On 30 Nov 2001 09:42:41 +0000, Nick Burrett wrote:

>"treonet." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> I have be do some work on the webinterface, but it is not ready to work in
>> real life. But if you like i can work on this.
>> 
>> Where is the new homepage of openVSD???
>
>Since this announcement, there seems to be several people suddenly offering
>their services to enhance this project.
>
>I'm just wondering why none of this voluntary work was never offered
>prior to Idaya announcing a non-free version of FreeVSD ?
>
>Curiously, 
>
>Nick.

For quite some time now people have felt abandoned by Idaya, and 
have been suspicious of their motives - justifiably as it turns out. You will 
be aware that provsd.com was first registerd in Feb 2000 - neary 2 years 
ago.

Why have people felt this way?
1.  While you previously complained about OT questions on the 
list, the fact is that far too many of the pertinent and fundamental 
questions went unanswered by Idaya - I know that mine did and 
I've seen other complaints about this. 

This is not only rude, but self-destructive. If this happened on 
other lists I belong to then I'm sure that those projects would 
wither and die too. It seems plain to me that Idaya was created 
with too many people trying to share what turned out to be too 
small a pie, but their visible rescue tactics are not impressing 
people. Ignoring or mistreating their community is *wrong*.

2. I've always wondered why so many FIXME and BADHACK 
comments were left splattered throughout the code. These 
only flag the need for a major revision, and it's now plain that 
this revision became Provsd. Again, this would seem quite 
plainly to be part of a long-term strategy, and leaves a bad 
taste with the community. It seems to us that we are now, quite 
deliberately, the 'second class' version.

I'm not saying tha *all* the people at Idaya/vsdr are to blame, 
and it seems that some may also be unhappy with the 
situation. But certainly those in corporate control have made
some bad decisions, and if they don't understand the 
reactions here then they will probably continue to make 
bad decisions. 

Compare this situation to that with Interchange - this is very 
strongly open source and has *always* been commercially 
profitable for the one man originally behind it. The 
community has always been respected and the 
interaction has always been both ways, to the profit of both. 
When he decided to change the business model he did it 
intelligently, and it is now part of RedHat. This was done to 
the benefit of all the people at the intermediate company 
(Akopia) as well as the community and *everyone* 
concerned - no problems, no bad taste, no sneakiness. 

And so we have come to this situation, where the 
community has taken the Open Source project into their 
own hands. We will do the Right Thing (TM), for our 
mutual benefit and prosperity, and as you have seen 
we will do it without feeling constrained by a commercial 
party pulling in  a different direction. 

Bye
Lyn St George



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