> Although you cannot withdraw code licensed to the GPL, it is possible to > add new code and state that it is non-GPL. You can still distribute the > package, but there's no requirement to distribute the non-GPL'd code. > Effectively you are forking the project and dual licensing the software, > which is entirely permissible. Two examples of this are GFS and SSH version 1.
we raised the not-so-freevsd issue on the list a while back and after much discussion here at our office we have withdrawn our freeVSD hosting packages from our site for the time being, due to the uncertainty raised by the part commercialisation of the project. Our decision to do this is very simple that a GPL project does tend to have people (like Wim) who are ready to contribute/pick up the project/drive the project and keep it fresh and moving forward even if something drastic happens to the original authors. However a commercial organisation has commercial goals and the product and its development then only becomes as good as the commercial enterprise driving it, if the commercialisation fails you can end up with nothing. We feel the commercialisation of the product is not going in our direction which I will cover later and there is no real information about the organisation behind the commercialisation. So, making a decision to run with a commercial FreeVSD is entirely different to running with a fullGPL one. I feel the 'commercialisation' has gone in the wrong direction for us as a hosting company and probably many other hosting companies like us. The 'commercialisation' seems to be targeted at those who may have a small LAN or one server - I say this because I feel most hosting companies are remote from there servers and a CD with auto install is pretty useless - we need something that can go on a server with a network connection and OS already installed - so we feel the auto-install CD is out of step with the majority of small hosting companies and so made us ask "what does Idaya really know about us and the market and are we really in their target market?" - this is then compounded by the drive towards a windows GUI which again in its present form certainly isn't aimed at the people we would be selling freeVSD packages to. Reason is the majority need to access their VS from one, two maybe even three different machines, home, work and laptop plus its windows based and we have a lot of clients who have Linux on their laptops etc etc. For us we have to play towards the lowest common denominator and that is that if people want to work on their VS you can guarantee they have web access, so give them something they can access over the web and they are happy. Finally, I would like to say that if Idaya produce/distribute/develop a product aimed at companies like us, who have the cash to buy it, then we would buy it, at present we don't think they have developed such a product but that could change. But Idaya need to understand that taking this into the commercial realm means a whole new ball game in terms of support and product development and the present offer certainly doesn't match what we would look for in a commercial partner. We are hosting partners with Plesk and spend quite a few thousand dollars with them and wouldn't hesitate in doing the same with Idaya if Idaya could match their product development and support. Steve ------------------------- The freeVSD Support List -------------------------- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=subscribe%20freevsd-support Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=unsubscribe%20freevsd-support Archives: http://freevsd.org/support/mail-archives/freevsd-support -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
