Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 23:00:44 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Szilveszter Adam" <sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Funding large Open Source projects (was Windriver, Slackware) Message-ID: <000101c0c95f$3d083cc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010419121942.A15266@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Szilveszter Adam > >OK. Let's step back for a while here. While you may be right in saying that >it's the end-product that matters, it's the product that's used etc, but I >think that a project that does not give access to the development process >itself (even if for just spectators) is missing something that cannot be >easily compensated for. Let's consider a good example (because it is not an >OS that can be rather self-contained), the Mozilla project. They do not >seem to have the resources (and interest) to build and test on any BSD >variant anymore, so if you just got the source to their releases and left >to try to bring them to run on your box, you would face a big challange. >But because the development process is open (and one of the best in terms >of organization principles and development structures, even if the result >does not always look pretty) you can test and chime in early if problems >develop. Sure, it's their project, but while it's their right to not >support a particular OS, it's not their best interest, if it's doable with >just a bit of tweaking. While in this example support for BSDs may not be >the key to success, in other cases the overall acceptance of the project >may very well depend on such factors. Again, if we are talking "bigger" >projects that go outside the circle of your immediate friends/collegaues >and are meant to address more than your particular needs at the moment, >acceptance starts to matter. > >This exact thing was the problem with the XFree project, too: You could get >the new release when there was one out, but the development itself was not >open. While this may not have prevented their overall acceptance (lacking >a free alternative) it surely contributed to the fact the code has now >become so complicated that only few people are actually capable of auditing >it for security problems etc, and if you discount the people who actually >wrote it (because they may not spot all errors, they are too intimately >familiar with the code) hardly anyone remains. So most people simply prefer >to think that "It oughtta work" and be done with it, but this is not what >OpenSource is supposed to be about. The same thing with BIND, btw. I prefer >to think of these not so much as "real" OpenSource projects, but rather >remnants of that old time when hiding the source to one's program did not >make a lot of sense, so if you wanted it, you got it. But this is not >OpenSource, this is just "I don't care".:-) > This is an interesting point. I don't know myself at what point Open Source has suddenly come to mean "source cooperatively developed on the Internet" but this is what it appears that your saying. I'm not sure that a one-size-fits-all model of every source being cooperatively developed on the Internet with open cvsup servers and all that is appropriate for all Open Source projects. It seems a lot of work to maintain that administrative infrastructure for a project that is narrow - bind for instance is an example. Are there really a crowd of spectators all wanting to view the development process for that program? >> WHat it seems to me really sucks the bandwidth is the distribution FTP >> servers. Thus, >> that is where most of the corporate support is going to flow. Of course, >> you need >> people to run these servers and so even more support is needed >for salaries >> and such. > >But without which your project will not gain wide-spread acceptance, for a >number of factors. See below. > Should gaining widespread acceptance be the goal of every open source project? That's a commercial, not a personal, goal. I think the goal of any Open Source project should be to be the best-of-breed, that's my major difference of opinion with the Linux camp. While certainly some Linux distributions do have being the best distribution as their goal, it appears to me that the overall goal of the entire Linux movement is to get on as many systems as possible. Being the best UNIX-like OS is secondary. I've found that in life, it is usually the top-quality products that don't have the greatest numbers of sales. Usually, the bestsellers are not as good quality as many other products. >> But, is it really essential to the world-class development >infrastructure to >> have an >> FTP server that 4K simultaneous users can hit? Perhaps convincing more >> people to >> buy distributions instead of pulling the entire thing down over >the Internet >> would >> go a long way towards funding the development and getting rid of our >> dependence on >> a single corporate sponsor to host the Project. > >This what OpenBSD seems to have adopted as a strategy (since they do not >have much choice) but apart from the fact that it doesn't seem to work >splendidly, it also is counter-productive for the project (as in: project >means also a community not just code and infrastructure). I have long >resented the voices on the misc@openbsd.org maillist that really sounded >like selling CDs was more important than say welcoming new users or helping >people. There were times when I almost could feel that "Have your official >OpenBSD CD receipt ready before writing" attitude. This is simply >disgusting to me. > There's more subtle ways of "convincing" people to do something than by ham-handedly shutting something off. Here in Portland OR, the misguided tree-huggers that apparently control city government all hate automobiles. For the last 30 years they have been hamstringing every roads project that has come up. In fact, in the worst abuse of this in the city's history, about 15 years ago they torpedoed an _entire_new_freeway_ project and sidetracked the money into light rail. That light rail project has now been in operation for 5-10 years now and only carries about 5% of all commuters, and doesen't even go where the freeway was supposed to have gone. Their belief is that if they make the roads as uncomfortable as possible to drive on (ie: as congested as possible) that people will give up their cars and ride busses. I assume that this idea actually does work, in a limited fashion, or they wouldn't keep doing it. To relate this to the FreeBSD project, what if they simply put a moratorium on additional capacity for the feeds into the archive site? This makes the master site more uncomftorable to use, thus pushes people onto the mirror sites. Since the mirrors aren't funded by the Project directly, while in the last analysis nobody has really lost capacity to _access_ FreeBSD, (since they are just using the same bandwidth on the mirrors now as before) it has reduced the Project's dependency on a single corporate sponsor because the master archive site won't be costing new amounts of money for new upgrades. >An OpenSource project, esp the bigger ones, should be >about more than software. It is a way of working, thinking, socializing. >Setting a good example, showing that you can do it differently than most >believe, if you want. (For which reason I truly encourage OpenSource >projects outside of software, too.) This attitude should not be ruined by >mixing business matters into community. > But you started the mixing of business matters into the discussion. Look, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either the Project goes whole-hog for lots of corporate sponsorship, or it spurns that in favor of pure volunteer effort. The former gives the Project money for bandwidth and cvsup servers, but you have to accept some "mixing" The latter keeps the movement "pure" of business matters, but you don't get all the fringes either. >Also, CD distribution is bound to >be limited. Why exclude a lot of people outright just because they happen >to live in countries where your CDs are not sold? (For example, here in >Hungary maybe you can buy the FreeBSD CDs half a year after release, which >is already a lot of delay, but eventually maybe they get here, in one >selected bookshop only, because the others do not order it, and other BSDs >are not available at all. Of course, I could theoritcally order them from >the USA or whatever, but that's theory, because I, like most Hungarians, am >not good enough for my bank to issue a "real" credit card to, so only a few >people have say a Visa Classic or a Mastercard that you can use to pay on >the Internet with.) If you put the stuff on ftp, you at least give us guys >a chance. Also, while the Internet is free for me here, I would not be >necessarily able to afford buying the CD sets for every release. So... > You should be using a mirror site near you. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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