Manager'
2. Closed source software is so very expensive, enterprises choose to build their own systems; and they mostly choose J2EE and Eclipse. The LAMP stack is packing up with amazing velocity as well. ROI can be seen in a single year, with many apps.
3. Not much of lock-in has occured already - very few companies have data locked in
4. The hardware specs are roughly 10% in the OSS space.... and that matters a lot as well.
and lately:
5. It is getting more and more cumbersome pirating Closed source s/w - be it OSes, Office, SQL or whatever. Most EDP mgrs over here have been on the same company for a decade on average; and they're pretty amazed at what OSS can do.
A recent Java conference (paid, mind you) had over 10,000 attendees! RedHat is doing very well... not many people know or care about Novell... many state govts. have mandated and stipulated Open Source specs...
Somehow, people this part of the world do not seem to wait for Gartner reports or NYT articles before experimenting with OSS.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
YHBT YHL HAND
This same exact troll has been copied and pasted here for years...
Tastes like FUD...
Oh shit here comes a chair DUCK
'Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit.'
You may however have the EFF or activists wanting to inspect your code.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
I cry bullshit!
l
/. - if you don't distribute it, you don't have to share it. No one is going to sue you for using GPL'd code in internal projects and not releasing the code.
/. You need new lawyers!
specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support
Here's a howto dated 2000 that describes setting up token ring:
http://www.linux.com/howtos/Token-Ring/index.shtm
I haven't specifically used this, but I have setup Linux on Arcnet, arguably much older, certainly equivalently obsolete, networking technology.
we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
This has been covered over and over again here at
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released.
Also done to death here at
"Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit."
It's funny, but when *I* say "Nice business, be a shame to see it audited..." people start talking about calling the cops if I don't leave immediately.
Seriously though, FUD is FUD whoever it comes from; just because they do it doesn't mean it's ok for us to do it too.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You left out GPLv3 and Google (web services) and Tivo (the new spirit)
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
This is one of the two main points for OSS that I have experienced. The second important point is that with OSS your system is able to survive the vendor. Where I work we have a 400000 lines VAX-FORTRAN software that we are struggling to migrate. Although we do have the Fortran source code, migrating it to any other Fortran is very costly, we have the choice of doing it ourselves or pay about $250k to outsource the job.
I think our experience shows the importance of going all the way in OSS, the operating system, utilities, compilers, etc are just as important as the applications. That's why we are migrating our system to g77 on Linux, instead of using one of the several commercial Fortran compilers whose vendors claim VAX compatibility.
Ah yes - we must all bemoan the lack of defrag for ext2 - it does make that particular troll memorable :)
And having worked for IBM I can attest that token ring is still quite usable (but not that that realy matters - I'm sure IBM is the only company in the world that still has working token ring networks in use)
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
originals are Here and here...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
When you explain that the company's Word and Powerpoint presentations are potentially locked up in a format that belongs solely to Microsoft and nobody else, it gets their attention quickly. Curiously enough, it's usually something they hadn't considered before.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
In this thread you can see an employee[1] of FSF (novalis atsign fsf.org) asking for submissions about the Linksys software. This is not out of simple interest in what is running. It so that they can build a case to ask Linksys to prove they have complied with the various licensing terms of the open source software incorporated in their device.
For the other people out there who might mod this down, here is a more comprehensive list:
* Theo de Raadt On Firmware Activism - requiring firms to open linked code
* And the whole SveaSoft debacle - Is Sveasoft Violating the GPL? - Please note this entailed multi-party activism with external people deciding to leak SveaSofts code
-----------
1 - someone claiming to be at least
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
A quick google search says that it's probably a troll
It's quite different over here. It's not just a question of experimenting with OSS, it's a combination of seeing the job as deciding between presentations from different vendors and being averse to taking personal risks.
As I mentioned, it seems like people have stopped doing their own research and now mainly choose between different schpiels from different vendors. Vendor 1 selling you something for 100,000 dollars, and vendor 2 selling it to you for 50,000? Clearly if you go with vendor 2, you've saved the company 50,000 dollars a year. No need to point out vendor 3, who doesn't have a substantial sales team but who sells something identical for 5,000 dollars per year, or an OSS solution which might need 1,000 dollars per year worth of tweaks. Or maybe it makes sense for you to write your own. We generally have a 2-vendor solution, and nobody can fault you for choosing the better of the two, right?
The risk-aversion deepens. In corporate US if you create a product that everyone else is making, your job is reasonably safe even if it tanks. And, in fact, simply because everyone else is making it, it's likely to tank. On the other hand, if you create something original (i.e. something with an open market) and it tanks, it's more likely that your career will bear the brunt of that mistake. OSS is currently viewed a lot like that. Taking risks is largely regarded as a negative, and certainly regarded as a dangerous career move.
One does not experiment with OSS, because one does not experiment. One either knows for sure, or one contracts a vendor who will bear the brunt of the responsibility when things might go wrong.
The ______ Agenda
Right now I use Debian. I use it because I'm lazy.
However, every now and then, a package will just stop getting updated. Maintainer goes on to better things, maybe. It's not that the software no longer exists, it's just the maintainer isn't making Debian Packages for it anymore. One reason or another. Often it's not "no longer making..." but "isn't making _right_now_, but really intends to at some point" (ie: packages are out of date)
What Linux currently lacks is an overall packaging scheme to allow people to switch between using Packages and hand-built sources easily.
Another example: Perl modules vs Debian packages. Ruby gems vs Debian packages. These systems are not linked together in any way, so if I say "gem install foo", and Debian later supports a foo package (as it often does), there's no connection to say "this already exists" or even "this exists over here, not over here" (many things like putting things in many places)
I realize there are efforts being made towards fixing both of these problems, but that only serves to point out that they're very real problems.
So what happens if you vendor goes away? You can just compile the sources by hand, of course!
But if there's no overall packaging scheme, distribution is going to be hell.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'll explain the difference: in the Linksys case the company didn't supply source code but did use Open Source software, and the GPL clearly states you have to do this.
Result: Linksys folded and opened its code (this is 2003, mind you) and nowadays we have http://www.openwrt.org/ and http://www.dd-wrt.com/. And I'm sure Linksys doesn't mind all the interest in its products.
In the case of the BSA, they bribe disgruntled ex-workers to rat of their ex-bosses. When they knock on your door they're accompanied by a police officer (at least here) and you're told to leave alone every computer in the office until they've run (yes, run) their little tools.
So, I think I do like the EFF better.
Check the enterprise version of http://sugarcrm.com/
Somebody who writes an article about OSS, should at least mention this "not free" flavor of OSS.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
What you speak of is definitely in *BSD, and I think it might be a part of Gentoo. I know for a fact that in FreeBSD, you can manually compile from Ports or you can use pkg_add (i believe from pkgsrc) to install a binary package. pkg_add has an option to grab a remote copy if you do not have one locally. Gentoo's portage is theoretically based on FreeBSD ports (hence PORTage). Portage makes it simple compile your own packages, and I believe there is an option to install a precompiled binary but I am not 100% sure if you can tell portage to grab the binary from a remote server or if it needs to be available locally.
At least I have never read of the BSA knocking because people were distributing or selling software copyrighted by another, rather the articles are about them knocking because a company buys one licensed version and installs it multiple times or some variation on that theme. Some even may have purchased all the copies they have installed but just not tracked the licenses properly.
Using a bit of software rather than trading in it.
Now, I imagine that they may knock in the trading cases as well, but not nearly so many businesses trade in software as use software.
So, your point may apply to the former, but do you hold that it applies to the latter as well?
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcaf2ThG7q4
UFO seen in skies over Winton!
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
How powerful are these guys, I mean really? Do they exist in Canada? Despite privacy laws and all this bullshit do they have some kind of authority to march into your business? I just never really understood how they work
Hooray for India! It's all about the countries outside the USA. The USA, """land of the free""" will be the last in the world to embrace technology freedom, if indeed they do not outlaw it entirely. Every time I hear about Linux making a gain, it's outside the US.
What's it like to simply walk into a store and buy a Dell laptop with Linux on it? (Linux installs are demanded by 22% in India I hear). What's it like to not have your ISP threaten to cut you off from the Internet if you don't use Windows? What's it like to not be suspected of being a "hacker" just because you uttered the words "shell script"? What's it like to not have the government search your hard drive to be sure you're sponsoring the monopoly?
I'll take this as sincere and not a troll.
Did you know the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?
Arcnet and token ring aren't obsolete, they're just limited to applications where reliability and timing are important. Which, oddly enough, also happens to be the exact situation where you'd want to use Linux (well, RTlinux, anyway), and have a modifiable kernel.
As I see it, this is actually one instance where you only fear something if you've done something wrong; I mean ... why should you fear an audit if you're using legal software?
I am using Linux at home almost exclusively, but for business cases, I've seen the following scenarios:
Either way, if you use proprietary software as a business, you should buy it (its part of your running cost, if you want that software).
Also, the entire entry does not take into account the TCO of Linux, which can be a decisive factor. I'm not talking here about Linux versus Windows (though there is that), but I've seen Linux dismissed in our company in favor of SUN/Solaris machines and HP/AIX due to a much higher maintenance/configuration cost for Linux.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
Well, yes, it's simple to compile your own packages when that's what the entire system is based on. Attack of the poor metaphor: "I've had trouble with others providing me with only screwdrivers. Do you provide a hammer?" "Yes. In fact, it's a very good hammer because that's all we provide, so we can stay focused."
I hear many good things about Gentoo. If they'd just get rid of that one tiny problem..
Throwing out the "way things are done" may be a good thing, but I don't think throwing out the concept is. It's a good concept.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I've been seriously studying the Open Source market for 4 years now, both from "how does my company consume and support open source projects that add value to our commercial offerings" as well as "how does my company compete against open source-based solutions that directly face off against our same commercial offerings". (It's a tough job, filled with contradictions...).
One of my biggest frustrations, and the point I've often made to customers, is that just because something is based on Open Source, it doesn't mean that they are getting the benefits of using an Open Source model.
Any commercial company, save perhaps a complete custom-development & integration shop, that provides any sort of standard support and maintenance services on a solution that has open source elements within, is going to want to limit their customers' ability to churn the software environment and negatively impact their ability to provide support. So, in the end, although the customer is entitled, by GPL, to a copy of the code, actually modifying and attempting to use the modified code becomes a violation of their support contract (and not their software license).
So, in the end, the customer may like Open Source, but ends up with as closed a solution as any proprietary coded system.
Heck, just take a look at the multitude of Asterisk-based VARs that are out there, including Digium, Fonality and SwitchVox (among others). Even Digium, who oversees the Asterisk.org community, provides proprietary elements in their Asterisk Business Edition, and in doing so completely restricts customers from updating the Asterisk core elements that are OSS based without violating Digiums' commercial licensing for ABE.
And yes, I know that Digium holds that they have the right, via copyrights, to release Asterisk under a proprietary [non-GPL] license model. My point applies equally to Fonality, SwitchVox and others -- no commercial vendor who wishes to make money on support can afford to have their customers randomly upgrading or enhancing the underlying code base upon which their support is based. At least not without incurring exorbitant costs, and passing those along to their customers.
--
All things being equal, if I still remembered how to program, I'd probably be writing open source applications. However, my paycheck doesn't come from an open source company (yet).
The last time I wrote code, it was Morse
I probably wrongly singled out the EFF, whereas I probably meant the FSF.
Your comparing apples and oranges in either case. The choice to use open source software as part of your development process begins early on. Linksys didn't wake up one day and discover GPL code in their router firmware. They made a conscious decision to use GPL code as a base to cut development costs early on, knowing full well what the license terms required. Later they decided improvements and modifications were "theirs" and they didn't have to give anything back.
The alternative is to pay the money up front and write your code from scratch. They knew exactly what they were doing, I've heard other companies saying the same thing. Line usually goes something like, "We won't put it out there. Let them sue us, we can always settle and bury a copy of the source code somewhere on the server it's hard to find." Because there are no monetary damages involved, some companies feel like they can use open source code and later play hardball with the open source community about releasing changes.
So, yes, when you start your project with open source code...all your base belongs to us. It's not a secret, you know that starting out. And if you discover later that one of your programmers has been gun decking their contributions by copying open source code, you have the option of removing their contributions...and if you can't separate their contributions you shouldn't be in the software business anyway...and pay for a rewrite. That's the way OSS works. It's not a secret. There are options if you don't like the deal. Because some companies are going to be dickheads and go to court before they'll release changes doesn't mean it's anything like the proprietary enforcement model.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I think the point you're missing is that in both cases there's an implicit threat hanging over anyone who uses their software. Trading, multiple copies, all are diversions to the main point. Use our software in an approved manner, or else...!
No, he's quite on the mark, and all of you seemed determined to ignore his point (guess that's why he got a flamebait). It's not about license terms, and who knew what.* It's not about who you like better. It's about the fact that there are GPL advocates who will rat on you. Just because they don't take out ads doesn't in any way diminish his point. Good or bad, that's a fact.
*All your arguments could apply to closed-source as well. Those companies who violate their EULAs KNEW what they were doing too.
While your point is true, you're making a mistake as well. "Free as in beer" and "commercial' are not mutually exclusive. AOL ships a million "free as in beer" CDs all around the country, but it is still a commercial venture. The BSD and GPL licenses are well known and used by businesses to license software they create in order to make a profit. Just because that method is not selling licenses to use said code makes it no less commercial.
What if package foo isn't in ports/portage?
I could be wrong, but it seems entirly possible to me that the problem isn't compiling from source, but adding packages not in official repositories (or even un-official ones).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
"Still it was a pain in the butt to get approval and then deal with receipts, invoices, shipping, etc. "
And that's different from any other expense how? It seems to me like you all want software to be under a different set of rules (much like everything else digital. But that's an argument for another time)
It is always unsettling when 100% of the comments to a post agree. Reminds me of the dotcom bubble or enron or the subprime market in 2006.
I don't know; maybe I just like being a contrarian too much.
TurboTax has DRM that messes with your machine in ways that can trash it- in and of itself
that merits changing off of the product for a comparable solution.
TaxCut doesn't seem to do this and works completely correctly under WINE and CrossOver,
even down to printing the forms. I've done my taxes for the last 4 years without needing
to reboot into XP. No hassles once you've got the web foundation fonts installed in WINE.
It just simply works. It's not as good an answer as a native version of either tax program,
but I suspect you may be waiting another couple of years for that to happen. Why wait if
that's the only hold up for you?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I've been reading stuff like this for about five years?
Does it really deserve space on Slashdot?
You are feed a troll and you are also spreading FUD.
"How the hell did your company take the time to learn Linux to such a degree to be able to "modify the kernel code to fit your needs" and NOT know that it had to be shared..."
Google has made many modifications to the Linux kernel not all of them have been shared.
You only have to share you code with the people you distribute it to. So if you are paid to make some changes to the Linux kernel for a big company you must give that big company the source. You don't have to give it to anyone else on the planet.
Now if that big company distributes that code to other entities then they would have to make the source code available to those entities.
And using GCC doesn't make your code GPL.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Sounds like the ignorance of your lawyers ended up costing you a lot of money. Next time you should get a second opinion.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
You will never, ever, get what you want on Linux. Even if there was some epiphany moment and 99.9% of all developers suddenly agreed on a single standard and instantly began supporting it, you would still have to deal with asshats like DJB and Jorg Schilling who think they know better than everyone else and insist on using their own tools and installation systems that don't work like anything else known to man. Oh, and you'd have huge amounts of badly designed "portable" code produced by post-grad students that re-invent the wheel at every opportunity because they're too stuck up to use accepted standards, or somehow believe that supporting vintage 1970s DEC PDPs is important so they "can't" do things in a sane manner.
No one always gets all the benefits offered by any advantage in software or anything else. It is possible to have an open source software offering that is so obfuscated and encumbered by patents that there is basically no advantage to using it. That is not common in my experience. The point is not to ignore the potential advantages of a whole class of software because you don't understand the underlying business method.
Any commercial company, save perhaps a complete custom-development & integration shop, that provides any sort of standard support and maintenance services on a solution that has open source elements within, is going to want to limit their customers' ability to churn the software environment and negatively impact their ability to provide support.While customizing software ourselves negates our support option for modified copies of that software, that does not remove the advantages brought by the fact that the software is OSS. We can make those modifications in the first place, if the business case supports it. We can get support contract from one of a dozen companies drastically reducing the cost.
no commercial vendor who wishes to make money on support can afford to have their customers randomly upgrading or enhancing the underlying code base upon which their support is based.Umm, we submit enhancements to Apache and Linux all the time and that does not negate our support contract or undermine the companies that supply said contracts. Any company who relies entirely upon support for revenue is one you should be very careful doing business with. They have a vested interest in increasing your dependence upon that support which is opposed to your best interests. In the long term, that is no business model.
However, my paycheck doesn't come from an open source company (yet).My paycheck does come from a company that develops open source software as well as closed source software. What most people don't understand is that OSS works as a business model for software users who want software to aid them in creating value in some endeavor and who are not in the business of creating or supporting that software. If you're in the business of selling photoshop, the OSS business model is a poor fit. If you're in the business of editing photos and you need a flexible tool for doing that, OSS can be a great fit, if you can get enough other players to buy into that model at the same time. Even if you're the early adopter, if you're large enough it can make a pretty reasonable long-term business case.
To protect users against failure of the vendor to provide support, proprietary software must be escrowed. This involves placing a copy of the source code with an "escrow agent" who releases the source code under terms of an "escrow agreement" that defines what is meant by failure to provide support.
In advocating OSS, I have for years pointed out that OSS is essentially automatically escrowed, which is a significant part of the argument made by this author. I think that both the auto-escrow feature and the choice of support provider are extremely important aspects of OSS.
BTW, I've always wondered in escrow agreements how the escrowed software is guaranteed to be up to date, whether the escrowed software is sufficiently documented that a new support provider can step in without great difficulty, and how such provisions would be enforced by the escrow agent, which is usually a law firm.
How the hell did your company take the time to learn Linux to such a degree to be able to "modify the kernel code to fit your needs" and NOT know that it had to be shared...
You'd be suprised, you'd be very suprised. In the embedded industry, it is very common for companies to distribute products with modified Linux versions without releasing the source. Ofcourse it is all rumors at this point, unless a law suit comes up where someone is payed millions, employees have very little incentive in outing their employers.
Football Odds
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Arguing that the enforcement of the GPL and other licenses is equivalent to the enforcement which BSA does is just rhetorics, since the GPL is not the only open source license out there so that a company which does not want to share it's changes can for instance choose a BSD licensed project instead. And how does it hurt any company that Theo decides that in *his* project he does not want any binary blob firmware? He and his fellow coders are the ones which do the work to enforce this policy.
But even if we were talking about GPLed software I find this argumentation capricious. The first thing which strikes me as wrong with this kind of argumentation is that the rights to modify and change the software is something which most proprietary software companies will not give you, so the simple provision that you have to give back your changes in order to distribute GPL software is *not* the same kind of software provision BSA is using to put it's customers customers in line. BSA controls the way you use software you have *not* changed in any way which is something the GPL does not restrict at all.
Enterprise versions with those sorts of licenses are not OSS licenses, so the original author is correct and egork is a prat (that revolting confluence of arrogance and incompetence).
I've been reading /. for about a year at this point (hence the high UID). It seems to me like most of the articles that I read that champion OSS almost universally use the economic ("free", no licensing cost, etc) argument. How long until OSS starts selling itself based on features and functionality? We are all aware of the potentially lower TCO involved with OSS. We are all aware of the strong security foundation that contributes to the potentially lower TCO. What about the functionality though? What functionality does OSS deliver to the SMB market that the competetition hasn't already been doing for years?
This is not my sandwich.
"So what did swearing off Microsoft entail? ..."
... but does not *truly* correct.
... I thought there'd be more camping.
We looked at all the alternatives. We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft. (Editor's note: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997.) We just looked around
Microsoft has never owned any part of Apple, that stock they bought in '97 was non voting, a "DOJ good faith" effort, trying to dodge a bullet.
Mr Becker, the c|net's articles writer, glosses over this obvious fact with a link,
"investment cannot be sold for three years and covers non-voting shares in the company."
Ernie Ball was misinformed by his IT vendors, team, but, no matter, at least he got away from The Problem(TM).
A damn sight better than having to do business with thugs.
I don't know about you guys, but ever since the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) took over this whole software enforcment stuff, I think it's tarnished their image, I wouldn't let my boys join - going around to strange businesses, strong-arming IT departments, scaring old ladies and children.
~hylas
Yeah, but you aren't Microsoft. First of all, Microsoft EULAs require you to agree to allow the BSA to audit you. Because of that, calling the cops won't do you a damn bit of good since it's ostensibly legal. Second, Microsoft has proven itself to be above the law anyway.
The BSA is not FUD; it's a very real threat. You should STFU and do your research before you start spouting off, because you're the one who's actually spreading FUD!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Did anyone else get an ad on this page from Google about reporting piracy to BSA? I shit thee not.
bah.
Not exactly. With the source, the customer can cancel the support agreement with one support vendor, and get another. That isn't really possible with closed source software. In that case, the original developer is the only support option. The only other option is to switch systems.
I suspect virtualization will invalidate your argument in time. /really/ need to install some software which will absolutely not (no matter what) play nicely with any other software, I'm fine with it running in some virtual playground where it thinks things are however it wants.
If I
Meanwhile: in various environments, supporting outdated backwards pieces-of-shit is part of the spec. I prefer "write a portability layer around both ways", but often a policy of always using the lowest-common-denominator can be simpler.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This so completely false that I can only imagine the person who modded it "troll" was spot-on.
Nothing in the GPL (V. 2, at least, who knows how V. 3 will wind up?) requires you to release the source for modifications you create only for in-house use and do not distribute. A couple clear examples:
1) Linksys did have to release their source because they made a product for distribution and in fact distributed it. The fact that it was an embedded system does not change the fact of distribution, thus they were required to honor the license; I'm sure you have no problem with honoring licenses, right?
2) My former employer makes extensive use of Linux and other GPLed software, and in fact built they business around it. They have also modified that software, and directly use it to support customers and provide the services they offer. However, since none of that software is ever distributed (it runs only on the company's servers, under their control in their own co-los), there is no requirement to release any source code for the modifications.
Since you're a troll, I'm sure there is no "lawyer" who told you those things, but on the off-chance there is, you need to get a different lawyer and that one needs to be disbarred for incompetence.
In the case mentioned - a company hired you to do some consulting work and wanted it done in Linux - the only party you'd have to release the source code to is the company that hired you, since what you're doing is a work for hire and they own the code, not you, unless you have a contract with them that says otherwise. Since it is a work for hire and the code has therefor not been distributed, no source release is required. Even if there was, however, the GPL terms are satisfied by giving the source code to those to whom you distributed a binary. If you provided binaries only to the company that hired you, then you are under no obligation to provide source to anyone but them. If they do not distribute it further, then they don't have to give source to anyone, either. Since investment firms are not in the habit of distributing their software, that's unlikely to happen.
Token ring? Since when does Linux not support it? Not that I've seen a token ring net in years...
Note that I address these points only to keep anyone new to free software from being taken in. I'm certain you made up the entire story and none of these events ever took place.
First, a few points:
1) They're not merely using OSS, they're redistributing it.
2) Unlike a BSA audit, I don't believe they had to pay large amounts of money. All they had to do was give up copies of the source code they modified (note that it is not "their" source code, it is a modification of Torvald & co's source code).
3) Unlike a BSA audit, Federal Marshals did not visit their workplace, make a nuisance of themselves, or run a huge, expensive audit of all the software on all of their computers.
4) Unlike a BSA audit, they were not subjected to humiliation in the local media. Contrast this with the case of Ernie Ball.
So say what you like, but I'd *much* rather have a nice C&D letter from the FSF that I can comply with than to be invaded by jackbooted thugs from the BSA. The behavior isn't even remotely comparable. Yes, you could call it a "risk" but it doesn't seem like one that would cost the company anywhere near as much in either manpower or money.
The BSA doesn't play nice. That's the point. And it's why I want nothing to do with them (which makes OSS all the better--you can tell them where to stick it, because you aren't using *any* of their software).
I haven't used either extensively enough to fully answer your question, but I do know that Gentoo allows you to keep a custom "overlay" so you can have portage manage "custom" packages. As for *BSD ports/pkgsrc, I don't know exactly, but I know that FreeBSD Ports is named so because the packages are ported to run natively in BSD.
> As I see it, this is actually one instance where you only fear something if you've done something wrong; I mean ... why should you fear an audit if you're using legal software?
I wish that were true, however, after reading about their demands, I think they're less than reasonable.
Here are a few specific points:
* They have Federal Marshals visit your company. This disrupts operations and may frighten customers. They do this to prevent you from "destroying evidence." You don't get any warning ahead of time. Their only evidence is likely to be a statement by a disgruntled ex-employee. They don't care if said employee is the one *responsible* for any such violations.
* You think that the Windows license sticker on your computer is good enough? Nope. You think that having licenses is good enough? Nope. You need a dated invoice for *each and every* bit of software. Otherwise, you might have bought the license after the fact, or something...
* They don't litigate to win, they litigate to make it expensive for you to do anything but settle. Oh, and thanks to the EULAs they make you click through, you owe them the attorney's fees. Ouch.
If you don't believe me, feel free to look up the case of one Ernie Ball where he discusses these points as well as the fact that his company was lambasted by the BSA in the local media as part of a shakedown on local "pirates."
In other words, you do NOT want to deal with these folks. The only way to manage that is not to use their software at all.
I don't quite understand what your argument is here. I posted saying that both FreeBSD and Gentoo allow you the choice of compiling your code our installing packages, to the best of my knowledge. I know the philosophy of Gentoo is based around custom compiles, but they still include an alternative. I know FreeBSD can grab the binary packages from an online repository much as apt-get can, but I am unsure if Gentoo can do that or if you need to provide the binary packages yourself (i.e. compiling on a central server then distributing to clients).
I own an OpenSource Company and now I seek linking to my Op-Ed to drive business!
Did slashdot get paid for this advertising?
I wouldn't worrry about the FSF. The only thing they seem to care about is making sure Stallman gets the credit for "inventing" "GNU/Linux" because a bunch of GNU utilities are included with Linux.
An article the other day described how a journalist wanted some information on GPLv3. Stallman wouldn't talk to him - and forbade anyone else from talking to him - until the journalist agreed to always refer to Linux as "GNU/Linux."
If this isn't completely stupid fanaticism on the part of Stallman, I don't know what is.
The FSF's argument in any case is braindead. You need a desktop just as much as you need cat, so why isn't Linux called "KDE/Linux" or "GNOME/Linux" or even "Xfce/Linux"?
And refusing to discuss GPLv3 until Stallman's ego is stroked? Pathetic.
Stallman is someone I can't pay any further attention to. He's gone completely senile.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Gentoo can't do that, according to everyone I've ever asked.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
You've done more than just feed the troll.
The last thing Microsoft wants is an genuinely interesting discussion on the business case for OSS. Their shill has just deflected the possibility of such a discussion. Instead we have hundreds of repetitions of the standard boring explanations of the GPL's scope that everyone has read a thousand times before.
It's been an extremely effective tactic for a long time here. Post a trollish comment as a red herring at the start of any potentially productive discussion of Linux or FOSS. Any interesting posts promptly are buried in an avalanche of "me too" replies to the troll.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I don't understand how they get the right to search businesses without a warrant. Is it just the threat of a lawsuit, or is there some law I don't know about which allows BSA audits to happen?
you hang out with the wrong people: http://gentoo-wiki.com/MAN_emerge
specifically:
--buildpkg (-b)
Tells emerge to build binary packages for all ebuilds processed in addition to actually merging the packages. Useful for maintainers or if you administrate multiple Gentoo Linux systems (build once, emerge tbz2s everywhere). The package will be created in the ${PKGDIR}/All directory. An alternative for already-merged packages is to use quickpkg which creates a tbz2 from the live filesystem.
--buildpkgonly (-B)
Creates binary packages for all ebuilds processed without actually merging the packages. This comes with the caveat that all build-time dependencies must already be emerged on the system.
--getbinpkg (-g)
Using the server and location defined in PORTAGE_BINHOST (see make.conf(5)), portage will download the information from each binary package found and it will use that information to help build the dependency list. This option implies -k. (Use -gK for binary-only merging.)
--getbinpkgonly (-G)
This option is identical to -g, as above, except it will not use ANY information from the local machine. All binaries will be downloaded from the remote server without consulting packages existing in the local packages directory.
so it appears that Portage can not only install binary packages, but it can grab them remotely, too.
And I quote,
"Logos are extremely important assets to all companies, and Microsoft is no exception. As the most visible form of our brand identity, they represent the intellectual resources, high standards and corporate values Microsoft has put into its software products since 1975. That's why we ask journalists who wish to use Microsoft's trademarked logos in connection with news stories to observe the legal restrictions outlined below."
Oh, by the way, don't tell Steve I copied that here.
Note that the GP's points may hold true to some unsuccessful open source projects you don't want to use anyway. This means single developer projects with little/no user community.
:-)
Regarding accountability: Most successful FOSS projects have a core team which is responsible for maintaining the software. This is true of PostgreSQL. It is true of Linux. It is true of just about every other successful program out there. These people usually take this responsibility more seriously than at proprietary companies where the coding is far more anonymous. I.e Linus's reputation is on the line far more with Linux than is Alchin's regarding WIndows.
Regarding bug fixes: If the project is alive and well, you can count on either being able to get the core team to fix the bugs or ge the bug fixes you hire a programmer to make to be committed back to the source tree.
Regarding big vendors: I would expect that the likes of IBM do indeed see the question as very simple. Just maybe not in the way the GP thinks they should
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
may just have to try it, then. Somehow I doubt it, just because 1) I've never heard that before; and 2) I always hear people complaining that Gentoo is stupid because you need to compile everything.
Still, may as well try it, if the option potentially exists.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Richard Steven Hack I Have A New SIG: Stop the upcoming war on Iran! [stopiranwar.com.]
Do you have any plans to stop the upcoming nuclear war from Iran on Israel?
Negotiations have failed. Resolutions have failed. Any suggestions?
The truth shall set you free!
i don't know if there is a main, public online repository. I think that the feature is supposed to be more of a local thing where you have one system compile binaries which you can then pass along to all of your local boxes, instead of having each local box compile the same software. if you try it, make sure to edit your make.conf accordingly: http://gentoo-wiki.com/MAN_make.conf_5 PORTAGE_BINHOST = "ftp://login:pass@grp.mirror.site/pub/grp/i686/ath lon-xp"
This is the host from which portage will grab prebuilt-binary packages. The list is a single entry specifying the full address of the directory serving the tbz2's for your system. This is only used when running with the get binary pkg options are given to emerge. Review emerge(1) for more information. Note that it should point to the 'All' directory on the host that creates the binary packages and not to the root of the PKGDIR.
Be hard for Iran to have a nuclear war on Israel with no nuclear weapons or even a program for same.
Check back in ten or twenty years, because if Iran starts now it will take them that long to get a weapon AND a delivery system. (Then of course they have to figure out how to deal with Israel's nuclear cruise missiles from submarines - the second strike capability. Then of course they have to figure out how to deal with the US nuclear capability.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Sorry. I don't buy this. (I was going to say "horsehockey", but figure that I'll keep this friendly).
Take Asterisk as an example. In and of itself, Asterisk is not a complete solution, but rather is part of a whole (you may still need management interfaces, IP phones/softphones, PSTN card drivers, etc.). An enterprise that purchases Digiums' Asterisk Business Edition, which is marketed as an open source solution, is actually getting a mix of open and closed source elements. And there is no guarantee from Digium that the source code available from Asterisk.org actually matches the Asterisk elements buried within the A.B.E.
So even if a customer wanted to take A.B.E. binaries, go back to Asterisk.org and modify one of the source code trees with their own extensions, recompile and figure out that it still works with all of the proprietary elements Digium originally bundled with the core Asterisk elements, there is no way that any other commercial company selling Asterisk-based solutions (such as Fonality, SwitchVox, OpenVoice, etc.) would support that now-custom version. Heck, they wouldn't even support A.B.E. itself out of the box because it isn't their own "product".
I have no issue with the open source model, or contributing code back, or even being able to obtain source and modify for my own reasons.
But I do have agita when companies that tout the "we are open source" as a competitive angle turn around and restrict their customers by eliminating or blocking the customers access to all this great "opens source model" value. Let them be up-front and say "We are based on open source elements, but you are licensing a commercial product".
I know that this is marketing tactics, but it always feels like bait-and-switch to me. "Buy my product because it is open and extensible and you can modify the code to suit your needs" is quickly followed by "but don't expect me to support you anymore and, by the way, you can't have the source for elements X, Y & Z because they are proprietary to me in the first place".
Apache and Linux are quickly becoming the exceptions, not the norm. Asterisk/Digium, MySQL, SugarCRM and many other "open source companies" have very "closed source" commercial practices.
--
You know, from up here on my soapbox, I can almost see your house....
The last time I wrote code, it was Morse
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.