Re: Announce: new EchoLink Howto
On Monday 29 September 2003 01:07 am, Nate Duehr wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 05:41:52PM -0500, w9ya wrote:
> > Huh, well why then , when I asked did they tell me that I couldn't get a
> > package with the code to add to my favorite linux distro.? "They" also
> > specifically told me it was closed sourced and that I would need to run
> > it on Red Hat (personal ug).
>
> Well... really, I guess I shouldn't have said it was "open
> source" in the sense of the DFSG or Free Software -- but being that it's
> shell scripts, it's pretty darn easy to buy a node board, grab the
> software and then do whatever the heck you want with it. It falls into
> that weird category of "no license whatsoever" software that is of
> course, not DFSG-Free -- but still useful. I've been considering
> hacking out a bunch of the IRLP stuff and using the software for doing
> some private linking of a couple of repeaters point-to-point. Should be
> a piece of cake.
>
> As far as their reaction at the booth -- I can't blame them. They were
> there to promote the network and grow it, not hand out software. IRLP
> is a package right now... you get a board and some software and in
> return a bunch of volunteers help you set it up, run it, and handle the
> backend server issues. You get free software updates to the code via
> rsync, and generally -- it's not about the software. It's about having
> a properly working network of VoIP linked repeaters/radios. If they
> were curt to some guy who just walked up and wanted their source and
> wasn't interested in participating in the network first -- I could
> understand that.
That's definitely me. Curt to the point of obvious.
>
> BTW: Who did you talk to at the booth? One of the guys there had my
> name tag on -- I was supposed to be there, but a straight-through drive
> from Denver would have just been too much and my schedule around Dayton
> was just too tight. If I'd have made it, maybe I could have had a
> better explanation or at least been able to answer some of the questions
> folks like yourself might have had about the codebase. Wish I could
> have been there.
I chose not to remember, because the response about being a "security issue"
was so full of "it".
>
> (I think APRS started out much the same way. I don't remember any
> viable completely open source solutions for APRS for many years after
> Bob created it. I never did hear how or when that changed, though. How
> is Bob handling APRS stuff? Was it just reverse-engineered by the
> open-source folks, or ???)
>
> The "one distro" reasoning has a LOT more to do with support
> than anything else -- the volunteers (myself included) in many cases
> have to ask node owners/operators if we can ssh to their machine to help
> them fix problems. Remember, 90% of the people running IRLP have never
> seen Unix/Linux before in their lives. Asking them to do a simple "ls"
> can be a two-hour ordeal if you're wondering what their file permissions
> look like if you're troubleshooting with them. Having all the nodes
> running the same distro is a plus, in this particular case. I spent
> three hours on the phone in two sessions last week explaining to one ham
> why double-NAT (one from his Sprint router, one in his Linksys) was
> going to make getting the port-forwarding necessary to run a server like
> IRLP, quite difficult.
>
> Remember, we're dealing with the Ham Radio "appliance operator"
> generation here, that and the older generation that is frightened by a
> command line, and is happy to just do e-mail on a M$ Windows machine.
Perhaps. But for others a single distro is a problem. I doubt it would make
much difference to anyone to offer it up on Red Hat (or whatever) and still
make it available otherwise.
>
> And quite frankly, having tools to autodetect hardware and sound cards
> is a godsend that many distros (including Debian) simply don't deal with
> well. Especially when the choice was made to use RedHat over four years
> ago in the project... (some of the first IRLP nodes ran RedHat 5.0
> series code, and it really took off around RedHat 6.2. Potato was out
> at the time and it wasn't even close to being "easy to install" enough
> to consider it for a project where all your free time will get sucked
> away by newbie-to-Linux questions about setting up sound cards, etc.
> Dave picked what worked best at the time. If Debian has been best at
> installation for newbies, it probably would have gotten used.
>
> I honestly believe that certain smart folks could reproduce everything
> it does in about a week of coding. Just no one's done it. Maybe I'm
> hoping you'll be interested enough to try it out. I gain nothing if you
> do, I'm just saying "come on, have some fun".
>
> Meanwhile, two or three node owners do have it running on Debian with a
> bunch of tweaking and messing around with it. I think all the
> approaches to doing it were custom, and not via a .deb -- which would be
> a nice way to go. It runs from /home/irlp which drives the filesystem
> purists crazy though -- me included. :-)
Alot of stuff requires tweaking to run on Debian....grin.
Seriously, the point I was making was that the "authors" were making silly
claims (silly to me that is) as to why they made the "closed-source" choice
they made.
Nothing more except that I will not want to look at code that isn't available
under a license that allows me to look at it freely without any restrictions
related to my looking at it. I was left with the impression that it was not
under an "open" license format.
Thanxs for your insight.
73;
Bob
w9ya
>
> 73,
> --
> Nate Duehr <nate@natetech.com>, WY0X
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