Users - Apache what?

[dkey]

Sorry,

I just had to chime in on this. I respect Si Chen greatly as well as the
rest of the OFBiz crew and contributors, but why fix something that is not
broken. OFBiz has been making astronomical progress and has some very high
profile users out there and continues along what I think to be a true open
source path. Why on earth would anyone want to throw the proverbial monkey
wrench in the works now by switching license structures to the Apache 2.0?

Would it not be better to continue to progress as we are under the MIT and
concentrate on the framework instead of a license change? Please correct
me if I am clouded in my thinking but it just seems to me that this makes
no sense to convert at this point, after all what is there to gain, some
approval from the ASF? Not needed in my opinion, Andy and David have their
vision and have produced an amazing product and it has propelled OFBiz as
is just fine.

I do not think this will gain anything in the way of contributors at all
as state vaguely in the last post, many people already know about OFBiz,
just look at the companies using it I.E DKNY, ISOTONER etc. the ASF is no
magic bullet and would more than likely cloud up the waters as to how you
could sell and distribute the code, hell why were at it why don't we just
go GPL (not!)

Dale
 
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[Andrew Sykes]

Dale,

Debates are always better and the conclusions more thorough when someone
can express a strong counter argument like this.

That being said, I think I probably agree more with Si/David...

One interesting thing that comes to mind from your comments was an
analogy from the Apache JAMES project.

We've been using JAMES for quite a while now and it does just great,
however they seem to have had a great deal of difficulty in making any
progress with IMAP. Given that this must be pretty high on the agenda it
seems strange they've been procrastinating for so long. I know they've
had some issues around Avalon etc, but their website doesn't seem to
have changed much in the last year. This certainly seems to corroborate
your point that a move to ASF doesn't necessarily guarantee progress.

It would be interesting to know what has caused this stagnation in a
pretty popular product.

Kind Regards
--
Andrew Sykes <[hidden email]>
Sykes Development Ltd

 
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[YoavShapira]

Howdy,

> I just had to chime in on this. I respect Si Chen greatly as well as the
> rest of the OFBiz crew and contributors, but why fix something that is not
> broken. OFBiz has been making astronomical progress and has some very high
> profile users out there and continues along what I think to be a true open
> source path. Why on earth would anyone want to throw the proverbial monkey
> wrench in the works now by switching license structures to the Apache 2.0?

I think the ASF path is just as much "true open source" as what OFBiz
is doing, both from a legal perspective and from a
community-empowerment perspective.

Consider the history of the ASF itself: it was just The Apache Group
with the eight or so original developers for a long time: this is
similar to OFBiz at this point in time.  But as the product became
more widely used and as the number of side projects grew (see for
example today's thread asking for an OFBiz "contributions" subtree),
the benefits of forming a Foundation for legal and organizational
purposes outweighed the costs.  So a structure was put in place to
easily allow growth, with legal backing, and places to plug in support
services like press releases or licensing advice, for those
projects/people who want it.

Alternatively, one could consider another type of project: look at
Tomcat.  It was donated by Sun to the ASF for a number of reasons,
from an organization which already had the funds and setup to do its
own marketing and development without the ASF's help.  Two of the
relevant reasons to this discussion were the desire to attract a
broader developer community and to gain mind share.  I think both are
true to OFBiz as well: the current crew is awesome, but moving into a
higher visibility sphere would attract more contributors, a good thing
for the product and its community.  And it would bring more
high-profile users.  It may even let some of the 5 or so current
committers try another project for a few months if they felt like it
;)

> no sense to convert at this point, after all what is there to gain, some
> approval from the ASF?

It's not about ASF approval.  Like I said before, besides the few
basics like using the Apache License , no one will try to change how
the current team runs the project.  They still decide on technical
standards, when/how to cut releases, what to do when, etc.  The same
five or so people who approve stuff now will approve it then.

What there is to gain is the support of a community of experienced
developers, associated services like infrastructure maintenance,
press/PR coordination, legal indemnification, legal advice, the ASF
brand and associated mindshare, and the emergent opportunities for
cross-pollination that arise when good people discuss things.

> Not needed in my opinion, Andy and David have their
> vision and have produced an amazing product and it has propelled OFBiz as
> is just fine.

If you're content with that, I completely understand.  It's a fine
point of view.  I'm almost always in the "if it ain't broken, don't
fix it" school myself.  But if you want to scale bigger, get more
users, grow the team, be more robust to current committers wanting to
leave (or having kids and needing to leave for a little while, etc.),
I think the ASF supports that better than a stand-alone project.

> just look at the companies using it I.E DKNY, ISOTONER etc. the ASF is no
> magic bullet and would more than likely cloud up the waters as to how you
> could sell and distribute the code, hell why were at it why don't we just
> go GPL (not!)

No one is saying the ASF is a magic bullet for anything.  It wasn't me
who came up with this idea in the first place ;)

I don't want to get into a licensing debate: I think the facts on the
ground with respect to how people are using, bundling, packaging, and
selling products and services based on Apache-licensed code tell
enough of the story.  It's not the GPL, and great care has gone into
not only the design of the license but the enforcement of its usage.

--
Yoav Shapira
System Design and Management Fellow
MIT Sloan School of Management
Cambridge, MA, USA
[hidden email] / www.yoavshapira.com
 
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[Si Chen-2]

Just a quick note -

I think OFBIZ is doing pretty well right now, of course, but I think
joining Apache will make us better.  Not only can we interact with other
great developers, but we can also all learn more about how to build a
great project.  (There is an article by Mockus and Fielding about how
Apache projects work on my website www.opensourcestrategies.org in the
academic research section.  It's actually pretty fascinating reading.)

Just like the French saying "Better is the mortal enemy of the good."  
(But is this really a French saying, or just the saying of a particular
French friend of mine?  Can anybody confirm this?)

Si

Yoav Shapira wrote:

>Howdy,
>
>  
>
>>I just had to chime in on this. I respect Si Chen greatly as well as the
>>rest of the OFBiz crew and contributors, but why fix something that is not
>>broken. OFBiz has been making astronomical progress and has some very high
>>profile users out there and continues along what I think to be a true open
>>source path. Why on earth would anyone want to throw the proverbial monkey
>>wrench in the works now by switching license structures to the Apache 2.0?
>>    
>>
>
>I think the ASF path is just as much "true open source" as what OFBiz
>is doing, both from a legal perspective and from a
>community-empowerment perspective.
>
>Consider the history of the ASF itself: it was just The Apache Group
>with the eight or so original developers for a long time: this is
>similar to OFBiz at this point in time.  But as the product became
>more widely used and as the number of side projects grew (see for
>example today's thread asking for an OFBiz "contributions" subtree),
>the benefits of forming a Foundation for legal and organizational
>purposes outweighed the costs.  So a structure was put in place to
>easily allow growth, with legal backing, and places to plug in support
>services like press releases or licensing advice, for those
>projects/people who want it.
>
>Alternatively, one could consider another type of project: look at
>Tomcat.  It was donated by Sun to the ASF for a number of reasons,
>from an organization which already had the funds and setup to do its
>own marketing and development without the ASF's help.  Two of the
>relevant reasons to this discussion were the desire to attract a
>broader developer community and to gain mind share.  I think both are
>true to OFBiz as well: the current crew is awesome, but moving into a
>higher visibility sphere would attract more contributors, a good thing
>for the product and its community.  And it would bring more
>high-profile users.  It may even let some of the 5 or so current
>committers try another project for a few months if they felt like it
>;)
>
>  
>
>>no sense to convert at this point, after all what is there to gain, some
>>approval from the ASF?
>>    
>>
>
>It's not about ASF approval.  Like I said before, besides the few
>basics like using the Apache License , no one will try to change how
>the current team runs the project.  They still decide on technical
>standards, when/how to cut releases, what to do when, etc.  The same
>five or so people who approve stuff now will approve it then.
>
>What there is to gain is the support of a community of experienced
>developers, associated services like infrastructure maintenance,
>press/PR coordination, legal indemnification, legal advice, the ASF
>brand and associated mindshare, and the emergent opportunities for
>cross-pollination that arise when good people discuss things.
>
>  
>
>>Not needed in my opinion, Andy and David have their
>>vision and have produced an amazing product and it has propelled OFBiz as
>>is just fine.
>>    
>>
>
>If you're content with that, I completely understand.  It's a fine
>point of view.  I'm almost always in the "if it ain't broken, don't
>fix it" school myself.  But if you want to scale bigger, get more
>users, grow the team, be more robust to current committers wanting to
>leave (or having kids and needing to leave for a little while, etc.),
>I think the ASF supports that better than a stand-alone project.
>
>  
>
>>just look at the companies using it I.E DKNY, ISOTONER etc. the ASF is no
>>magic bullet and would more than likely cloud up the waters as to how you
>>could sell and distribute the code, hell why were at it why don't we just
>>go GPL (not!)
>>    
>>
>
>No one is saying the ASF is a magic bullet for anything.  It wasn't me
>who came up with this idea in the first place ;)
>
>I don't want to get into a licensing debate: I think the facts on the
>ground with respect to how people are using, bundling, packaging, and
>selling products and services based on Apache-licensed code tell
>enough of the story.  It's not the GPL, and great care has gone into
>not only the design of the license but the enforcement of its usage.
>
>--
>Yoav Shapira
>System Design and Management Fellow
>MIT Sloan School of Management
>Cambridge, MA, USA
>[hidden email] / www.yoavshapira.com
>
>_______________________________________________
>Users mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>
>  
>

 
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[YoavShapira]

Hi,

> Apache projects work on my website www.opensourcestrategies.org in the

This is a great site, thank you for sharing.  You may also find
http://opensource.mit.edu/online_papers.php interesting, as it
contains a large collection of academic work around open-source
software, including comparinsons of the structures and pros/cons of
the Foundation-type (Apache, Eclipse, Mozilla, etc.) organizations,
the psuedo-cathedral (Linux, etc.) organizations, the foundries (SF,
Savannah, Tigris, etc.), and individual projects like OFBiz.

--
Yoav Shapira
System Design and Management Fellow
MIT Sloan School of Management
Cambridge, MA, USA
[hidden email] / www.yoavshapira.com
 
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[Jacques Le Roux]

From: "Si Chen" <[hidden email]>


> Just like the French saying "Better is the mortal enemy of the good."
> (But is this really a French saying, or just the saying of a particular
> French friend of mine?  Can anybody confirm this?)

In french it's rather "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien", you can add mortal if you
want but it's not mandatory (and I never heard this proverb with mortal in it
;o) There are plenty of proverbs in France, more than cheese, which is not
nothing !

Jacques

 
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[Si Chen-2]

So I didn't just make it up!  Thanks, Si

Jacques Le Roux wrote:

>From: "Si Chen" <[hidden email]>
>
>
>  
>
>>Just like the French saying "Better is the mortal enemy of the good."
>>(But is this really a French saying, or just the saying of a particular
>>French friend of mine?  Can anybody confirm this?)
>>    
>>
>
>In french it's rather "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien", you can add mortal if you
>want but it's not mandatory (and I never heard this proverb with mortal in it
>;o) There are plenty of proverbs in France, more than cheese, which is not
>nothing !
>
>Jacques
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Users mailing list
>[hidden email]
>http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>
>  
>

 
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[David E. Jones]

I think Yoav has responded very well to this and presented most of  
the important reasons that are making the idea of putting OFBiz under  
the Apache umbrella very attractive.

I considered a number of these issues and was still on the fence  
about it until I started researching it more and realized that doing  
this would solve one of the biggest problems that OFBiz has right  
now. Sure, being affiliated with Apache will expand the community and  
add an element of trustworthiness to the project, which will likely  
increase the general interest in the project quite a bit. However,  
perhaps even more importantly it will clear up a _lot_ of  
intellectual property issues.

There are various issues related to this that have come up for both  
contributors to and users of OFBiz. The MIT license is great and does  
a lot of what we want, but does not cover some pretty big issues like  
patent abuse by contributors, and copyright assignment from  
contributors to the "owner" of the software in the project. Another  
big issue is the entity that "owns" OFBiz. This has always been a  
problem with OFBiz as we have not yet created a non-profit  
organization or a trust or something to own the intellectual  
property. Our main intent here is to not alienate any potential  
contributor to or user of OFBiz, or limit the level of collaboration  
that is currently possible, so having some for-profit entity own it  
(like MySQL, JBoss, SugarCRM, etc, etc) is something we _really_  
wanted to avoid. For a long time we avoided it by having no legal  
entity called "The Open For Business Project", but that opens up  
another risk that someone could create such an entity and try to  
claim ownership of the software. So, I just organized a simple  
partnership that bears the name and "owns" the software. I don't like  
this though, and technically it is not a non-profit entity either.

Joining up with Apache solves this problem in a major way. Even if we  
went through the expense and effort of creating a non-profit  
organization to own OFBiz the trust level for that new and unknown  
organization would be limited at best. Apache not only has such a  
legal entity, but it is a well governed and trusted entity, which is  
a BIG deal.

Currently most users of OFBiz either don't care about these issues,  
or are attracted enough to what exists in the project that they are  
willing to overlook/ignore the issue, or setup some internal legal  
arrangements to limit their liability and such. However, this is  
quite complicated because of the very patent and copyright ownership/
assignment issues listed above. For some companies this is simply a  
deal killer.

So, in other words, or in short, the current situation is not  
something "ef it ain't broke don't fex it" (spelling intentional)  
actually applies to, because it is rather "broke" in various ways,  
and it would help a lot of current and prospective users if we did  
fix it.

If anyone would be negatively affected by this, please let us know!  
We certainly want to consider all views and concerns before making a  
change like this, which will not be quick, easy, or cheap (though  
really not too slow, difficult, or expensive either).

The Apache 2.0 license that we would move to offers pretty much all  
of the same benefits for users of the software, and even more  
protections for users and contributors. You can create commercial  
derivative works, modify and not open source your changes, and all of  
the fun things that are so important for commercially friendly open  
source software (which is a concept that Apache embraces, somewhat  
distant from the GNU/FSF ideals).

-David


On Dec 8, 2005, at 7:29 AM, Yoav Shapira wrote:

> Howdy,
>
>> I just had to chime in on this. I respect Si Chen greatly as well  
>> as the
>> rest of the OFBiz crew and contributors, but why fix something  
>> that is not
>> broken. OFBiz has been making astronomical progress and has some  
>> very high
>> profile users out there and continues along what I think to be a  
>> true open
>> source path. Why on earth would anyone want to throw the  
>> proverbial monkey
>> wrench in the works now by switching license structures to the  
>> Apache 2.0?
>
> I think the ASF path is just as much "true open source" as what OFBiz
> is doing, both from a legal perspective and from a
> community-empowerment perspective.
>
> Consider the history of the ASF itself: it was just The Apache Group
> with the eight or so original developers for a long time: this is
> similar to OFBiz at this point in time.  But as the product became
> more widely used and as the number of side projects grew (see for
> example today's thread asking for an OFBiz "contributions" subtree),
> the benefits of forming a Foundation for legal and organizational
> purposes outweighed the costs.  So a structure was put in place to
> easily allow growth, with legal backing, and places to plug in support
> services like press releases or licensing advice, for those
> projects/people who want it.
>
> Alternatively, one could consider another type of project: look at
> Tomcat.  It was donated by Sun to the ASF for a number of reasons,
> from an organization which already had the funds and setup to do its
> own marketing and development without the ASF's help.  Two of the
> relevant reasons to this discussion were the desire to attract a
> broader developer community and to gain mind share.  I think both are
> true to OFBiz as well: the current crew is awesome, but moving into a
> higher visibility sphere would attract more contributors, a good thing
> for the product and its community.  And it would bring more
> high-profile users.  It may even let some of the 5 or so current
> committers try another project for a few months if they felt like it
> ;)
>
>> no sense to convert at this point, after all what is there to  
>> gain, some
>> approval from the ASF?
>
> It's not about ASF approval.  Like I said before, besides the few
> basics like using the Apache License , no one will try to change how
> the current team runs the project.  They still decide on technical
> standards, when/how to cut releases, what to do when, etc.  The same
> five or so people who approve stuff now will approve it then.
>
> What there is to gain is the support of a community of experienced
> developers, associated services like infrastructure maintenance,
> press/PR coordination, legal indemnification, legal advice, the ASF
> brand and associated mindshare, and the emergent opportunities for
> cross-pollination that arise when good people discuss things.
>
>> Not needed in my opinion, Andy and David have their
>> vision and have produced an amazing product and it has propelled  
>> OFBiz as
>> is just fine.
>
> If you're content with that, I completely understand.  It's a fine
> point of view.  I'm almost always in the "if it ain't broken, don't
> fix it" school myself.  But if you want to scale bigger, get more
> users, grow the team, be more robust to current committers wanting to
> leave (or having kids and needing to leave for a little while, etc.),
> I think the ASF supports that better than a stand-alone project.
>
>> just look at the companies using it I.E DKNY, ISOTONER etc. the  
>> ASF is no
>> magic bullet and would more than likely cloud up the waters as to  
>> how you
>> could sell and distribute the code, hell why were at it why don't  
>> we just
>> go GPL (not!)
>
> No one is saying the ASF is a magic bullet for anything.  It wasn't me
> who came up with this idea in the first place ;)
>
> I don't want to get into a licensing debate: I think the facts on the
> ground with respect to how people are using, bundling, packaging, and
> selling products and services based on Apache-licensed code tell
> enough of the story.  It's not the GPL, and great care has gone into
> not only the design of the license but the enforcement of its usage.
>
> --
> Yoav Shapira
> System Design and Management Fellow
> MIT Sloan School of Management
> Cambridge, MA, USA
> [hidden email] / www.yoavshapira.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Users mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.ofbiz.org/mailman/listinfo/users

 
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