The nagios community wants to keep its open soul

[Christian Döbler]

Hi Oliver,

> It's an alarm call that is raised : after a long period where people  
> began to think nagios is a dead foss project, we nearly reach a point  
> of no return : the author try to gag on the community because it's to  
> free!!
> 
> Let's get back to the facts : Nagios is still the reference in the  
> open source monitoring tools, and some serious challengers like Zabbix  
> or Zenoss try to reach its place. In the open source world, and  
> especially the monitoring one, the real strength is not in code lines,  
> but in the community around the project. You know the Nagios one has  
> been a great one during years. Meanwhile, since two years, the lack of  
> presence and answer from Ethan to proposals from the community  
> legitimately irritate the community. As much as a fork, named Icinga,  
> arisen a year ago.
> 
> Where the story became complex is when we look at the economic sphere  
> around Nagios. Like a lot of foss that grow a lot, and after have  
> given more than 8 years of it's time to Nagios, he legitimately create  
> a support enterprise behind it, "Nagios Enterprise". The Icinga fork  
> came from community members that are also employees of another society  
> that supports Nagios : Netways. If the GPLv2 license of Nagios was  
> respected, it seems more like a business fork than a foss one for the  
> nagios author. That had irritate Nagios author and the major part of  
> the community have stay in the Nagios project.

sorry to correct the information you provided but NETWAYS is a powerful
member and tool of the icinga community. Only some of the members of
icinga are working for NETWAYS. The company supports us by providing
infrastructure, manpower and ideas. The final decisions are up to the
community and the whole team.

If anybody doesn't share my opinion, feel free to correct me.

> Unfortunately, this story have a side effect : we are thinking Ethan  
> began to turn against the community, and this open spirit that allow  
> this fork, by ignore even more the community and refuse to answer to  
> code enhancement proposals.
> Last but not least affront : he ask the DNS entry of the French nagios  
> community site (http://www.nagios-fr.org) to be give to him so he can  
> raised a new community, more corporate : in this site we can see some  
> posts about the felon (but open source and nagios relative) Icinga  
> project! This fork seem to have finally more cut Ethan author and the  
> community than the community into two parts.

"Refusal" of code patches started much earlier. I don't think that icinga
was the reason for code patches being sent to /dev/null. 

> That's the last straw for a community who want to be as free as foss  
> it supports. In Open Source, we have "free as in beer" but also "free  
> as in speech". I, as the leader of the French community, and with the  
> support of community members, answer him that it will be be tolerated  
> to be dictate laws about what the community can speak about. To do not  
> risk an hypothetical sue from Nagios Enterprise (for trademark  
> protection), we have decided to migrate the site to monitoring-fr.org  
> and to gave the nagios-fr.org site to Nagios enterprise when the  
> migration will be finished.

Why did you hand over the domain? You don't seem to be in need of peace
with the Nagios Developers anymore. :)
Furthermore I don't think that Nagios has any rights to own nagios-fr.org
since it is a french site. But I have to admit that I don't now the laws
exactly.

> With this open letter entitle "The nagios community wants to keep its  
> open soul", the community ask where the project is going and if it  
> will still be open and ethically respectful of the open source spirit.  
> Some question raised about the real open aspect of the Nagios future  
> by freezing the current open source part and put it into a close  
> solution (Nagios XI, close application based on Nagios, soon available  
> from Nagios Enterprise) that seem to be the only part that will evolve  
> in the future. The community also ask how it's seen in the Nagios  
> project, if it still have is its place into it and if it must hold its  
> tongue about what is not "corporate" for Nagios Enterprise.
> 
> The community want to help on the industrialization and support of  
> Nagios by free software business, but still want to keep its soul. The  
> community wish Nagios keep it's first rank, that was give to it by the  
> community, and the project came back to "the old good time" when foss  
> developers and people who just want to help had yet their words to say  
> against marketing communication.
> 
> We wish this open letter will not be a dead letter, because this will  
> finish to dig the gap between the author and its community, that  
> represent a major part of the project's power, and will not finish by  
> a fork that will divided again the community, and will add another  
> taboo name in all sites that speak about Nagios.
> 
> Signed by:
> *The French community
> *Olivier Jan, writer of a french book bout Nagios, and leader of the  
> french community
> *Gabes Jean, writer of another french book about Nagios
> *Gerhard Lausser, writer of a german book about Nagios

Keep up the good work and try not to sound too pathetic. :)
We are the community and so we are still the power behind these great
projects.

Please don't get me wrong. My answer to your post wasn't meant to be
offensive. Futhermore the post can't be named a dead post anymore. :)

Regards,

Christian
(developer of icinga-API)

-- 
Christian Döbler
Döbler Softwareentwicklung & IT­-Services
Färberstr. 20
90402 Nürnberg

E-Mail: c.doebler at tinxx.de
Tel.: 0911 / 144 155 1
Fax:  03221 / 440 899 4 

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