Re: MF vs. LAMP - orthogonal to closed vs. Free (was: Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?)
On Thu, Jun 30, 2005, Omer Zak wrote about MF vs. LAMP - orthogonal to closed vs. Free (was: Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?): Nowadays, IBM is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) supporters of Linux developments. They are in the business of tailoring solutions for customers, rather than selling shrink-wrapped software. Therefore, using Linux and Linux-based software makes a lot of business sense for them. Actually, that is not as simple as it sounds. First, the plain fact is that most software that IBM is currently involved in is NOT open source or free software. Second, IBM has to face, and in the future this will become even more urgent, the problem of how to avoid making a complete transformation from a research and development company, into a low profit margin chevrat co'ach adam (how do you say that in English?). It is not clear that it is in IBM's (and other companies, like Nzer's) best interests to stop hiding their home-grown software, and instead to just get paid, by-hour of support person, for the specific fixes and upgrades the users want. Like Nzer said, there's a limit to what you can charge for an expert's hour (if you overcharge, they'll just find a cheaper expert), while there's almost no limit to what you can charge for new software. Obviously, the IBMs and similar companies of the world will need to face competition from some small company that comes to a customer and tells him We can install for you a piece of free software, and only charge you half what you pay now - we will modify this software software to fit exactly what you need. And indeed, such companies are appearing and causing headaches to companies that want to keep their old marketing techniques. But apparently, these headaches are not (yet?) big enough to force the entire market to change its ways. -- Nadav Har'El| Thursday, Jun 30 2005, 23 Sivan 5765 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |The socks in my drawer are like http://nadav.harel.org.il |snowflakes: No two are alike. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: but its worth noting that if you will act as you act (espcially at your age) you will be treated as a less then progessional person. more so, you give other open source advocates like me bad reputation Nzer, I stayed out of the argument up till now, because I really don't like trolls, but I have to tell you that reading what and how you both wrote sure makes one of you come out as a less then progessional person (I do assume you meant proffesional, right?) but it sure ain't Oron. You can screw your customer as much as you (and they) want, and it really isn't our business untill you made it one by coming to this public mailing list and asking for help to screw your customers. Don't like what we have to say? though. It's not about open source and software, it's about being a human being. PS. Have you considered the fact that this is a public and archived mailing list? anyone who is about to do business with your company and has two bits for a brain will read this little exchange. I doubt that it bode well for you and your reputation. Have a nice life, Gilad -- Gilad Ben-Yossef [EMAIL PROTECTED] Codefidence. A name you can trust(tm) Web: http://codefidence.com | SIP: [EMAIL PROTECTED] IL: +972.9.8650475 ext. 201 | Fax:+972.9.8850643 US: +1.360.2275194 ext. 201 | Cel: +972.52.8260388 I am Jack's Overwritten Stack Pointer -- Hackers Club, the movie = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
Nadav Har'El wrote: Actually, sadly, he almost convinced me. Indeed, imagine a market where you can sell your software to 100 installation, for a price of $100,000 each (just making numbers up). That's all great, but how do you get more income after that? Most companies like to get more money from improvements and upgrades. Aside from all the usual arguments about whether it's right to REQUIRE income after that, whether the company deserves said income or not, there is a more fundamental difference. Having the source does not mean open source. The very fact that the program is an expect tcl script, and therefor readable to the client, does not imply that the client is at liberty to change it and do with it as they please. In other words, what Nzer is looking for is a way to technically prevent the clients from doing what they LEGALLY are not allowed to do anyways. Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting ltd. Have you backed up today's work? http://www.lingnu.com/backup.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
Hello, I need to compile expect source. (The main goal here is to hide the source from the customer not improve performance or anything of the sort) This is vital because after having a system based on expect (which can be read natively) mysql (which support generate ddl) and php we figured we have our commercial system were all components are open source!!! I need to know if there is a way to "compile" expect source or if it is impossible, do you know of any compilable alternative? Thanks scipio __Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 12:24:23AM -0700, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: Hello, I need to compile expect source. (The main goal here is to hide the source from the customer not improve performance or anything of the sort) This is vital because after having a system based on expect (which can be read natively) mysql (which support generate ddl) and php we figured we have our commercial system were all components are open source!!! I need to know if there is a way to compile expect source or if it is impossible, do you know of any compilable alternative? What distro are you using? I figure it provides a package of expect. Get the sources of that package and use the standard methods of the packaging system to extract the source tree, build that package, or whatever you want. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wednesday 29 June 2005 10:24, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: The main goal here is to hide the source from the customer not improve performance or anything of the sort 1. Binarization does not give you any protection against an attacker only the self-illusion you are protected at the price of harder maintenance. If you doubt this, ask yourself why it is so easy for anyone to get cracked version of any software on earth (and I mean closed-source-binary-software-from-big-companies). This is vital because after having a system based on expect (which can be read natively) mysql (which support generate ddl) and php we figured we have our commercial system were all components are open source!!! 2. There are companies that *sells* open source software for many years. 3. The economics, however, is different: - It's hard to overcharge the client because he is not locked-in to the software vendor and can walk away with the software. - But the software company also saved a bundle. Can you figure out how much your company saved by not developing/buying a database, a scripting language, a web-server, etc? So I suggest you stop whining about potential loss of sells when your company profited a lot from what it didn't have to buy. The fact is that corporates *want* to pay for software when the following conditions are met: - The software provides real value. - Someone stands behind the product and provides support, upgrades, training, customizations, etc. - They can trust that person/company because it is dependable, responsible, professional, honest, etc. Now does your company fit the bill? -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. [Albert Einstein]. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
--0-764380380-1120039057=:29102 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I use redhat and also cygwin and AIX but i don't understand or maybe i wasn't clear enough I have expect program (xxx.exp) and expect and all the tools. the problem is that since the xxx.exp is script (readable to all) all the code is provided to the customer. we don't want that so i want to either rewrite it with C++ engine (similar to expect) or compile xxx.exp to xxx.a.out (make the source invisible!) is it feasible? Tzafrir Cohen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 12:24:23AM -0700, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: Hello, I need to compile expect source. (The main goal here is to hide the source from the customer not improve performance or anything of the sort) This is vital because after having a system based on expect (which can be read natively) mysql (which support generate ddl) and php we figured we have our commercial system were all components are open source!!! I need to know if there is a way to compile expect source or if it is impossible, do you know of any compilable alternative? What distro are you using? I figure it provides a package of expect. Get the sources of that package and use the standard methods of the packaging system to extract the source tree, build that package, or whatever you want. -- Tzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | best ICQ# 16849755 | | friend = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Yahoo! Sports Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football --0-764380380-1120039057=:29102 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit DIVI use redhat and also cygwin and AIX but i don't understand or maybe i wasn't clear enough/DIV DIVnbsp;/DIV DIVI have expect program (xxx.exp) and expect and all the tools./DIV DIVnbsp;/DIV DIVthe problem is that since the xxx.exp isnbsp;scriptnbsp;(readable to all)nbsp;all the code is provided to the customer./DIV DIVwe don't want that so i want to either rewrite it with C++ engine (similar to expect) or /DIV DIVcompile xxx.exp to xxx.a.out (make the source invisible!)/DIV DIVis it feasible?/DIV DIVBRBRBITzafrir Cohen lt;[EMAIL PROTECTED]gt;/I/B wrote:/DIV BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style=PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solidOn Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 12:24:23AM -0700, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote:BRgt; Hello,BRgt; BRgt; I need to compile expect source. (The main goal here is to hide the source from the customer not improve performance or anything of the sort)BRgt; This is vital because after having a system based on expect (which can be read natively) mysql (which support generate ddl) and php we figured we have our commercial system were all components are open source!!!BRgt; BRgt; I need to know if there is a way to compile expect source or if it is impossible, do you know of any compilable alternative? BRBRWhat distro are you using? BRBRI figure it provides a package of expect. GetBRthe sources of that package and use the standard methods of theBRpackaging system to extract the source tree, build that package, orBRwhatever you want.BRBR-- BRTzafrir Cohen | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | VIM isBRhttp://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's BR[EMAIL PROTECTED] | | bestBRICQ# 16849755 | | friendBRBR=BRTo unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] withBRthe word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the commandBRecho unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]BRBR/BLOCKQUOTEp hr size=1Yahoo! Sportsbr a href=http://pa.yahoo.com/*http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=33539/*http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com?ovchn=YAHovcpn=Integrationovcrn=Mail+footerovrfd=YAHovtac=AD Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football/a --0-764380380-1120039057=:29102-- = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
--0-70147-1120040360=:76647 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dear Oron, While I do appriciate the buisness advice, I prefer to receive buisness advice from paid consultants who know what I am doing. Giving me a advice without knowing what i am doing is unprofessional. I don't want to expose what my company is doing (we are not telling anyone yet :-)), but let me tell you some things about our market. we operate in financial segements with banks and mainframes. nobody here is an attacker. my target market size is about 2000 installations and nobody will put cracked version of my software on the ineternet. In our market companies live of maintance fees, there are very few new clients and people pay you to introduce new systems to their already existing solutions. you may not like it but then you may like to know that this market rolls between 40-50 B$ a year depends who you ask. the people in those industries use mainframe VSAM CICS and other software (as wekk as our programs) by choice, not because they have too (trust me everybody heard of linux by now) and this is the world they want to live in. they may like to pay less but they prefer to maintain mainframe then the alternative... saying closed source has no place is just as dumb as open source has no place. charging by the hour in this market is impossible because nobody will pay me 10,000$ an hour and those are the margins i need to justify the development cost. sorry the market size is no bigger then about 10 installation in israel maybe couple of thousends world wide. we are not supporting for apache here... I am very sorry to say that your mail is typical to open source enthoistics who can sometimes be just as fanatic and clueless buisness wise as microsoft fud proclaim those kind of opinions, when heard by executives with far less time then you think serve the oposite purpose. they convince managers that in the open source world there are only mindless teenagers who like to mumble alot. and by the way... almost no opensource comapny made profit. mosts linux distros are closing their source at least partially. red hat has RHE, Suse was baught by Novell. mysql is far from open. you can make money from open source but you need to know how and models involving selling licenses are much easier. JFYI. ciao scipio. Oron Peled [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wednesday 29 June 2005 10:24, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: The main goal here is to hide the source from the customer not improve performance or anything of the sort 1. Binarization does not give you any protection against an attacker only the self-illusion you are protected at the price of harder maintenance. If you doubt this, ask yourself why it is so easy for anyone to get cracked version of any software on earth (and I mean closed-source-binary-software-from-big-companies). This is vital because after having a system based on expect (which can be read natively) mysql (which support generate ddl) and php we figured we have our commercial system were all components are open source!!! 2. There are companies that *sells* open source software for many years. 3. The economics, however, is different: - It's hard to overcharge the client because he is not locked-in to the software vendor and can walk away with the software. - But the software company also saved a bundle. Can you figure out how much your company saved by not developing/buying a database, a scripting language, a web-server, etc? So I suggest you stop whining about potential loss of sells when your company profited a lot from what it didn't have to buy. The fact is that corporates *want* to pay for software when the following conditions are met: - The software provides real value. - Someone stands behind the product and provides support, upgrades, training, customizations, etc. - They can trust that person/company because it is dependable, responsible, professional, honest, etc. Now does your company fit the bill? -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. [Albert Einstein]. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --0-70147-1120040360=:76647 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit DIVDear Oron,/DIV DIVnbsp;/DIV DIVWhile I do appriciate the buisness advice, I prefer to receive buisness advice from paid consultants who know what I am doing. Giving me a advice without knowing what i am doing is
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
Nzer Zaidenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I need to know if there is a way to compile expect source or if it is impossible, do you know of any compilable alternative? I don't know of a way to compile expect sources (look at tcl docs?), but how big an effort will it be to rewrite the code in C using libexpect(3)? If it is easy to use C [or C++] engine you are looking for, libexpect is your friend. Of course, you'll have to weigh the effort against the expected payoff, and that's your business. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wed, Jun 29, 2005, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote about Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?: the problem is that since the xxx.exp is script (readable to all) all the code is provided to the customer. we don't want that so i want to either rewrite it with C++ engine (similar to expect) or compile xxx.exp to xxx.a.out (make the source invisible!) is it feasible? Since the majority of subscribers to this list, me included, are free software fanatics ( ;-) ), it will be hard for you to get a real answer on this question here, even if the answer was a definite yes. But to the point: No, I don't personally know of a TCL (that's the language behind Expect) compilation tool - but I'd assume one exists as TCL is a very mature language (I've used over a decade ago) and you should just try TCL compiler on Google or something. But for your obfuscation purposes, why a compiler at all? Why not just use some silly obfuscation (or encryption, if you'd like to call it that..) on the script, and when you want to run it, just unobfuscate it before running it? Yes, this method is insecure because users can figure out how to unobfuscate your code. But they can also figure out how to uncompile your compiled code, so what's the point really? I've never heard of any computer cracker of software pirate being stopped, or even slowed down considerably, by code being compiled. So I find it sad that people feel they must hide their code by compilation. -- Nadav Har'El|Wednesday, Jun 29 2005, 22 Sivan 5765 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |What's the greatest world-wide use of http://nadav.harel.org.il |cowhide? To hold cows together. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
--0-714621511-1120056707=:9531 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit libexpect was exactly what I needed. thank you. Oleg Goldshmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:Nzer Zaidenberg writes: I need to know if there is a way to compile expect source or if it is impossible, do you know of any compilable alternative? I don't know of a way to compile expect sources (look at tcl docs?), but how big an effort will it be to rewrite the code in C using libexpect(3)? If it is easy to use C [or C++] engine you are looking for, libexpect is your friend. Of course, you'll have to weigh the effort against the expected payoff, and that's your business. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. Learn more. --0-714621511-1120056707=:9531 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit DIVlibexpect was exactly whatnbsp;I needed. thank you.BRBRBIOleg Goldshmidt lt;[EMAIL PROTECTED]gt;/I/B wrote: BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style=PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solidNzer Zaidenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED]writes:BRBRgt; I need to know if there is a way to compile expect source or if it isBRgt; impossible, do you know of any compilable alternative?nbsp;BRBRI don't know of a way to compile expect sources (look at tcl docs?),BRbut how big an effort will it be to rewrite the code in C usingBRlibexpect(3)? If it is easy to use C [or C++] engine you are lookingBRfor, libexpect is your friend.BRBROf course, you'll have to weigh the effort against the expectedBRpayoff, and that's your business.BRBR-- BROleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.orgBRBRTo unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] withBRthe word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the commandBRecho unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]BRBR/BLOCKQUOTE/DIVp hr size=1Do you Yahoo!?br Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. a href=http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=29917/*http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250;Learn more./a --0-714621511-1120056707=:9531-- = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
there are tcl obfuscation tools - out there - and there are tcl compilers and installers - just google for them the tcl fanatics already thought of that :-) Nadav Har'El wrote: On Wed, Jun 29, 2005, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote about Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?: the problem is that since the xxx.exp is script (readable to all) all the code is provided to the customer. we don't want that so i want to either rewrite it with C++ engine (similar to expect) or compile xxx.exp to xxx.a.out (make the source invisible!) is it feasible? Since the majority of subscribers to this list, me included, are free software fanatics ( ;-) ), it will be hard for you to get a real answer on this question here, even if the answer was a definite yes. But to the point: No, I don't personally know of a TCL (that's the language behind Expect) compilation tool - but I'd assume one exists as TCL is a very mature language (I've used over a decade ago) and you should just try TCL compiler on Google or something. But for your obfuscation purposes, why a compiler at all? Why not just use some silly obfuscation (or encryption, if you'd like to call it that..) on the script, and when you want to run it, just unobfuscate it before running it? Yes, this method is insecure because users can figure out how to unobfuscate your code. But they can also figure out how to uncompile your compiled code, so what's the point really? I've never heard of any computer cracker of software pirate being stopped, or even slowed down considerably, by code being compiled. So I find it sad that people feel they must hide their code by compilation. -- Danny Lieberman Visit us at http://www.software.co.il Office + 972 8 970-1485 Cell + 972 54 447-1114 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wednesday 29 June 2005 13:19, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: While I do appriciate the buisness advice, ... ...we operate in financial segements with banks and mainframes. As someone who used Rexx on a mainframe circa 1984 (CMS/3 IIRC) I'll try to ignore your patronizing attitude and boasting about the hardware your potential clients use. Instead let's focus on your other valid points. nobody here is an attacker. my target market size is about 2000 installations and nobody will put cracked version of my software on the ineternet. Good. Than the binary/source issue (as a protection measure) is moot. In our market companies live of maintance fees, there are very few new clients and people pay you to introduce new systems to their already existing solutions. Agreed. That's why I said that the important factors for selling into the corporate market are your company ability to deliver the required services on-time and in a dependable manner. you may not like it but then you may like to know that this market rolls between 40-50 B$ a year depends who you ask. Not like it? On the contrary, you describe an industry that use mostly custom made solution (no shrink wrap CompUSA type of software) which is ideal for open-source deployment (since the software stays in the client organization anyway). BTW: ~80% of the software in the world is of this type. The prepackaged software we see everywhere is just the tip of the software iceberg. What you completely failed to explain is why you need to hide the source with such a dependable client base... or maybe the picture is not so bright as you try to portray. saying closed source has no place ... Closed source has a temporary place (probably for many years), until enough customers understand the lock-in effect it place on them. The problem is that once closed source software is used in important segment of the enterprise it gives the software vendor absolute power over its client -- and as they say: absolute power corrupts absolutely charging by the hour in this market is impossible because nobody will pay me 10,000$ an hour... sorry the market size is no bigger then about 10 installation in israel maybe couple of thousends world wide. Charging by the hour, by number of license copies sold or by number of CPU's are just techniques to fund the development. So the question is the same: Are there enough customers with enough interest to pay the bill? The form of payment has (almost) no effect on the development costs. they convince managers that in the open source world there are only mindless teenagers who like to mumble alot. They can think what they want. In every major change in there are always those late adopters, we find them later in the history dustbin trying to get a hold on the changing reality around them. TCP/IP? sockets? Have you taken LSD in Berkeley? We stay with SNA! mosts linux distros are closing their source at least partially. red hat has RHE, Suse was baught by Novell. mysql is far from open. Let's stick to facts and not FUD. You are right about Suse (which AFAIK contain proprietary software), but wrong about the other two: - Even RHEL contain only free software. The only reason you cannot distribute the *binaries* is their trademark. In fact there are several free distributions that are created by rebuilding the *same* source packages that comprise RHEL. E.g: http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ http://www.centos.org/ http://taolinux.org/ - MySQL is GPL'ed, need I say more? ... and models involving selling licenses are much easier. Of course they are easier, but they are bad for customers. That's why the alternative model of FOSS is so successfull. I wish you luck with your plans and I am sure that if your company can give a good product and *service* for a price your market will take -- that what would happen (regardless of the openness of the source). Cheers, -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 But it does move! -- Galileo Galilei = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wed, Jun 29, 2005, Oron Peled wrote about Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?: Good. Than the binary/source issue (as a protection measure) is moot. ... Not like it? On the contrary, you describe an industry that use mostly custom made solution (no shrink wrap CompUSA type of software) which is ideal for open-source deployment (since the software stays in the client organization anyway). Actually, sadly, he almost convinced me. Indeed, imagine a market where you can sell your software to 100 installation, for a price of $100,000 each (just making numbers up). That's all great, but how do you get more income after that? Most companies like to get more money from improvements and upgrades. Like the guy says, he cannot charge for actual work per hour because these charges will come out tiny if customers are allowed to pay only for the features and fixes they really need. Instead, you want to sell new versions of the entire software, for a lot of money. In this situation, if his software was open source - even in the sense that the source was available to the customer - the customer could have hired someone to improve the software instead of buying a new version - and that scares a company that makes money from selling these new versions. What you completely failed to explain is why you need to hide the source with such a dependable client base... or maybe the picture is not so bright as you try to portray. If I understood him correctly, he is afraid that when the client needs an improvement, he'll pay $10,000 for a programmer to fix his problem, rather than pay $100,000 on a new version. The problem is that once closed source software is used in important segment of the enterprise it gives the software vendor absolute power over its client -- and as they say: absolute power corrupts absolutely I agree. -- Nadav Har'El|Wednesday, Jun 29 2005, 23 Sivan 5765 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |I am the world's greatest authority on my http://nadav.harel.org.il |own opinion. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wednesday, 29 בJune 2005 18:44, Nadav Har'El wrote: In this situation, if his software was open source - even in the sense that the source was available to the customer - the customer could have hired someone to improve the software instead of buying a new version - and that scares a company that makes money from selling these new versions. What you completely failed to explain is why you need to hide the source with such a dependable client base... or maybe the picture is not so bright as you try to portray. If I understood him correctly, he is afraid that when the client needs an improvement, he'll pay $10,000 for a programmer to fix his problem, rather than pay $100,000 on a new version. Yes, that the whole point of open source- the client would supposedly prefer a software he can get a different vendor to supply (fix, upgrade, whatever) in case he is not happy with the original vendor. But all is not gloom and doom for the vendors - the vendor can say sure - you can get another vendor to fix/upgrade the software, but then you lose my warranty and are not longer eligible for support. If after that you want an upgrade from me (because I just put in many more features and enhancements which my sales people had shown you to be the bestest ever), then please pay for a new site license - unlike some people I am not upgrading other people's software for peanuts - thank you very much. In this scenario, vendors indeed compete on best support and best features (that you can sell to the client, which is basically all about how good your marketing is), and not on who can lock-in their clients harder. -- Oded ::.. We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. -- Stephen R. Covey To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 18:44 +0300, Nadav Har'El wrote: On Wed, Jun 29, 2005, Oron Peled wrote about Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?: Good. Than the binary/source issue (as a protection measure) is moot. ... Not like it? On the contrary, you describe an industry that use mostly custom made solution (no shrink wrap CompUSA type of software) which is ideal for open-source deployment (since the software stays in the client organization anyway). [... snipped ...] In this situation, if his software was open source - even in the sense that the source was available to the customer - the customer could have hired someone to improve the software instead of buying a new version - and that scares a company that makes money from selling these new versions. What you completely failed to explain is why you need to hide the source with such a dependable client base... or maybe the picture is not so bright as you try to portray. If I understood him correctly, he is afraid that when the client needs an improvement, he'll pay $10,000 for a programmer to fix his problem, rather than pay $100,000 on a new version. This looks to me like Oron is not recognizing the full value of his services. His customers pay him not only for actual software writing, but also for familiarity with it, for certification testing of new releases, for fixing bugs reported by other customers. He should look into providing services like: 1. Maintenance contract with yearly fee, which entitles the customer to fixes at no extra cost. The fixes will solve problems reported by other customers as well. 2. Unbundled certification testing. If the customer hires a programmer to modify the software, then Oron will test and certify the modified software using extensive database of test cases which he accumulated during the years (he did, didn't he?) for a fee. Since Oron automated most of his tests (he did, didn't he?) the actual cost of running regression tests is not high, so he can charge such a fee that the customer saves money but Oron still makes a nice profit from his time. There are lists of Free Software based business models. Oron should review them and see whether one (or more) of those business models fit his particular circumstances, before spending time on making life more diffucult for both his customers and his own. --- Omer -- Jara Cimerman. A name to remember. My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/ My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone. They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which I may be affiliated in any way. WARNING TO SPAMMERS: at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Oron Peled wrote: Now does your company fit the bill? There are a lot of people who develop based on free software and then try to 'lock' the product. You cannot do that. The only option is to make it complex enough that anybody wanting to modify or develop it will come to you. If you want to crack something I wrote you have to match a certain perecntage of my man-hours and then you will have a chance. The more man-hours are in the product the less likely it is that someone will poke his little fingers in it and make it work somewhere else without your help. Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
--0-462838736-1120076086=:45522 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit thanks for the support ;-) though it seems like i started a troll. Yes I mennt that if you give the source you cannot charge when they introduce a new server. they can also do their own maintance and then you cannot do anything. Oron, let me be very clear. I am a unix power user. An open source advocate (Espcially Stlport, ACE, boost) I use Solaris on my Sun Blade 1000 desktop and Linux on my laptop. My GF use MacOS X on hers. we have 3 Solaris boxes two linux desktop one linux laptop one macos laptop and 2 windows pc's at home. and we spend more time programming on unix then with each other :-) I still write my documents on LaTeX for haven sake. but that still doesn't meen i can ignore my souroundings. my job prevent me from examing technology from philosophical view point without business perspective. In the Mainframe world (this is the industry i work on) people are paying through their nose to a very closed source company called IBM. a 40B$ world wide market is being held by about 40,000 customers! and is paid only for upgrade, maintanance etc. (you buy newer mainframe, more storage, and get support for software.) its amazing. an avarage MF customer pays about 1M$ a year for maintanance. when you pay that much you make queries about options. most of those people remain with MF for over 30 years. some over 40 years... they have tested their option and want to stay on MF. they have good reason. trust me when you pay that much you must have good reasons. nobody in this industry gives the source we don't want a community we want to overprice bug fixes and newer editions. otherwise we cannot pay the developers. believe it or not, our customers now. they are ok with it. really. (they would rather have everybody pay IBM through their nose then have IBM close the MF devision...) This market is closed in unbelivable way They have their own software, their own programming language, their own application server (CICS), their own myths and legends, their own storage protocol (have anybody here heard of Ficon?), their their databases are not even relational Still... This market volume is growning by over 10% every year. Maybe opensource is not for everyone? Maybe some market work well with closed source? (stats are available from market research by media group, Aberdeen, Yankee Group and others) now you may say that those 40 B$ market is dinasour market that will be extinct. off course linux doesn't have this market share even if you put all companies together but ok. That will make you narrow minded idealist but ok. you will do the open source community poor service because nobody wants to listen to people who have the solution before they know of the problem. you may actually help me like Oleg did or you can ignore the post. but its worth noting that if you will act as you act (espcially at your age) you will be treated as a less then progessional person. more so, you give other open source advocates like me bad reputation PS as open source advocate and UNIX junkie I'll tell you... long after VMS, AS/400, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Sun, SGI will be gone... MVS will still be there. It will run on very small boxes, it will be 100 times more efficient then today, It will still work and still be black. because the data will always be on the mainframe. And the market size will only increase. Ciao scipio Nadav Har'El [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jun 29, 2005, Oron Peled wrote about Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?: Good. Than the binary/source issue (as a protection measure) is moot. ... Not like it? On the contrary, you describe an industry that use mostly custom made solution (no shrink wrap CompUSA type of software) which is ideal for open-source deployment (since the software stays in the client organization anyway). Actually, sadly, he almost convinced me. Indeed, imagine a market where you can sell your software to 100 installation, for a price of $100,000 each (just making numbers up). That's all great, but how do you get more income after that? Most companies like to get more money from improvements and upgrades. Like the guy says, he cannot charge for actual work per hour because these charges will come out tiny if customers are allowed to pay only for the features and fixes they really need. Instead, you want to sell new versions of the entire software, for a lot of money. In this situation, if his software was open source - even in the sense that the source was available to the customer - the customer could have hired someone to improve the software instead of buying a new version - and that scares a company that makes money from selling these new versions. What you completely failed to explain is why you need to hide the source with such a dependable client base
Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: the problem is that since the xxx.exp is script (readable to all) all the code is provided to the customer. we don't want that so i want to either rewrite it with C++ engine (similar to expect) or compile xxx.exp to xxx.a.out (make the source invisible!) is it feasible? You can compile an application that is equivalent to your expect application using the expect (and tcl) C bindings. This implies rewriting your application. man libexpect(3). Peter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wednesday 29 June 2005 19:17, Omer Zak wrote: This looks to me like Oron is not recognizing the full value of his services. Bzzzt, Omer you mixed me up withNzer Zaidenberg to whom me (and Nadav) replied in this thread. Other than that, what you wrote seem very valid to me. Bye, -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 There are lies, damned lies, and statistics -- Benjamin Disraeli ...and benchmarks -- Garry Hodgson = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wednesday 29 June 2005 18:44, Nadav Har'El wrote: ... if customers are allowed to pay only for the features and fixes they really need. Instead, you want to sell new versions of the entire software, for a lot of money. True. FOSS allows customers to pay for what they really need instead of being coerced into paying for what they don't. ... the customer could have hired someone to improve the software instead of buying a new version - and that scares a company that makes money from selling these new versions. True. Extortionist companies will definitely suffer from FOSS. (but note that the one hired to improve the software still get a nice job and get paid for it). If I understood him correctly, he is afraid that when the client needs an improvement, he'll pay $10,000 for a programmer to fix his problem, rather than pay $100,000 on a new version. Exactly. Nadav, it's obvious you know something about FOSS ;-) But the picture for software developers isn't so bleak: - Every software producer is also a software consumer. So FOSS will lower your expenses, not only your profit margin. - The software needs of the world are so large (and growing) that programmers will have plenty of jobs. The good ones will obvious get paid for what they worth. - There would be a gigantic cotage industry of people and companies that earn their living by: fixing, adapting, supporting, training, certification testing (thanks, Omer) etc. To put it bluntly -- selling heroine has huge profit margin, but most people can have a very nice living by selling low profit products (e.g: portable phones). Have a nice day, -- Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron ICQ UIN: 16527398 Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep, but at least you only have to climb it once = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?
On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 23:34 +0300, Oron Peled wrote: On Wednesday 29 June 2005 19:17, Omer Zak wrote: This looks to me like Oron is not recognizing the full value of his services. Bzzzt, Omer you mixed me up with Nzer Zaidenberg to whom me (and Nadav) replied in this thread. I stand bzzzt'ed, my mistake of not carefully checking the entire thread. Good you corrected my oversight. Other than that, what you wrote seem very valid to me. Thanks. --- Omer -- One does not make peace with enemies. One makes peace with former enemies. My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/ My opinions, as expressed in this E-mail message, are mine alone. They do not represent the official policy of any organization with which I may be affiliated in any way. WARNING TO SPAMMERS: at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MF vs. LAMP - orthogonal to closed vs. Free (was: Re: Off topic - open vs. closed sources Re: compiling expect sources or easy to use c++ engine?)
On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 13:14 -0700, Nzer Zaidenberg wrote: thanks for the support ;-) though it seems like i started a troll. Now it does feel to me like a troll. However, I have some left-over food for you trolls, welcome to it. Yes I mennt that if you give the source you cannot charge when they introduce a new server. they can also do their own maintance and then you cannot do anything. What if they prefer to subcontract installation and maintenance to the experts? They would have to declare to the contractor all servers they deploy and pay accordingly, or they'll not get support. This is like my prefering to call the plumber even for trivial faucet fixes, because if I screw up I want expert with all tools to be here pronto! Oron, let me be very clear. I am a unix power user. An open source advocate (Espcially Stlport, ACE, boost) I use Solaris on my Sun Blade 1000 desktop and Linux on my laptop. My GF use MacOS X on hers. we have 3 Solaris boxes two linux desktop one linux laptop one macos laptop and 2 windows pc's at home. and we spend more time programming on unix then with each other :-) I still write my documents on LaTeX for haven sake. but that still doesn't meen i can ignore my souroundings. my job prevent me from examing technology from philosophical view point without business perspective. The above pronounciations translate into I am freeloader of Free Software and I am proud of this. In the Mainframe world (this is the industry i work on) people are paying through their nose to a very closed source company called IBM. a 40B$ world wide market is being held by about 40,000 customers! and is paid only for upgrade, maintanance etc. (you buy newer mainframe, more storage, and get support for software.) its amazing. an avarage MF customer pays about 1M$ a year for maintanance. when you pay that much you make queries about options. most of those people remain with MF for over 30 years. some over 40 years... they have tested their option and want to stay on MF. they have good reason. trust me when you pay that much you must have good reasons. nobody in this industry gives the source we don't want a community we want to overprice bug fixes and newer editions. otherwise we cannot pay the developers. believe it or not, our customers now. they are ok with it. really. (they would rather have everybody pay IBM through their nose then have IBM close the MF devision...) All this looks to me very believable and even makes sense from business point of view. When you pump billions of US$ through the arteries of your business operations, you can afford to pay a lot to maintain the crumbling arteries if this saves you from having to interrupt the flow for an hour or to suffer from switching to new (but incompatible) set of arteries. This market is closed in unbelivable way They have their own software, their own programming language, their own application server (CICS), their own myths and legends, their own storage protocol (have anybody here heard of Ficon?), their their databases are not even relational Still... This market volume is growning by over 10% every year. Maybe opensource is not for everyone? Maybe some market work well with closed source? (stats are available from market research by media group, Aberdeen, Yankee Group and others) now you may say that those 40 B$ market is dinasour market that will be extinct. off course linux doesn't have this market share even if you put all companies together but ok. This has absolutely nothing to do with the proprietary software vs. Free Software argument. Originally, IBM bundled its software with its hardware, so software was effectively free. IBM and its customers even shared their software (the SHARE user group). Later, IBM unbundled its software i.e. priced it separately when required to do so due to violation of anti-trust laws in USA. Nowadays, IBM is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) supporters of Linux developments. They are in the business of tailoring solutions for customers, rather than selling shrink-wrapped software. Therefore, using Linux and Linux-based software makes a lot of business sense for them. That will make you narrow minded idealist but ok. Only if one advocates that those big customers incur interruptions in their business operations just to switch their software from MVS/CICS/Ficon/MF/whatever to LAMP. I saw no Free Software advocate suggesting courses of action like this. What is being advocated is that new applications be developed on LAMP and bridged to the old MF based infrastructure. you will do the open source community poor service because nobody wants to listen to people who have the solution before they know of the problem. Trrroll Trrroll Trrroll you may actually help me like Oleg did or you can ignore the post. How would you repay Oleg and the nice Free Software developers (especially of Tcl)
