4/28/2009 at 11:53 p.m. (2 years, 9 months ago)
After seeing some lively debate about the subject of Canonical's Landscape service on the Ubuntu forums, I thought I would add my own two cents.
I think the majority of folks seem to grasp the concept of Canonical trying to make money and don't seem to support any kind of "free beer" approach to the software, even though they would like it. However, I am still seeing quite a few people griping about this move being in violation of the "spirit" of Ubuntu. That is primarily the point I would like to address.
Landscape is being released as a web based service to manage systems. It is not just software, but the hosting, support, and updates to the product/service. It took considerable time for Canonical to put this product together and they deserve to be able to make a profit from it. Nothing in that software package is proprietary, strictly speaking. They made OpenLDAP and Apt play nicely together, which is something that has escaped the Linux community for quite some time.
There is nothing in the world preventing a team of community developers from doing the same thing and making a server package that does the same thing except time. While I agree that Landscape would have to be pretty nice to justify the $150/node/year charge (disclaimer: I have not tried it yet), if it is not nice enough the field is open to competition.
I also do not think it was an unfair move for the company to not focus its efforts on developing the competing projects given their goal. However, I do think any move on the part of Canonical to block inclusion of a competing package in Ubuntu's repository would be a serious transgression.
So, for those of you who want "free beer" server management or better control over it (non-service based), go get involved. Join one of the many projects attempting to harmonize OpenLDAP and package management, or just go start your own. There is nothing stopping you. Welcome to Open Source.
