5 ms·

While I agree with your statement on it's face, in the context of the OP, this is just whinging. The author is not just offering constructive criticism on a pos

While I agree with your statement on it's face, in the context of the OP, this is just whinging. The author is not just offering constructive criticism on a possible fork of NGINX, he's calling the NGINX business out for "withholding" features. The tone is distinctly one of being "owed" a feature common to another popular FOSS project, instead of being grateful for everything NGINX provides (which is a lot, and probably why switching to Apache is suggested with some reluctance in the OP).

ams6110 13y ago
And using it for his own commercial purposes to boot. Really comes across as a crybaby.
pjmlp 13y ago
This part of FOSS culture I really dislike as a developer. Many people seem to consider an offence that other developers need to make a living, instead of being grateful of being able to sell stuff using software they haven't paid a dime for. Then become outraged when the developers come to the conclusion that the baker won't sell bread for pull requests. This is what moved me into the direction of suggesting dual license for open source projects, every time someone consults me on it.
- ars_technician 13y ago
  What you are suggesting is the part of a greedy FOSS project. One that enjoys the external open source contributions, yet still charges for features in the software. It's disgusting and an insult to your contributors, unless you pay them all money as well. There is nothing wrong with making money, but don't to it with sleazy tactics like this that put you in a conflict of interest. Charge for support or a hosted version, but don't artificially cripple the software. If you do want to go that way, don't be open source at all because you are just a leech on the community.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    Quite the contrary, let me explain better. I am all for charging for support or hosted versions. However this usually only suits server side software or developer tools. There are plenty more of other types of software. What I dislike are the companies that just use FOSS as free beer, specially in closed source products or behind SaaS walls. So when asked for advice what type of license one should give to their projects, my recommendation is always to go GPL for open source projects. If the developer community gets contacted by commercial vendors, then either create a special license for the respective vendor, or have a general one for those type of cases. But always use a license that prevents people selling your work as theirs.
  - rhino444 13y ago
    > What you are suggesting is the part of a greedy FOSS project. One that enjoys the external open source contributions, yet still charges for features in the software. It's disgusting and an insult to your contributors, unless you pay them all money as well. Just for the records: http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx/contributors/summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx/contributors/summary Indeed there are useful patches/bugfixes from the community, however nginx has always been almost a "one-man operation". To the best of my knowledge, syslog code in nginx plus isn't based on any 3rd party work too.
avenger123 13y ago
What I love the most about the author's post is the "fork it" part. The author goes out of his/her way to pick out what's wrong with NGINX due to the inadequate SAN infrastructure and at the end suggests someone else fork the project so his/her company can continue to milk the free software of the backs of others. It's somewhat disgusting.
- ars_technician 13y ago
  >The author goes out of his/her way to pick out what's wrong with NGINX due to the inadequate SAN infrastructure Wrong. NGINX has recognized this as a problem and discovered apache solved it years ago for a reason. So they decided to play catch-up, but charge for it. >company can continue to milk the free software of the backs of others. >It's somewhat disgusting. That's FOSS. If you don't like it, don't use it. What NGINX is doing is disgusting. The FOSS community actively invested in NGINX via external patches, documentation, bug reports, how-to's, chef-scripts, etc and NGINX is paying everyone back by charging for features.
  - avenger123 13y ago
    I agree with you. If you don't like it don't use it. I don't have any problems with the author's discussion on the issue's with NGINX, but the solution to the problem is not to say its time for a fork and for a better product to come along. That's pretty much an ultimatum type argument and no one likes that. Especially if the author has no stake in the actual development. It's one thing for Linus Torvalds to be abrasive (he's earned the right) versus being abrasive without any real foundation (I didn't get the impression that the author is a strong contributor to the project).

ams6110 13y ago

And using it for his own commercial purposes to boot. Really comes across as a crybaby.

pjmlp 13y ago

This part of FOSS culture I really dislike as a developer. Many people seem to consider an offence that other developers need to make a living, instead of being grateful of being able to sell stuff using software they haven't paid a dime for. Then become outraged when the developers come to the conclusion that the baker won't sell bread for pull requests. This is what moved me into the direction of suggesting dual license for open source projects, every time someone consults me on it.

ars_technician 13y ago
What you are suggesting is the part of a greedy FOSS project. One that enjoys the external open source contributions, yet still charges for features in the software. It's disgusting and an insult to your contributors, unless you pay them all money as well. There is nothing wrong with making money, but don't to it with sleazy tactics like this that put you in a conflict of interest. Charge for support or a hosted version, but don't artificially cripple the software. If you do want to go that way, don't be open source at all because you are just a leech on the community.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  Quite the contrary, let me explain better. I am all for charging for support or hosted versions. However this usually only suits server side software or developer tools. There are plenty more of other types of software. What I dislike are the companies that just use FOSS as free beer, specially in closed source products or behind SaaS walls. So when asked for advice what type of license one should give to their projects, my recommendation is always to go GPL for open source projects. If the developer community gets contacted by commercial vendors, then either create a special license for the respective vendor, or have a general one for those type of cases. But always use a license that prevents people selling your work as theirs.
- rhino444 13y ago
  > What you are suggesting is the part of a greedy FOSS project. One that enjoys the external open source contributions, yet still charges for features in the software. It's disgusting and an insult to your contributors, unless you pay them all money as well. Just for the records: http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx/contributors/summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/nginx/contributors/summary Indeed there are useful patches/bugfixes from the community, however nginx has always been almost a "one-man operation". To the best of my knowledge, syslog code in nginx plus isn't based on any 3rd party work too.

avenger123 13y ago

What I love the most about the author's post is the "fork it" part. The author goes out of his/her way to pick out what's wrong with NGINX due to the inadequate SAN infrastructure and at the end suggests someone else fork the project so his/her company can continue to milk the free software of the backs of others. It's somewhat disgusting.

ars_technician 13y ago
>The author goes out of his/her way to pick out what's wrong with NGINX due to the inadequate SAN infrastructure Wrong. NGINX has recognized this as a problem and discovered apache solved it years ago for a reason. So they decided to play catch-up, but charge for it. >company can continue to milk the free software of the backs of others. >It's somewhat disgusting. That's FOSS. If you don't like it, don't use it. What NGINX is doing is disgusting. The FOSS community actively invested in NGINX via external patches, documentation, bug reports, how-to's, chef-scripts, etc and NGINX is paying everyone back by charging for features.
- avenger123 13y ago
  I agree with you. If you don't like it don't use it. I don't have any problems with the author's discussion on the issue's with NGINX, but the solution to the problem is not to say its time for a fork and for a better product to come along. That's pretty much an ultimatum type argument and no one likes that. Especially if the author has no stake in the actual development. It's one thing for Linus Torvalds to be abrasive (he's earned the right) versus being abrasive without any real foundation (I didn't get the impression that the author is a strong contributor to the project).