July 1, 2010
"In short, open core is a model where a company produces a product that is mostly available as open source, but then there are some closed source components around the open source “core”. The point of the model is that it is supposedly easier to sell closed source than open source."

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From Open core is not open source.

I agree that the open core model makes you produce more close source software, because the open core it’s based in selling closed source software and not open source.

Henrik Hingo uses Red Hat and Canonical as a good examples of open source based companies that are doing it well, but I’m not that sure.

The open core advocates say that selling closed source it’s good, because that allows them to make more open source software. It makes sense, to some extent, and we’ve seen Canonical use the same argument to support some unpopular decisions (even the closed source of their Ubuntu One services).

You know, because a company needs to make money to hire developers to work on open source. It’s scary, isn’t it?

by jjm on 10:59pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyjFbfG
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Filed under: Open Source open core Canonical closed source 
December 29, 2009
Why I Avoid Using Closed Source Software

Lemme add: while possible.

--------------------- Kernel Begin ------------------------ 

 
 WARNING:  Segmentation Faults in these executables
    npviewer.bin :  1 Time(s)
 
 WARNING:  General Protection Faults in these executables
    npviewer.bin :  9 Time(s)
 
 ---------------------- Kernel End -------------------------

This is an extract of the logwatch report that it’s generated every day in my Fedora system (do you read it, don’t you?)

Yes, it’s the flash-plugin 10.0.42.34-release (non-free, from Adobe repos), and yesterday crashed 10 times and I don’t remember I browsed any page with intensive flash stuff on it (that’s very vague, because almost any page in the Internet has Flash on it).

Anyway, it crashes, it sometimes eats all my CPU (and/or the sound it’s choppy), and it piss me off that I can’t see Vimeo stuff on HD (may be it’s my 3 years old laptop), but there’s no replacement right now that doesn’t exclude you from being a normal web citizen.

I think it’s too late for Flash, but we must learn from this story and try doing something so it doesn’t happen again. I bet you’ve seen links to Spotify, haven’t you? What happens when you click on it? Disappointment.

I don’t know what’s the formula to stop this kind of viral closed source adoption that leads to de facto standards that finally avoids you to be free to choose, but I know that Gtalk and XMPP advocacy helped with the Microsoft Messenger issue.

We may need both: a free implementation of the idea, and a cool company to promote it.

by jjm on 10:10am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyIFHkg
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Filed under: Fedora Flash crash Spotify Bad Standards standard free software closed source 
April 17, 2009
"Currently Dropbox for Linux consists of two major components. dropboxd is a per-user closed-source daemon process that makes sure your $HOME/Dropbox directory is properly synchronized with your other computers and our secure backend. nautilus-dropbox is a GPL’d Nautilus plugin that connects to dropboxd (via a pair of Unix domain sockets) and presents a GUI based on the information dropboxd provides. You guessed right, GPL means nautilus-dropbox is open source, and it’s free software!"

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From Dropbox - How does it work?

Hey man! Do you realize that the other component it’s closed source software? You guessed right, no matter the nautilus component is GPL! You’re still using closed source!

Moreover they encourage you to develop an interface for KDE. Funny.

by jjm on 4:25pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZy5opkf
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Filed under: dropbox closed source open source