Apparently yT has private copies (repositories) of some “open source” projects. They seem to be (according to the story I heard) porting in changes made to the public repositories but not returning the favour. This sort of behaviour sucks. Do we really want to play this game?
Most people get involved in open source projects to contribute to a project that interests them. They gain a feeling of respect and that’s one of the key things that keeps them working. The small patches contributed often lead to acceptance and a growing involvement. That’s how open source projects are supposed to work. The code remains open to all and grows through more people becoming involved. Features get added, bugs fixed and over time the projects becomes more and more useful.
Now, yT is a company. They have a product that they want to sell and make lots of money. It’s important to keep that in mind. They pay developers to fix bugs and work on code.
Companies taking open source code and adding bits on to make it unique isn’t new. It happens all over the place and in all sorts of ways. The difference here is that the companies normally take a known release or version of the open source code to work from. They don’t simply create their own repository as “it makes their release process easier”. (I’ll refrain from talking about their release process as I guess we all know how succesful it’s been to date).
If yT are serious about not just making a product that will have a shelf life of 6 months, then having a viable community behind it is a key component. Be realised it early on, but then forgot the lesson and alienated the community it had created. yT need to take note of the history lesson and be very careful to avoid a retelling – actions such as this are NOT the way to accomplish it.
As evidence of this I’ve been told that some code destined for one of these projects may be released under a deliberately obstructive licence. This sort of action is a sure sign that the damage is real and unless yT take remedial action it will get worse. OBOS won’t be immune from such actions as many in that community want to establish commercial ventures on the back of their work. yT’s actions and the community reaction should not be taken in isolation nor considered in terms of their short results.
Expect another hitting from the DeBUG, another set of German-only conversation about you, another Peter Stegemann post moaning about my initial comment….
I also know what you’re talking about. In one case, they are violating a licence under which changes must be opened. Its not the GPL, though, so its not like the FSF will chase after them.
Some specifics would be nice. I have no idea what you are talking about and would like to remedy the situation, if there is one.
Alan
you suck, really. do you have nothing else to do then sucking around? no wife to speek with? no children to play with? this is the seconf time you are crying around how ‘bad’ yT is. Sit on your PC and code something instead of writing such articles. and if you don’t want to do something else, make this job right. Search infos, facts and prove the things you write. At the moment you are just talking bad about yT. Thats not right. If you know such a gpl-software in Zeta, so please post them. Or do you have something against german people in general? You should stop writing something, as it seems you want to split the open-source programmers and the yT-Team.
Florian
it would be better for the whole beos community if you stop that shit
because it would be a better strategie to support yellowtab and/or Haiku, but think about it haiku and zeta are no enemies.
many haiku fans talk about zeta as it is a enemy.
hey think about it, thats stupid.
yellowtab do a thing and haiku do a thing, that it not more.
if want to support yellowtab than talk to them and do not work such bullshit.
i my eyes your a loose, who cares what programs yellowtab use and why?
yellowtab should know whats good and whats thinks are not good, so when you have a problem with programs that yellowtab uses then contact them and tell them what do you think, thats it.
i hate that stupid people, they think hey i’am the best and all the other stuff is bullshit.
in my eyes you are a kiddie that is frustrated that you never get something to work, that it.
That is so boring. You only write shit, you have no arguments.
Why do you write something like that?
Do you hate yellowTAB?
Do you hate BeOS?
Or is it the truth that you are a boring man without any friends and you sit alone at home and you have nothing to do?
http://beusergroup.de/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=521
Oh look, I was right. The Germans falling over themselves to defend Zeta.
The project I assumed David was on about isn’t the one he was on about, which suggests there may be *two* OSS projects in question.
To the German reactionaries – do you have nothing better to do that defend YT tooth and nail every time someone says something bad about it? Before dragging up the traditional insults, take a look at yourself first.
I find it funny that amongst those personally attacking you are actual YT employees – I’m presuming Florian is Florian Thaler (oh, if you think you’re getting the Neomagic sound driver out of me now, you’ve got another thing coming), Peter Stegemann provides the Zeta crypto kit I believe.
Wonderful professionalism there, don’t you think?
To the babys whining and moaning (and as far as I know they’re not working for yT): Wouldn’t it be better to answer the complaint instead of trying to insult David? Saying something like “Oh, is that so? Tell us what app is the cause of all this and we’ll prove you wrong..” instead of “you’re ugly and you smell bad” makes you look a bit more like and adult.
@MYOB:
“The Germans [...]”
With statements beginning like that you already disqualify yourself from any meaningful discussion.
Enough said.
@Micronuke
A statement of fact. Its all German speakers who have been defending Zeta. Most of Zeta’s users are in Germany or Japan. There both facts. True, the German speakers could be Austrian or Swiss, but they are frequenting a .de site, which suggests that they may be German
I notice a number of the comments automatically claim some level of “German victimisation”. Just because Zeta and its users are mainly German doesn’t mean its anything against German people.
I don’t pepper every reference to a German person with their nationality. However, Peter Stegemann seems to think its nessacery to mention my nationality every time he mentions me, which I find odd in the extreme.
you’re all quite funny people. really. you are.
David Reid by telling stories he didn’t prove at all.
MYOB by saying “look at yourself first” but watching other people all the time.
Florian by being offencive. just like Lukas Linemayr.
oh. MYOB again by saying “The Germans [...]“. well, could you try to differentiate? my wild guess is, that the avarage German (if there is such a person) hasn’t got a clue what Zeta nor BeOS nor Haiku is. And by the way, when you say “prepare for the Germans”, why should they try to dissapoint your expectations?
well and myself being funny by even trying to comment on this post. poor old me.
finally I’ll obey m_eiman’s wish:
@David Reid: Oh, is that so? Tell us what app is the cause of all this and others might eventually _prove_ you wrong…
Thank you very much.
Florian, making personal attacks is generally very poor form. For a start, David *does* code and do various other things in the community. Lets see, there’s BeClan, which is his baby (as far as I know). Looking in its “Projects” there is the wavelan2 driver, which is hosted by him. Then there is also libpeople, packager and the BeBook which are also his toys. There’s also Apache, which I believe is mostly his work in porting it to BeOS. Same deal with SVN. Secondly, David never mentioned GPL code. He said “open source”. Last time I counted there was a hojillion and one “open source” licenses, some sanctioned by the FSF and other such bodies, some not. Bear in mind that having a private depot of an “open source” project isn’t necessarily “illegal” (It’d of course depend on the specifics of the license).
What David is talking about is demoralisation of developers. Lets just suppose there is a private company, SuperMegaCorp, with a private depot of a mythical app called FancyUltraFreshApp. This commercial depot doesn’t violate (the mythical) SuperFreeLicense2.0 that FancyUltraFreshApp is released under. What it does do is create a situation whereby everytime the “hobby” developers sit down to write code for FancyUltraFreshApp they think to themself “Have the developers at SuperMegaCorp already implemented this feature? Have they fixed this bug? Maybe instead of coding I’ll go for a picnic with my [girl | boy]friend. That sounds like much more fun than writing code that someone at SuperMegaCorp has already written. And got paid to.” Then you also get a situation whereby developers, as David said, move away from open source licenses to avoid such a situation. Which can end up being bad for the end user.
Also, bear in mind that David isn’t making any personal attacks against the developers of yT. I’m pretty sure he has the utmost respect for the developers at yT, what he is doing is criticising yT’s business practices. Which is a totally different kettle of fish.
It’s always nice to see comments about what I write, though sometimes I wonder about whether I should read them!
First off, I wrote this piece as it was brought to my attention by someone that yT were engaging in practises that aren’t ideally suited to the way the community is growing. Alan has posted and asked for more information – so that’s a good first step in the right direction.
I’m not attacking any of the yT dev’s presonally – I know and respect them so why would I? Nor am I attacking any race of people, whether so grouped by language, skin color or religion.
The conversation that triggered this post was private, so I can’t divulge the details without permission from the other person involved. It’s another case of respect being due and being paid. However, once I return home I will try and discuss things directly with Alan to get this situation resolved. Sadly licence issues are becoming more and more of a problem throughtout the software industry and phrases like “due diligence” are starting to be heard in forums where once they were never considered. I’m not the first to suggest that in their rush to market yT may have missed a few issues and bringing these issues to people’s attention is a responsible thing to do. The sooner they’re addressed the better for everyone.
O.K., a Comment from another German People, please excuse my English
Not all in DeBUG like all the practices of yT, include me. But: If anyone have a problem in anything yT does: tell with yT
If you want, make it public. But please: more Information. Things like “I heard . . ” doesn’t bring anyone forward.
And I don’t like most of the sort of personally Attack in some posts here.
Poldi123
Hello,
so there are two OSS projects, which YT is violating the GPL. And you still have not written which one …
in Germany we have still roman law: a Person is not guilty, except proven otherwise.
In this case you have not proven nothing. So defending Zeta is the right thing to do.
Greetings,
Roman
It saddens me to see both your articles and your responses to it. Is the BeOS community really in such a sad state that it has two sides fighting each other, without either side of them trying to cooperate?
Namecalling and generalizations never did anyone any good. I propose that anyone who has to something to complain about should take it the party in question first. In the case mentioned in this article: Dave, why don’t you take Alan’s (aka voidref) offer and name the open source packages in question so he can take care of publishing the source code?
Alan and I did have a long conversation on IRC about the issues I raised. They turned out to be real and the solutions not as simple as yT simply “publishinh the source code”. I wasn’ able to give more specifics as the person who highlighted the problem did so in a private conversation. To have given more details would have made his identity more obvious.
The solutions to this problem aren’t simple, nor are they easy. Please read my follow-up posts ‘Zeta & Open Source’ and ‘BeOS & Building Apps’ for more detailed replies.
My apologies. Somehow I was under the impressions as if this article was your most recent and didn’t catch the newer ones. I’m glad to hear that things are rolling and I keep my fingers crossed that a solution will be found that everyone involved is happy with.