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Can You Be Denied the Right To Support OSS?
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?"
Legitimate + Fair != Legal
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.
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
Read the original thread - Matt Asay quite specifically dodges the question of whether there is in fact such a restriction. The original poster notes this and repeats the question, with no answer being given.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Thing one; Don't ask for legal advice on slashdot, ask a laywer. I don't really think this should be worth saying, but I think it can even be illegal to give legal advice; which this is not.
Now on with the rampant speculation.
a) If you have your own software you can distribute it under any terms you want. Including "like the GPL but you can't provide commercial support"
b) The partner agreement is probably not related to GPL software distribution so the GPL isn't relevant.
c) they can probably stop doing business with anyone giving support if they want.
d) details likely vary from country to country and so on so a lawyer would need much more detail to help you
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Wow. This is coming from Matt Asay ( http://news.cnet.com/openroad/ ) who writes the OSS blog for Cnet, routinely blasting people for not being open enough, and routinely praising Alfresco for their OSS efforts.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I was at a studio on a support call. Had to work on a Blue-Red stereo image, so I started using GIMP functions to edit the layers when their attorney came out of his office and said I could only use such-and-such studio-licensed custom program or risk contanimating their intellectual property. Apparently they had software made specifically for them to use, from a small PC-repai expert out of his southern CA office. Needless to say, it couldn't accomplish what the GIMP could do, yet wouldn't let me explain. They cut me a check and kicked me out within 30 minutes despite assuring them that GPL licensing doesn't extend to their content and property. They looked at me like I was a liar the whole time. Meanwhile, I think I should just go back to my old gig. Anyone have any similar anti-OSS establishments railroad you like a municipal court?
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.
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.
And can set the terms for use of their software, and provision of their support, as they see fit. They can set terms in their partnership contracts restricting what those partners can do with the software, that would take precedence over the license of the software itself. This does, of course, assume that they themselves hold copyright on all code covered by their commercial license and partnership contracts, or have secured permission from the copyright holders for distribution under these terms.
That said, if you simply download the GPL version and then have nothing to do with them or their partners, you are still free to do anything with it that the GPL normally permits, provided their GPL version does not use an altered GPL.
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?
In addition to that you can always sign your rights away in a contract. If you sign an agreement that you won't compete with a company's commercial product, expect to get sued if you work on an open source project that competes with theirs and they find out about it.
I should point out at this point that I am not a lawyer, but I have had this discussion with a number of them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There is no such thing as "fairness" when it comes to corporations. This is not a criticism, just an observation. Fairness is a positive yet vague concept that is easily open to interpretation, something corporate legal departments avoid like pro-bono work in the inner-city (zing!). You make your own fairness. Your quickest path to having decisions made your way is to move up to decision maker.
The future ain't what it used to be.
Well, it seem as if it would be legal. It also seems like a good reason to look for someone else to work with.
I have nothing against paid support plans (as long as they actually support you). That's a cost, and needs to be paid. I wouldn't even mind a company that just ran a bulletin board for customers as their support center, and charged for accounts (included, perhaps, as a part of the cost of the software). Though if that's their support, they'd better not charge as much.
Back awhile I used to purchase my software from KRUD (Kevin's RedHat Uber Distribution) because the support from Red Hat was so bad. (I can't justify Enterprise Level support, so that's not what I'm talking about. But their end user support was pitiful with their included support.) These days I generally wing it, live with some things instead of fixing them, etc. because I'm *not* a systems level guru, and I can't find decent support, so I just use Debian or Ubuntu where things usually work, or you can usually get help from free sources. And if it's not clear what to ask or who to ask, well, I live with it. None of the support options I see are both cheap enough to afford and good enough to be better than that which is available for free.
This is a real problem, and one reason that some people buy from Dell (I don't know how well that works out). My notebook from ZAReason is working well, and they've supported it well, but I'm dubious about upgrading the system. So it'll stay on Hardy Heron for awhile. The defect of having support is that you stick with the system that's supported. You *can* change, but then your system isn't supported anymore.
The ZAReason notebook is interesting. It's totally open (in some sense). You can even hack the hardware. But once you start making changes, you're on your own. So this is analogous to what you want from the CMS system. Because it's open, I'm not tied to them for support. Because they're the experts, and I'm not, I still am. If they refused to support me, I *could* find someone else, but I'd be much more likely to see what changes I could make that would let them support me.
OTOH, if Alfresco are using some contractual trickery to say that experts can only support the proprietary version, I'd definitely look elsewhere for my system.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Restrictive contracts and policies are examples of a masculine philosophy that many business leaders erroneourly believe in, the idea that business is a kind of war. Essentially what a company does depends on the philosophy of its leaders, but if the philosophy is wrong then their actions will come to bite them in the end. You can only succeed in business, and life in general, if you have a philosophy which is right. But what's wrong with the philosophy that business is war?
Business is what a person wants it to be, and what they want it to be depends on their personality, which is in turn dependent on their DNA and their life experiences. If they are high on the social dominance orientation then business, for them, is war. If they are low on the social dominance orientation then business, for them, is cooperation or servicing the free market. But whatever they think about business, this does not affect what business actually is. Business is business. Whether people frame it as war or cooperation depends on a person's personality.
A person who is high on the social dominance orientation metric is likely to see business as war, and will seek to use any available means to achieve their purposes. They may believe that the economy is a zero-sum game (ie that no new wealth can ever be created), therefore they will seek to exclude others from gaining any advantage over them. Such people are also likely to be high on Machiavelian intelligence (and mayble also in selfishness and greed). They think that rugged individualism is a better strategy because they perceive the economy as a zero-sum game in which only the most competitive individuals survive.
A person who is low on the social dominance orientation metric is likely to see business as cooperation or collaboration, and will only use means that are acceptable by the business and greater social community. They may believe that the economy is not a zero-sum game (ie that new wealth can be created at any time), therefore they will seek to cooperate with others in a collaborative effort to produce more new wealth by joining forces together. Such people are also likely to be high in agreeableness (and mayble also in empathy and altruism). They think that a communitarian spirit is a better strategy because they perceive the economy as a non-zero-sum game in which only the most creative individuals survive (and, as free and open-source software demonstrates, creativity and wealth-creation is much more easier when people collaborate together).
Thus, what business is, to a person, depends on who a person is, but they should not let their own (mis-)conceptions draw them into making claims about what business is in reality, because this is the line of thinking that destroys science and reason, and the first step in science is to not let one's intellect affect their image about the reality (albeit there are, of course, philosophical objections to the feasibility of this endeavour). Just as a colour is not a colour unless perceived by an eye, but different eyes may perceive the same natural phenomenon as a different colour (eg under conditions as colour blindness), business cannot be something other than business unless people perceive it as such, but what people perceive depends on who they are and how they contextualise and frame the reality.
If you ask me, I have never perceived economy as a zero-sum game, and thus I have never seen business as war. What I see, however, is lots of people who have the wrong ideas about the economy and business and try to make war against other people, including against people who have the correct ideas, and in the process they drive into their war people who never had any intention to participate in their war. It is for this purpose that everyone, no matter how they see business, should be ready to defend themselves during an attack (ie walk calmly while carrying a big stick, doing your own thing and never attacking anyone, but be ready to effectively defend yourself when attacked). But other than that
The problem here is that there's 3 parties, not two: the person wanting support, the Alfresco partner potentially providing support, and the Alfresco owner. The question is whether the Alfresco partner can be denied the right to provide support to the person wanting it. The answer there is, there isn't an answer. The question is incomplete, it's missing information about what the partner has agreed to. In this case, the partner as part of their partnership agreement signed away their right to support the GPL'd version in return for rights to support the enterprise version they wouldn't have had otherwise. It's not just legal for them to do that, it's entirely reasonable and right for them to be able to do that. It's their business, it's their right to decide that the income from enterprise support is greater than the potential loss from not being able to provide support for the GPL'd version. Someone else may think their decision is dumb, but it's their decision to make.
From the standpoint of the person wanting support, legitimate and fair don't enter into it. They're not a party to the partnership agreement, they're not qualified to decide whether Alfresco is treating it's partners fairly or not. It is, however, rather unusual for open-source companies to deny their partners the right to work on the GPL'd version. RedHat, Sourceforge and the like don't impose any such restrictions that I know of. The most they may do is prohibit partners from making use of any non-GPL'd stuff they have access to in the GPL'd projects. I suspect Alfresco is doing this to try and induce people to use the enterprise version instead of the GPL'd version (if you use the GPL'd version, you lose access to the best sources of support). That'd make me twitchy about using their software.
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."
My company uses Alfresco for an online collaboration tool between us and our customers. We've been with them for awhile, starting out with the 1.x code base.
We have a license with them to run the Enterprise version, but are not currently paying for support. Our customers are very adverse to change and until we have more than half of them using it it's not worth paying the very high cost of the support contract.
Our install is a little different as we run Liferay on Tomcat 5.5 and use Alfresco as a portlet. We've been working on getting it upgraded to the newest versions of the software, but we don't have any java programmers on staff. We also tried to reach out to Alfresco partners to get some help getting our setup moved to the newest releases, but no one would help us since we're not paying the yearly support.
Honestly it feels like blackmail. Thankfully we found someone who is not working as an Alfresco partner, but had experience with it, even going so far as to use his companies Alfresco support to get help with what is not working. With his help we're getting very close to having it all working.
You say software must be OSI compliant, but you cannot use the OSI compliant version of alfresco... So, just don't use alfresco but use another OSI compliant CM system? What's the problem with this?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"