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Linux Foundation Makes Open Source Boring
superapecommando noted an essay by Glyn Moody where he writes "In the early days of free software, the struggle was just to get companies to try this new and rather unconventional approach, without worrying too much about how that happened. That typically meant programs entering by the back door, surreptitiously installed by in-house engineers who understood the virtues of the stuff — and that it was easier to ask for forgiveness after the event than for permission before.
[The Linux Foundation tries] to take all the fun out of free software. They are about removing the quirkiness and the riskiness that has characterized free software in business for the last decade and a half, and seek to replace it with nice, safe systems that senior management will instantly fall in love with. In a word, they seek to make open source boring for the enterprise. That's not only good news for companies, it's a really important step for the Linux Foundation."
What's the story?
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
then I'm all for boring.
I'd say my experience has been similar in that we often usezZZZZZzzzzz *snort* zZZZZZzzz......*snore*...zzzZZZZzzzzzz.........
http://www.whuddafug.com
So, basically, this is the same story that everyone else is running about the Linux Foundation releasing a set of tools to help companies check GPL compliance, but with a confrontational headline and summary?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Are you trolling? Because "Open Software is in fact pretty much Close Software (GPL anyone?)" is a patently ridiculous statement. Yes, you can argue that the viral nature of the GPL is not a good thing for certain business models, but arguing that open source is closed is flat out Orwellian.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
But we allied with Open Source. We have always been at war with Closed Source.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
But that's a good thing in my book. Takes a little longer to get things set up and configured, but once you do, it stays working. No Wednesday am WTF?! No panic when the virus of the day rolls around.
It took Microsoft until Windows 7 to produce an OS almost as boring.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Was there a struggle to get open source into businesses? I thought "In the early days of free software", the whole point was that the developers sought to provide free software in terms of libre, and as gratis as a side effect. Stallman wasn't trying to get businesses to use his software, he was trying to make the software he needed available for free because he saw that the software business was not distributing code or providing the freedoms to tinker and improve software enjoyed under the MIT heydays.
Include pr0n. That ought to make it interesting.
Tell me man, can i take BusyBox and include it in my little embedded $30 device, without paying some license fee to the main developer of the Open Software Busybox program??? In my book, there is nothing open, or free in fact, if at the end you end up paying some fee. Free as a Beer anyone?
If you only use the software and don't redistribute alterations, then how is the GPL different from the BSD license?
Too boring
Interesting. I guess we can look forward to less obscenity in the comments of released FOSS source code. As well as the stated goal of making "sure developers did not leave comments in the source code about future products, product code names, mention of competitors, etc."
Well, ok, that last bit about competitors may be a reference to swearing.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Why would you have to pay any fees for distributing GPL licensed software? All you have to do is provide the source code of your derivation. If you haven't modified the software, even an acknowledging link to http://www.busybox.net/ is more than enough.
To my knowledge, as long as you release the source code changes you made when releasing your device, you're okay. And if you're doing this for personal use and not selling it, then you don't owe a penny. Everyone sued by BusyBox had used BusyBox source, not acknowledged it, and sold products with it without releasing the source.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I read the title as "Linux Foundation Makes Open Source Bong"
And it's not like they're likely to have even modified BusyBox, and so they really were just lazy - not protecting company secrets that should have been open-sourced.
That is what FOS needs. It is fun working on state-of-the-art stuff. But it isn't fun being end user of FOS apps that are buggy because developers make new bugs before fixing iportant old ones.
This is the problem with open source, since there is more freedom what to do. Often new releases are more fun to do than to fix old broken stuff. Just take a look at KDE and Linux distro releases, they come so often.
Plinkett, is that you?
if you use GPL Affero even your in-house changes must be made public. Worse, this gives others an implied right of audit of your servers. So stay away from Affero!
Yeah, the business about being at war with Open Source was just a misprint.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Tell me man, can i take BusyBox and include it in my little embedded $30 device, without paying some license fee to the main developer of the Open Software Busybox program???
Yes.
Since the rest of your post is based on a false assumption, it can safely be ignored.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
That's not true, only the code directly utilizing the GPL'd library needs to be open-sourced.
So as long as your 1TB project keeps the portions that need the GPL'd code sanctioned off (in another binary, or a compiled library similar to Windows DLLs) from the rest of your code, you don't need to open source the whole shebang.
Now, if you include code that includes GPL code, you're absolutely right. But you'd have to be an idiot not to be able to find a way around that, and if the GPL code is so critical that it must be included, and you cannot re-write it yourself, then perhaps you shouldn't be complaining about GPL'ing the whole thing, given the amount if time/effort the GPL library is obviously saving you.
GPL only acts as a virus if you're stupid. If it's a 1kb GPL library, you should be able to include it in a way that does not violate the GPL nor force you to GPL the rest of your code. If you can't, then re-write the damn library on your own. If you can't, I can't imagine how you ever managed to get 1TB of code in the first place.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
But it does make a point. Linux was for the uber geeks. Not for the corporate suits. Its good that we have reached a point where a discussion of the license is as important as the features of the software. .... AH!!!! Then I go read the article and realize its just a promotion for 3 tools being released. Upper management doesn't care for these tools. Maintainers maybe.
What a waste of time.
To my knowledge, you are simply unaware of all the implications of using open source code. Once you use even 1kb of GPL'd binary, you MUST open the source code of this binary, and everything else. So, if i have 1TB project that is using 1KB GPL, my whole 1TB project source code should be released too. There is good reason in this, but nevertheless, there is a good reason in poison too.
If you had a 1TB application, why would you be needing busybox to begin with...?
Apart from that, take a more realistic scenario: You have a small embedded device. You make some changes to the Linux kernel to adapt it to your hardware. Then you use busybox to provide the functionality of init, sh and the like, but you make no changes to busybox itself because it's fine as it stands.
Next you develop, from scratch, some app started by init that blinks your lights or does whatever. It links with LGPLd libraries (probably libc).
The result? You have to provide the changes you made to Linux. That is all. You made no changes to busybox, so simply telling people where to find the source code is enough. Your super-duper app stays private because it was written from scratch, and linking with LGPLd libraries is okay.
People like you - the idiots who like pushing shit through the back door and apparently like "quirkiness and the riskiness" of immature, poorly maintained, undocumented projects. Seriously: fuck you.
You are the reason that Open Source has taken such a long time to adapt. I know of several IT contracting firms which will not touch Linux or Open Source in general because they have seen entirely too many instances of people like you and their work: technologically headstrong geek installs an Open Source product/project in an esoteric, convoluted fashion and didn't document the process (potentially only so he could fix it). He does his best to put as much customization and inter-dependence into the system(s) as possible. Then he moves on to do something else, and the customer is left holding the bag.
I suspect you and my predecessor would get along just fine. He enjoyed fucking people over, too.
Guess what? Most people would much rather be "bored" at work than have to fuck with something that broke because it was poorly conceived, and face the wrath of managers and users. THat's what the Linux Foundation (and those PFYs that fall in love with their recommendations/solid products) does for us: lets us sleep at night.
There is a time and a place for "tinkering" and non-turnkey solutions - and it's called a lab. If you don't have one, you need one. It will save you time and money in the long run - it's the first step towards standardization and reduction of costs. It is very unprofessional (and foolish) to roll an untested product out to production without thorough initial testing - anyone who calls themselves an IT administrator or engineer and does otherwise is a fool.
Any administrator worth his salt hates sketchy nonsense. This is why we don't run early release software and other such nonsense.
It's different if you're in an "IT company" making something new, but yeah, as a general rule, sketch is bad.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I don't know if you have actually given a look at that "fun" code of the "golden age of free software".
I have. I'm pretty sure that the programmer that did it had a great time and felt very smart when he wrote it.
Undecipherable variable names. Functions with 200+ LOC and no comments. C macros gone grazy. I hope you get the idea.
It sucked.
I get it. Making maintainable, structured, easy to understand code is boring. Or not as fun as showing the word how mad your "regexp skillz" are. Well, it also sucks.
I personally enjoy making code as easy to understand and "obvious" as possible. It is difficult. It makes you work more slowly. You don't get the instant gratification that you might get with this or that clever hack. But you get long-term satisfaction, when someone sends you an email saying "Hey, I needed to make a change in your code and it was so easy because it is well written. Thanks a lot"
So what about non-Affero GPL?
No one wants quirky and risky software anymore than they want quirky and risky airplanes. Software is not playtime for developers.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I don't like Microsoft. I love the idea of open source. I just don't think the group-think is dead yet. People use microsoft because people use microsoft. People use word becauseeveryone else uses it and sends stuff around in it. Blaargh! Just imagine the world we could have.
If I ran the world, (being the Nazi control freak that I am) I'd rule that we'd all shift to Mac, which would become open source. We'd keep the Mac creative guys in charge of brainstorming various projects, but also with input from the grassroots hacker community. These hacker ideas would filter up from the bottom. We'd arrange some means of having the best of both worlds dialogue online, vote on it, and move to the next big thing. And this would save on human capital, as mac users getting a job in PC land wouldn't have to relearn how to suck eggs every time, and vice versa. I mean, does the world really need 30 different word processors, and the end-user confusion when switching from one to another? New ways of doing stuff in this GLOBAL software would become 30 second snippets in the nightly news. Everyone would have an idea of how to navigate the basics, and what changes might be coming.
Then it would be boring, and reliable, and universal: yet still shiny all at the same time.
How much does "boring" generally go hand-in-hand with "dependable"?
I am not devoid of humor.