And of all of that is terrific, but none of it is supported by the vendor. You can call RH with your MySQL or PostGreSQL problems, as the primary thing they are selling you is support and updates. You can't call MS, you can scarcely get support form them on the features included in the OS without shelling out extra $$$.
If support and updates are unimportant to you and you're willing to run things like Cygwin and Apache on your Windows server to avoid paying for Red Hat, its a lot more likely you're just going to run a free as in beer linux distribution which provides the same tools with no support.
I believe his point was that you shouldn't be "amazed" at their attempt to squeeze you out. That sort of thing is business as usual for any large corporation.
I've done enterprise-grade checkpoint firewall installs by configuring the equipment ahead of time and mailing it out there. If you document well and are careful about what you do, its entirely doable.
If I can mail a firewall across the states, someone in India could mail one from there. Likewise with a router.
Is it nicer to have someone on-site? You betcha. But its cheaper to have an on-site guy who is just competant enough to plug in the port marked "WAN" and outsource the harder configuration to someone else who costs more per hour, but doesn't need to be salaried.
It says something that the most succesful open source projects tend to be run on a model almost identical to a typical corporation. I believe Linus refers to it as the "benevolent dictator" model.
What the poster is describing is nothing less than mob rule. Theres a certain amount of this to all open source projects, but you'll find almost all have a small group of people ultimately making the decision about what direction to take. And of course if they make enough bad decisions, a portion of their developers can always create a fork
If anything, its the pirate form of democracy. Everyone gets their say, the captain makes the final decision, and if makes enough bad ones, they vote in a new captain.
Lask I checked, you needed admin rights to create a TUN/TAP interface in Windows for OpenVPN to work. Noone in their right mind is giving end users those kinds of rights. Or else I'm missing something?
My experience has been that more often the executives don't ask for admin rights, and understand quite well why they don't need them. The peons in a given company are the ones who want to install AIM, kazaa, and god knows what else on their computer and make the most noise. The CEO has more important things to do...and would rather not waste his own time installing software if he does need it. Thats what he pays IT for.
The problem isn't the method, its the destination. You've said it yourself good enough for the many many individuals and small businesses who donate. Large businesses won't donate until the check is going to a recognized non-profit, not a personal checking account.
I don't know that thats true. I've heard that its been offered, and turned down.
I have a feeling that part of the issue is a desire not to be subject to any of the US laws. The security page makes a big deal about them being able to export crypto to their hearts content, as they don't exist as an entity in the US. My understanding is that most of those restrictions have been lifted for some time now, but i suspect that they are concerned that the situation could change at any point. Theos political views are pretty clear...and the DARPA incident likely didn't win him a lot of friends here in the states.
I can't blame him for being concerned over that. But from a business perspective, they need to get incorporated here as a non-profit, plain and simple. The money just isn't going to roll in how they want until they do. Corporations don't want to donate money that they can't deduct.
Pardon the sarcasm, but it's pretty much the same as if you sent Linux a check to help support the Linux project.
This is where you're wrong. The Linux kernel, and virtually every other large open source project is funded through officialy recognized organizations of one sort or another. Nobody is making checks out to Linux Torvalds personal checking account.
The issue of whether or not Theo is going to squander the money is irrelevant. Many organizations, in particular large corporations with deep pockets, simply CAN'T support a project like OpenBSD by cutting a check to an individuals personal account. Not only is it going to be against company policy, they can't claim it as a deduction on their taxes because it went to an individual, not a recognized non-profit.
Large companies like IBM set aside a certain portion of their budget each year to donate to these kinds of causes...probably just for the tax deductions. Since they are already planning it, getting them to throw some your way is easier than you'd think. But asking to write you a personal check goes outside of that established system, and creates a whole lot more work for them.
Does it make sense to make it harder for someone to GIVE you money? No.
If Theo wants donations on a large scale, he will need to get that taken care of eventually. Everyone else has.
honestly, i'm happy to see competion in the virtualization market...but those two open source products meet my own needs as well, and in some ways better, than vmware did
One of the complaints many have is that you can't actually send money to support OpenSSH. What you can do is support OpenBSD, by sending a check to Theo's personal checking account.
I've bought CDs and t-shirts in the past, and likely will continue to do so. I have no problems supporting the OpenBSD project, its something that i do use myself. But i do see how the multitudes who are using strictly OpenSSH, OpenBGP, or one of their other related projects would prefer to be able to donate money specifically earmarked for that project.
The lack of either a recognized corporation or non-profit to accept donations is also going to be a big sticking point for and business interested in donating. When the check is written to Theo de Raadt, and not OpenBSD, it makes it a lot harder to write it off on taxes.
The big boys don't play that way. I've worked on the Ohio Linuxfest this past year, which is 100% free to attend due to corporate donations. The big players like Novell and IBM would not work with us without a non-profit to write their checks to. For that matter, even small businesses tend to feel the same way. Once we had that in place they were more than happy to send us nice big bags of cash so that 1000 or so people could enjoy a nice free event.
There are plenty of open source projects that are doing quite well with soliciting donations. There are well-defined methods of eliciting this. I see the porblem here as less that corporations are being greedy, as much as it is that the OpenBSD camp are bending over backwards to make themselves unattractive for corporate interests
They have very strong opinions about the way they do things, and thats fine. But if you're not willing to compromise on some things, you have to accept the fact that not as many people are going to be there to hold your hand and help you out.
Net admins block IRC traffic because a lot of worms use it to communicate with each other and build botnets.
University networks are one of the WORST things to try and maintain. Thousands of new users every year bringing their own machines onto the network, which you have no way of realy locking down effectively due to both resources and the fact that they are private property. Yeah, that sounds like fun to me.
The bandwidth thing is likely in response to the late 90's when every student on the planet discovered napster and was eating up university bandwidth like crazy.
Behind every nazish network policy, there is always some horribly abusive user(s).
I've had to block IRC traffic in a business setting many times. I hate to do it, because i'm an avid idler...but when the local admin somewhere doesn't do a damn thing about cleaning up their machines, then its my job to stop that traffic at the perimeter firewall:/
IIRC, higher levels of trust are only available through more rigourous identity confirmation. Things like meeting in person, checking drivers license, etc.
Again, much better than a system that is based pretty much on simply giving the right size bag of money to the right person:/
One can at least mitigate the money issue. http://cacert.org/ is an alternate "open" root cert authority. They're working hard to gain the acceptance of the likes of verisign. I've had converstions with a few of them, and its arguable that their verification procedures are _more_ rigorous than those conducted by the the CA's that are charging high prices.
Nevermind the fact that if noone is buying certs, theres no finanical pressure to cause them to make any compromises for those willing to pay the right price.
I recall F-secure mentioning on their blog that their product detects the rootkit, but does not remove it. This is because they have decided that its too dangerous to do so, and are referring users to Sony for instructions on removal...which apparently work.
They've apparently been working closely with Sony and the company who wrote the rootkit to resolve some of these issues, and Sony released some kind of software update tool that removes the rootkit pretty cleanly
What about the line of "Communicator" phones which run Symbian? They are aimed squarely at the business class, and seem to totally own the ultra-high-end phone market. The problem is these things can be so damn expensive ($900!) that your typical phone carrier doesn't bother carrying them, let alone offering nice rebates. People tend to buy them from other sources: online stores, ebay, etc.
I'm mostly deciding between one of those and a treo when my current plan is up next year
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Just because you haven't had a problem doesn't mean you're not one for someone else. If you havent run scans, how do you know you're not infected?
http://force.coresecurity.com/index.php
open source != non-profit
And of all of that is terrific, but none of it is supported by the vendor. You can call RH with your MySQL or PostGreSQL problems, as the primary thing they are selling you is support and updates. You can't call MS, you can scarcely get support form them on the features included in the OS without shelling out extra $$$.
If support and updates are unimportant to you and you're willing to run things like Cygwin and Apache on your Windows server to avoid paying for Red Hat, its a lot more likely you're just going to run a free as in beer linux distribution which provides the same tools with no support.
I believe his point was that you shouldn't be "amazed" at their attempt to squeeze you out. That sort of thing is business as usual for any large corporation.
I've done enterprise-grade checkpoint firewall installs by configuring the equipment ahead of time and mailing it out there. If you document well and are careful about what you do, its entirely doable.
If I can mail a firewall across the states, someone in India could mail one from there. Likewise with a router.
Is it nicer to have someone on-site? You betcha. But its cheaper to have an on-site guy who is just competant enough to plug in the port marked "WAN" and outsource the harder configuration to someone else who costs more per hour, but doesn't need to be salaried.
Of course they are. You're hard-pressed to find any sizable system which doesn't include some open source components.
It says something that the most succesful open source projects tend to be run on a model almost identical to a typical corporation. I believe Linus refers to it as the "benevolent dictator" model.
What the poster is describing is nothing less than mob rule. Theres a certain amount of this to all open source projects, but you'll find almost all have a small group of people ultimately making the decision about what direction to take. And of course if they make enough bad decisions, a portion of their developers can always create a fork
If anything, its the pirate form of democracy. Everyone gets their say, the captain makes the final decision, and if makes enough bad ones, they vote in a new captain.
Lask I checked, you needed admin rights to create a TUN/TAP interface in Windows for OpenVPN to work. Noone in their right mind is giving end users those kinds of rights. Or else I'm missing something?
My experience has been that more often the executives don't ask for admin rights, and understand quite well why they don't need them. The peons in a given company are the ones who want to install AIM, kazaa, and god knows what else on their computer and make the most noise. The CEO has more important things to do...and would rather not waste his own time installing software if he does need it. Thats what he pays IT for.
The problem isn't the method, its the destination. You've said it yourself good enough for the many many individuals and small businesses who donate. Large businesses won't donate until the check is going to a recognized non-profit, not a personal checking account.
Seriously. Theo needs to see this. No more excuses.
I have a feeling that part of the issue is a desire not to be subject to any of the US laws. The security page makes a big deal about them being able to export crypto to their hearts content, as they don't exist as an entity in the US. My understanding is that most of those restrictions have been lifted for some time now, but i suspect that they are concerned that the situation could change at any point. Theos political views are pretty clear...and the DARPA incident likely didn't win him a lot of friends here in the states.
I can't blame him for being concerned over that. But from a business perspective, they need to get incorporated here as a non-profit, plain and simple. The money just isn't going to roll in how they want until they do. Corporations don't want to donate money that they can't deduct.
This is where you're wrong. The Linux kernel, and virtually every other large open source project is funded through officialy recognized organizations of one sort or another. Nobody is making checks out to Linux Torvalds personal checking account.
The issue of whether or not Theo is going to squander the money is irrelevant. Many organizations, in particular large corporations with deep pockets, simply CAN'T support a project like OpenBSD by cutting a check to an individuals personal account. Not only is it going to be against company policy, they can't claim it as a deduction on their taxes because it went to an individual, not a recognized non-profit.
Large companies like IBM set aside a certain portion of their budget each year to donate to these kinds of causes...probably just for the tax deductions. Since they are already planning it, getting them to throw some your way is easier than you'd think. But asking to write you a personal check goes outside of that established system, and creates a whole lot more work for them.
Does it make sense to make it harder for someone to GIVE you money? No.
If Theo wants donations on a large scale, he will need to get that taken care of eventually. Everyone else has.
vmware is much more concerned about Xen.
honestly, i'm happy to see competion in the virtualization market...but those two open source products meet my own needs as well, and in some ways better, than vmware did
I've bought CDs and t-shirts in the past, and likely will continue to do so. I have no problems supporting the OpenBSD project, its something that i do use myself. But i do see how the multitudes who are using strictly OpenSSH, OpenBGP, or one of their other related projects would prefer to be able to donate money specifically earmarked for that project.
The lack of either a recognized corporation or non-profit to accept donations is also going to be a big sticking point for and business interested in donating. When the check is written to Theo de Raadt, and not OpenBSD, it makes it a lot harder to write it off on taxes.
The big boys don't play that way. I've worked on the Ohio Linuxfest this past year, which is 100% free to attend due to corporate donations. The big players like Novell and IBM would not work with us without a non-profit to write their checks to. For that matter, even small businesses tend to feel the same way. Once we had that in place they were more than happy to send us nice big bags of cash so that 1000 or so people could enjoy a nice free event.
There are plenty of open source projects that are doing quite well with soliciting donations. There are well-defined methods of eliciting this. I see the porblem here as less that corporations are being greedy, as much as it is that the OpenBSD camp are bending over backwards to make themselves unattractive for corporate interests
They have very strong opinions about the way they do things, and thats fine. But if you're not willing to compromise on some things, you have to accept the fact that not as many people are going to be there to hold your hand and help you out.
you can do rounded corners without images, just clever css: http://pro.html.it/esempio/nifty/
they bought it from tesla.
thats just for starters
Net admins block IRC traffic because a lot of worms use it to communicate with each other and build botnets.
University networks are one of the WORST things to try and maintain. Thousands of new users every year bringing their own machines onto the network, which you have no way of realy locking down effectively due to both resources and the fact that they are private property. Yeah, that sounds like fun to me.
The bandwidth thing is likely in response to the late 90's when every student on the planet discovered napster and was eating up university bandwidth like crazy.
Behind every nazish network policy, there is always some horribly abusive user(s).
I've had to block IRC traffic in a business setting many times. I hate to do it, because i'm an avid idler...but when the local admin somewhere doesn't do a damn thing about cleaning up their machines, then its my job to stop that traffic at the perimeter firewall :/
Again, much better than a system that is based pretty much on simply giving the right size bag of money to the right person :/
One can at least mitigate the money issue. http://cacert.org/ is an alternate "open" root cert authority. They're working hard to gain the acceptance of the likes of verisign. I've had converstions with a few of them, and its arguable that their verification procedures are _more_ rigorous than those conducted by the the CA's that are charging high prices.
Nevermind the fact that if noone is buying certs, theres no finanical pressure to cause them to make any compromises for those willing to pay the right price.
They've apparently been working closely with Sony and the company who wrote the rootkit to resolve some of these issues, and Sony released some kind of software update tool that removes the rootkit pretty cleanly
I'm mostly deciding between one of those and a treo when my current plan is up next year