Nick, Wim, I can see both sides of the argument. Probably the best solution is for us developers to continue developing the GPL licensed version of Freevsd under a new name. Stranger things have happened, just look at the X windowing system development. If Idaya wants to take a stab at making some money to recoup development expenses... god bless them. As for proving who made additions to the source code and is it still there, well that could prove very expensive indeed (Take a page from the Microsoft tactics book).
We as developers can keep this freevsd alive if we wish. Continue to write patches and modules, I know I will. I'll continue to keep my server running. I will say that I recently purchased the 2 cd set to tinker with. This was before the provsd announcement, I believe in supporting software development companies. If I find a program I like and use, I'll find out if the developer has a 'For Sale' Version and purchase it (if priced reasonably) and a kind of thank you. I know we open source developers do it because we like it, but a little green on top of it doesn't hurt either. Just remember, this is not the end of the world, open source projects won't die that quickly. Yes, someone will have to step up to the plate, but if you want it bad enough, you'll figure out a way to get it. I will not be purchasing ProVSD. I disapprove the of the dongle. That would require me to be in physical contact with my servers to move to a new machine. Something I don't wish to be required to do. -Mike -----Original Message----- From: Wim Godden [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 9:24 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: ProVSD Nick Burrett wrote: > > Allright, where can I download the latest version of this free software ? Oh right... I > > have to pay for the cd-rom... > > As has been said several times already, get a CVS client and download > the sources using the anonymous account. I know, I know... but I still wonder what the big deal is about creating a tar.gz file. I can easily download it through CVS, but some people don't have access to CVS on their hosting machines... oh well never mind... I might as well download it and create a tar.gz file for everyone then. > > I think you're making a big error here... FreeVSD was not released under the GPL > > license... the CODE of FreeVSD was released as GPL. Idaya might own the name FreeVSD > > (which I don't believe they do), but they don't own the code. Parts of the code have > > been written by other people and released as GPL by those people. > > Idaya do own software rights to FreeVSD. They have prior art to the > usage of the name and the work. DSVR signed an agreement back in > April 2000 to grant them this.. What they don't own this any > contributions made by persons who do not work for Idaya who have not > signed an appropriate copyright assignment. But those mods can be removed, > if there are actually any. That's the problem : are there any ? Some people here claim there are... it's up to Idaya to remove them, but what if they don't even know which portions they haven't written themselves ? > > > Therefore they are perfectly entited to re-license ProVSD to whatever > > > they like. Yes, they must remove the code changes by developers who > > > have not signed a copyright disclaimer. But what grounds do you have > > > for suspecting that this has not already been done ? > > > > How can a developer check whether his/her code has been removed ? You can claim whatever > > you want to claim... > > That's the big problem : you're using other people's code and then you claim you've > > removed it. It might just as well still be in there, without their copyright > > information. Since it's closed source, we have no way of checking that. > > So then you take Idaya to court, and get them to prove that they don't > distribute any of the modifications that you believe are in the code. > It could be expensive. Exactly... and Idaya knows about this and knows people won't spend that time and money... > Just to clear the issue up, I work for DSVR and the opinions expressed > in these mailings are my own. The decisions of Idaya are nothing to do > with me. I'm arguing the issue because I think you are wrong. Sorry, but DSVR and Idaya seem to be very closely linked, as DSVR is using Idaya's products 100%... > I think it is more to do with not having the time or inclination to write > such documentation. Certainly that is the reason why I won't explain it. > Plus I don't want the hassle of the follow up questions, which usually > amounts to: Please write full documentation or an RPM script to set up > a full clustering solution for me because I don't want to do any of the > work myself. I'm not asking for documentation on setting up clustering. In fact, if I understood how FreeVSD works, I'd write that documentation myself. I'm asking for a design paper on the structure of FreeVSD. But as I said before : every well-developed project has a design structure... which leaves me to think FreeVSD was never developed in a structurized way. > Even with casual scan through the history of this list, you can attribute > more questions to setting up Apache, PHP, MySQL or Postgres, or some IRC > bot or some other crap like that than there is anything about FreeVSD > itself ! I know... it's annoying if people don't know how to setup things and start using the wrong mailing list for it... > Setting up a clustering solution is a non-trivial task and I don't see > why such stuff should be documented by the FreeVSD project. If you > want to do it, then study the depths of the various clusting solutions > around and see whether they truely suit your needs. Most are only > useful for CPU intensive work, such as weather modelling. True, but I wasn't talking about that kind of cluster... I was talking about a high availability and failover cluster system. > > With FreeVSD, making it more reliable is something we could do > > ourselves. > Yeah, but are you going to even try. Or are you just going to sit there > and compain that there's no documentation and so you don't have a clue > how it works. You aren't going to stand any chance of making the system > any more reliable unless you know how to read and understand source code. > Which you seem to either not be able to achieve, or even want to attempt. > Understanding FreeVSD is only a tiny part of understanding why there > are reliability problems with the system. I would have tried it if someone had created some very basic documentation. I wasn't asking for a fully detailed explanation of how every module works, just a general chart which indicates how FreeVSD links up with the different architectural pieces and the daemons. > Fine. That is your decision at the end of the day. But by the end > of reading your reply I seem to get the impression that you don't want > anybody to make a profit out of the code you write. Hmmm. I've seen > this argument somewhere before. If I had developed on FreeVSD, I would have released the code as GPL, free for everyone to use and improve. I think you don't really believe in open sourcing anymore, judging from the fact that you support Idaya in their source-closing effort. I still believe in the power of open source. I've been main developer for phpAdsNew, an advertising system, for about a year (until I didn't have enough time anymore), and I received patches nearly daily (there were days when I received over 10 patches and add-ons). It truelly works, as long as you give people what they need : a working product with the features they need. phpAdsNew is still the most popular php advertising system around, because of 2 reasons : "simply the best around" (quote from a magazine) and it's totally free. But alas, Idaya doesn't seem to believe in it anymore. They might as well simply say FreeVSD is dead, because nobody will be contributing to a project from which the ideas and efforts end up in a commercial effort anyway... Greetings, Wim Godden FirstLink Networks ------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- ------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
