Reasons to not release in house GPL'd code (was Future of Nagios)

[Arno Lehmann]

Hi,

I did not to intend to reply here, but some comments below seem to 
require comments from me :-)

07.05.2009 22:01, William Leibzon wrote:
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Steven D. Morrey <smorrey at ldschurch.org 
> <mailto:smorrey at ldschurch.org>> wrote:
> 
>     When I worked as an enterprise IT consultant, I noticed that lots of
>     GPL'd projects that were created for in house use would never be
>     released to the public.
>     Below are the top 5 reasons given by these organizations, most of
>     these decisions came from either corporate legal or some MBA way up
>     the chain in middle management.
> 
> 
> Hi all
> 
> I have to strongly agree with what Steven said. I've seen all the same 
> too. Best I could do (wich only worked in a few cases) is try to 
> convince to release code as my own taking full responsibility but many 
> are unwilling since after all they paid money to have it developed. Very 
> egoistic enterprise morality unfortunately, everyone for him/her/itself 
> and don't do things for the public good eventhough these enterprises are 
> themselve using program developed and made available for free.

Similar to what I experience.

> BTW, I did not want originally to comment on that entire thread in 
> regards to Icingal and see how things go but my opinion is what's 
> happening is related to egoism and personal/corporate/commercial 
> interests too. I did not like it when Ethan started changing nagios from 
> purely open-source project to a company with commercial interests.

Myself, I couldn't find anything inherently wrong with that move, but 
that's because I believe you can have a company and still do "honest" 
open source. That's what we do with Bacula Systems SA, for example.

> But 
> its his project and he really done A LOT for the public in the last 10 
> years so he's entitled to proper compensation and project does need a 
> more stable base. I did not like Netways even more because even though 
> they were releasing good things I always perceived strong commercial and 
> corporate interests and certain greed

Well, that's a company's business... I admit I don't know anything 
about how Netways run their business, so I'm not qualified to assess 
if they're doing an "honest" open source business or not. But, even if 
they don't give much back to the community, they actually are not 
required to do this. They need to follow the GPL, obviously, when they 
distribute Nagios to customers, but for their own work, not based on 
GPL'ed software, they may choose to keep it closed (not that I would 
like or do that myself, but they may!)

> - I even had a running with 
> Netways myself when I modifed nagiosgrapher and offered to submit 
> changes to them (see http://william.leibzon.org/nagios/) if they opened 
> project more but they were unwilling and I saw that their interests are 
> not inline with a real open-source attitude;

Might be... did they explain their reasons to you? I mean, actually 
they did release the NagiosGrapher source...

> and I was actually 
> reluctant to post my code to nagiosexchange for long time because I 
> perceived commercial interests there too,

Surely there is a commercial interest there, but I doubt that they 
would (or could, for that matter) keep things you post there to 
themselves.

My question is rather why Nagios Enterprises hasn't set up such 
services? It's a relevant part of the community work for a program 
that so heavily depends on external contributions (check scripts, in 
Nagios' case). Also it would allow them to get in better contact with 
their community - and that, as we see now, is really vital for a 
company that exists to exploit (yes, I used that word intentionally) 
an open source software.

Side note: Making money with services and support for open source 
software is in no way immoral or anything. Providing professional 
support beyond what a community can do is important if you want the 
software being used in critical environments. Also, some organizations 
will simply require a company to provide support so they have someone 
to strangle / sue / shout at if things go wrong. And you don't get 
SLAs from the -users mailing list...

> just look how prominently they 
> display that its "powered by Netways" where as usually 
> repositories/directories like this display sponsor logo at the bottom or 
> talk about sponsors at the about page

Oh well... I don't care much. I think it's ok if they use a service 
they operate as a platform for their marketing efforts.

> (and notice also that 
> nagiosgrapher is still the only top-rated project).

Hmm... that might be a valid point.

>  I really wish we 
> had repository like this organized by independent party (or preferably 
> non-profit entity) doing it entirely for the benefit of users and 
> getting money to run it through donations directly by users or by 
> companies.

The problem is you simply don't get the donations you need. That's my 
experience at least.

> 
> At the same time it appears to be true that Ethan is keeping too much 
> control over nagios base, but simply does not have time to develop it in 
> the way he did before

I wholeheartedly agree.

> so projects that have been on agenda for 3+ years 
> are not getting done. In fact the project is really too big for him to 
> do it alone if we want enterprise-centric features. So I can understand 
> frustration that people here have shown but "split" in the way it has 
> been announced is simply not the right approach.

Hmm... I guess we'll know that in a few months. Personally, I don't 
like the fork as it's been prepared somewhat secretly, and I believe 
in an open source environment, you should be open on more levels than 
only the actual code.

> What the right approach 
> should have been is announcement of new project that will incorporate 
> nagios as a base and at the same time provide some new features and 
> interfaces (i.e. monitoring system like groundwork base on nagios but 
> with further work on top of it).

Icinga is trying to further the development of the core itself, so 
it's really a different approach than adding things. Naturally, 
getting there will take a while, and what the icinga guys try to 
achieve may change over time, but I believe that, for their current 
goal, a fork was the most reasonable approach.

> We have several such projects that are 
> doing well. But instead this was announced as a fork so rather then 
> build user base based on their release and new features, they are trying 
> to take away existing user base.

That worries me a bit, too - I hope that any developers working on 
Nagios now will create patches that apply to both Nagios and icinga. 
If, after a while, that is no longer possible, we will hopefully know 
which project looks more promising for the long term future.

> This appears to be a battle of personal 
> and corporate interests more then anything else

Unfortunately, there is some reason to assume that, yes.

> and its hurting nagios 
> community which in my view is really represented by developers on this 
> list and by users on nagios-users list.

Fortunately, it's possible to be part of both projects. Myself, for 
example, being no developer but a "consumer" of Nagios, I will follow 
the icinga project to see what I will use in my business. Obviously, 
Nagios has a serious head-start. But if future development of icinga 
looks good, and Nagios remains to be slow, the decision is simple...

But that's not a problem (well, for Ethan, it may be; for some 
contributors, too). For most users of Nagios today the result may be a 
good one - competition is something that has its value even among open 
source projects as it keeps the community and developers alert :-)

> To Ethan - I think the code should really be opened more then public or 
> you should hire additional people who will help development and 
> incorporate changes and discuss anything that is not incorporated. If 
> this is not done, it looks like you're too busy for nagios and its not 
> entirely clear that what you're busy with is good for the benefit of the 
> nagios community.

I think Andreas addressed this quite well.

> 
> And I really really hope people will come to their senses that they 
> should be helping community and public and that means working together 
> and helping each other and public as a whole rather then acting on their 
> own interests.

But how do you help if your contributions are not accepted or, in some 
cases, even noticed?

> This "fork" will hurt nagios and help competition 
> projects rather then help too make it popular and better.

Well, competition can make both projects stronger. That's what I hope 
we'll see.

> Ok. done with my opinion. No flames please, we've had enough.

Fortunately, this discussion was quite civilized. Which tells us a bit 
about the community around Nagios. Thanks to everybody!

> Frustrated with what's going with one of my favorite open-source network 
> tools,

Not too frustrated - mostly curious,

Arno

> William
> 

-- 
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de

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