Magnus:
You repeatedly say that "how does open source company make money without
doing it". Let me ask you this question, how does Ubuntu make money
giving Ubuntu Linux away? How does PostgreSQL make money giving
postgreSQL away. Yes, they sell support contracts just like XenSource
does, which I highly support the model. What I don't think is right is
when Xen Source releases "Express editions" with capabilities
castrated. Last I checked, 4GB of memory limit, and 4 VM limit. (as a
developer, sometimes I need close to 8-10VMs running all at once, so I
use VMware now) Do you see PostgreSQL do that? do you see Ubuntu do that?
Well, you can say that well MySQL does it(you can't even touch their
latest 5.1 releases or cluster capabilities without paying for the
Enterprise edition), SuSE does it(no SLES is not free, it's a 60 day
eval), Redhat did it(CentOS is binarily the same with updates for free
too), Microsoft SQL Server Express did it (not open source, so not a
good example). The issue is the virtue or lack thereof of dual
licensing , forcefully segregating markets into "home users" vs
"enterprise users" on open source GPL license. You said ,
XENSource is not selling the code. It's GPL'd, meaning you are not
allowed to sell it. I'm guessing that XENSource also packaging admin
utilities which is not open source, and support, hence they charge money
for it.
Of course, everyone doing dual license says they are not selling code,
they are selling service and support, but what if the user did not wish
to get service and support, only the code underneath? Then everyone
doing dual license says, "well we are selling the admin utilities,
updates which aren't open sourced". First of all updates aren't that
much work, if there is a critical patch that affects all users, the
patch should be pushed to all users regardless. As to admin utilities,
how many LOC does that require compared to the Xen based code? A
pittance. Most admin utilities are scripts for goodness sakes. And
don't forget, all Xen Branded distributions are nothing but a Linux
distribution.
The question remains that tons of developers coded for Xen(I can name a
few from INTEL and AMD especially) and their work is being cashed by a
corporation XenSource(500Million), and the features they worked on(which
didn't have the arbitrary VM limits, memory limits) are not made
available to the public under the official Xen Branded distribution.
So your response, " Buying XENSource did not (and can not) un-GPL the
code. " does not answer the question. If the issue of dual licensing
applies when you "sell" the code, shouldn't open source developers get
paid also when they code the code that gets used by both the "home
users" and "enterprise users"?
If Microsoft thinks open source is the virus to the software industry,
I think dual licensing for GPL is the virus to open source industry.
Just something to think about. Meanwhile, I will stick to VMware. The
reason being: if I am paying someone for something, that someone must
wrote the code themselves,not piggy backed from the open source community.
No response is required of this post.
Magnus Boman wrote:
On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 21:09 -0600, Tao Shen wrote:
Well, my point is this: if you have "analysize"d Xen, perhaps you
shouldn't have written a book about it, at least not in English.
Why not?
On the issue of Xen being purchased by Citrix, I was wondering about the
issues of legality. Is it even legal for a corporation(Citrix) to
purchase an open source package, of which was contributed by thousands
of open source developers, and is it legal for a corporation(XenSource)
who basically combines a lot of open source package(qemu device drivers
and their paravirtualization based on the linux kernel) into one to sell
the technology as if they owned it? When Xen was doing their Xen
Off course it is.
Enterprise, Xen Windows, and Xen Express separation, I knew this
XenSource was going to be bought. While it's perfectly legal for
XenSource to provide open source service...selling support packages(to
amazon EC2 for example), but forcing the bundling of support with an
"enterprise" edition is pushing the boundaries of GPL. At least that's
my understanding of the GPL. Doesn't anyone here smell something?
No, I think your understanding is wrong. How would an open source
company make money without doing something like that?
Windows paravirtualization drivers are released in closed source. That
alone is fishy at best. Also, I had this question: even though
Nothing fishy with it at all.
Microsoft had a deal with XenSource to bundle windows paravirtualization
drivers with Xen, shouldn't we pay Microsoft for the drivers instead of
paying XenSource for their Xen "Windows" Edition?
I'm sure MS wouldn't mind if you pay them as well. But my guess is that
MS only provided technical documents (under NDA) and XENSource wrote the
drivers. That's why they can't be open sourced. And again, this is
another way for an open source company to make money.
Comparing this behavior to VMware or Parallels, at least VMware and
Parallels wrote their code they are selling. Every line of it. VMware
workstation 6 will also be using paravirtualization techniques. VMware
ESX was criticized for using Linux as the backend...but the point is:
Vmware wrote very single line of their own kernel that runs on top of
linux kernel including device emulation, and windows drivers even. Xen
cannot say the same. For one thing: all their devices are emulated by
qemu. That's why they can't do 3D yet like VMware and parallels.
XENSource is not selling the code. It's GPL'd, meaning you are not
allowed to sell it. I'm guessing that XENSource also packaging admin
utilities which is not open source, and support, hence they charge money
for it.
Enough rambling. It's too bad the open source community has turned into
this way: giving a limited basic version and upselling an Enterprise
version and continue to ask for open source developer to code their
stuff for free(MySQL comes to mind) There is a reason why CentOS was
forked from RHEL and why OpenSuSE was a fork of SLES. I predict that
Haha... You crack me up. openSUSE is a fork of SLE? Since when? Both
openSUSE and SLE is freely available. It's only if you want an automatic
way to install updates, and get support that you have to pay.
there will be a fork of openXen from the last checkpoint where Xen was
bought. To me personally, it just doesn't make any sense that XenSource
is capitalizing on the work of thousands of engineers from INTEL,
AMD...shouldn't the developers who contributed to be paid individually
as well?
Buying XENSource did not (and can not) un-GPL the code.
So, in conclusion, Jian, I think you should be free of legal issues to
write a book about the source code or at least the code before it was
bought.(I think the freedom of speech alone justifies it), btw, the
first line was a joke, don't be offended.
Ah! I didn't actually read your email all the way down before I hit
reply. So you can forget about my first question.
jian zhang wrote:
Hi all:
Previously we have analysize Xen source code, and we have wrote a
book about the code. BUT now, I noticed that xen has been purchased by
Citrix <http://www.cnetnews.com.cn/list-0-0-16406-0-1.htm>, so does it
legal to publish that book???
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