Comments on: Musing about purchasing and opensource and tenancy agreements

By: JP

JP — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:29:59 +0000

thanks Robin, that was well worth a look

By: Robin Harper

Robin Harper — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:42:02 +0000

You might be interested in some of the work being done to craft agreements between the provider of a virtual world and the virtual world residents. These agreements serve to define individual responsibilities and consequently end up shaping the culture of the world society. If you haven’t seen it, take a look at: http://alpha.metaplace.com/information/terms_service

By: Boycott Novell » Links 18/03/2009: SunBM and Cisco+GNU/Linux

Boycott Novell » Links 18/03/2009: SunBM and Cisco+GNU/Linux — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:49:06 +0000

[...] Musing about purchasing and opensource and tenancy agreements I also like the idea of the environment being treated as a commons, even if we have to conjure up the concept of “private commons” and “public commons”. I know that it sounds unwieldy, but it’s a start. [...]

By: JP

JP — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 08:24:54 +0000

Thanks for your comments.

Doc Searls has been elaborating on the connections between software and construction for some time now. Here are some references:

http://www.windley.com/archives/2003/07/doc_searls_diyi.shtml

cachefly.oreilly.com/radar/r1/05-04.pdf

I think there are three key aspects to all this:

1. Enterprises and homes are looking more and more like ecosystems in their own right, “private commons” as it were. This is above and beyond the “public commons” we have.

2. People who provide services into these commonses need to be courteous in their behaviour, leave things as they found them.

3. Opensource was a harbinger of this, so was plug-and-play, but it actually affects all software.

I will be following this up with another post at the weekend.

Open Sourcerer, I agree with you, trepidation is not unreasonable. We need to keep on educating people about this. Part of the reason I write. There is no point preaching only to the converted.

By: The Open Sourcerer

The Open Sourcerer — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:41:32 +0000

“The software vendor becomes responsible for maintaining the area being tenanted; has to respect common areas; needs permission before carrying out alterations; must repair any damage caused; must leave the area as it was when he/she entered it in the first place.”

You could think of this like a public park. It is about community, responsibility, and respect.

With FOSS, there really isn’t a “vendor” as such. there may be an organisation which provides the facility or service, but the “consumer(s)” are either unknown and have individual needs and wants that are orthogonal to the provider, or are deeply involved with the community with which the facility or service supports.

Either way, as a novice or sceptic, when you enter a new environment the trepidation is not unreasonable and needs to be empathised rather than scorned.

By: Andrew Back

Andrew Back — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:51:55 +0000

The vendor/IT dept Stockholm Syndrome-esque scenario is frighteningly common. Thankfully, most of those who are scared of the freedom that F/OSS affords can be weaned-off their chemical dependency-like vendor addiction, by addressing the common major misconceptions. Of those who refuse to budge you have to question their competence, else where their loyalty lies…

I like the idea of something akin to a software tenancy agreement, but worry that obligations contained within would be subject to varying interpretations. I’m sure such agreements would prove extremely popular with lawyers (they already have a field day with F/OSS licences, e.g. “is it a licence, or actually a contract?”)… I’d personally rather see that we reach a stage of transparency whereby vendor action against a customer’s best interests is a reliable path to failure. Where when a vendor creates lock-in or fails to adequately maintain software etc, it is the exception rather than the rule, and such action never goes unnoticed.

By: Don Marti

Don Marti — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:48:56 +0000

Construction and real estate have independent inspectors that both customer and vendor rely on. You get a second pair of eyes on your contractor’s workmanship when the city inspector comes.

Well-run Linux distributions do this for the software they bundle.

By: Ivan McCann

Ivan McCann — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:55:50 +0000

Stewardship – what a great word to remove the fear from IT teams confronted with change. I find this particularly visible in Operations teams, where stability is at a premium and protectionism is the way to prevent errors caused during change.

Thanks for the article. :)

By: Dominic Sayers

Dominic Sayers — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:40:47 +0000

In the construction industry you have a Retention sum that is only paid after a Certificate of Practical Completion is issued.

If you want to build a nuclear reactor you have to take account of the decommissioning costs in your business case.

Plenty of precedent for this practise.

By: Ben Francis

Ben Francis — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:57:23 +0000

Interesting.

I think this also applies very well to cloud computing/commercially hosted applications.

In this case you really are physically renting rackspace from a company (be that directly or through sub-letting). You have certain expectations of the landlord (looking after utilties and major hardware appliances) and the landlord has certain expectations of you (not abusing the place and using communal areas responsibly).

I got an email from my landlord this morning telling me of planned alterations to my property and giving me advance warning of their visit. They’re upgrading the RAM on my virtual server.

I like your ethos of stewardship and I’m interested to hear about where cloud computing and Open Source intersect. It concerns me that a move to cloud computing may mean a move away from Open Source.