Drawback of Open Source

I'm a huge fan of open source projects.  Most of the software that I install at home is open source, and I have thrown some money at a few projects that I like.  My own preference on the matter is that there should be contributions made by companies that use open source.  I've identified a few things that bother me about the current state of funding open source, some of which I will become very hyperbolic about.

RedHat.  The enterprise standard.  Please stop trying to charge for every single feature.  We used to make fun of Microsoft about their licensing.  How much is it going to cost for me to run a virtual container environment with software defined storage?  What if I want to have a local patch repository and centralized management? I suppose I will need to pay for RHEV, Ansible, Ceph, RHEL, Satellite, OpenShift, Docker EE, and whatever else you can find in there.  Or I can spend a few minutes looking up alternatives and use the cost savings as a selling point to the C level.  Convoluted licensing for products that were free up until they became RedHat products is a bad path to go down.

Also, notice that the Docker EE license comes from Docker?  That will not be the case soon.  Because RedHat couldn't figure out a decent strategy to make more money off of it, the are fleshing out Buildah as a replacement for Docker.  It also looks OpenShift is going to be a full step away from Kubernetes.  It's almost as if the community creates a standard, and RedHat makes enough minor changes that it no longer works with the community.  Don't believe me, take a look at what port they use for VXLAN compared to what is defined in the RFC. 

But, RedHat is the easiest way to pay for enterprise open source software.

Aggregate 1:
Ready to drop Docker in RHEL

Aggregate 2:
Standards being fleshed out in 2017

While I was scanning through the news one morning, I saw something relevant to my interests.  How to pay for open source projects.  This should be a no-brainer, just hit the donate tab on their website.  That's generally not how it works in corporate environments. The article sounded like a nightmare scenario for any admin.  Let another company scan your systems for open source software, and you pay the open source developers to keep your projects up to date.  Yeah, no thanks.  It is still a step in the right direction.  It does offer a method of payment from corporate customers, and it can make sure that critical software stays up to date.  But, if the dev team has heavily modified the software, then there is potential that it is not something that they want patched or changed at all.  It could be a part of a whole new application that the company does not want to rebuild every time some code change happens in the underlying technology. 

Aggregate 3:
A good start

So, the ideal solution in my mind is to find a way to pay for open source, reduce risk by holding the scanning tools, and being able to have a line item method of paying for mandatory components.  While I do not believe that Tidelift is 100% there, I think they are the closest to what is needed.  And, if enough customers agree on what is the correct approach, I'm sure Tidelift will create a policy based on that.  And no, I am not paid by them.  If you're looking to ditch some of the RedHat licensing and want to make sure that you can maintain support, I'd look into Tidelift.

Aggregate 4:
Pretty neat 

Yammering about 3d printing

I'm not going to pretend to be an artist.  I did get some toys so I can try, but I decided to start off much simpler.  My very first blog post was about building a home made IR blaster that integrates with AWS to make a voice controlled remote.  To completely finish that project, I tried to make a case for the project.  I now have a lovely ingot of PLA.  Not a big problem, it just reinforces that I have to learn more about the 3d design tools available.  Something I have not really had much incentive to do before now.  Which is kind of funny considering how often I seek out the design panels at different conferences.

About a decade ago I went to a conference that had a speaker connect his system to the projector and build out a skull in roughly 30 seconds, then drop it down some stairs by applying gravity to his design.  I think it was around the same time that the open source nerds were all freaking out about the release of Big Buck Bunny, a video made using only open source software.  They kind of missed the mark, making some of the creatures and themes too violent, dark, or deranged for small children.  I'm not trying to be as good as the 30 second skull guy or the Big Buck Bunny crew, but it would be nice if I could figure out the application well enough to make a box with a hole in it.

Adding injury to ignorance, I also tried a fun trick from my 3d printer manufacturer.  Soldering extra long pins to a pi zero w and adding it directly to the controller.  Within about a week I had realized that the system wasn't operating properly anymore.  I took the pi out and went back to a pi 3.  The system then degraded further and further until I found the root cause.  I had tangled a wire that led to the heated bed of the printer.  It caused a temperature failure for about 75% of my prints.  Once I resolved that, I realized that I could put the pi back into the controller box.  But I had a backlog of things I wanted to print, so it has to wait until after I get caught up. 

The most recent Chrome update has resulted in Octoprint being unable to preview the print with the GCode viewer.  I have found that it still works fine with Firefox.  I suspect that there is a memory leak somewhere, since my system will fail to come out of sleep mode when I leave Octoprint up on Firefox.  A minor annoyance since I use Chrome for everything.

I would have to say that my minor gripes are pretty funny.  I have to learn how to use an application that has been around for 2 decades.  I don't have time to upgrade my toy because I'm still playing with it.  I now have an increased workload because I have found more toys to make.  I have to use a different browser sometimes.  Meanwhile, Amazon and Prusa have created inexpensive filament that works well.  There are new attachments to make multi-color prints with dissolving supports.  I can make better toys for less money.  I just need to finish making my Halloween napkin rings so I can get started on Thanksgiving decorations.