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Freeside Internet Services: Doing Well With Purely Free Software (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the making-a-good-living-by-giving-software-away dept.

While attending ITEXPO West in Austin, TX, Slashdot editor Timothy Lord met Ivan Kohler, the "President, Founder and Head Geek" of a company called Freeside Internet Services that is 100% open source (no dual-licensing) and makes its living supporting software Ivan says is used to manage some of the very unsexy backend tasks that ISPs and VoIP providers need to do, like track usage and send bills to customers. Freeside uses the AGPL license, which Ivan calls "a GPL variant for web applications" that, he says, "prevents people from taking our software, modifying it, and selling it in a hosted capacity as proprietary software."

8 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Freeside Support by 54mc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    TFS mentions that Freeside makes their money on support. Here's the caveat - you need it.

    I spent a full work week, with the assitance of several high level (in charge of thousands of servers, been doing it for 10+ years) admins and perl programmers (Freeside's native tounge) attempting to install it. To put it shortly, the documentation is terrible. I discovered over seventy undocumented modules, not including those modules required modules, that were required simply to even install the thing. We spoke to one of the developers on the project who basically told us this difficulty was intended and let us know he'd be extremely impressed if we got it installed without his help.

    So yea, it's free... If you don't mind either paying them to install it or spending an inordinate amount of time installing and configuring it.

    --
    Joy! Beautiful spark of the gods!
    1. Re:Freeside Support by PRMan · · Score: 2

      Cool, so now you can sell an installer that installs it for people (unmodified, of course)...

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    2. Re:Freeside Support by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This tells me the software is poorly designed and problematic, and is not a good product, and that the company is abusive to its customers and is tithe-extracting. Next product.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    3. Re:Freeside Support by Jawnn · · Score: 4, Informative

      Agreed. We had the same experience - discovered that the software and documentation appeared to be deliberately rigged so that it was effectively useless, virtually requiring a payment for someone to show up with the keys and make it work. Were it not for the perfectly valid choice of "Fuck this. I'll use something else", we'd call that extortion. Yes, with enough time and expertise, one could discover where the broken bits are and fix them, but then (with enough time and expertise) one could write something from scratch too.

    4. Re:Freeside Support by _ivan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hi,

      I am the person interviewed in this video.

      It is a completely and utterly false statement that we attempt to make the software difficult to install on purpose. The documentation is resonably straightforward for any competant sysadmin, and all prerequisites ARE listed. The documentation is in a Wiki if folks from the community would like to help improve it for a more novice-oriented audience.

      We even provide a completely installed and functional VMware appliance with each release, for folks who have difficulty installing from source code but who would still like to evaluate or use the software.

      May I respectfully ask that you consider saving the vitrol for companies that ACTUALLY falsely represent themselves as "open source" while having pro versions, proprietary plugins and other such nonsense? It seems a bit unfair to pick on a small company doing the best we can to employ people full-time writing 100% free software, just because a free installation tutorial wasn't handed to you on a silver platter.

      Thanks.

  2. Re:AGPL, legally weaker than a EULA. by Digana · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In addition to the terms of the GPL, You violate the AGPL when you (1) copy the source code and (2) modify it (3) host the modified version over the network and (4) don't provide source for your modifications. Since by default (1) is a copyright violation if there isn't an explicit permission to do so, if you say you don't agree to the AGPL, then you don't have permission to do (1) either. So if you do the above, you can't claim that you didn't agree to the terms of the AGPL without acknowledging copyright infringement.

  3. Good software, Really Complex by banetbi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I actually had Ivan install Freeside and train the staff when I was still running a dialup ISP. The software is a bear to install, but mainly because it is so massive a piece of software. At the end of the day, Freeside saved us a ton of man hours by automating most of the administrative tasks like account suspension and billing. Since I used it last Freeside has gotten loads of new functionality. It was well worth the initial cost of having Ivan come out and install, transfer our old accounting info, and train the staff.

    No I don't work for Freeside or Slashdot.

  4. Re:AGPL, legally weaker than a EULA. by RobKow · · Score: 2

    IANAL, but I think the AGPL is pretty solid. The Ninth Circuit held in MAI v. Peak that copying software into RAM for execution is indeed copying, and the provisions of 17 USC 117(a) don't apply to mere licensees (as opposed to copyright owners). Being that the AGPL license, which allows you to use, copy, and modify the software, only remains valid if you continue to comply with its terms, you are infringing copyright by continuing to copy the software into RAM for purposes of executing it if you're not abiding by the license. You have no right to copy the software otherwise.