Ascend Archive
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Re: (ASCEND) "Free" Software vs. Licensed (was "analyse RADIUS logs")
I said:
>> Well, it is obvious that Dale makes money selling software
>> which would not even exist if not for the original (public
>> domain) Radius. Dale should be forgiven for having a vested
>> interest in promoting the one platform for which he has a
>> product...
and Dale E. Reed Jr. replied:
>The above is very opionated and lot of sarcasm
Sorry if I touched a nerve, but I think that it is clear
that EVERYONE starts with the "lingua franca" public-domain
Radius, and takes advantage of the baseline functionality.
It seems clear that we all stand on the shoulders of those
who came before us (as physically impossible as this may sound).
Therefore, I repeat. All vendors of any commercial Radius
owe much to the original work.
As for promoting one platform vs another, this is obvious
to the casual observer. If had you ported Radius NT to Unix,
you might have me as a customer. Since you didn't, you don't.
>on something you don't know much about
Please excuse my modesty. I pre-date the "internet" itself,
going back to the very old days of MULTICS and SAIL, so I think
I am entitled to make a few observations about one approach
versus another. I have seen many stray from "the one true
path", and I have watched them suffer as their dreams were
smashed upon the rocky shores of proprietary products and
single-vendor O/Ses. I have seen many (and helped quite a few)
understand that the mantras "Unix", "Open Systems", "Standards",
and "Source Code" must be chanted to drown out the siren songs
of the vendors who claim to offer single-source solutions, and
call them "turn-key". When I hear the song of the sirens, I
know that there are rocks nearby, so I chant louder, and come
about hard to starboard.
>I talk about things I have experience in for many years.
Cool. Opinions are the grist which we all run through
the mill, and the end result is truth. Welcome to the mill.
Your opinions are interesting, and welcome.
>> a) Costs money (one would presume that the customer
>> is paying for the "added value", not the freely
>> available baseline Radius code, but this is not
>> known to me)
>So why comment on it? RadiusNT and Emerald are un-matched on ANY
>platform, UNIX or NT, for what it does.
Is this presented as fact, or opinion? Sales pitch, or
consensus of the community as a whole?
>> The contention made by Dale - that "Unix" means "Linux", and
>> all Unix software must be "free" to have "market share" confuses
>> many issues:
>Again, not really what I said.
Oh? What you said was (and I quote in total):
>> There are two REALLY different markets. Most UNIX people are [sic]
>> willing to put out money for software. They want their LINUX
>> for nothing and their tools for free. How can Ascend make
>> money there? Now on the NT market, people are willing to put
>> money into products, so there IS a viable market for selling
>> products on windoze.
How else can that statement be read?
>Most people countering what we offer start with price. Something like "why
>buy NT, SQL Server, and all that when I can get Linux on cheap pentiums with
>free software"?
Price is an issue, but if this is your only problem,
I would not worry about it too much. I think we both
agree that there is a minimum ante, we only appear to
differ on how that ante should be spent.
>There are two kinds of ISPs: Big and Small. The big ones have commercial
>products and large systems (ie, money). The small ones penny pinch and use
>as much free software as they can. Thats the facts.
Let's ask a "big ISP" - >>>HEY JASON NEALIS!<<<
Erols is a "big ISP", right?
(Bigger than we wanna get, anyway.)
Let me guess:
a) Netscape Commerce Sever AND
Apache, maybe Cern for a
proxy server, if you run
proxies at all?
b) inn for news?
c) Plain old (but tricked up)
sendmail and Qualcomm's qpop?
d) Radius from? (Wanna tell?)
e) 10 different SNMP packages
in as many months, all found
to be lacking, and a skunkworks
project to use ucd-snmp or
some other snmp where you can
trick things around.
f) Serious servers, likely a mix
of Suns, DEC Alphas, all with
a load of "homebrew" stuff done
by skilled-old-world craftsmen
in Perl, awk, yacc, lex, and c?
>I don't want to argue an OS war here so please don't.
Argue? Who? Where? About what?
>> Commercialization of the net is a recent fad,
>> and this too will pass. The net was built via
>> standards and cooperation. If the interlopers
>> think that they can "get rich quick" think that
>> they know better, good for them. I for one
>> have no intention of ignoring a fellow
>> professional's request for assistance, since I
>> (like everyone) have benefited much more than
>> I have contributed.
>
>That is really being blind. As I said earlier, there are two kinds of
>ISPs, Big and Small.
Blind? The two kinds of any business are PROFITABLE and
UNPROFITABLE!!!!
Size has nothing to do with profitability! AOL proved
that, and Mindspring (even though their stock price is
at least out of the dumpster) is (or will be) the next to
admit that bigger does NOT mean more profitable.
We are very profitable, and we KNOW that if we grow too large,
the overhead will eat into the profits. Profit is why you
work. Size is an ego trip.
>Big ISPs do *NOT* use public domain software to run their companies.
Oh yeah? Let's count Apache sites, shall we?
Better yet, let's let the "Big ISPs" on this
list settle this issue. (Please comment, you
big guns!)
>They buy multi-million dollar software packages with hefty
>support tags simply because they can't afford to ask a list when
>something breaks (and hope that someone else has encountered that problem).
>They call their support rep and get it fixed. Small ISPS typically
>do follow what you say, though.
What multi-million dollar software packages? I would love
to see a software package being offered for any "ISP application"
that has that large a price tag.
The few "large ISPs" that send me checks on a regular basis
see software tools as one of their few tangible assets, and
all have developed most of it in-house.
Sorry, but the risk is in being dependent upon a single
vendor, which explains the overwhelming success of things
like Apache.
>> 3c) Public domain software comes with SOURCE CODE...
>Again, this is assuming the company has the expertise to do this
>kind of stuff. Not all have that kind of fluent talent to modify
>kernals and add extensive and complex patched to software. They just
>need something they can buy and it will work.
There is no such animal, since more than the software has to
work for the overall system to work. Just look at some of
the arcane stuff you see on this very list! "Plug and Play"
Radius will not help anyone when the problem has to do with
multiple PRIs with different clocking from different
LECs on the same MAXen. If one does not have talent with the
basic required skills (and this includes patching software),
then you will not have talent that knows what a DCD-400 is,
and knows about clock sources in Central Offices.
Here's the point. Only the "easy" stuff is being packaged.
The hard stuff is hard because it requires judgement, experience,
and defies a packaged solution, since the hard stuff is random.
>Now you are implying that I am selling MS?
No, only that the NT platform (while it may be OK for
a Radius server) is not acceptable for serious business
in general. Only recently has NT become "stable" enough
to be useful outside non mission-critical "workgroups".
While your product is sure to be a fine product, I cannot
trust NT to stay "up". If I cannot trust NT, I cannot
buy your product. Therefore, NT is PART of what you "sell",
until you port to some other O/S and give us a choice.
>> 6) There is a great push from recent arrivals, wannabes,
>> and "suits" with no sense of history or perspective
>> to try to make running an internet site something
>> that can be done by inexperienced/untrained personnel.
>
>We have a "suite" not suits. :)
The "suits" want to buy the "suites". (They think it's sweet.)
>Its been around for well over two years. We are not a recent arrival..
The "recent arrivals" include the suits that want to buy "suites".
I was not talking about vendors, I was talking about customers.
>Nothing personal, but your "wisdom" is pretty opinionated and lacks
>a lot of research and understanding.
Sorry, if you want the citations and back-up data, including
the 3-inch binders full of charts and graphs, you have to pay
some money. If you do not want agree, fine with me. One must
first work through the denial stage... :)
>We have been in the market for well over two years and I "know" what the
>people who I talk to want.
I have been "in this market" for well over a quarter of a century,
so while I may be "opinionated", I assure you that I do not lack
adequate research to back up such "opinions".
"Understanding" is a qualitative measure that can only be measured
relative to something else, so I cannot exchange insults - I do
not feel it is anyone's place to do so.
It is also not my place to continue to go so far "off topic"
on this list. Back to business.
Rather than "carpe diem", on the Internet, once is wise to "carpe PM"
james fischer jfischer@supercollider.com
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