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How Long Should an Open Source Project Support Users?
Ubuntu Kitten writes "Since October the community-generated database of cards known to work with Ndiswrapper has been down. This is apparently due to an on-going site redesign, but right now the usual URL simply directs to a stock Sourceforge page. Without the database, the software's usability is severely diminished but this raises an interesting question: Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users? If so, for how long should the support last? Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites. While developers can sometimes find sponsorship, is it possible to get sponsorship simply for infrastructure and user services?"
It seems you are looking for a list of cards supported by Ndiswrapper, nothing else? Is the software development not keeping up with cards or something? I'm more concerned that I can no longer access their wiki. I'm not sure how the lack of a database of cards it works with would cause its functionality to "diminish" but you are right that this raises an interesting question.
Without the database, the software's usability is severely diminished but this raises an interesting question: Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users? If so, for how long should the support last?
No. Although from time to time I notice that Maven2's repo1 is sometimes down which irks me a bit when I'm using new packages. And that's why I have a local repository on my list--in case the bandwidth I steal from Jason van Zyl of Codehaus ever dries up. And if it should, I realize there's not a lot I can do about it ... although I can always keep downloading packages (or even building them myself) and installing them on my local network albeit tedious. I am lucky though as Maven2 is well thought out in this respect, always defaulting through a whole list of repos (indeed if repo1 went down, there are others).
I appreciate Mr. van Zyl's work and efforts but he and I have signed no prior contract guaranteeing the length of time his service should be available to me. And I, of course, expect nothing from him. He's doing me a great service at the moment but the service--though rarely spotty--doesn't have to last past this second.
Say, where's your local repository of Ndiswrapper's database?
Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites.
This is correct. And by that logic, it may benefit you to send the sourceforge developers a simple message asking them if a modest donation of funds could ail this predicament? Every so often I anonymously throw $10-$20 at a project that I use heavily, I really wish others would do the same.
While developers can sometimes find sponsorship, is it possible to get sponsorship simply for infrastructure and user services?
I'm really not sure although I do realize that if Ndiswrapper is talking to this database on the backend, there's probably no eyeballs looking at ads to the left and right of this database. Which makes it kind of hard for magical ad revenue to come in (similar to the codehaus repo1 scenario listed above). I think you'd be better off appealing to some distribution that may hinge heavily on Ndiswrapper but I'm pretty sure the developers would have exhausted these resources before letting this site lapse into oblivion.
My work here is dung.
As long as its users support it, duh.
No, an open source project is not obliged to provide support for its users. They're giving you the software (and sometimes documentation) for free. They weren't even required to do that (even if you use GPL components you can keep your modifications to yourself as long as you don't go handing out binaries to the rest of the world).
The people responsible for the project have absolutely zero obligation to help you with anything. If they want to help, good for them (and you). If not, you have the source - read through that to figure out what it does. Or pay somebody else to do that for you.
There are companies that provide support for open source software, but unless you're paying them for it, they have no obligation to help you.
When your beer is free, someone still paid for it.
:P
The difference between purchasing software and choosing whether or not to donate to a F/OSS organization is that you choose how much the software (or service) is worth to you, should you actually decide to pay for it.
Disclaimer: I'm a huge advocate of F/OSS, just not Linux... I honestly wish my interests aligned with reality
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
One of the hazards of the trade is that some software may cease to be supported. This goes double for OSS, where the developers are often unpaid.
The source is available. If you have to have it, pick it up yourself and keep the project going.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Open Source Projects are not required to support any users, unless they have agreed to. That isn't to say that they should NOT go about supporting users, and in fact, if they did not, the FOSS world would not be as successful. Most projects do support their user base, and do it very well, but, of course, are not required. An author of a book is no more required to help people comprehend their words than a driver writer is to help people use their code. But we all help each other out because its better that way.
Ugh. People who take down the existing page because they're redesigning the site.
Generally you only see this mistake from 14-year-old "web developers" whose qualifications all come from adding animated GIF background images to MySpace profiles. Of course, these "web developers" always severely doubt the amount of time it'll take to finish the page and put it back online, so "check back in a couple days" typically turns into months, years, or "kiss that page goodbye, sucker!" Saying the term "staging server" to these type of people will usually garner the response: "caging what? I was too busy picking my nose to listen."
If you're lucky, it was actually a hostile admin pulling down the site and holding it hostage to the project for (pinky-in-mouth) one-hundred-billion-dollars! and they didn't just recruit an incompetent idiot to run it. In the former case, at least the pages will come back once the FBI breaks down his door and holds an assault rifle to his head, in the latter case they'll be "under construction" until the end of time.
So, uh, yeah. The question here isn't "how should open source projects support users?" But more along the lines of, "should open source projects do intensely retarded things with their websites?" (The answer is no.)
Comment of the year
Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users?
A. No
Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites.
A. Advertising can pay for this, especially for popular sites
While developers can sometimes find sponsorship,is it possible to get sponsorship simply for infrastructure and user services?
A. Yes if there is actual significant demand.
Seems to me that there is no reason that a snapshot dump of the database can't be released, and subsequently "forked" into another web site. (The problem of synchronizing submissions once the original site does come up again is left as an exercise for the reader.) It doesn't matter that the live site scripts won't work as long as you share the database. The flatter the format, the better. It's the information, stupid.
As for the original question, I would say "until they can't", which is a point that may have been reached here.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users?
No.
A project itself is not obliged to do anything. In the case of non-commercial volunteer projects (which not all open source projects are), the people working on the projects aren't obliged to do anything either. And by the very nature of Open Source, even the users of the project aren't obliged to do anything (except when it's GPL and they want to distribute their own changes to the project).
Ofcourse successful Open Source projects are often very well supported. But that's because the people working on it want it to be big and not because they're under any kind of obligation.
Exactly. If you want support from an open source project, you need to help that project out. Whether that's in the form of development work, testing, documentation writing, helping uses in the forums or lists out, or good old fashioned cash depends on what the project needs. Most projects are more than happy to list what they need, and if they don't, e-mail the project's lead(s) or e-mail their support list -- they'll be very happy to hear from you.
You get out of it what you put into it. Like anything else in life.
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They're not obliged to do anything for the public. What an ill thought out question.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
In other words, if you don't have a git repo, you don't warrant support? Actually, I'm kind of sympathetic to that train of thought. Open source is driven by volunteers, not big centralized servers. Corporations certainly do their bit, but open source is about bazaars, not cathedrals.
You should read any open source license, a project does not have to support you at all and I think that it's kind of selfish that you expect it.
Maybe they should just post the .sql dump of the database for anyone to download...
Sounds silly, but the best proof that an OSS project is worth keeping alive is the willingness of someone else to pick up where the original maintainer leaves off.
Besides, ask yourself this - how does the submitter's question differ WRT closed-source projects? Of course there's the money angle, but vendors are equally willing to dump proprietary projects once the income no longer equals the resources put towards distributing them.
The big (and IMHO useful) diff is that at least with OSS, when a project dies you can still do something about it if you think it's worthy of keeping alive (besides nursing increasingly outdated binaries, that is).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
As an open source author, this is a difficult question. I can't "support" people who don't pay me. Period.
If I had a bigger project that had some sponsors, maybe I could. As it is, I can't even work on my projects on a regular basis. Currently, I just make what I need for my own purposes, and make it generally available to others. The community support we hope for is almost non-existent on most of the open source projects.
Sure, the Apache, PostgreSQL, MySQL, et. al. get lots of attention and some funding, but the vast majority of projects are just one or two guys (gals?) writing what they need and sharing.
Support for open source? No. However, I see no reason to take down an existing site to create a new one. Even if you have only one machine, you can still handle two sites.
"Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users?"
Of course not. If I give you a car, are you going to expect me to change the oil in it every time its due? Sure, people that spend their time developing software for free may be inclined to help you out to an extent, but they don't owe you anything.
Take the issue I found in Pidgin. It was crashing seemingly randomly, and debugging showed it had something to do with playing sounds. I opened a ticket, someone marked it as an actual defect, and 14 days later, since no one had looked at the ticket again, it automatically closed. Annoying, but I still have a Windows XP disc laying around somewhere (for which there are a number of IM clients that run just fine for me).
Whale
The less ndiswrapper users there are, the better!
There's far too much agreement on this thread so far. Somebody please make some ridiculous arguments supporting the opposite position. We need pedantry! Where's the petty bickering? I demand more petty bickering!
If I built a car and gave it to you for free along with the specs and blueprints, would I then be "obliged" to teach you how to drive and perform all the maintenance and repairs that may be needed in the future? No.
Where the hell does this comment about git come from?
At least, they're not required to provide support as long as they don't care if no-one uses their project. After all, I, and many other people, are unlikely to use a piece of software when I don't know whether it will work with my hardware, or do anything that aids me in any way.
Now, that doesn't say they should provide infinite support forever with no compensation, but they should, in my opinion, consider whether they want people to use the product before deciding to, say, remove the web page and all the existing support documentation.
Unfortunately this can only run so far. If you're a business and you've spent 100 hours installing a piece of software across a network only to find updates and support drops a week later, that can work out to be very expensive.
Likewise if you're a student and a paper is due but you can't complete it due to a bug/error and the support section for the program you've used no longer exists, it's a big issue.
This is even more of a problem if there is a leading OSS solution that is so well known, no one wants to write competing software for it so when development and support stops, there's a gaping vaccuum in that area.
Open Source has to compete with commercial software and usually commercial companies will give you support for the lifespan of a product or until it becomes obsolete (not always, companies go bust, get taken over etc.). It's no good software being free if lack of support means you waste a fortune on wages trying to fix issues.
Two possible solutions: OSS developers give in and run ads on their sites (it's not hard to find unobstrusive ads with acceptable rates nowadays) or owners of sites are given incentives to hand over control of their sites to a central OSS archive where you can at least get snapshots of support forums and wikis, as well as the downloads and source.
I thought one of the strengths of the Open Source model was that it blurred the line between "user" and "project team."
If your project has a crucial dependency on some Open Source software (Ndiswrapper, or whatever), and the original developers of that software can't keep up with your needs, you should help them out, take it over, fork the source, or whatever. The project team is as obligated to you just as much as you are required to use their stuff -- not at all. Because once you take it and use it, it effectively becomes your stuff.
In this particular case, if the list of cards is community-generated, it's likely somebody has a backup (or enough of one for the community to re-generate the list without too much trouble). I would treat this as a valuable lesson about an improper (eggs : basket) relationship.
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
Open source projects don't support users... they are the users.
If the main groups no longer wishes to participate in the project then other users need to step up.
This is one of the greatest things about OSS.
Software for the Users, by the Users!
Is that you should be GLAD they let you pay money to them. If the product should work as advertised, or even be in the box, this is merely a happy coincidence.
And do you think that's YOUR code you're running?
At first I thought you could have been an MS troll, but I see that most of your books are about 'beginning' something.
Welcome to the real world. Beginning is the easy part. The world of the typical consultant and author is for now, and implementation, and not for ongoing support - or to look back at what was said, and how you ended up in this mess.
Maybe all those 'beginning' customers are coming back and wondering why they can't get support for, say ubuntu 7.10 (vs say 8.04)? Maybe you need to explain in your books that the beginning is only a start of a journey.
The short answer is that you need to do your homework (or research if you are an author) up front. And totally understand the contract terms and conditions. If you don't, you deserve everything that you get.
ws
PS: Yes I have cleaned up a lot of sh!t from incompetent people.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
It's a serious question for you to consider... If you're not willing to support it yourself why go open source?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Not exactly. Here's some examples where a non-technical user might help out, even if it's not in the form of cash:
I have a couple of open source projects that are sorely in need of translators. I don't speak any languages other than English, and a little bit of very broken French and Spanish. If someone wants to provide me good translations of UI strings, help bubbles, messages, dialogs, etc., in their native tongue I'll gladly add good i18n and l10n support to the projects.
Neither of these projects have good end-user documentation. I need someone with good technical writing skills to write the user docs for them. You don't need to any programming, just how to use the program.
Evangelism: one project has existed for two years now, and the other is just about to have its first release. I need people to help get the word out about the projects.
You see what I mean? You don't need to be a programmer to help an OSS project. You just need to care.
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Forever, and ever, and ever.
I run a free online game. So I'm also on the "provider" side. My take is this:
What I provide free of charge is a present and should be taken as such, i.e. no obligations. On the other hand, I'm a responsible person and my players can count on me not simply pulling the plug one day without prior announcement and saying "party's over, go home".
So how do you answer the "how long" question? You can't. As long as I want to, the stuff I provide will be available, be it my game, my website with its papers, mirrors, etc. - and if I don't want to anymore, I'll be responsible in shutting it down with enough time and ahead warning.
But if you as a user rely on a free service, then you must take into account that it could go away any minute. If your business or your happiness depends on it, make sure you can launch a local copy.
I don't think any free (as in beer) project, Open Source or not, has any obligations to provide support at all, much less for any specific period of time. The people behind it, however, probably want a good reputation, and providing support and not going away suddenly is part of that.
It's a lot of soft factors, and that's why all things considered, I'd say the question isn't adequate.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you post a link to any of your projects needing translation I am happy to perform the Spanish translation for you.
This is apparently due to an on-going site redesign, but right now the usual URL simply directs to a stock Sourceforge page
Doesn't the FIRST link at the top of the "stock sourceforge page" tells you anything?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
while user.has_payed_for_support():support.provide(user)
Is it really? I sometimes wonder. The marque projects of open source - OpenOffice.org and Firefox, for example - look corporate to my eyes. The Dirac video codec emerged from the BBC, and you can't get more high church than that.
OSS developers do not owe their users anything - they do not have a formal support agreement, binding them legally to support whatever they created.
If you really depend on something, you'll need to ensure that you have the proper legal agreements in place to ensure continued support.
If you're a single person, this is practically impossible, unless you have really huge amounts of money or understand every piece of OSS software you use, neither of which is very likely.
If you're a corporation, the only way to do this is to either hire people with the necessary technical knowledge to maintain a given project (which is the big advantage over most commercial software, for some commercial software you can get the source code, which is easier the more specialized an application is).
Or you do it the old fashioned way - you purchase support agreements from another company that supports the available OSS products - Red Hat and Novell offer this.
Whether you're an open source project or not, you're only obliged to support your users if you want to have them. If you're OK with not having users, you can probably choose not to support them.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. You get only what you pay for. No more, but sometimes less.
Didn't anyone back up this database so it could be put back up if something happened to the original hosters? Anyway, if they were planning on stopping support, it would have been nice for them to have made some notice of it beforehand so that someone else could take it up. Something as simple as a database should be easy enough for someone else to volunteer to host.
The only time I would feel an obligation of support is if I've had to put up with endless whining about the superiority of open source and how there's no possible reason I could want closed source software, until I caved.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080113194857/ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/id,list/
This has nothing to do with Open Source. The question should be "Should projects that give software away for free be obligated to provide support?"
There is plenty of closed source software that can be downloaded for free. There is plenty of open source software that can be purchased with support.
The answer, by the way, is no. Just because software is free does not mean that the makes of it are obliged to give you support. Support costs money. Businesses who use software (open or closed source) pay for support, either through a support vendor or in house talent.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
Assuming this is GPL software, what part of "ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY" in the GPL don't you understand?
Open source developer should support his/her users within reason. Not because there is a moral obligation but because users do provide a service to the developer, they provide testing and feedback. Also, what's the point of developing something if no one is going to use it? I can see if it's some obscure program which is usefull only to the author but if for example ndiswrapper disappeared compeletely tomorrow then somebody else would start a new project and replace it. Who wants to put all that work into something just to see another group come along and make it irrelevant? What good is it? Bragging rights? Still, this is the developer's choice. There was never any agreement to maintain support and no one paid for it.
If the developer has accepted contributions of code however... it could be argued that the contributors do in part own the code. If the developer is going to abandon or close source it then there is probably an obligation to keep all source and documentation accessable for a while to give others a chance to fork it.
Now, as for taking down the list. I'm not sure why they would have to do that just to make a new site. If it were static pages they could just keep the old version up till the new one is ready. I'm sure in this case though they are not dealing with static pages, rather it's a database being accessed by some sort of framework, probably PHP based.
Good practice would be to do this new development on a separate copy of the site, probably on a development server. Using a code versioning system such as SVN and keeping all server specific config stuff in one place it should then be trivial to update the live site all at once from the development copy only when it is ready.
This would be ideal, however it's probably a bit much to ask every developer to develop their site in an ideal way, after all not everyone specializes in developing websites. It is much better that a person specialized in developing device drivers run a project like ndiswrapper.
If the author(s) of ndiswrapper do not want to use a separate development copy of the site while the rebuild it but do want to keep their users around there is another way. They could just dump the card compatibility database to a static spreadsheet file and just post it on their (under construction) page. It's not nearly as convenient but it would be much better for the user than just not giving access to that information at all and it would only take a few minutes.
don't feed the trolls.
Unfunded hobbiest resources have absolutely no "responsibility" to stay in operation.
It would be nice if they made an effort for someone else to take over the project, but in the end, it's their pet project to do with (or kill off) as needed.
It's the same as a commercial product, except when the company can't fund it any more, they can simply drop it and the users are really SOL. They don't necessarily open it up for the general users.
Of course, when something happens, people complain. One of the things I do is run a news site. We ask for, and appreciate donations, which remove the ads from the page. We get a few (a very few). If/when things happen, people complain. If they don't get their nightly newsletter, they complain. If they can't get to the site, they complain. If something happens to the server, they complain. The revenue from ads and donations don't cover the most basic of costs. They wouldn't even cover the power consumption of the server, much less bandwidth, hardware upgrades, SSL cert renewal, domain renewals, etc, etc.
The biggest reason that I keep running it is because it's parked on my personal web server. I have quite a few things tucked away on there, that I use frequently from wherever I may be sitting. If one day I decided to stop running the news, and put up a notice saying it's all gone, then that's the way it is. There is no "responsibility" to open source my code, redirect my domain to another source, or anything like that. Luckly, I run it because I like it. My thousands of readers like it. Maybe someday it will even support itself, but until then, if I decide to shut down the server tomorrow and never turn it back on, I have no obligation to do anything.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I'm a FOSS developer myself but I would never be rude enough to take an entire site off line for "maintenance", specially for important stuff like NDiswrapper. This is unacceptable. You make the new site and propagate the changes when you're done; shouldn't take more than ten minutes tops. People will take ugly-website over unavailable software any day.
I'm not 100% sure what "marque" means but I would suggest that gcc is the marque project of open source and has been for about 20 years.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
With open source software, users are developers and developers are users. There is no distinction.
If an open source project fails you, you have failed the project. You need to pick up your share of the weight and improve the project.
As others have pointed out, contact the developers and ask how you can help out. Perhaps you can donate money, or -- often more importantly -- donate your time and work out hosting for the database yourself.
Self support isn't some implicit requirement of open source.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users? If so, for how long should the support last?
Since many closed source suppliers who charge you money for their products typically include an EULA that purports to excuse them from any sort of responsibility whatsoever, criticizing "free beer" projects (open source or not is irrelevant) for failure to provide lifetime support seems a bit rich.
I hope ndiswrapper isn't dead, though - or has the state of the art of native Linux wireless drivers now advanced to the point where it is no longer needed?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Open source developers have jobs, families, expenses, other hobbies. While long term support would be ideal, and I suspect most developers probably want to give it, it isn't always practical.
If they've got the spare time and can afford the expense, I'd say providing support to a comparable duration of similar commercial products is ideal.
If that isn't practical, or was but no longer is, dump all your support documentation into the tarball so people can find their own way or someone else can take up the support job.
Most projects situations will probably land in between those extremes.
Just be glad you have the software. The bulk of open source development and support work is on a volunteer basis. Don't forget this.
For this database you need, perhaps you can email the last maintainer and ask for a copy of the last version? Then you can host it yourself, they will probably be quite happy to see someone help them out on that.
> Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users?
They are not obliged to do anything, including creating the project in the first place.
> If so, for how long should the support last?
For as long as the contract you paid for says it will. Software is free. Support is not.
> Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites.
Yes. How much is it costing you to mirror the site? You aren't doing so? Why not? Did you contact the project principals and ask them how much it it would cost to induce them to put the site back up? Why not?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The vision of open source is that when the sponsors decided or neglect to keep an OS project going, that *anyone* (meaning you) can pick up the source and keep the effort going.
OSS is a community effort whereby everyone willingly participates. OSS is *not* an exercise in socialism whereby developers or their projects are mandated into perpetual existence.
So, if you're feeling like there is not enough support, then use your freedom and support it!
> While developers can sometimes find sponsorship, is it possible to get sponsorship
> simply for infrastructure and user services?
No. Debian does not exist.
Mozilla is kind of corporate, but may have ended up crappy abandonware it were not for Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross forking it (and all the wonderful bazaar of contributors adding spell checkers, pimped skins and other wonderful ... crap). Forks only happen in open source. OpenOffice is the best open source office suite, and I personally like it better than MS office (yey for math type), but it's not that great.
If you want to talk about marque projects, lets stick to ones that blow the competition out of the water. SVN, emacs, git, gcc, Python, perl, Ruby, Apache, LaTex, OpenSSH, and so on are certainly good projects.
If you want consumer products, look at BitTorrent (which is no longer open, but there are forks). Look at RSS readers. Look at web forums and chat servers and that those DVD players that don't make you watch the stupid anti-piracy ads (as a way of thanking you for buying a real copy...).
Problem is that ego-boo works better with programmers showing off to programmers. Spanish speakers don't necessarily crave the praise of programmers, and too many programmers don't want to thank the technical writers.
I think you meant Software for the for Developers, by a not Wholly Disjoint Subset of Developers. I seem to remember all kinds of bitterness in several projects that the users would just shut up and deal with the software they chose to use. 2 cases in point that I can think of are Pidgin and KDE.
Pidgin in particular was very guilty of this, I remember reading some of those comments in the thread and some of the devs basically came down on the side of "If you don't like it, tough, we write this for ourselves, not you." I think on the whole there is absolutely no reason why an open source project should have to support users at all. I say that cynically, but support doesn't magically occur. Unless you have specifically contributed to a project you have no reason to even expect some kind of support, and even then, its kind of iffy, unless you've contributed code, at which point it becomes pointless, because if you can hack on a project, it's unlikely you need any support.
I don't agree. I think there is an obligation to do something, but not necessarily for that project. If you are putting in 30 hours a week, or more, to one widely used open source project, there is no need for you to support other ones, no matter how much you use them
Some people would go further and say if you are donating your time to any worthy cause, it absolves you of the responsibility to provide any support to F/OSS. That water is a little murky for my taste, especially when deciding what causes are "worthy", e.g., a political campaign, or converting people to your chosen religion. But I view F/OSS as one community, and while we all have to be involved, we don't have to be involved in every project that we use.
Exactly. If you want support from an open source project, you need to help that project out. Whether that's in the form of development work, testing, documentation writing, helping uses in the forums or lists out, or good old fashioned cash depends on what the project needs. Most projects are more than happy to list what they need, and if they don't, e-mail the project's lead(s) or e-mail their support list -- they'll be very happy to hear from you.
You get out of it what you put into it. Like anything else in life.
I happily get word out for stuff I use which I feel meets my rather modest quality criteria.
However, there's some tension here when projects are haphazardly supported/abandoned. There's a movement towards having something you recommend be solid & stable. Otherwise it would slide back toward the status of Freeware Utility which people expect to be As-Is.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Maybe we need a robustness rating here.
Business oriented projects can't be "Bazaar". It would be Saccharine Software. Microsoft-Free, but then it causes cancer in your business.
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Python is a consumer product, as well as a product for seasoned developers. One of Python's design goals is to make coding easier for newbie coders. I have to say that I've seen more non-coders pick up Python easily and readily -- more than any other language.
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I think OO.o and Firefox are both bad examples, because they both started life as commercial software, i.e. they came from cathedral-style development. I can't remember if StarOffice was originally "sortof open source" or whether it, like Mozilla, was completely closed but then opened later. Either way, it's not surprising they both look pretty "corporate", because that's where they came from. A more apropos example than Mozilla/Firefox would be KHTML - an open-source project that was good enough that a corporate adopted it and everyone benefited.
Dirac also isn't very typical of OSS, really, and I'm also not yet sure if it actually matters to many people. If you hadn't mentioned the BBC I would've had no idea what you were referring to, and I only recognised that because it was mentioned in an article here somewhat recently.
its true every project is consumed by someone but still its rather specialist
SURELY NOT!!!!!
However the Cathedrals have been around for thousands of years and the bazaars come and go and move around. Also the Cathedral is a place you can stop in warm up and pry in solitude for free (they may ask for donations but you are not required to pay) In the bazaars you are out side in the weather and if you want any service you will need to pay for it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If you're not willing to support it yourself why chose open source? It's a legitimate question and you haven't answered it.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
This may be true of very large long running projects like the Linux kernel, but typically OSS is developed by a very small number of developers and used by a much larger number of users.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Something as simple as the a supported cards list could be mirrored - even if out of date, an old list is better than no list.
Surely the poster / complainer has enough resources to copy the list and put it up on a free website somewhere? Maybe they could even get together a script to update it weekly or something - then when the main site goes down, a reasonably recent copy is still available?
It means 'brand' in French. It seems GP was making a car analogy of sorts...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marque
Certainly NOT. From GPLv2:
The rest is all about goodwill of developers and active users. That means you.
s it really? I sometimes wonder. The marque projects of open source - OpenOffice.org and Firefox, for example - look corporate to my eyes.
What about Linux itself?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The majority of open source software is provided "as is". No warranty, no offer of support, etc..
So, to answer your question: Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users? No.
While often a community forms around an open source effort, and that community collectively supports its members, there is no guarantee that all requests for support are fulfilled (especially in a manner which pleases the requestor). If you want a guarantee of support, hire someone.
Unfortunately this can only run so far. If you're a business and you've spent 100 hours installing a piece of software across a network only to find updates and support drops a week later, that can work out to be very expensive.
You made a business decision, live with it. If you don't expect to get the support you require, don't use the software. If you absolutely require support, consider offering the authors some form of compensation to provide you such support. In theory your business is attaining some sort of competitive advantage through the choice of an open source project, if you expect support, you need to share the wealth.
Likewise if you're a student and a paper is due but you can't complete it due to a bug/error and the support section for the program you've used no longer exists, it's a big issue.
Support section? What support section? Is offering support mandated when you opt to release your software under an open source license? You are clearly one of the many leaches that hope to capitalize on the hard work of others without participating in the community process that such hard work was born from.
Yer On Yer Own. That's how REAL FOSSies roll!
"smellyvagina"? What?
Watch out for helpful translations from unknown sources...
"Print Nozzle Test" -> "chupa me"
"Clean Nozzles" -> "je manque une putain"
"Align Print Heads" -> "donde esta mis huevos"
"Properties" -> "Pile de Merde"
"Refresh" -> "Tenga una cerveza"
I kid, project looks great.
Pet peeve number two: people who take down perfectly functional websites and replace them with AJAX monsters that are not any more useful. Usually, the new website will be even less useful than the old one, but who wants the embarrassment of going back to the older design?
This mistake is commonly combined with the "let me take down the website and then upgrade it" mistake, and usually by "web designers" whose background includes an associates degree in IT and two weeks of basic HTML. We recently had this very thing happen at my university with the meal plan system; students can get a meal plan, and are able to add money to the plan online. Then one day, some idiot realized that this system could never work without an AJAX interface, and convinced management to pay thousands of dollars for an upgrade. This same idiot, or possibly one of his moron friends, then proceeds to completely disable the previous system, during an off-peak time of the year (one week in August when there are no classes), but apparently underestimated the time it would take to write the new system (three months). So for half a semester, students had to find the meal plan office (which had been moved due to building renovations) every time they needed to added money to their meal plans. I like to bring up the Debian website in these discussions. It has not significantly changed since...actually, I cannot remember a significant change to it, but I am more of a Red Hat Linux guy, so maybe at some point over the past few years there has been some sort of change. Anyone want to cite one?
Palm trees and 8
The flight operations system I used to work on at a major airline came from another major airline -- we traded some gates for the source and rights to use it, and the two airlines continued to develop the software in parallel over the subsequent decade plus.
Such things are not uncommon in the mainframe world. Customers who bought multi-million-dollar packages from a commercial mainframe software vendor would often receive a copy of the source along with the rights to use the software, and many of those customers made extensive internal modifications for their own benefit.
One of the challenges as a support programmer of such software is to verify that any issues discovered by the customer were in fact problems with the standard product and not problems with code that was introduced at the customer site. :-)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I used to help out via entering bug reports for bugs I found. Invariably, the bug report would either get a gruff, unhelpful reply (like: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=1865630&group_id=95717&atid=612382 ), or it would simply be ignored for months and months until the project either closed it due to inactivity or switching bug trackers (like this ex-bug: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1609779&group_id=93438&atid=604306 ).
I don't bother anymore.
Comment of the year
So all we need is more Jewish open-source developers, and our problems are over.
Imho you have to consider the shit that got hurled at KDE before they made that statement.
The OP gives Ndiswrapper as a specific example, but asks a general question, and so far all the replies have been about the general question.
What about the specific situation of Ndiswrapper? There's a saying that "bas cases make bad laws," and Ndiswrapper is sort of like that -- it isn't a typical example of OSS.
Okay, first off let me say that I have two machines on my home network that have Ndiswrapper on them, and I'm grateful that it exists, because it saved me from having to drill holes through my hardwood floors and pull cables from the downstairs to the upstairs.
However, I'd be surprised if anyone had ever been under the impression that Ndiswrapper was anything more than a horrible, nasty, dirty kludge with no future ahead of it. The basic problem is that the manufacturers of the wifi cards don't disclose the relevant technical information that would allow third parties to write drivers, and they also don't support operating systems other than Windows. Anything the OSS community does to try to work around that is bound to work badly and be unsatisfactory. I've already seen that any time I upgrade from one release of Ubuntu to the next, wifi breaks, and I have to go back through all the steps of installing the drivers again. There's also the problem that binary blobs make it difficult to debug kernel crashes.
All of these problems show that ndiswrapper has always been nothing more than a band-aid, and nobody should have ever expected it to have a future.
The only real solution for the future is to spread good information about what cards work with OSS (no binary blobs). The FSF has some info here: http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/net/wireless/cards.html . The trouble I always have with this kind of situation is that these online lists are always out of date and inaccurate, and they also tend to systematically overstate the quality of support, e.g., when you I the OSS driver, I can't get it to work at all, or if I do get it to work it crashes all the time, or the full functionality isn't supported.
This is all qualitatively different from the situation where you just have an OSS project that doesn't have ongoing support. A more typical example of that kind of thing would be sox, which is a command-line utility for converting sound files between different formats, adding effects, and playing sounds. Its author hasn't been supporting it properly for a long time, so less and less of its functionality is working on, e.g., a fresh install of ubuntu. It's gotten to the point where, for me, it's basically useless. But that's no big problem, because other people have picked up the slack by writing similar software to replace it. The difference with Ndiswrapper is that the problem is more fundamental. The things that make Ndiswrapper a kludge are inherent to its purpose, which is to be a kludge.
Find free books.
.
The "marque" is more than a instantly recognizable brand-name.
The Porsche. The Rolls-Royce.
To say the word is to conjure up the entire world which surrounds it in popular mythology.
Unless you have specifically contributed to a project you have no reason to even expect some kind of support, and even then, its kind of iffy, unless you've contributed code, at which point it becomes pointless, because if you can hack on a project, it's unlikely you need any support.
So you're saying that if I help out a project through non-coding means, usually the things that OSS projects need the most (GOOD documentation, translation, marketing/advertising, usability testing), that I don't deserve help/support?
Those may be the poster-childs in the "desktop", but in the corporate world they're Linux itself and the Apache web server, the former of which started with a random Finnish guy posting on USENET about his Minix clone, while the latter began it's life as a collection of patches made by random people for a government-funded web server whose code has been long gone. Not exactly what I'd call "high church".
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
"Marque" just means "name brand". Firefox is obviously a big name brand open-source project.
Not to be confused with "marquee", which are open-source projects that come and go really fast.
... if you need to add support of a device to an OSS, do it. If you don't know how to do it, buy a device with the integrated support.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Because you think the work you've already done might be useful to someone else.
Well, considering I know what 'merde' means in French and that a cerveza is a beer (I live in Florida, lots of Mexican places sell cervezas down here), I think I know what you mean.
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I understand that *commercial* support isn't that hot - just try to get Forte to even acknowledge they have a problem with their Agent usenet reader. But commercial vendors most usually provide an *UPDATED* help file with screenshots and **EXAMPLES** of common usage, and in many cases one can find a BOOK in an actual, physical bookstore with color pictures and everything! FLOSS developers spend their time adding features and smashing bugs, good stuff, but it's not a balanced approach. What's good with new features in the next version when MOST people can't figure out how to do basic things in the PRESENT version? And don't get me started with what must be the biggest black hole of the Internet, not just "support" - IRC. Often cited as a "rich source of support by enthusiastic FLOSS users" - one can type a question in a chat room with hundreds of users to only get a reply HOURS later by a teenager with his own problems that doesn't understand it's spelled "yes" and not "ja".
What if you're not able to support it yourself? I bet that a majority of the people who use Firefox wouldn't know the source code if it took a dump on their chest. Does that mean they should all go back to IE?
...give us back the right to remove story tags from our life!
Do I really have to put up with "smellyvagina" and similar inanely juvenile tags? It's a delicate dance as is to get Slashdot posts through our proxy (filtering comments and 3 and above keeps the filters happy), but if this crap keeps appearing on the front page, I'm just going to give up the fight and get my tech news (some of which is questionable as "tech news") someplace else.
If Firefox fails to support their needs and IE does support their needs, why not?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's not a legitimate question at all.
"Why give me a gift horse if his teeth are all rotten?"
There are a dozen different reasons for opening your source, and three quarters of those reasons don't require any sort of support.
I always open my source and release stuff I've created because I learned from reading other people's source, and those people learned by reading still other's source. Adding to the community, making more code that people can learn from, or take features they like from, is reason enough for me.
So you come around and want me to add a bunch of features, or fix a bunch of bugs on code I've released. Good for you. I guess I would if you paid me, or if you asked nicely and I was feeling charitable, but I've got no reason to provide free support.
It's been a long time.
Sorry, I may have confused you on this. I'm asking this question more as an end user than a developer. Basically, I'm saying that as an end user if I'm choosing an open source project because it's open source I should be able to support it. Otherwise there is no real point in being exclusively open source.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I'm not 100% sure what "marque" means but I would suggest that gcc is the marque project of open source and has been for about 20 years.
I'm ROTFLMAO at the people suggesting that the GP meant "marque" as in brand. It's obviously a typo of "marquee," as in prominent.
An open source project isn't obliged to provide ANYTHING, except source code just to meet the minimum definition of Open Source. Anything above and beyond that is great for you. If it doesn't meet your needs, contribute, finagle or pay for that support or find something else that meets your needs.
Omeganon
There are a dozen different reasons for opening your source, and three quarters of those reasons don't require any sort of support.
Yeah, I may have been cloudy on this but I'm speaking as an end user as opposed to a developer. I'm saying that if I or my organization goes with an open source solution isn't it reasonable that we would be responsible for the future support of it if it ends up being dropped by the original developer. Otherwise why did we choose open source in the first place?
In other words, if you're going to take on an open source solution why are you asking for the community to support it after the initial developers have dropped the project? That seems to defeat the reasoning of taking on an open source solution at all.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Ah, I see now.
I agree completely. If you're providing solutions based on open source software, it's only responsible to be prepared to stop relying on the windfall of other people's generosity.
I'd say that applies to any solution. Microsoft isn't going to redesign Internet Explorer if they break your site in an upgrade. It's up to you to make sure you're ready to support your own solutions.
It's been a long time.
You also have the remember that the kde team were pushing kde4 as usable by average users, when its still not. Nobody expected kde4.1 to be a usable release, until the KDE team started saying so, then they complained because end users didn't find it usable!
Personally im waiting for kde4.2 before i use the thing, most likely 4.3 before i leave trusting 3.5 behind
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
as long as the project lead wants to.
It does not make it worse than useless for all businesses. Some may be so tight on capital that license fees are the difference between profit and loss that they may well still take the risk. You may be thinking of large businesses with several layers of risk-adverse management, but many businesses are just above mom-and-pop size, with technically skilled owners and personnel who can get by without support. Perspective is everything.
Also, commercial support is available for most OSS projects.
I've released some of my code as LGPL libraries, as they may benefit someone else and possibly get me a little assistance testing and developing the code. It's nothing business critical, but does make developing some things a bit easier. But I don't do support for this code, either. My attitude is - "you have source" because it is only of use to other developers who should be fully capable of figuring it out.
"If the software is a key component of my business it's got to continue to be available." -- like, say, MS Access 95 that runs the client-end of a database and breaks on Access XP, and can't be changed because the ex-employee who developed it got hit by a train?
OSS is most certainly not there to reward "freeloaders" who want functionality and support for free.
I'm disappointed, I'd hoped you'd understand all of it. It isn't as funny if you don't know what the phrases mean.
Well, with the Microsoft issue I would say that there is a reason (but limited) amount of expected support if you stay within their suite of solutions. I wouldn't expect MS to support a foul up if it were related to a change by, let's say, Adobe but if Windows 7 breaks some function of MS Office 2007 than there is a reasonable expectation on MS's part to fix it. I don't see the same being true in the OSS world at all aside from a paid service contract with the vendor.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Hi Blakey Rat. I'm sorry about the unrelated comment, but I've been trying to contact you for a while regarding a conversation we had about a year ago. Unfortunately both our email addresses are hidden, so this was my only recourse.
You and I had a spirited debate about DRM, and I'd like to put it on my website in a manner similar to this discussion.
Unfortunately google isn't working for me right now (!) and I can't access the DRM discussion in question because it's dropped off the bottom of my comments list. So hopefully you remember the debate I'm talking about...
Anyway, I'd be grateful if you'd give me permission to put that discussion in a more prominent place than the Slashdot archives. I think your enthusiasm made the conversation very interesting, and I think others would agree.
If you're okay with this, let me know either by responding or by sending me an email at the address on this page. Specify any conditions you like-- I intend to place a link to the original discussion and not edit the conversation in any way whatsoever, but you may have other ideas and I'm open to suggestion.
Cheers,
Khayman80 (aka Dumb Scientist)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: anybody who says that a business can just hire someone to work on open source software if it becomes unsupported does not understand the first thing about the nature of business.
Links to where you've clarified your insights?
There are four options:
1) proprietary software continues to be supported
2) open source software continues to be supported
3) proprietary software ceases to be supported
4) open source software ceases to be supported
in 1) and 2), you're fine. In 3) you're completely hosed. In 4), you can pay someone to get you back to 1) or 2).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nobody owes you anything, whether it's open source or not, unless you have a real or legally implied contract with them to provide something.
As long as it bloody well wants, assuming it even starts supporting users. That's what "free" software means. Don't like it? Fork the code (if you can) or go somewhere else. Any other dumb "should" questions?
So OSS projects actually support users?^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
*ducks*
I think projects should support for as long as needed. I think it's the right thing to do to try, at least. If a project wants widespread adoption by enterprise and organisations for example, offering support will be key in achieving that. If you don't want that, then don't feel obliged to support. But the solution to the money problem: Charge for support. There's decent money to be made there.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
> Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users?
I don't know about legal obligation, but ethically I would say you should make a serious effort to provide the support for as long as you said you were going to provide it for. So for instance if you say that a certain release is "supported until January of 2009", you should try very hard to support it until then.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
A lot depends upon the project. I submitted a bug on Bugzilla and, literally, had a supplied hotfix applied in under 3 hours.
"Beginning is the easy part" - this is the most insightful comment I have seen for some time.
I have seen the same problem over and over again. Welcome to the first annual conference on whatever - nothing happens next year. Welcome to the first issue of our newsletter - there is no second issue. Welcome to our web site where you can find out the latest news about our organisation - as it was last year before it changed. Part of the problem is that those who start something are often hailed as heroes where those who keep it going are seen as a drain on resources.
There's nothing more annoying than a site that's "down for redesign"...
Why can't they just leave the old site running until the new one is ready?
As for server costs etc, if it's hosted by sourceforge then you don't have any costs and can just leave it there, possibly place a statement on the page saying you no longer maintain it and offering to hand over the project to someone else if they're interested.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
An instruction package from a DeVry OSS senior project used the phrase "The following steps worked for the project team."
A similar line was found in a Linux manual: "The following steps worked me."
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Not a support project.
Some projects may provide venues for support (documentation and mailing lists hosted by the developers), but it's normally only to foster a community of people familiar with the software who can assist with development.
Support for popular software may be available from other users in public internet forums, Usenet, etc, regardless of whether the developers of the project choose to foster that community.
But that is true of any software. You can find support on internet forums for Windows XP, Acrobat, Perl, Java, Firefox, Photoshop, etc. For free.
Even where the support is not available for free from the maker of the software, but you can still find it.
This is not about developers having some "obligation" to offer free support; they don't and never did, although their community project may not succeed if they don't foster community involvement.
This is about the power of the internet allowing you to collaborate with other users of the software.
No OSS developer was ever "obliged" to provide support options. They did it because it was the well-mannered polite thing to do that would make their project more likely to succeed (regular people can actually use their software).
Still further off topic,
IANAL but if you took part in the conversation, can't you simply post the conversation? That conversation was on slashdot so there's no expectation of privacy.
It's still nicer to ask I guess.
This raises and interesting question.
If someone is non-technical and would like to work on translations, they need to jump through a string of technical hoops to get there. Figure out what CVS/SVN/Git are and check out the repository, figure out what gettext and all those strange .po files are about, figure out the mechanics of generating patches and submitting them via bug reports, what have you.
There has to be an easier way here.
What about a web site that has displays a list of strings that need translating with an empty text box alongside? The user (could be anonymous) selects the language they're working with and submits some translations in a few minutes, no hassle at all. You could even set it up so that it needs a few identical submissions to trust that the translation is correct.
Might be an interesting idea for an enterprising project to try out.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Both those projects started as cathedrals and were saved by bazaar development, which allowed that organized corporate interests adopted them again.
The bazaar model saved them and made them desirable for corps, so go and find better examples trying to prove your difficult to defend point.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You don't need extra capacity to redesign something.
You keep the old site running, develop in a different area (in the same server if you have so few resources) and you take a few minutes to switch to the new site.
With virtualization nowadays this is even simpler.
So frankly the pet peeve of the GP post is very valid.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are these things called businesses, and they have tens/hundreds/thousands of employees taking care of customers. Then there is 1/10/100 tech support people for that business, and they do not get paid to contribute to open source products. They get paid to find programs that work and help the business make more money.
Yes you can point out exceptions to this. My own experience: I set up a Drupal site last week, including several modules, and there is no way I would be allowed to (or expect myself to) use my work hours to develop, test, write documentation, or help in the forums.
okay, it's 'marquee'