The title is misleading -- one developer (a major one, mind you) is stepping back from offering free community support. This is not "Apache PLC4X" announcing an end of community support, it is one of the core developers announcing he will be doing so.
Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
121–130 of 162 posts
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#122I truely feel for the guy. Reading the blog it seems like the age old story of having a superior product (drastically cut cost, better performance, etc.). However getting managers at customers to stick their neck out for it is hard. Because they know (and to a degree I can't say I blame them) changing such a critical piece of core infrastructure is going to be stressful. And what's in it for them if the company saves…
Proprietary solution never cost "only" money. You generally have to negotiate licensing, then you have to renegotiate licensing when you need to make a change (or when you current terms expire). You have to invest effort into understanding your license (Open Source licenses are usually at least somewhat standardized and usually a lot short than proprietary licenses). Finally, the big kicker is vendor lock-in. If the…
I think this misses the point, though-- no matter how true it is.
The costs associated with procuring the existing, proprietary solution are understood and accepted. If it goes wrong, it's a risk that the organization has collectively selected together.
Advocating for doing something cheaper doesn't gain any individual person that much necessarily, and incurs outsized risk. It also incurs a lot of explicit, poorly-understood costs outside of those already accepted and recurring costs.
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one except the most credulous buffoons really believed the "MIT is more free" nonsense about the GPL, it is, was, and always will be a push to move away from "Free as in Freedom" to "Free as in Free Tech Support". Large Corps won't use your code if its AGPL? Thats a feature, code away without worrying about breaking anything!
Having a license where "network use is distribution" seems to be a must these days. I also recently found the European Union Public License (EUPL, e.g. [0]), which seems similar to the AGPL. Might be interesting to Europeans. The translations being available in multiple languages is really nice. It being a less often used license could also be a feature. [0] https://choosealicense.com/licenses/eupl-1.2/
EUPL is severable, unlike GPL family. GPL is explicitly non-severable.
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#124Hi all, geee ... a friend pointed me here and I have to admit that I'm quite overwhelmed by the wave my post generated. But very happy it seeded some good discussions. However I should point out that only I said that I would stop providing free community support. I am only one of the contributors. Even if I am probalby one of the most active ones, there are still others probably going to step up and tackle the one or…
Just curious (not in the industry), and I guess you maybe have already looked into this, but in addition to paid support have you considered paid work for implementing a specific new feature that a company wanted? A previous company I worked for did this for custom requests and made some money out of it.
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#125The title is misleading -- one developer (a major one, mind you) is stepping back from offering free community support. This is not "Apache PLC4X" announcing an end of community support, it is one of the core developers announcing he will be doing so.
To be fair, it seems there is just about ~5 developers who have contributed more than 100 commits(https://github.com/apache/plc4x/graphs/contributors), with only three of them working on it for longer than one year. So it seems Christofer is just about the "core development team".
Looking around at the website and the GitHub repository, I can't find a single place to get community support either, it seems to only be commercial support now, so it seems Apache PLC4X is indeed no longer offering community support.
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one except the most credulous buffoons really believed the "MIT is more free" nonsense about the GPL, it is, was, and always will be a push to move away from "Free as in Freedom" to "Free as in Free Tech Support". Large Corps won't use your code if its AGPL? Thats a feature, code away without worrying about breaking anything!
Having a license where "network use is distribution" seems to be a must these days. I also recently found the European Union Public License (EUPL, e.g. [0]), which seems similar to the AGPL. Might be interesting to Europeans. The translations being available in multiple languages is really nice. It being a less often used license could also be a feature. [0] https://choosealicense.com/licenses/eupl-1.2/
Unfortunately it's compatibility clause means it's only as strong as GPL...
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#127I think building the stuff YOU (or your company) need for free, and offering paid support to build stuff other need is exactly how open source should work. If no one has interest in paying the paid support, I guess there is no business opportunity, and it's better to focus on something else.
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#128If I am ever rich enough to engage in philanthropy for open source projects, I’ll let an admittedly petty pet peeve drive some of my decisions about which projects to shower cash onto: If you define your acronyms and tell me up front what tf your project does without making me google it, I’ll support you.
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#129It's not surprising that people and especially companies are not going out of their way to pay for a free product.
Instead of being hurt by how ungrateful the world is, maybe it would be better to find a way to make the rich pay and let the poor (like me) still get the software for free.
It's not like it's unheard of in the open source world.
Re: Apache PLC4X announcing end of community support due to missing funding
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a peon, I push for open source because I'm tired of doing the same thing at multiple jobs that have nothing to do with our competitive advantage. That goes for a lot of industry collaboration. So much money is quietly wasted on labor that could be saved by standards and open source projects existing.
So true! I don't understand why the government does not provide grants to open source projects that help the most people. Things are changing (i.e. Sweden & France using Matrix), but I see some projects like public infrastructure (roads, sewage, power lines.) If they are good and strong enough, a business can piggyback on it and be more efficient.
Call me cynical, but I believe more government adoption of open source will occur only when those projects can match the political kickbacks being paid by the proprietary vendors. Corruption is globally endemic, and there is too much money sloshing around to keep politicians honest and working in the interests of The People they purportedly serve.