VA Linux to Sell Proprietary Version of Sourceforge

Cassivs writes: "There's an article claiming that VA Linux is planning on selling a proprietary, closed-source version of SourceForge, SourceForge Enterprise Edition. See the letter to SourceForge members assuring them that VA Linux will continue to provide free hosting/etc. at SourceForge. They will also continue to maintain a GPL version of the code, SourceForge Open Edition." VA is Slashdot's corporate parent.

not really news...

This really isn't a big deal. Linux/dot-com company sells new product. Where's the story? The only reason this got posted is because hundreds of readers would have moaned and griped if it didn't, saying "slashdot is censorware!"...

As a side note, does anybody know of any companies that are actually using sourceforge enterprise for interenal development?

This seems honest...

After the trolls post countless comments, and everyone already knows about it and us RESENTING you. Post a story about it. A nice fluff PR piece. Guys, we're losing it. Sourceforge isn't the Sourceforge I grew up with. Tis sad. Lets just hope /. continues the high level of professionalism it always has.

I do feel for the guys though, watching your stock drop, having to basically shutdown VA, that couldn't of been fun. Oh, and they've got all of us laughing our asses off. Its just cruel

Oh My Gawd

Is it allowed under the GPL to make money?

that was sarcasm by the way, though I am sure this will anger many zealots.

closed source open source community

A closed source version of an open source community? Quite the oxymoron.

a question i've had about open source

so, the product has been GPL'd and open-sourced for a while now, and it's a collection of contributed elements from a presumably wide array of developers.. Now the company says "well, we need money, so we're going to take the codebase and sell it for profit." Is that fair to all the open-source developers out there that basically worked for free?

The current project team of sourceforge is listed as:

Ariel Garza, Tim Perdue, Dominick Bellizzi,Chad Schwartz, Dan Bressler, James Byers, Jim Gleason, John Mark Walker, Marc, Trae McCombs, Jacob Moorman, Ze Arruda, Patrick McGovern, Paul Sokolovsky, Uriah Welcome, Darrell Brogdon


are all these people employed by VA? Are they going to be compensated for their efforts once VA starts making cashola off this?

just curious..

Let them make their money

There is nothing wrong with selling value added extensions, as long as they aren't violating the lisence on the original body of code.

The idea has always been pay for people not software.

Custom modifications and services are the only way Open Source will survive.

Free as in Freedom not Beer. Get it.

Re:Let them make their money

It's not about whether or not you can sell GPL'ed software for money or not. Ofcourse you can, nothing wrong with that.

The only thing everyone seems to miss is that lots of people especially here on Slashdot keep claiming that the GPL will be the license of the future. That businesses will use it and everything will eventually become GPL. After all, information wants to be free, right?

Now there is this company that has been saying for years that they support Linux and the concepts behind the GPL all the way. Now however, they are trying to find a way for their company to actually make money and the only thing they can come up with is to make proprietary extensions. That's a bit too ironic isn't it? How can you expect a company (meaning: wanting to make money) like Microsoft ever to see the merits of the GPL when a supposed supporter of the GPL turns to the Microsoft model (proprietary software) to make money? That's just ridiculous.

So no, this is not violating any license or law, it's just a slap in the face of all those people who are trying to convince the world that the GPL is a viable license even for businesses.

Good!

I hope it works out for VA. If they can make money with this, and still supply the services that they are now, *great*!
I would much, much rather see this then VA going down the tubes becouse of lack of funds. They've done so much for the comunuity.

What good is it?

I can't see why a company may want to deploy sourceforge on site. Maybe I never worked for a big enough company but unless you have hundreds of projects I can't really see why one might one to have sourceforge in the office. Even when I worked for my biggest ever employer they had some sixteen distinct projects and that was a company with well over a thousand employees. Where's the selling point?

Re:What good is it?

I think that a company will soon have a number of projects. Even if you only have three projects (which really isn't much for any company) then it is still nice to have a centralized point to control all this. SourceForge gives you cvs, bug tracker, support tracker, other trackers, message forums, mailing lists, ...

I can certainly imagine this to be very useful for even smaller companies.

Greetings,

Re:What good is it?

My employer uses sourceforge internally.

We have approx 8000 designers/ software engineers/ admin and so can quite happily share code and jointly develop projects.

Oracle on the back-end

In a recent meeting with some VA Reps, they mentioned that a closed-source package of Oracle hooks would be coming out in the future, at the request of many of their large customers.

This was, of course, an answer to our question, "when will you support Oracle?" I felt funny asking that question, but OSS be damned. Oracle has it over any other database when it comes to performance and management.

Closed vs Unavailable.

Simple fact, if VA Linux goes under they'll be taking SourceForge, Slashdot, and a bunch of others down with them. Its not like they're closing the source completly after having had people work on it openly, it another product (presumeably the GPL stuff (which remains GPL) with closed source extensions). So I say let them sell, coz the profits from such go toward keeping the pretty cool free stuff around.

Posted in defence on the trusted sight comment and

Got modded down - well i thought you could leave it alone but then again who knows - it might have been offtopic there but i have been seeing the misinformed stories all day

Reposted in CORRECT FORUM

the end of the world as we know it

Actually the story says that VA linux is going to sell some investigate ways to make some money from their software development and thus build some applications that move in new ways - this is perfectly reasonable as their employees have mouths to feed.

I quote: (lifted without permission but maybe this wil stop the register being slashdotted)

SourceForge is the new ERP - VA Linux
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 24/08/2001 at 07:49 GMT

Barely six weeks ago VA Linux Systems was an open source hardware vendor. Now, the company is undertaking a Napoleonic retreat from the hardware business and it's doing the unthinkable: adding proprietary subscription software to its open source software flagship SourceForge.

VA swallowed charges of around $230m in the last quarter - $160 million coming under the category of "impairment of goodwill and intangible assets", and almost $70 million as a one-time charge - contributing to a net loss for the quarter of $290 million as it liquidated its PC manufacturing and sales businesses.

Costs will continue to affect the bottom line for two further quarters, said VA. Its Japanese subsidiary will continue to sell hardware, the company said, but that amounts to chump change.

The new software-only VA expects to make an operating lost of $10 to $13 million on revenue of $3 to $4 million in the forthcoming quarter. With a cash pile of $83 million, that gives the company as little as six months to ramp revenue, or else seek new investment. VA said its burn rate will continue to decline, suggesting that more layoffs are to be expected.

But CEO Larry Augustin is bullish. He says there was no competition for the distributed code management system SourceForge. Current development processes and tools haven't kept pace with geographically dispersed or ad hoc teams, according Augustin, who predicts that the impact of SourceForge could be as great as ERP or CRM.

Typically VA deals with in-house developers using a range of tools (it cites Borland, Rational and Microsoft as well as GNU tools). The company emphasises that seeks to complement rather than supplant existing tools.

VA is gunning for $600 revenue per seat per year - it claims that buyers typically see a return on investment within six months.

Augustin talks of adding "proprietary software features and functionality" to the subscription version SourceForge. That VA is looks at the software-hoarding model to save the business is an irony a few will savour, but we guess that by now badly singed VA investors will simply be hoping it flies. ®

IN OTHER WORDS

They are not 'going closed source' they have had a subscription service for some time - the code is well developed and they are looking at new areas like ERP - they have a right to do it and if they dont they may very well be down the tubes.

From someone who works in MIS and who's company has just spent AU$20 Million on SAP let me tell you that this is a field where some competitors would be good - there arent many new products that ar worth buying and three companies have it tied up - SAP, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards.

And no - no company in their right mind would ever buy a free GPL erp system - these systems are the heart and sould of a business when you implement them - they do all payroll and accounting functions etc and no one would trust a product without a company with cash and controlled development backing it up.

I have been accused in the past of defending MS - so it might seem strange for the people who can't see past the MS sucks argument to defend an open source company but im not that narrow minded.

VA Linux have not sold out the GPL - they are simply running their free software projects and at the same time trying to make enough money to survive and build a new product in the meantime.

And you can only attack them ?

Christ have you stopped to think what this means if these guys get this right - ERP's are run on Windows or Unix Platforms - what this might give the world is a stable lower cost ERP alternative that is built on linux.

The problem with free sourcing applications like this is that VA would be expected by their clients to do all the development work but by the brethern to give everyone that work for free and thus give competitors the chance to profit off their hard work when they adapt the code and havent got to pay for the development.

Open source does not have to mean free IMHO - devlopment of corporate systems costs money - but maybe VA can start the ball rolling and we might win a few of those corporate file and app servers and some corporate desktops.

So please no more meaningless VA have sold out posts - its boring and innacurate and they are only being posted here because they own Slashdot and your trying to be smart (and failing)

licence?

I'm curious what licence the'll use...

I think the easiest way would be to change the licence of sourceforge code to something less GPL, offer the free (beer) version (with source) to non-profit projects, and just licence the use of their code to profit orgs...

I saw them present this

Some reps from VA came by and gave a presentation at my company regarding this product about 2 months ago.

Its actually pretty neat - they'll set up your own internal sourceforge on servers in your organization. And while they are doing it, they'll customize it so that the backend works with all of your already establised CM and problem tracking tools.

The idea is that even if your company makes closed software, you can benefit from a structured way to share code within the company. They can even close off portions with restricted access, so that classified projects (I work for a defense contractor) will only be available to the developers working on it.

The product the and the services they bring with it are really amazing... if I was in charge of such things here, I'd switch over ASAP. I really hope they make a go with this.

Are they planning to sell buggy software ?

Sourceforge is a marvellous thing for developpers and it helps a lot the free software community.
However, Sourceforge is very buggy. Sometimes the CVS server refuses authentication. Sometimes, uploading new releases is impossible. Sometimes, I have to authenticate dozens of time. And it doesn't like Opera.
Maybe VA should fix Sourceforge before selling it.

VA logo graphics

Is VA trying to draw its own logo [slashdot.org] with its stock graph [yahoo.com]?

The V is getting a little to big, time to move on people.

It does promise good times ahead though!

I'm happy about this

In my opinion, this is a good sign for companies in the future. I mean, we have a company demonstratably commited to open source able to or trying to make some money from their open source. I hope they succeed.

To me it shows that they've understood how to make a living out of the free software fad, and are showing others how to make dollars out of the service industry. Good for them, and I truely thank them for what they've given me in the past, in the form of sourceforge.net and sites like /.

The product isn't that great

It isn't like the product was that great.

The only selling point might be the ease of starting new projects. Even that isn't all that great.

The whole thing is basically just some basic open source software development tools haphazardly latched together.

Now is the time to create a backup copy of the sourceforge CVS archive somewhere safe.

Please.

Good...

...so now maybe some PHBs will take notice instead of being afraid of using hippie commie software to manage their projects...I sure know it would help around here...

Why shouldn't they?

I've already seen a dozen or so posts detailing why this isn't fair to the people who have contributed to sourceforge and helped create the functionality that it has now. To be honest, though, who offered the first olive branch? Im sure most if not all the people who have contributed code have also used sourceforge to communicate/facilitate their ideas and projects. That's payment enough IMHO. We have a huge, free, well developed architecture that VA said, "Hey develop here! It's free!" And now you want to give them a hard time when they want to make some money off of it? It has to come from somewhere ya know! The alternative would be they run out of cash and Sourceforge Open Edition gets closed down. It takes alot of resources and people and money to keep SF open and free for us to use. Howabout showing a little grattitude!

Repeat after me...

..."you can't make money on free software." Free/open software is a terrific way to do things like help bring computers to low-income areas and prevent companies from obtaining and abusing monopoly power, but as a business plan it stinks on ice. Even if some company like RH manages to squeak into the black in the near future (real operating profit only, please) it will be just barely, and it won't be enough to fund serious growth over the long run.

The more realistic you are about business and the way the world works (as opposed to how the open/free community wishes it worked) the more you have to wonder why VAL's stock isn't already down to about 10 cents/share and RH's isn't about a buck a share.

There is a FEE in FREE

People don't realize that there is a FEE in
FREE. VA Linux is only using their right
to sell Open Source/Free software (GLP'd)
with proprietary extensions.

adding value to the product?

Hopefully they'll be adding a lot of value to the product. I mean, I can get for free a product with source code I can fix, or I can pay for one that I can't.

what about a closed source version of slashdot?

I can already see it.
News for lawyers. stuff that costs money.

VA linux Out of Business in A Year

Polish up your resumes guys,and start recruituing volunteers to help you run /..

From the article:

And VA needs a proven business model. It reported revenue of $16 million Thursday; most of its loss was from its abandonment of Linux computer sales in favor of software and services. The company said $267 million of the loss was from non-cash charges for goodwill, intangible assets and restructuring charges because of VA's departure from the computer business

What does the rest of the world call this?

Uh I think it's called version management or change control or version libs or problem-queues or something like that. At any rate since the days of Panvalet or CA-something or PVCS we've had this function. All this is a more open ended spin on it. Open ended as in less process bound not open as in (Ta-Da) OPEN. This is great VA gets to sell a product and make some money doing it. What's the big forking deal?

patches to sourceforge code (alexandria)

SourceForge is actually run on code called Alexandria [sourceforge.net] which is under the GPL.

There are currently many users of this code outside of the SourceForge staff & probably more than a few who contribute back to code.

In light of (somewhat) competing products... how does one go about submitting patches to the GPL'd product??? Should a submitter license their patch under the GPL??

Practicing what you preach...

Interesting... So what about any Source Forge code wirtten by external developers who did so under the terms of the GPL? Unless they signed over the copyright to VA, then VA can't do this (unless those developers agree to it and license them the code under a different license).

Actually though I suspect this isn't an issue which leads me to a significant realization about the poor implemtnations of open source based businesses we've seen come out of the recent hype. What are the advantages of open source?

1) Many eyes to find many bugs
2) Large collaborative effort distributing cost of development

Now, if Source Forge was all code written by people in-house, why is it open source? There is absolutely no business justification for this within their business model. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm glad they do it, hopefully out of a sense of community, not just a PR thing. But the result is that they are getting ALL of the drawbacks of open source and none of the benefits. No wonder VA is having financial problems and no wonder they have to make a proprietary version.
People keep thinking that open source can't make money. That's only because we keep seeing a lot of companies make the same serious mistake, trying to develop an open source project in a proprietary development style then just opening the code.

If you look at successful open source projects and companies who are making money off it, their approach is entirely different. RedHat actually gets it! They subsidize some of the cost of developing linux, but not all of it by any stretch. They release new products by taking existing open source projects, branding them, and then throwing some developers at it (see also RedHat's new Postgres database).

Hopefully VA and the rest will soon learn that you can't set out and build an open source project overnight. It is something that has to grow organically by a bunch of geeks recognizing a common usefulness of a piece of software. If you try to force it, fronting proprietary development costs, and then just saying it's open source, your company will fail because it is not a sustainable model. Doesn't mean anything is wrong with open source, just means these people aren't doing it right.

Ski Slope

If anyone looks at the stock profiles of RedHat or VA Linux, it's interresting to note that their line graphs would make excellent ski slopes.

VA Linux does not support free software

I use to work for VA, and they do NOT support free software. Their a corporation and they use Linux's good name to make money. This isnt the only closed source project that they have.

Is SourceForge AVAILABLE? WHERE?

I mean, is it still open source? Where it can be found (sources) ?

Good for them

That is one of the things I really agreed with as a business model that gives back.

Make the most current version closed source and binary only, then each time a new version is out, put the last one into an open source license.

Everybody wins. Sorta like how patents were SUPPOSED to work.

DanH

Subscription Fees for Mailing Lists ?

Why would nobody think of charging subscription fees to read, post and search technical mailing lists and its archives to generate income ?

I never understoodd why, if the source code is open, the technical support to explain how an open source code software package works to other users and developers, is a thing you can get for free. This is a free like in free beer thingy and it is not necessary to give that kind of technical support away for absolutely nothing.

A developer who donates code to an open source project might be willing to pay a little to the mailing list to show support for open source code in general (even though he already donates his work and his time).

All the others, the ones who just profit from the knowledge of the (in general) few real developers of the package, who just use the mailing list to learn and get advice for free, should pay a subscription to fee to support the overall chance for open source software to make money for the developers and the companies who hire those developers, IMHO. May be it is time that the community helps itself to generate income for open source projects in paying "a little bit" to the most helpful and used item by all users and developers, the technical support mailing lists of any open source project ?

I want to stay source code opened up as much as possible. I would pay a subscription fee to a technical mailing list, where developers help to explain their software's features, detect and fix their software's bugs and open up in which direction the software is going to be developed.

I think cvs and bugzilla is the best and most beneficial invention of all things I have seen so far, for all, users and developers alike. I would not hesitate to pay a subscription fee to be able to read, post and search a mailing list's archives.

Of course it has to be a low subscription fee that is affordable.

Is that not a way to generate income for a company like VALinux too ? Or would it be just peanuts ?

this is how it should all work anyhow

as long as the base is free and open (I.E. the main program and all the protocols and file formats) then the programs built on top of that base can be either open or closed, it does not matter. what is the one reason that MS is hated?
because they place a barrior to entry to compete with their products. if windows, the protocols, and the file formats were all open and under the GPL and they sold word and office as a proprietary tool, I would have no issues with them, however, the barrior to entry is huge because they don't let anyone see anything.
that is why Linux is so great, everything you need to compete equaly is available free and open. the sam priciple applies to sourceforge, the base system is open and free, this allows anyone to compete in this arena, VA is adding extentions to the system that are proprietary, to add value that is exclusive to VA, another company can come along and take the base code and add proprietay extentions on it to make its sourceforge have features that are exclusive to that companies product. nothing wrong with that, just let the market sort them out.

SourceForge

SourceForge doesnt contain any code borrowed from other GPLed programs, does it? If it does, how are they going to get away with this? Am I the only one who sees the irony in a Linux company violating the GPL?

Lets be realistic about LNUX

The target market for proprietary SourceForge extensions is tiny. The market for SourceForge at all, even the free version, above and beyond plain CVS is small as it stands.

While its admirable for a company to strike out for new business, its probably time for the VA execs to fess up to the reality of it - the negative momentum on earnings is too much for the stock to bear. Once LNUX inevitably goes under $1, the dilution of the stock will bring the market cap to ridiculously low levels. Once the market cap gets under $80 million, the assets of the company are valued more than its valuation as a publically traded company (I believe VA has $83 million cash and securities).

Why not just sell off the assets and simply redistribute the funds to shareholders? Really, this isn't a slag on the company or its employees - the math is simply against them. Morningstar has given them five more quarters and then they predict it is all over for them.

I can't figure out why companies insist on spending every last dollar when its obvious that it isn't going to happen.

stuck with Visual Source Safe

we're stuck with Visual Source Safe here at work, and it is a broken turd (doesn't help that we run it with shared drives [via the 'net] across the country). I've shown a couple of people here in the office how SourceForge works, and while they agree that it looks nice, nobody wants to even think about changing. (yes, I work with a big bunch of llamas).

VA's dim outlook

This will probably me moderated as flamebait, but anyhow.

VA didn't make much money with run-off-the-mill PC hardware. Sure they could capitalize on the dot-bomb hype of 2000 (when some places were too lazy to install Linux themselves, check hardware compatibility, etc, and were willing to pay VA for a box with preinstalled Linux). One would think that now for VA the services is where it's at, but if they can't even generate much revenue with the services what's left? Oh wait, we have developed a web application that was never meant to go commercial, but since now it might very well be our last chance to stay afloat, what the hell. And if that doesn't go well (I can't see how this can be as popular as VA would need it to generate revenue) it's definitely bust for VA.

Saw This on a Slashdot Banner Ad!

Well I found out about sourceforge last week. The funny thing is a banner ad at slashdot tipped me off. The company I work for happens to be in the market for collaboration software. Unfortunately, I was too late to throw this one the bucket. The decision had already been made for another product.

After talking to a sales rep from VA Linux on the phone the advantage of buying sourceforge [valinux.com] is support. Which I'm sure is the same reason businesses buy RedHat. Time is money to business and I know first hand we cannot be down from a bug in software or at the mercy of newsgroups for technical support answers. What I found really interesting is VA Linux no longer sells hardware, but they do still provide support. Anyway, good move VA Linux. I really appreciate the open source collaboration sourceforge provides and I think its a great move to supply the same great tools at a price to businesses for proprietary development. Lets hope their stock prices reflect this decision.

JOhn

yea -- quite a good situation for VA

Call it Open, get all the bugs out of your software - and then close the door. Brilliant.
Cheap Beta Testing.

CSDN?

Will they now set up a Closed Source Developer Notwork?

Ask Slashdot....

I'm not trying to troll, inflame, or commit heresy here, but I've been thinking about the following:

I've heard it said that Linux and the idea of an 'Open Source' movement can't die or get squished by Microsoft because there will always be people who will carry the torch no matter what happens to the Eazels(sp), Ximians, RedHats, etc.

Now, although I believe that is true to a point, it does seem that the whole Open Source idea is losing momentum. Maybe the novelty is starting to wear off. Maybe it's just the economy. Maybe I'm completely wrong.

But consider this - do you feel the same sense of excitement and wonder about the Open Source model of software development as you did in 1999 and 2000?

When the Open Source flagship decides to release a closed-source version of it's software on a subscription basis, is your first reaction to say "Why not?" or "Yeah - Damn Straight!" Or do you think, "Hey - isn't that why we all bitch about Micro$haft?"

To me, it seems that VA has just confirmed what Microsoft has been saying all along, and I find that pretty depressing. I truly hope that Linux and other open source projects gain ground and continue to offer the freedom that attracted us in the first place. But after reading this story, it seems like the apex has been reached and the thrill is gone.

"Open" and "Enterprise" are mutually exclusive?

It seems that VA is not so subtly implying that "Open Source" and "Enterprise" are now mutually exclusive!?!

Why on earth is a "Linux" company doing this to the community?

Couldn't VA have simply sold "Enterprise Support" for the open product (a la Red Hat)?

Does VA have a stake in Microsoft these days, or something?

Other means of making money?

Sure, VA is a cool company and needs to make money somehow, but I question whether this is the way to do it. I highly doubt that proprietary extensions in and of themselves will win VA more customers. The real money is to be made in getting contracts for installation of turnkey solutions. Part of those installations may require either customizations or extensions of Sourceforge and could be sold as services to the customer rather than as software licenses. So it seems like merely a choice of how to raise prices to meet operating costs. Assuming that contracted services are priced the same as proposed license fees, the net effect would be the same, while keeping the source open to the public. If the market saturates, then it's probably time to search for new software to apply this model to. Anyone see problems with doing things this way? Has anyone actually tried this business model?

Let them eat cake

How fortunate for someone at VA Linux to have their head screwed on right. This is how open source development should be done if anyone ever wants to make any money. I have no complaint about the license if they release the proprietary version to open source in a year or so. However, for the moment, let someone eat cake.

VALinux is bloody useless

I asked VA a year ago to provide this service for us. For two months no one answered my emails apparently because they did not have anyone to look after european customers. After TWO months someone replied to me that they were just setting up their european office. When they finally got the office working someone called me to offer their "onsite" service for mega-bucks. I declined.
Not that anyone has called me or emailed me now to offer this service. I guess their European office has been closed again :-)

Finally moving toward sustainable business model

In June, during the SiliconValley.com Open Source Roundtable, I pointed out [siliconvalley.com] to VA's Larry Augustin that basing the company's business model upon GPLed software prevented it from doing two things which are necessary to survival in a market where one is competing against "generic" hardware and software. These are: (a) differentiating one's products from competitors' offerings; and (b) adding unique value that others cannot simply copy for free. Larry never responded to my posting (in fact, he dropped out of the conversation at that point when I was hoping to read a response). But maybe he listened! While the company has now exited the hardware business (a shame; it was what they were founded to do) and is still competing with itself by offering GPLed versions of its products, it is moving in the right direction. I am convinced that a BSD-like approach will work for the company: creating unique enhancements that are at first available only from them, and then -- sometime later -- giving them to an open source project once they are no longer strategic. It would be better for VA if such projects used a truly free license such as the BSD License, so that subsequent improvements made in the open source projects could be rolled back into VA's own code.

In all of this, it pays to bear in mind that the GPL was originally created by Richard Stallman as a way of destroying companies such as Symbolics and Lisp Machines, Inc. -- two companies which tried to build specialized hardware that was differentiated by uniquely powerful software. Just like VA. By embracing the GPL, VA Linux unwittingly clasped the serpent that was designed to hurt these two companies to its own breast. By backing away from the GPL and moving toward a win-win strategy that combines the advantages of open source and commercial software, VA can embark upon a sustainable business model.

--Brett Glass

Re:And this trolling is brought to you by...

How hypocritical is it that the people who run this site, while espousing the virtues of open source take an open-sourced program and make it proprietary.

While they will have a "Source Forge - Open Edition", there will undoubtably be features in the "Enterprise" edition missing from the GPL'd release. Is this fair to those who have contributed to SourceForge on a voluntary and uncompensated basis? Will the open-source contributers receive royalties from the commercial product?

Where is JonKatz and CmdrTaco crying out against this now? I guess moral superiority stops at the hands of those who sign their checks.

Re:And this trolling is brought to you by...

I think you need to understand that once something is GPL'd, you can't un-gpl the released software. For instance, if for some reason the slash code has only been written by folks in VA, (assume no pathces for this argument), and we release version 2.2 under the gpl and from that moment on we never release again, slash is still available uinder the GPL. You can't un-gpl software.

I don't think that will ever happen, mind you. But if it did then fork it and do your own. In fact the same thing goes with SF. IF you want to write the interfaces to rational, pvcs , and open it up. Go for it. Have fun. This is part of what open source is all about.

Honestly, sometimes I think that 99% of open source software is the willingness to do the work. I don't want to sound blasphemous, but it's just software. Anyone can write software and release it. And , looking at some of the code (oss and proprietary) just about anyone has.

Chris DiBona

(speaking for VA)

Re:VA is Slashdot's corporate parent

Well I didn't yet notice. Whenever there was something (serious) with VA there was first the slashdot story.

Like VA leaving the hardware sector -> slashdot story.
VA reducing staff count -> slashdot story.

I guess you don't have any proofs for your statement, slashdot usually picks on all equally and doesn't stop with it's corporate parents :o)

Re:I want to sell a proprietary version of...

Please keep us informed of your progress!

Of course it is!

How can a business possibly expect to survive when they *don't sell anything*? Free software as a business model works if it's in conjunction with a product/service you're selling (hardware drivers, for instance). Open source is supposed to be a community movement, not a business one. If they want to sell money-making add-ons to sourceforge (I'm suspecting these are add-ons that most OSers wouldn't care much for anyway - sourceforge is doing fine without them as we speak), good on them. If they improve the OS core while they're at it, even better.

Didn't even read the whole teaser, huh?

It's that little part not in italics at the end that says "VA is Slashdot's corporate parent."

Christ, we used to not bother reading the linked-to stories, then we stopped reading the whole Slashdot stories, and now we're not even reading the whole teaser before we post a reply?

Re:Ok, we've seen this before

Your stupid, they are just selling the server, not the service.

Re:Open Source, RIP

Its not open source its the GPL. The problem with GPL Open Source is its greatest asset. Being free is a double edged sword in a capitalist system. You Companies just have a hard time making money off a License that's designed so companies can't control/make profit (whichever way you look at it) off of it.

Actually if you think about it the GPL seems historically new to the capitalist system. Think about it, where has there been a service or good that when received required the user to not sell any changes but release them free and include the exact information on what specific changes were made. Currently this can only work for software, as it just wouldn't make sense for other industries. Even public information of the past (and present, not the future of course because that hasn't happened yet) has not been setup like this. Imagine if the Wright brothers had GPLed the basic design for an Airplane. We would have literally never gotten off the ground.

I guess my point is that a capitalist system like the one we live in has a lot of difficulty with the GPL, just look at all those profitable (or unprofitable I should say) linux companies out there.

I'm probably going to get alot of replies about how linux is not supposed to be profitable, etc... And i'd reply "Thats great just don't expect it to put food on your table or become mainstream."

ESR - Surprised by Wealth!

ESR can't come to the phone right now, he's still surprised by wealth!

Re:ESR is still on their board, right?

This fits into ESR's model quite nicely. See , particularly [tuxedo.org] this section [tuxedo.org]. Zope is an excellent example of what SourceForget is doing...

Re:WHY IS THIS -1? TACO ARE YOU DOING THIS?

learn how to spell.