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Can You Be Denied the Right To Support OSS?

Posted by Soulskill on from the oss-enterprise dept.

jerico.dev writes "I am currently selecting a CM tool for a project. Important condition: the software must be OSI compliant. I considered Alfresco, since they call themselves 'open source.' Then I heard from several of Alfresco's partners that they are not allowed to do projects based on Alfresco's GPL edition because their partnership contract denied them the right to do so. They only can support Alfresco's enterprise edition. But Alfresco's VP of business development Matt Asay told me that their enterprise edition is not OSI compliant. Does anyone in the Slashdot crowd have experience with partner contracts of other OSS vendors? Is it normal that Sun, Red Hat, etc. force their partners to decline projects based on their open source editions? It's probably legal to do so, but do you think it is legitimate and fair?"

18 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Yep. by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why do you want an open source customer management system anyway? You clearly want to make money using it, so why are you surprised that the people who are going to help you do so want money too?

    It's simple... the writers of the open source system wanted to make money so they made a commerical enterprise varient, then told all of the consultants hanging off of them that if they still wanted access to official support, they'd have to agree to only support the enterprise edition. No law violated for that. Either learn how to run the open version yourself, or pay for enterpise. Your choice.

    1. Re:Yep. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To answer another question of yours...

      Sun has open sourced just about everything they have right now including Cluster and SAMFS. They just charge for support using the old pricing model. You can use it, but if you have a question or a problem then you need to pay.

      It's a fair trade. Open Source is not free of charge. Cluster and SAMFS are damn complex software and you had better not go it alone unless you really know your stuff. And experts always pay for backline help.

      Sun's goal is to get lots of people interested in using their good code (a lot of it really is great). If you use it for your own purposes and go it alone, fine. But when you have a paying customer requiring enterprise support...you'll use the code you know and funnel the support dollars back. None of our clients would ever consider not paying.

      This is not evil. If you ask me, it's fair trade and probably the only model that will keep OSS going into the enterprise.

      My advice: you get what you pay for. Don't get fooled by the GPL tag...people gotta pay the bills.

    2. Re:Yep. by yttrstein · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's not anywhere near this complicated.

      If the software you're licensed to use from this company is not OSI compliant and you must have OSI compliancy, and if the GPL version IS compliant, then your course of action is clear:

      Dump the license and use the GPL stuff to your heart's content. Where's the issue?

    3. Re:Yep. by mabhatter654 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Poster is willing to pay for consulting, but he wants them to consult on the Open source version. I'd have thought that's how this was supposed to work. The consultants are telling him they can ONLY consult on the enterprise version, which is not OSI approved. I'd agree it's fully legal, but it really does seem to go against the spirit of open source, essentially treating the free version as trialware but contracting all the consultants to do the work on the proprietary not-free version so you can doll out what gets to be free and not free.

    4. Re:Yep. by fruitbane · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It kinda sounds like the OP is willing to pay for project work, which is therefore not free. The OP appears to simply want work done with, or rather on, software that's OSI compliant.

      In this case the open source software is free, but the work is not. And isn't that how open source software is supposed to be profitable?

    5. Re:Yep. by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Having multiple vendors for business critical goods and services is a basic principle of good business. Custom modified OSI compliant software ensures that *any* software development contracting firm can act as a vendor for software maintenance. Proprietary software ensures that a single vendor has a monopoly on that service.

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    6. Re:Yep. by Lost+Engineer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Probably still has more documentation than most open source software not produced by a company.

  2. Fair? by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's business. Business is war. Everything is legal, until and unless of course it isn't. They only ethical considerations businesses have is to their shareholders and owners to keep profit coming in. And in this case, denying "shelter and comfort" from their enemies, those other evil open source projects, they're protecting those profits.

    The better question is; Why are you working for them if you have an ethical objection to this?

    This leads to the old rhetoric of -- well, if enough people turned down the job offer they'd be forced to raise the going price to find a software engineer who'd be willing to "sell out", and if there were enough people this price would be so high that it wouldn't be practical to engage in this business practice. Of course, in truth... Most free agents in the system also subscribe to the theory of "I need to eat." A pity... If only ideals were edible we wouldn't have this problem.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Fair? by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The better question is; Why are you working for them if you have an ethical objection to this?

      These days, with official unemployment figures pushing 7%, and real figures (including people who are ineligible for or have exhausted their unemployment benefits) probably twice that, I'm quite sure that many people are thankful just to have a job, without the luxury of being able to resign for idealistic reasons.

    2. Re:Fair? by girlintraining · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > These days, with official unemployment figures pushing 7%, and real figures (including people who are ineligible for or have exhausted their unemployment benefits) probably twice that, I'm quite sure that many people are thankful just to have a job, without the luxury of being able to resign for idealistic reasons.

      Bingo. :) Idealism is a luxury for the rich. We don't have the privilege of questioning our 'superiors' on their ethics.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    3. Re:Fair? by MarkvW · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Idealism is a luxury for the rich" = Slave Logic

  3. Re:Quick note... by spazdor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Notice where the OP makes exactly this distinction in the last setntence?

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  4. Welcome to contract law by DraconPern · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Welcome to contract law. If you sign a contract that says you are not going to do something, you better not do it unless you just want an ass raping.

  5. Common Misunderstanding by maz2331 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All the talk out there regarding the "viral" nature of GPL code has confused a lot of otherwise very smart people. What happens is that they miss the dividing line between "the development" and "the use" of the programs.

    This seems to be, in my experience, more likely among lawyers than in other groups.

    It just proves the old saying the stupidity and hydrogen are the universal elements of the universe.

    And, professionally, I'd run from a client like that. They strike me as paranoid enough to end up suing for a trivial reason down the road or cherry-pick advice in a manner that ensures failure of any project you would engage in for them.

    1. Re:Common Misunderstanding by mindstrm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The confusion is that a lot of people, despite the very clear language in the GPL itself, seem to be under the impression that anything *produced* with GPL tools is GPL.

      I have had countless developers, especially in years past, tell me that "Oh well we don't program on Linux because we don't want to have to give away our code. We can't use GCC for that reason."

  6. Wrong question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Can you be denied the right to support OSS? No.

    Can you sign away your right to work on a particular project, in a contract where you get something in return? Of course. Why would you expect otherwise?

  7. Conflict of interest? by fugue · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can use it, but if you have a question or a problem then you need to pay.

    This would seem to suggest that all efforts to make software easier to use will hurt the company's bottom line. I know it's more complex than that--since simpler software then becomes, essentially, less expensive and therefore more popular--but there is still a feedback loop in a direction with which I'm not entirely happy. In a sense it's still an "opposite" of the more traditional (but waning) model of an up-front cost for "the software" with some "free support", in which the incentives are clearer. I'll be curious to see where this goes.

    --
    "The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
    1. Re:Conflict of interest? by frieko · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This would seem to suggest that all efforts to make software easier to use will hurt the company's bottom line.

      I'm not convinced. They might be able to count on the existing customer base to be stuck with their crapware, but they always have to compete for NEW customers and that means making the product better/easier.