Sevan Janiyan wrote to tell me that his port of OpenNMS to FreeBSD is complete and it just needs testing.
I love it when people do stuff like this, so I’m extremely excited to have OpenNMS available on yet another operating system.
So if you run FreeBSD and need a great management platform, be sure to help test the port so that it can get submitted to the main ports repository.
Even though OpenNMS is a open source project, we do sometimes receive support from commercial vendors. For example, when we do demonstrations where Internet access isn’t available, we often use Gambit’s Mimic software to simulate a network. In exchange for temporary licenses we place a link to their website in the footer of the OpenNMS wiki.
Back in 2007, Johan Edstrom, one of our OGP members, really liked the IntelliJ IDEA IDE. While most of our developers use Eclipse, he was just more comfortable with the IDE from JetBrains and since they offered free licenses for people who work on open source projects, he wrote to them and asked for one. Here’s the response he got:
We are pleased to support the Open Source community and we look forward to seeing your project’s progress. If we can be of any additional service, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Also, while it’s not required, we would be very appreciative if you would add an IntelliJ IDEA banner to your project’s site in support of IntelliJ IDEA.
[snip]
This is absolutely not required. This is a no-strings-attached license, but we would be very grateful for any help leading people to info about IntelliJ IDEA!
Again… welcome!
Best regards,
Ilia Dumov
Product Manager
JetBrains, Inc
So I went ahead and added the banner to our site and all was right with the world.
The license was good for one year, and so in 2008 he renewed, again with no problem. But this year he received quite a different response:
Hi Johan,
We can’t give you free license because it will be used on your paid support services engagements. You can buy commercial licenses if you want.
All the best,
Victoria Dumova
OS Support Program Manager
JetBrains, Inc
I never tire of pointing out that the OpenNMS Project is independent from the commercial services company, The OpenNMS Group. Johan is not an employee of the commercial business, so he doesn’t perform “paid support services engagements”. In fact, his involvement in the project has not changed in the last two years but for some reason he didn’t qualify for a free license this time. Furthermore, since 100% of OpenNMS is free and open software, what would it matter? The IDE is used to help develop code, and all of that work gets released back to the community.
I must wonder what types of projects qualify as open source for JetBrains. Only those that make no money whatsoever? I can see the next e-mail: “Sorry, your license will be used to get donations on Sourceforge so you have to buy one.”
My point here is not to bash JetBrains. To complain about not getting a free license is like complaining that the bisque in a free soup kitchen is a bit salty. But it does illustrate the dangers of commercial software.
In two years we went from “This is a no-strings-attached license” to “You can buy commercial licenses”. The rules changed. Luckily for us we can probably get Johan to use Eclipse now, but what if we depended on IDEA? We’d be screwed.
With open source software the power lies in the user, not the provider. With commercial and open core software companies the revenue model is to sell licenses, and thus to maximize profit these companies are motivated to increase license revenue. This may mean selling to you licenses at a discount to get you using the product, only to change the rules a couple of years down the road.
If you are a decision maker in your company, I think you owe it to your employer and your shareholders to question any commercial software purchase. Are you willing to base your operations on software that may double in price without warning? Maybe the vendor will go out of business, leaving the code in limbo, and what will you do then?
Transitioning to open source is not easy. Although the software is free, there is a cost in time, perhaps consulting services and in getting your staff up to speed on the product. But in the long run the cost is worth it, if just to lose the reliance on outside vendors who, as this situation demonstrates, can be very fickle.
The US House of Representatives voted today not to delay the transition from analog to digital television since the Yeas did not achieve the 2/3rds majority needed.
As one of the few people I know who gets their television over the air, I can’t wait for the switch. Not only will it allow television stations to boost their digital signal, it will free up gobs of bandwidth for other uses.
It’s been over three years since the transition was put in motion, and if people aren’t ready now they won’t ever be ready. However, the Senate is trying to delay the switch by four months, and I can’t help but think this is motivated by more than just concern for the people. I am very happy the House saw fit to correct this and hope its action stands.
With all the money that is spent, why is it so hard for government to demonstrate even an acceptable level of competence when it comes to technology? I’ve long ago given up hope that they could provide something that would make me go “wow” but, jeez people, can’t you get the basics right?
At The OpenNMS Group we get paid once a month, and today I’m running payroll. This is the first payroll with our 401K deductions, so it is a little more involved than usual, but it doesn’t tend to take me very long.
Our business is headquartered in the state of North Carolina, so I have to deposit withholding taxes each month. I usually do this online, but when I went to the site today I see this message:
Okay. Cool, new services. How bad can it be? Well, pretty bad. When I go to register on NCID the first thing I see is:
I’m not sure why Verisign isn’t a recognized root certificate authority, but it looks valid so I’ll soldier on.
Now the next thing I get is:
What? In this day and age I don’t expect every web application to support every browser perfectly, but it should support every standards compliant browser and at least Firefox well enough for something like this. Since Internet Explorer is Windows only, I need to write the North Carolina State government to ask for my free copy of Windows so that I can use the services that my tax dollars helped create. Sheesh.
But considering the level of competence displayed by the designers of this abomination, I’m going to assume that there is nothing that really requires IE but that they were too lazy to test it using other browsers, so I’ll see what happens.
Well, about halfway through the registration process I get this error:
Great. This system is going to be the only way of paying my taxes electronically in a week and this is how well it has been tested. Although 500 errors indicate something is wrong with the server, I’ve seen with OpenNMS cases where IE rendered relative links differently than every other browser, and even though I filled out submitted a form to report the bug I’m sure the answer will be to blame Safari.
I did manage to get an NCID, and when I went to logout I got:
Close the browser? Why? Does the application not clean up after itself?
What’s even funnier (in a sad, developing into maniacal laughter sort of way) is if you hit the “exit” button you get:
No wonder people have no faith in government anymore. One would assume with all of the web programming talent available in the area they would be able to get someone who knew what they were doing. Of course for a website like NCID you’d want to use only the best technology, like, say, FrontPage:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us"> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0"> <meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
Gaaaaah! I assume it was some politician’s relative with a copy of Frontpage for Dummies that won the bid.
I’m going back to mailing in my tax check. They’re only going to waste it anyway.
Unless you’ve been away from the news for the last week, you’re probably aware that today is the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the Macintosh computer. It all kicked off with the famous “1984” Super Bowl ad.
I didn’t use my first Mac until 1986 and I didn’t buy one until 2003, but in between I often used the machines of friends or at work. Also in 2003 I rescued an original Mac that was on its way to the dump.
When Giles Turnbull asked on Cult of Mac if anyone still had an original Mac that worked, I wrote up a short history of this machine and he was kind enough to post it on his website.
I think my Mac is a little unusual in that it has been upgraded and can be connected to the Internet. You can’t really do much with it outside of FTP, but there is rudimentary support for web browsing (Through MacWeb and NCSA Mosiac) as well as IRC (through ircle). I hopped into the OpenNMS channel on freenode but that screen shot didn’t make the article.
It’s a lot of fun to see both how far things have come in 25 years, but to also realize how far ahead of its time was the original Mac.