> So why punish them by breaking them up just because they've been successful?
Have you been following the same court case I've been following? No one is suggesting breaking them up because they've been successful. They're suggesting breaking them up to punish them for BREAKING THE LAW (and to prevent them from breaking the law in the future)!
Read the Finding of Fact & Finding of Law.
> it isn't an issue of what benefits the consumer or the industry, but an issue of basic right and wrong.
Correct. They broke the law, they get punished. Or is being rich & successful an excuse to be able to ignore the law (ideally, before anyone starts in about buying your way out, & the number of poor in jail vs rich, etc)?
I suggest you go to http://www.beopen.com/company/investors.html, where you will find that 4 of 7 investors of Beopen.com are from AboveNet Communications, and one of the others is formerly with AboveNet. Whether or not you're owned by them, or that they are the Evil Empire, I couldn't say. But having 4 of 7 investors (or 5 of 7, depending on your count) certainly indicates they have a say in your company.
In addition to linux-ha, which includes links to Linux Virtual Server, Piranha, Ultramonkey, you can also find organizations that do this for a living. One (the company I work for, to be honest) is Mission Critical Linux. Specify what your needs are, exactly (web service, database failover, file system, etc), then look around.
By the way, is your consultant a reseller of Solaris (since I see he suggested that)?
The point I was making is that just because it's Open Source doesn't mean everyone's going to download it. You can sell the packaging, testing, QA, support, etc. However, everyone else can as well. NOTHING in the GPL or Open Source Definition prevents you from selling software, it merely prohibits you from preventing others from also selling it, or giving it away.
In a way - you give up mandatory control of your software(allow forking). Of course, all the Open Source projects I know are either run by the people who started them, or they voluntarily gave it up, so giving up the mandatory control doesn't mean you necessarily give up control, as long as you play nice in the community.
> unless you're willing to give up major parts of one of them
Well, you need to give up thinking that software is a product, which you haven't yet. Think of the services around software as the product, software is the enabler.
Slashdot Mirror
> So why punish them by breaking them up just because they've been successful?
Have you been following the same court case I've been following? No one is suggesting breaking them up because they've been successful. They're suggesting breaking them up to punish them for BREAKING THE LAW (and to prevent them from breaking the law in the future)!
Read the Finding of Fact & Finding of Law.
> it isn't an issue of what benefits the consumer or the industry, but an issue of basic right and wrong.
Correct. They broke the law, they get punished. Or is being rich & successful an excuse to be able to ignore the law (ideally, before anyone starts in about buying your way out, & the number of poor in jail vs rich, etc)?
I suggest you go to http://www.beopen.com/company/investors.html, where you will find that 4 of 7 investors of Beopen.com are from AboveNet Communications, and one of the others is formerly with AboveNet. Whether or not you're owned by them, or that they are the Evil Empire, I couldn't say. But having 4 of 7 investors (or 5 of 7, depending on your count) certainly indicates they have a say in your company.
In addition to linux-ha, which includes links to Linux Virtual Server, Piranha, Ultramonkey, you can also find organizations that do this for a living. One (the company I work for, to be honest) is Mission Critical Linux. Specify what your needs are, exactly (web service, database failover, file system, etc), then look around.
By the way, is your consultant a reseller of Solaris (since I see he suggested that)?
jeff
The point I was making is that just because it's Open Source doesn't mean everyone's going to download it. You can sell the packaging, testing, QA, support, etc. However, everyone else can as well. NOTHING in the GPL or Open Source Definition prevents you from selling software, it merely prohibits you from preventing others from also selling it, or giving it away.
> you lose control of your product
In a way - you give up mandatory control of your software(allow forking). Of course, all the Open Source projects I know are either run by the people who started them, or they voluntarily gave it up, so giving up the mandatory control doesn't mean you necessarily give up control, as long as you play nice in the community.
> unless you're willing to give up major parts of one of them
Well, you need to give up thinking that software is a product, which you haven't yet. Think of the services around software as the product, software is the enabler.