The Open Source War

You can gain more insight about this topic after reading a Richard Stallman's FSF site page here. His points are clear that if software is free, then call it by no other name but 'Free Software'. Reason i reckon is even obvious if you are to apply our name calling test - can we call it as Community Free Software vs Commercial Free Software? Oxymorons abound.

But in our case, we can call ourselves Community Open Source (ADempiere) vs Commercial Open Source (Compiere and OpenBravo). So now this cat really got away. How did we come to using 'Open Source' in the first place? I think it has everything to do with how our brains are wired when it comes to name recognition. Such as Google instead of Yahoo!, Obama instead of McCain.

Open Source sounds sexy. Cool to pronounce and doesn't sound as cheap as 'Free' anything. But if we are to extend that name abit and call it Freedom, then we have a whole different sense to it. Freedom Fighters to just plain Freedom. It has a grand league ring to it.

But 'Free Software' is a bit quirky. It needs more of Richard Stallman to keep knocking at it. Take for instance Linux. He prefers to call it GNU-Linux, which hardly anyone i know says it that way. But i was corrected by friends that those CLI stuff such as 'ls' belongs to GNU. Now i didn't know that. Well i know now. But i would inadvertently not twist my tongue and still call it Linux and call Linus Torvalds a demigod.

And as for RMS, he is just the Masstarrrr.

Now coming back to Open Source. It is now proven when we hear alot of venture capital going into funding Open Source startups, and remembering the last bubble, there is going to be a mini bubble over this space. Take our ERP sub-space for instance. There are now 3 big players - one parent project (Compiere) and 2 forks (OpenBravo and ADempiere) where the later been the community one, not having any commercial entity or even a nice suit to wear during dinner parties. We have a lousy website, but some serious stuff going on at our trunk level. 

We exposed spyware put in by Compiere, removed security holes, patch up countless bugs and extend the model's model. And we still have no staff. No one is paid by ADempiere. Its only resemblance of a headquarters is at ADempiere Deustchland e.V.  where its registered as a Non-Profit organisation, temporary acting for the world project, just in case.

Our sister contending projects Compiere and OpenBravo already received millions in fundings and those have to be paid back. Thus switches have to be flipped back, bills paid, advertising done, pretty long legs waxed, licensings reworded and free-riders turned away.

How long can they go on? Until they go public? Not during this financial meltdown. But even if that didn't happen, how can they sell when there is this brother ADempiere hot on their heels with betterware and still free with no melanine powder?

Open Bravo has more than 70 mercenary soldiers that has to be paid monthly with yearly bonuses. ADempiere has none, but freedom fighters buried in all those caves all over the world. Some are fanatical enough never to come out from their fox holes. Particularly me.

More and more volunteer open source army marches into ADempiere rank each day without enticements of rank or resource. Patches sent, bugs fixed, testings reported and conversations go on without ordering latte.

ADempiere is the first in many things that the others copy. First in giving a Virtual Machine, first in free migration, first in Wikisite, first in IRC room, first in getting first SF rankings fastest time since inception.

For the next millenium ADempiere shall go on, and can never die. Simple, there is no office to seal, no labour to picket and no one to kill. For us here, it is not a ploy. We are serious freedom fighters.

ADempiere Hacked Compiere To Save Lives

This is a story in the interest of end-users has to be told. And it involves saving lives. It happened some months after the ADempiere project was created by the community around Compiere to fork the later for the sake of end-users who needed quality code and growth.

Been a bazaar of unabated collaboration, among the community were rebels who prefers to hack the system and smite at rotten and broken code. Among such a hacker was a young punk who by giving us a single url string could hack into any Compiere webstore window, and by definition ADempiere's also, without logging in. Some kiddie easily exposed Jorg Janke's password and took a few snapshots in the closet to prove to others that such a security flaw is real. At that time there are about 33,000 live installations of Compiere worldwide.

Now that shocked us out of our wits and immediately we had a series of bouts i mean internal heated debates what to do. The hacker school of thought is that been Eric Raymond's chaotic bazaar and a community open source project as opposed to the commercial one that is Compiere, we have to expose such a serious security flaw without ado. In the words of Linus Torvalds, "show me the code". But the other school of thought, mainly System Integrators and Implementors that seeks to protect their end-users' exposed systems objected in horror.

So we took a vote. Only those 2 hackers and I alone say aye. The rest say nay. And so as leader i supported the majority under protest to hide such flaws and refer them to a security council first before exploding the device.

We then have a more systematic approach to release such timebombs to the world. We decided to inform our sister projects namely Compiere and OpenBravo. Emisaries (emails) were sent but Compiere as usual does not take the rebels' cause heavily. Nothing was done about our patch submission to them. 

So in a limbo and out of care for the many lives that are in danger for using a system where hackers could easily compromise the system's integrity, i have to send a specially encoded message that proves that I have seen Jorg Janke with his pants down. A prompt reply came soon after from Kathy Pink thanking me and the rebel for the cause. However Compiere as usual will not take our patch directly. Instead, based on our patch and telling them where to look, they created their own version of the patch. Then they announce to their unknowing end-users that they have solved a security breach. Sounds familiar?

So in conclusion, we have to reconcile to this fact of software life. Are we to treat software as some commercial commodity under patent and greed, or are we to treat it as a common knowledge capital shared under public interest to remain open and free, its community supporting it getting the honour and respect they deserve?

Or are we to continue drugging the masses and end-users with paid advertisment that has never tell the whole truth nothing but the truth?

- (above is a screenshot proof that if your password is obtained anything can be done. Such as login as Jorg Janke and read his email. So. Be afraid. Be very afraid.)

Disclaimer: This is an unpaid public broadcast. No taxpayer money has been used.

Leader's Note: All you smart people out there. Join us, and have fun!

Editor's Note: This article does not reflect the position of the ADempiere Project and the majority of its peace loving community. Our standard policy is that if any security flaw is discovered it is discussed by select email, solved and then released with a patch. In the interest of public safety we only declassify certain information when ample notice has travelled far and wide.

OpenBravo Unethical Use of Compiere's Intellectual Property

Many did not get irked in this case when someone else steal another's IP and gets away with it. Reason is that this crime is buried in some smart twist of words and license carpeting. This should be a clear case with OpenBravo absolving Compiere's expensive technology of the application model and design (see http://www.openbravo.com/product/others/relationship-compiere/). That is all left of Compiere's epitaph, in some products/others/relationship wasteland.

Without Compiere's (I reemphasise) very expensive investment in coming out with an application model that encompass functional and metadata, of which is fondly called Application Dictionary, we wouldn't have figured out in 10 light years how best to come out with an Open Source ERP product without investing tons of money.

When OpenBravo won an estimated USD18million (so far) for the launch of its operations, this cannot have happened if the players and investors have known the above fact and acted out of conscience and ethics. Those angels should have given to Compiere to add the sugar coating packaging instead and do history justice.

Of course Open Source licensing allows you to fork and start off your own project but not to commercialise it lock, stock and barrel without homage or proper credence to the true owner and patron behind all those hard work. All OpenBravo left Compiere with are the following disrespectful words:

Our current code base is almost entirely comprised of original, Openbravo-developed code that is continually evolving. By our estimates, less than 10% of this code can be attributed to Compiere. Any code that has not been developed by Openbravo is properly identified in the source files.

What a dumb thief who took the beehive and rid off the bees! And how apt an example of another evil commercialisation of Open Source. By confusing Open Source as an effort of mere lines of codes and not true Intellectual Property of others, they have taken advantage of the poor sheep with another set of wolf's clothings, claiming to be original and free by at least 90% in their worth. Nay! I say they still owe 90%, if not more to that old sheep.

The true spirit of Free and Open Software is to always acknowledge the original copyright and authors, but instead these clothiers chose to look for loopholes in the engine chasis license and come out with their daylight but 'legalised' blowtorch.

Their intent is clearly not altruistic, and not for the public good. Theirs are for profit and they are commercially owned. One day, they like MySQL shall pull the rugs from under the flock's paws.

If they are honest to the bone community open source, then they would have paid more fitting homage or at least do what RedHat did - give away shares to Linus Torvalds, which has always been identified as the inventor behind Linux of which RedHat depends on. RedHat has no similar propounded fine printing that says it has added 90% to Linus'.

But i tell you, if you believe in Karma, those who steal shall not sleep well. In this world nor the next.

We in ADempiere that forked from Compiere through open forum put Jorg Janke the creator of Compiere on a high pedestal and always bow to him whenever we can, and even ruled to pay him honourware royalty. Without him we cease.

Until we turn a handsome profit in order to carry out our oath, I am writing this to put my arrow to bow in his honour.

Is There Life After Google?

Yes, there is. 

It is called Cuil. 

I tried www.cuil.com out and immediately fell in love with it. It even wears black. 

But, alas, this is another capitalist notion that the web is for free rides. As long as there are such Open Source search engine like this 

www.dataparksearch.org, the community will perpertually fork or roll out new ones.

Let's build an army. Our 300. Let's take over the world and keep it free.

Who Really Cares About Free Software?

Like all things good, there shall also be bad. Take Free Software for instance. It is meant to be just as its namesake says, "Free as in Free Speech" but no, it has now become syndicated speech, sugar-coated or rather melamine-tainted milk powder and shoved into the throats of babes everywhere.

Today's freeness or Open Source (as i prefer to name it) is more of commercial open source if you are not careful. People who comes to me to sing praises and dedication to open source i suspect are not sincere and in the end i am proven correct when they either slipped off the pirate, i mean boat or ridicule the captain and his merrymen.

The search criteria to look out for among such fur coated men are the following remarks they make rather early in the conversation:

1) I have a family to feed

2) I have paid staff to feed

3) I have to repay my old man

4) I need money

5) I need projects that pay money

6) I know this will make money

7) I can become rich, very rich with this

As you can guess, they all seem to have the word 'money' in it. Some are now more sophisticated in their wordings:

a) This business model has the right service offerings the market wants

b) We are the champion of Open Source and fully dedicate to the cause from day one

c) We are responsible for our works and shall professionally ensure your successful implementation

d) We have a global market uptake and now in negotiations with big players

You catch my draft, and i certainly gringed even while mouthing out the above tell-tale signs. I come across more and more combinations, but somehow they just don't feel right in the spirit of Open Source.

To me and to a whole lot of people, Free and Open Source is a religion. It is something you believe and worship in. To the extent that you make sacrifices, either monetarily or momentarily.

Yea, we do eat. I do have a family of 6 including me to feed. I have staff and i often sacrifice them (relinquishing their services). But in all this, i am also very selfish. I care for my free spirit and not been bogged with monetary laced questions. It is my lifestyle. I choose to write freely or not depending on my mood. I have no position to answer to (trying hard), no phone calls to take (hardly pick up my phone if needed) and always ready to hit the open road.

Somehow we do get fed and the end of the day analysis from my 28 years of adulthood ringed with hippy days and necktie meetings, i have finally ended up content that Karma takes care of things no matter how much words you used. And condemns no matter how many billions (USD700 billion to be exact) or bubble economy regulation is there.

It all boils down to the real charity you wished for and you shall deserve it accordingly. Karma do cares about Buddhas, Jesuses and Mother Theresas, and they have an abode much better than many of us rats.