The OpenBSD project is requesting help to surpass its financial difficulties. As you probably know, the development team of OpenBSD is also in charge of the development of OpenSSH. Could these economic problems put in danger the continuity of OpenSSH, an essential tool for Sysadmins like you? While all this happens, the big companies (Cisco, IBM, RedHat, etc etc etc) that take advantage of the work done in OpenSSH for free are in silence. And what about you? What will you do without OpenSSH?
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A few days ago I read an insightful thought from a poster (Joseph Daniel Zukige) at slashdot. It deserves to be read here…
I have thought along similar lines, but it really demonstrates something that we must quit ignoring."Free" is an illusion.When we use "free" software, we pay for it one way or another. Time or money, and, no, time is not money.Money is green stuff that you through around on the crops to make things grow, as somebody in some famous musical once said, quoting somebody else, I'm sure. When you collect too much money in one place, it goes fetid.Time is the true currency, although too much time can go fetid as well.The licenses are gentlemen's agreements. It's a trade of time for time, with rules of courtesy. (EULAs are _not_ gentlemen's agreements, I am not taking about those licenses, they don't deserve to be called licenses.) The licenses form the ground rules for the community that forms around the software. It's very much like the old guilds, although much more open in a very good way.With the GPL, some of the rules of courtesy which are important for maintaining the infrastructure of the guild are explicit. We might assume that this is because Stallman is a cynic, or because he is a realist, but must people are still confused and think he is an idealist.With the BSD license, the rules are implicit, derived from the external society, the (Christian, though not entirely uniquely so in the current view of history) principle of casting one's bread on the water. It is expected that the waters will bring the bread back, multiplied. And this is where things have broken down.Even under the BSD license, the rules of giving back are natural laws, and are not suspended. Humans whose primary product are sales presentations have no idea that they have to give back or the resource will be depleted. Stallman recognized that, Theo has not yet.People have to be reminded to be courteous, and that's why an idealist and general nice guy like Theo ends up making enemies. The license doesn't remind people, so he has to spend his energy reminding them.Putting new source under GPL would be one solution, but, as is well known, it is not one that can really be considered yet. A new modified BSD that contains a non-binding reminder that the resources don't renew themselves may be what's in order right now.