The nagios community wants to keep its open soul

[Michael Friedrich]

Hi Olivier,

after reading this for background information:

http://www.nagios-fr.org/2010/02/accuse-nagios-fr-org-levez-vous/
(scroll down for the English email conversation)

I'm deeply annoyed how communi...cation happens this time.

Olivier JAN wrote:
> 
> 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.

Ethan's work on the core and also to mention the addons, was and is 
really nice. The way things are going this time, is not good, but with 
different behavior community and developers and Ethan might have a 
"come2gether" again. But yeah, I am a bit shocked about those emails and 
sorry to mention that, "communism thoughts".

> 
> 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.

Let me rephrase - I am NOT affiliated in any way to Netways. I am 
working on behalf of the University of Vienna on Icinga Core and 
IDOUtils Postgres/Oracle and I am adding my knowledge to this fresh and 
active project.

 From our point of view, the now closed NDOUtils Oracle have been 
migrated back to upstream (1.0.1 will have full improved Oracle 
support). Furthermore, many hold back patches and improvements can be 
committed. Good for the community, and we get testing and feedback. Just 
the way open source is meant to be.

We appreciate the help by Netways for server costs and providing 
development resources. And it is of course a "give and take" situation 
just like we have.


> 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.

Why hand over the DNS entry? Which law would fit there - French against 
US? For what reason ... because it's nagios-*.org not nagios.fr. Which 
is already owned by Nagios Enterprises of course looking at the whois.
Will this be a neverending story then? Should I register 
nagios-community.at, talk about Icinga and then get asked to hand that 
over? Sorry, but I don't get it.

And reading on the fact, that nagios-fr.org is being sued for posting 
Icinga updates on their websites - WTF? So I as a user within a given 
numbers of nagios related boards and mailinglists am not allowed to 
mention Icinga (ups, I just did) in any way related to Nagios? Sorry, 
but what's wrong with you people?


> 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.

Hm, a slap in the face not only for the French Nagios community.

> 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.

This is not about frozen Nagios development. This is about how to divide 
and conquer the community. And that's really sad to read and hear.

Community is what matters and therefore I will be continueing with 
ongoing development. I am pretty sure the community will not have to 
decide wether using Nagios or Icinga or Shinken or any other monitoring 
approach.

Community happens.

Kind regards,
Michael
(you'll figure it out what I am working on in Icinga ;)

> 
> 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



> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
DI (FH) Michael Friedrich
michael.friedrich at univie.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 4277 14359

Vienna University Computer Center
Universitaetsstrasse 7 A-1010 Vienna, Austria

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proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance.
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