Comments on: A New Star Is Born: The PIAF-Green Virtual Machine featuring Scientific Linux 6.5

By: Skavoovie

Skavoovie — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 18:20:48 +0000

As far as I understand it then, the issue for you is not the source code or binaries, but rather, wanting to be able to use not just the name, but also the CentOS logo on a commercial offering of PIAF and/or Incredible PBX. [WM: See our most recent article for our position. Some of it may found familiar. :-)]

By: Chris West

Chris West — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 02:07:23 +0000

Ignoring the technical arguments for or against a particular distro, wouldn’t it make sense, in the name of freedom and openness, to choose a distro that has next to no chance of closing up on you?

RHEL and CentOS are rock-solid and popular, but Red Hat, at its core, will always be motivated by profit margins. That’s not bad, but they always reserve the right to close their own code in some way. SL is still based on Redhat code, which means you still run the risk of IP constriction in the future…

Debian and, to the best of my knowledge, Slackware have always been completely non-profit. Debian brings fantastic package management, while Slackware has always struck me as more of a hacker’s OS, with little or no central management. Pros and cons of each are dependent on your design philosophy.

I’ve not spent any time looking at the implications of porting PIAF to another distro, but wouldn’t it make sense to consider it?

By: Skavoovie

Skavoovie — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 09:21:24 +0000

I never implied that you had claimed the installer was open source. I'm saying if you're going to give Red Hat grief because of their very reasonable trademark limits, doesn't it make sense that every aspect of PIAF/Incredible PBX should follow suit? Red Hat won't allow others to use the CentOS name as part of their product name, or if they change the source code, or that they don't offer a tutorial or turn-key solution for removing the trademarked content in order to release an identical or nearly-identical distro (sans their logo and name). If this is so horrible, then why not lead by example and make the same offerings with all aspects of PIAF and Incredible PBX -- including the installer? Just because installers are exempted from the GPL doesn't mean they can't be released under the GPL or another open source license of one's choosing. We have two products that package others' software and maintain them all in a logical and time-saving and headache-saving manner with some clean-ups, tweaks, add-ons, etc., to make a great product that is a huge asset to many people. They both offer automated updates for a fee, but both provide methods available to end-users to update on their own at the cost of time and effort instead of money. Hence the goose/gander analogy that still seems spot-on to me. To be perfectly clear and to avoid any misunderstanding, I am not asking for source code of the installer -- after all, to do so would be a violation of the terms of the use of said installer, right? [WM: Simple answer is the person that wrote the PIAF installer doesn't want it open sourced because he doesn't want to have to support "improvements" by others. It's the exact same reason Red Hat doesn't want people changing their code and calling it Red Hat. But there's a major difference. RHEL and CentOS are GPL products. The PIAF installer is not. Whether to open source an installer is the developer's call unless you're claiming the code is GPL compliant. And you do lose control of what's come unglued in the platform once people start tweaking the installation method. If you don't believe it, watch the install process and start counting the number of interdependencies that get installed to make everything work reliably. You can capture what scrolls across the screen if you want to replicate what the PIAF installer is doing. Having said that, if Tom gets hit by a truck, he understands that I would open source the code (and probably retire) in a heartbeat. You may be unaware that there has been an open source alternative for loading PIAF on a stock CentOS platform for many years. I've provided a link to the latest code if that's your thing. The "Red Hat won't allow others to use the trade name if others change or even use the code" stance is anything but a "very reasonable trademark limit" to use your phrase. It's a direct violation of the terms of the GPL. Nobody is trading on the CentOS trade name! Does PBX in a Flash sound like CentOS PBX to you?? CentOS is a Linux platform on which PBX in a Flash runs just as Windows is an OS platform on which Excel runs. The difference is Microsoft never gave away Windows. CentOS did! And, under GPL2, you can't do it by attaching conditions after the fact that require a programming staff to unravel the open source product before you can use it. Read the GPL2 license. It's crystal clear! Red Hat basically wants the CentOS source code minus the CentOS marks and images to be GPL code... but not its object code/executables. You can't impose either of those restrictions under the GPL2 license. Assuming Red Hat ever obtains the CentOS registered trademark, Red Hat has two options under GPL2: drop the trademark and artwork removal requirements or stop marketing CentOS as a GPL product (which they obviously cannot do since they are using thousands of other folks' open source trademarked products in "their work"). The same applies to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, by the way. But we'll save those issues for the courts to decide if Red Hat wants to go down that road. Been there. Done that. Can't wait! David and Goliath is one of our favorite Bible stories. In the meantime, here's the solution that would make everybody happy. First, many folks don't give a rip about using either the RHEL or CentOS marks or artwork. It's the source AND executable code that was released under the GPL that they are after AND that they were promised could be used! What we're not going to do is invest hundreds of programming hours rebranding what is touted as a GPL product. If Red Hat wants a generic, mark-free, image-free distribution of RHEL, Red Hat can produce it AND keep it current as new versions of RHEL and CentOS are released! Make it a 100% compatible RHEL clone and call it MugWump™ and use the Nerd Vittles logo for the artwork. Under GPL2, we will license everyone to use the product with our copyrighted artwork and our MugWump trademark. Then everybody will be happy while saving Red Hat hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Simple as that.]

By: Trousle Undrhil

Trousle Undrhil — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 13:31:38 +0000

Just wanted to point out that Windows does not have "Option" keys. The key to press to release the mouse capture into VirtualBox is the right "Control" key. Minor detail, but some people may get stuck looking for that key and not realize you meant Control there.

By: Skavoovie

Skavoovie — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 08:56:46 +0000

I commend you on your stance regarding Open Source, software freedom, and making software turn-key easy to repackage and redistribute. I assume this means that with PIAF / Incredible PBX being built on top of all the GPLd software it uses, that we'll see all the PIAF and Incredible PBX code open sourced, and DMCA warnings, and agreements to not request source code or attempt to reverse engineer the scripts removed? Goose, gander and all right? [WM: Incredible PBX 11 has been GPL code since inception. It incorporates all of the freeware installation code of prior releases. PIAF is a freeware installer of other folks' software. For details, see this thread. Installers are specifically exempted from the open source requirements of the GPL. The goose/gander analogy is misplaced. We've never claimed the PIAF installer was open source or GPL code. That is not the case with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS.]

By: lelnet

lelnet — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 12:59:45 +0000

Just FYI, but the Incredible PBX 11 install script is still checking the OS and failing if it doesn’t report CentOS. (I commented out that test and then it ran fine, but since you appear to intend to never use CentOS again, you might want to fix that in the source.)

[WM: Thanks for the heads up. It’s fixed now. ]

By: r070rHead

r070rHead — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 02:29:27 +0000

I've followed your guide to getting this going, and all is well until I try to install Incredible PBX 11. When I run the install script, I get a "Ooops. You aren't running a 32-bit version of CentOS 6. 32-bit CentOS 6 is required for this release of Incredible PBX." I saw in another post where you "fixed" something in the script... What do I need to do to get this to work here? [WM: Thanks for the heads up. It's fixed now. Just download it again after erasing the one you already have.]