You do realize that you own the copyright to your code and you can license it however you please to businesses?
Yes. I choose to license it as BSD as my first option. If a company really wants GPL'd code I could do that too, but I find BSD is more business friendly. GPL, to a business, might not be as attractive of an option (or even an option at all) depending on what the project is. If it's extending an existing product, GPL might not be a compatible license.
Basically you're saying that businesses are attracted to your code because they can use it for free without compensating you in anyway.
No, I'm not saying that. If they want me to do work, they will pay me for it. After they, they can do what they want with it, and I can continue to do what I want with it. If they decide they love it and want to resell it, they can. I may not help them anymore, or I may charge them.
Developers who own copyright on valuable code might be better off to dual-license the code. Proprietary/GPL. Give your code a life of its own if it is that valuable to you, while at the same time allowing companies who really do value your code to have access to it under terms that are agreeable to you and to their business aims. This idea was related very well by the guy who said he writes code under the GPL because he wants to make money on his code if someone else wants to benefit from it monetarily.
I never once said I worked for free. You can make just as much money off of BSD code as GPL. If I make a piece of code under BSD, it can have a life of its own. I can choose to release it to the world at the same time as I give it to the client. I can keep it all to myself and use it in other projects without fear of anyone complaining. Depends on the code. The only difference GPL or BSD makes is what happens/after/ the code has been given to a client and what the client can do with it. Under BSD, the client can do/anything/ to it but claim they wrote it (I would still own the copyright). The GPL places additional restrictions on what the client can do, things like releasing the source code, what kinds of licenses are compatible with the code, what kind of code can talk to the GPL'd code, etc
I am a software developer. I release my code as BSD licensed code. Do you know why? Business are more attracted to it than other code. When I make the case to sell my services and prepackaged code the business knows that they can use my code for whatever they want. As a developer, I'm fine with that. If they want to lock it up and sell it as their own, feel free.
I will keep my own, original branch of code BSD. If I don't like the company that locks it up, its well within my rights to not help them anymore. They can spend their own time taking my work and trying to get it to work with their fork. I make my money off of services anyway.
This assumes they take the code and lock it up without my approval. If I'm contracted to do work for a company I always do the work as BSD licensed. It takes the complications out of things but still gives me access to a large body of code to work from. The stuff I do for them they can resell/lock away without worrying.
Most FOSS projects who will use GPL'd or BSD'd code know and understand the moral implications of locking up code or trying to ignore the license and they will play fair. Yes, there are companies like MS that lock things away and try to keep it under wraps. Know what though? Developers aren't stupid, and if we pick licenses like MIT or BSD, *we* understand what might happen.
End users really don't care. As long as the software works. 99% of end users are never going to modify the code or attempt to redistribute it, so the choice of license becomes moot. This isn't the 1980s where code is being shared amongst companies to make their mainframes work nicer.
Have you ever read any of Stallman's rants? Stallman is about the freedom of the/software/, not the end user. He wants all software to be free no matter what the end cost for the user actually is. Why do you think he has a problem with licenses like BSD (which is less restrictive than the GPL)? They give more power the user than the software itself to determine how it can be used.
If you take the time to actually read the GPL and some of Stallman's writings, you begin to see that he is a religious zealot who is banging the wardrum for software to forever be 100% free and open. If the user doesn't like that, he doesn't care.
As a developer, I personally go for projects that are BSD-based. Yes, there is potential that the code could get locked up in a proprietary stack (MS using the BSD network stack, for example), but as long as it was released under BSD it will forever be open to be used as USERS see fit.
So ask yourself. What ISP would limit a popular service to such a degree that it becomes 100% unusable for their entire user base?
The ISP that I worked for. They had just started to roll out wireless internet to compete with cable and DSL in the area, with the fastest package they offered 1 megabit/sec. The original wireless equipment (802.11b Lucent equipment) began to choke due to the amount of connections the P2P traffic was generating so a Packeteer was put into place. Kazaa traffic was limited to 512 kilobits/sec for everyone on the ISP, regardless of your throughput package you purchased. Once about 5 people were on, the Kazaa traffic was all used up.
When Bittorrent started to get big, it was an even larger issue as we had more people on wireless broadband. It was laughable how they tried to combat it (at one point all outgoing BT connections were denied by the Packeteer, which effectively shut the service off). Deep-level analysis was being done so changing the port didn't matter. We'd get calls constantly saying WoW wouldn't update, that customers we knew were using it for legitimate purposes couldn't get their software, etc, and we were told to basically waste our time troubleshooting and find a reason to blame it on the customer.
Management didn't want them to know that they were throttling the traffic to the point that it was only usable for 5-10 people (at speeds grossly under what they were paying for) because they needed the business. The highest level service was even sold as a way around issues as those customers that needed to play games were whitelisted to IPs for those games in the Packeteer (if you needed bittorrent for any other reason, like to download a Linux ISO, you were out of luck). But, if for any reason someone complained about throughput issues on a tower where someone was whitelisted, that whitelisted person was blocked.
It sucked, but that was the only way they handled it.
Contrast this to the places that they received by purchasing Adelphia. My cable actually has been worse since the switch, and there isn't anyone to complain to (and not that TW cares. I lodged a complaint due to poor management when attempting to upgrade from cable to Digital + Internet and it was messed up for over two months by the time billing was corrected. 4 months later and the most I can get from TW is that my complaint is still in queue!). They've reduced our local office to little more than a scheduling and billing station, a shadow of its former self under Adelphia where at least the manager cared.
Our cable lineup is still the same crappy Adelphia offering that we've had the last 8 years, before the buyout. I pay the same amount as my brother-in-law in Lima and he gets more channels, onDemand, and better hardware. I get no onDemand (but they sure will advertise the service multiple times during a show) and attempting to get premium hardware like DVRs or HD boxes is like pulling teeth since they are still using Adelphia equipment.
Local monopolies are stagnating broadband rollout, at least here. The only cable service we get is TW, telephone is Embarq (who is at least increasing their DSL speeds to be more competitive), and smaller ISPs are just DSL resellers unless you want to pay through the nose for Wireless service (or for DSL, as the contracts Embarq makes them sign make them $10-$20 more a month for the same speed you can get through Embarq).
I've been on the fence about virtualization for a very long time now. Sure, it's quite convenient to install VMware, load up a guest OS, and tinker with new features. But to load up a server with multiple instances of the same operating system is ludicrous. It certainly doesn't scale well at all. And the marketing teams are incredibly good at making people believe that by installing their virtualization software, you'll suddenly have a bunch of "virtual" servers with the same capabilities as a single server. Sure, they all have the same capabilities from an OS standpoint, but performance isn't going to be anything close to a standalone server..
We've been running VMWare here at work for over a year now. What it let us do is consolidate a bunch of aging servers into two machines. We had no delusions of security (I and coworkers head to SANS every year and do what we can to stay abreast of security, and I got to listen to the VMWare Escape talk that IntelGuardians gave). Performance on modern hardware is not really an issue anymore. Granted, the virtual file server I built won't be as fast as the octa-core, 32gb RAM ESX server it is running on... but do I need it to be? Now, if you're dumb enough to run ESX or any VM software on a single CPU system, that is your own fault.
And as far as security goes, it's nonsense. Ok, so I install 5 copies of RHEL 5.0 on my virtual server. If the virtualization software itself is attacked and compromised, all 5 servers go down
Not going to argue with you there. Without extra software like VMotion or external SANs to store the VMs on, if the server goes down for any reason (like, say, updating ESX itself), they are all down.
If an OS level attack is successful, then all 5 virtual servers are likely vulnerable because it's an OS level attack.
So is the room full of RHEL 5 installs. Once you've compromised a server you can bet that the company you've gotten into is running more boxes with the same OS. This is a bad analogy that people always bring up to show the low security of VMs when this type of attack has nothing to do with VMs.
However, once you get into that one server, DDoS attacks aren't far behind. At the very least, you'll take up resources and you can potentially impact the operation of the other virtual servers.
Out of all the VMs that we have set up, none of them have come close to DDoSing the server it is on. VMware lets you specify the amount of RAM that a VM has access to as well as forcing a VM to a specified CPU. Even without any extra tweaking, VMware makes it hard to let you DDoS a box.
Let me say again though, I know fully that VMs don't provide any extra security. When you've seen a VM escape in person, you realize real quick on what is to come. Virtualization is for convenience only, not security.
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You do realize that you own the copyright to your code and you can license it however you please to businesses?
Yes. I choose to license it as BSD as my first option. If a company really wants GPL'd code I could do that too, but I find BSD is more business friendly. GPL, to a business, might not be as attractive of an option (or even an option at all) depending on what the project is. If it's extending an existing product, GPL might not be a compatible license.
Basically you're saying that businesses are attracted to your code because they can use it for free without compensating you in anyway.
No, I'm not saying that. If they want me to do work, they will pay me for it. After they, they can do what they want with it, and I can continue to do what I want with it. If they decide they love it and want to resell it, they can. I may not help them anymore, or I may charge them.
Developers who own copyright on valuable code might be better off to dual-license the code. Proprietary/GPL. Give your code a life of its own if it is that valuable to you, while at the same time allowing companies who really do value your code to have access to it under terms that are agreeable to you and to their business aims. This idea was related very well by the guy who said he writes code under the GPL because he wants to make money on his code if someone else wants to benefit from it monetarily.
I never once said I worked for free. You can make just as much money off of BSD code as GPL. If I make a piece of code under BSD, it can have a life of its own. I can choose to release it to the world at the same time as I give it to the client. I can keep it all to myself and use it in other projects without fear of anyone complaining. Depends on the code. The only difference GPL or BSD makes is what happens /after/ the code has been given to a client and what the client can do with it. Under BSD, the client can do /anything/ to it but claim they wrote it (I would still own the copyright). The GPL places additional restrictions on what the client can do, things like releasing the source code, what kinds of licenses are compatible with the code, what kind of code can talk to the GPL'd code, etc
I am a software developer. I release my code as BSD licensed code. Do you know why? Business are more attracted to it than other code. When I make the case to sell my services and prepackaged code the business knows that they can use my code for whatever they want. As a developer, I'm fine with that. If they want to lock it up and sell it as their own, feel free.
I will keep my own, original branch of code BSD. If I don't like the company that locks it up, its well within my rights to not help them anymore. They can spend their own time taking my work and trying to get it to work with their fork. I make my money off of services anyway.
This assumes they take the code and lock it up without my approval. If I'm contracted to do work for a company I always do the work as BSD licensed. It takes the complications out of things but still gives me access to a large body of code to work from. The stuff I do for them they can resell/lock away without worrying.
Most FOSS projects who will use GPL'd or BSD'd code know and understand the moral implications of locking up code or trying to ignore the license and they will play fair. Yes, there are companies like MS that lock things away and try to keep it under wraps. Know what though? Developers aren't stupid, and if we pick licenses like MIT or BSD, *we* understand what might happen.
End users really don't care. As long as the software works. 99% of end users are never going to modify the code or attempt to redistribute it, so the choice of license becomes moot. This isn't the 1980s where code is being shared amongst companies to make their mainframes work nicer.
Have you ever read any of Stallman's rants? Stallman is about the freedom of the /software/, not the end user. He wants all software to be free no matter what the end cost for the user actually is. Why do you think he has a problem with licenses like BSD (which is less restrictive than the GPL)? They give more power the user than the software itself to determine how it can be used.
If you take the time to actually read the GPL and some of Stallman's writings, you begin to see that he is a religious zealot who is banging the wardrum for software to forever be 100% free and open. If the user doesn't like that, he doesn't care.
As a developer, I personally go for projects that are BSD-based. Yes, there is potential that the code could get locked up in a proprietary stack (MS using the BSD network stack, for example), but as long as it was released under BSD it will forever be open to be used as USERS see fit.
Gnome is in packages and there are lots of other Window Managers ported to OpenBSD...
The ISP that I worked for. They had just started to roll out wireless internet to compete with cable and DSL in the area, with the fastest package they offered 1 megabit/sec. The original wireless equipment (802.11b Lucent equipment) began to choke due to the amount of connections the P2P traffic was generating so a Packeteer was put into place. Kazaa traffic was limited to 512 kilobits/sec for everyone on the ISP, regardless of your throughput package you purchased. Once about 5 people were on, the Kazaa traffic was all used up.
When Bittorrent started to get big, it was an even larger issue as we had more people on wireless broadband. It was laughable how they tried to combat it (at one point all outgoing BT connections were denied by the Packeteer, which effectively shut the service off). Deep-level analysis was being done so changing the port didn't matter. We'd get calls constantly saying WoW wouldn't update, that customers we knew were using it for legitimate purposes couldn't get their software, etc, and we were told to basically waste our time troubleshooting and find a reason to blame it on the customer.
Management didn't want them to know that they were throttling the traffic to the point that it was only usable for 5-10 people (at speeds grossly under what they were paying for) because they needed the business. The highest level service was even sold as a way around issues as those customers that needed to play games were whitelisted to IPs for those games in the Packeteer (if you needed bittorrent for any other reason, like to download a Linux ISO, you were out of luck). But, if for any reason someone complained about throughput issues on a tower where someone was whitelisted, that whitelisted person was blocked.
It sucked, but that was the only way they handled it.
Contrast this to the places that they received by purchasing Adelphia. My cable actually has been worse since the switch, and there isn't anyone to complain to (and not that TW cares. I lodged a complaint due to poor management when attempting to upgrade from cable to Digital + Internet and it was messed up for over two months by the time billing was corrected. 4 months later and the most I can get from TW is that my complaint is still in queue!). They've reduced our local office to little more than a scheduling and billing station, a shadow of its former self under Adelphia where at least the manager cared.
Our cable lineup is still the same crappy Adelphia offering that we've had the last 8 years, before the buyout. I pay the same amount as my brother-in-law in Lima and he gets more channels, onDemand, and better hardware. I get no onDemand (but they sure will advertise the service multiple times during a show) and attempting to get premium hardware like DVRs or HD boxes is like pulling teeth since they are still using Adelphia equipment.
Local monopolies are stagnating broadband rollout, at least here. The only cable service we get is TW, telephone is Embarq (who is at least increasing their DSL speeds to be more competitive), and smaller ISPs are just DSL resellers unless you want to pay through the nose for Wireless service (or for DSL, as the contracts Embarq makes them sign make them $10-$20 more a month for the same speed you can get through Embarq).
All in all, Ohio sucks.
Kinda too late for that, Max Brooks wrote his books a few years ago...