Recently in Stupid Companies Category

Do you see that picture on the right? I bought Windows XP when it came out. An actual legitimate copy of Windows XP Home Edition. It promised a lot of things that it eventually pretty much delivered after a couple of service packs. It's moved from machine to machine as I've updated hardware. I've gotten rid of basically all of my old PC hardware and now it lives on my Macbook Pro. I've been reasonably happy with it. Except...

With such a long history, I've long-since passed the time when Microsoft accepted my key without question through internet activation. Do you know what happens when you pass that time? Painful crushing phone activation.

Observe:

First, you have to call a number, and enter 9 sets of 6 digits (they're kind enough to let you use the touch-tone phone to do it, instead of braving their voice recognition system). Then, on the 9th set, it always complains that it didn't understand the last set of digits, until you're forced to tell it to forward you to a human without finishing the automated input.

Then, since it didn't actually record all of those numbers you put in, you get to read them again to the call-center person.

Then, they read a string of numbers back to you, that you have to type in, and finally, in true Microsoft fashion, you hit "Next", followed by "Finish", because it wouldn't be Windows without a wizard with a few extra unnecessary clicks. ;)

Have you seen what you have to do to activate a pirated version of of Windows XP? I did a quick Google search out of curiosity. You use a pre-made serial number, and then run a command that will do the activation for you, and one more command to trick Windows Genuine Advantage(TM). Voila!

It's sad that I find it so tempting to pirate something I legally own just because it's so frustrating to activate the damn thing.

The best part is, the only reason I had to re-activate at all was because the logic board went bad in my MacBook Pro, and Windows no longer recognized it as the hardware it was installed on.

Even better, now that it's done, I have to re-activate every time I switch from booting in VMware to booting natively through Boot Camp, or vice-versa.

Alternatively, you know what I had to do to register my copy of Mac OS X when I installed it? Nothing. Imagine that.

I'm in the lucky position that I get to work on open-source software for a living. Not only that, but I work with a group of people who really believe in open-source software as more than just an alternate business strategy -- it's a philosophy that benefits everyone involved.

OpenNMS is completely open-source. There's no whacky $50-per-node "enterprise" version with extra features -- we put it all out there, and we stake our reputations on being the people you contact when you need something more than community support on the mailing list. The code is open, and anyone can become an OpenNMS consultant if they want. To survive as a services company, we have to be good at what we do, and not just keep the code hostage and force customers to go through us to get things done. We have to work our butts off to remain the go-to experts on OpenNMS.

That's what makes it frustrating when we see our code, and the code of lots of other contributors appear to be misused. The whole point of the GPL is that everyone benefits from improvements made to the codebase; taking that code and integrating it into a proprietary product goes against the letter as well as the intent of the project.

So on that note, it's official, we've retained Moglen Ravicher, LLC (an arm of the Software Freedom Law Center) to represent us regarding potential GPL violations in Cittio's Watchtower.

Obviously, since lawyers are now involved, there's a whole lot we can't say; it's their job to talk to Cittio and, if it comes to it, the courts, to prove our case. What I can say is, while I'm sad that it's come to this, I'm glad that we've decided to take the plunge and not just "Do No Evil" as Google says, but "Do the Right Thing" and defend our code and the community's code.

My former employer, Motricity, finally officially announced laying off a boatload of people this morning.

I've weighed in quite a bit on Motricity and their baffling business strategies on the MocoNews post that talked about rumors of layoffs; going by what most of us former employees have said, this has been expected for a looooooong time.

Best wishes go out to all of those affected by layoffs; I still know a few folks who have stuck around this long; they should be at least expecting a nice severance package and some time to look for something new. I worked with plenty of very talented people there who I expect will be able to get back on their feet pretty quick.

Good luck to all!

So Tarus posted about Cittio and their potential GPL violations last night, and it made Slashdot this morning. Once again I was reminded why I haven't read Slashdot comments for a number of years. ;)

It all boils down to a bunch of people saying:

1. "OMG Get a lawyer!!!!"
2. "It's the GPL, you're not a customer, they don't have to tell you anything! Shut up!" ...and...
3. "DUDE. They totally say they use OpenNMS RIGHT HERE!"

Yes, they do mention OpenNMS on that page. They also say they use OpenNMS 1.0.2 which is either unfortunate for them, or very likely modified in a way that doesn't appear to be communicated to customers.

By the time I posted a response clarifying things, it was too late and it's buried way deep in the comments, so I would like to reiterate it here:

"So what's all this then?"

Well, that link says they're running OpenNMS 1.0.2, which, given the questions Cittio employees have asked on the OpenNMS mailing lists in the past, seems very unlikely (although technically possible). If they *are* using 1.0.2, they very likely *have* made modifications, 'cause that code has plenty of bugs that have been fixed in later OpenNMS releases. ;)

One thing that Tarus didn't really mention is that we (The OpenNMS Group) have had a few folks come to us wanting quotes to compare us to Cittio, and they've been rather surprised that Cittio is in fact already using OpenNMS under the covers. The problem is not with them using OpenNMS, OpenNMS is all about sticking not only to the letter but also the spirit of the GPL, and they can do whatever they want with it as long as they're complying with the distribution requirements of the license. The problem is whether Cittio *is* upholding their side of the GPL, and it's unclear whether they are -- and there are some signs that they might not be.

As for them not having to offer the source until they distribute the software, yes, that's true, but from what we've heard from existing Cittio customers, that is not being made clear to them. Not only that, but while the wording of the GPL may not make it obvious, the FAQ does:

The difference between this and "incorporating" the GPL-covered software is partly a matter of substance and partly form. The substantive part is this: if the two programs are combined so that they become effectively two parts of one program, then you can't treat them as two separate programs. So the GPL has to cover the whole thing.

If the two programs remain well separated, like the compiler and the kernel, or like an editor and a shell, then you can treat them as two separate programs--but you have to do it properly. The issue is simply one of form: how you describe what you are doing. Why do we care about this? Because we want to make sure the users clearly understand the free status of the GPL-covered software in the collection.

It seems likely that they've incorporated OpenNMS into their software at a lower-level than just screen-scraping it's output and stuffing it into their own UI. At that point, they should be prepared to provide the modified OpenNMS source to their customers. Not only that, but considering how tough companies are on open-source developers accidentally "tainting" open-source code with IP from their closed-source employers, it's more than a tad annoying that many closed-source companies taking advantage of open-source software are happy to use it, but ignore the spirit of sharing that is part of being in the community. "We won't say anything, but if you do ask us for the source, we'll fax it to you." ;)

Again, all this is unproven, and they've not been terribly responsive to private inquiries on the matter, and that's part of the reason Tarus posted, the question is -- what's the next step?

Update: Tarus also weighed in on the slashdot stuff here.

So I used to think the folks at SourceForge were just overworked and under-appreciated. They've worked really hard recently to show me this is not the case. Sure, it's a "free" service, but it's there to sell their premium services, and they get a lot of exposure being the place to go for open-source development.

They've been having growing pains for a while; a few months ago, they had a major CVS outage. Open-source development the world around ground to a standstill for days while they worked to get hardware up. Since then, they've been planning on transitioning folks to subversion, and to a new CVS infrastructure. Did I mention that in the meantime, the anonymous CVS has been frozen and out-of-date since March? This outage was only "repaired" for developers; user access has been broken all this time.

Since then, we've been planning on moving to our own server (donated by xs4all). As you've seen in previous posts, I've made progress towards that end. In the meantime, our expectation was to get in on the "new CVS" beta. We've been preparing versions of Fink that can "phone home" to figure out what the CVS repository should be, so we'd be prepared for when the switch came.

2 days ago, another CVS outage occurred. After a day of waiting without the site status page being updated, I opened 1 of (I think) hundreds of open unanswered bugs about CVS being down, making note that they should at least update the site status, so people would stop opening bugs. I went to the #sourceforge channel on IRC and asked about it, and they said there were network driver problems. They got it fixed, and CVS was back up, for, literally, 30 seconds. It turns out that machine also had a hard drive out. After being told it would be up once the hard drive was replaced, I wandered off to nap some more. I'd been out sick for 2 days and was really hoping to commit the culmination of 2 weeks of work on KDE fixes for outstanding issues that were (and are) affecting nearly all Fink KDE users. I had made the last few changes while I was at home, sick, and could finally commit and get back to sleep.

Hours pass, and I finally ask, "I hate to keep bugging you guys, but it seems the site status never gets updated during outages like this. Were there problems putting in new drives? Is there something else keeping our cvs from coming back up?" The response: "I'll update site status tomorrow with details, I don't have full details at the moment, but I do know it will be down over night, at minimum." Understandable, things happen. But the fact that the site status page wasn't the first thing updated as soon as a problem was found shows me how much they care about their users. You can save a lot of ill will by just telling people what's going on.

Today, the site status gets updated:

( 2006-05-10 04:43:14 - Project CVS Service )   As of 2006-05-09 the developer CVS server had a disk-failure. As the new CVS infrastructure is in its final phases of rollout, we'll be deploying it, in place of the current infrastructure, by end of week. We'll be sending out an email to project administrators with further details later in the day, regarding how to access the new CVS servers and the changes that occurred with the new infrastructure.

So one thing to note. Anonymous CVS for the new servers is at a new CVSROOT. Everyone that wants to access the new CVS repository will need to check out fresh, or manually munge their CVS/Root files. This is the eventuality we were going to handle gracefully, which is now impossible.

Additionally, shell access to the project servers (ie, the way we log in to modify pages on http://fink.sourceforge.net/) is down, so basically:

• we can't get to CVS
• when we do, our users won't be able to get to CVS
• we can't update the old CVS to give users a version of fink that can find the new CVS
• we can't update the web site to tell people what's going on
• once we can, the only option we have for our users is going to require manual intervention of some form, at the very least switching to selfupdate-rsync

This is intensely frustrating. It would be one thing if it were just hardware and server issues. These things happen. But the total lack of disaster planning and managing of user resources (and user expectations) is just abysmal. The timing makes it all that much worse, since we were literally prepared to finally move away from SourceForge's spotty service in the next few weeks (or, at the very least, months).

But don't worry, SourceForge, we'll be reducing your server load just as soon as we're able. You can count on a little less load in the future.

So I got a sweet new camera and went "wow, even comes with up-to-date Mac software!" Little did I know what I was in for.