[WBEL-users] whitebox: the pros and cons of hitchiking

[Tom Cooper]

John Morris wrote:

>On Thu, 20 May 2004, Mario Gamito wrote:
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>>About the other issue, of course as a CTO of my company, it worries me
>>that whitebox is a one man show. Someday, he may wake in a bad mood or
>>get an excelent job and put an end to whitebox.
>>And if that day comes i'll be in troubles in my job :)
>>    
>>
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>Shouldn't be a problem.  Even if I get hit by a bus it shouldn't take too
>long for the userbase to self organize a new source of errata.  Plus, as
>I'm working on this respin I'm making better notes.  Combined with the
>upcoming ability to do everything inside a chroot means almost anyone will
>be able spin a package.
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I think that it's all too easy to think in terms of Intellectual 
Property protection, and proprietary software frameworks.  Let's say 
that you hitch your technological wagon to company XYZ.

If XYZ company is a one-man show, and he gets hit by a bus, the 
technology is dead,
and you're in big trouble.

In this case, it's a different story.  First, the code is open source, 
and copylefted.  This means that  company PDQ could take the offering 
from company XYZ and repackage it as their product.

Secondly, it's a well-known technology base.  I'd venture a guess that 
Linux in general and redhat in particular are extremely well known in 
the open source community.  This provides protection because the ramp-up 
time for understanding the technology is particularly short. 

If an obscure technology was abandoned by the death of it's 
creator/maintainer, it would be possible for someone to take it over, it 
would simply be more difficult.

Finally, let me tell you a story about leveraging open source.
I've been a linux user at home for about 8 years now.  This means that 
I've been using Linux as my primary desktop at home, not just that I've 
had a toy box with a distro.

For a while my wife and I each had a Linux system in "the office" where 
we downloaded our ISP pop mail.  When we had kids, it was more difficult 
for my wife to get to "the office" to check mail,  so I set up a cheap 
notebook with VNC so that she could get to her desktop and apps.  
Eventually she wanted wireless mobility and long battery life, so we 
bought a wireless  PowerBook.  This brings me to the point of my story.  
RealVNC.com says that they are working on a Mac port.  This made me sad, 
because I wanted VNC now.

Thinking in terms of proprietary products, I gave up on VNC on my Mac.  
Not long after this I came across a reference to VNC on the Mac.  How 
can this be?  VNC is open source.  There are quite a few implementations 
of VNC for Mac.  Open source is a different animal from closed-source, 
proprietary software.  My wife ran 'Chicken of the VNC' on her Mac for 
months until I got the inbound mail server speaking IMAP.  Now she uses 
thunderbird on the Mac - another Great open source tool.

Open source acts differently from proprietary software because the rules 
are different.

Using WBL provides short-term benefits, and is low risk.  If it 'goes 
away' it can be replaced with something else.   Let's hope that doesn't 
happen. 

In the interim, MUCH thanks to John for his hard work.  We ought to find 
a way to shore up his efforts so that it is less likely that this 
becomes abandonware.  How can we help with bandwidth, mirrors, writing 
docs, helping maintain this animal, etc?

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Tom Cooper

>Whitebox is a nice idea, but the idea of every organization of any size
>eventually being able to roll their own customized internal distro based
>off of it is even more interesting.
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