To free or not to free?

It is a very common question, if it is godd or not when a company deals with GPL editions. Now, after RMS's very impressive presentation (I mean evangelisation;-) I was also musing about this question. He really strengthened me. At this moment Zorp and syslog-ng have GPL'ed edition (only for misleading you we call Zorp GPL and syslog-ng OSE;-)

Let's see why we deal with development of free softwares!

1. First of all, because we need them. Let's suppose we have a goal, but there is no suitable tool. We quickly hack one and we releases it under GPL. We have already published some applications and hopefully we will do it (e.g. Restrict, iptables-utils, pinger, jailer or sendrip). Our approach is when we need a tool we search for one under GPL. If there is no suitable one than we search for one which quite good and we develop the missing funcions and (of course) we release it (e.g. GTK, WAF or happydoc).

1. Reputation. It is the second of the most important motivator. No need for explanation. A well-done project brings a good reputation both for the developer and the company.

1. Possibly bringing leads for the commercial edition orf for the support.

Okay, we have some GPL'ed stuff, but how can we know its popularity? It is a very good question (nobody knows the answer;-).

1. We could measure the downloads, but it is only an indirect guess. We do not know downloading info of the mirror sites and even their mirrors etc. Of course a download do not mean and installation and and installation do not mean it stays on the machine. As soon as an application become a part of a distro measuring is more difficult. It is obvious that a distro's user base do not mean the really use it.
2. Polls. Some index site measures vitality and popularity but not all the users are willing to vote. We could do it on our own site too.
3. Mailing list archives. It is also an estimation. Only a few users are asking, willing to tell information about themselves. If you have good documentation it really decreases the traffic on the list.
4. Articles, reviews and books. If your tool is mentioned in an article or a book, that is a really good reputation. What is more if your name is in an RFC (just search for Bazsi in the RFCs;-) Fortunately all have happened to us. Mick D. Bauer mentioned syslog-ng several times in his books and also wrote some article about Zorp in the LinuxJournal (The Paranoid Penguin column).
5. Of course the best feedback comes directly from the user. Unfortunately it is very rare. Days ago a hold a Zorp GPL training for a big multi. They use Zorp GPL as an internal firewall. (It is a secret but I disclose it, they are not the only one;-). The firewall was installed by an outsource partner but their engineers really like it and want to know a lot deeper about it. It was good to hear, that they are satisfied by the Zorp GPL. It is also happened that on an exhibition (this week) I mentioned syslog-ng and the guy told me they use it all of their servers. What a surprise! These are moment when I feel it is very good dealing with GPL.
   

All in all, cooperating with open source communities appears to be a sensible strategy for software developers. With a partially or fully open source development, time and financial means can be saved, the global marketing potential - represented by free products - can be exploited and remarkable know-how can be gained. In case you do not merely have a business plan but you also possess high-level competence, you can only profit from cooperating with others.