[Nagios-devel] The nagios community wants to keep its open soul

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It's an alarm call that is raised : after a long period where people =20
began to think
nagios is a dead foss project, we nearly reach a point of no return : =20
the author try to
gag on the community because it's to free!!

Let's get back to the facts : Nagios is still the reference in the =20
open source monitoring
tools, and some serious challengers like Zabbix or Zenoss try to reach =20
its place. In the
open source world, and especially the monitoring one, the real =20
strength is not in code
lines, but in the community around the project. You know the Nagios =20
one has been a great
one during years. Meanwhile, since two years, the lack of presence and =20
answer from Ethan
to proposals from the community legitimately irritate the community. =20
As much as a fork,
named Icinga, arisen a year ago.

Where the story became complex is when we look at the economic sphere =20
around Nagios. Like
a lot of foss that grow a lot, and after have given more than 8 years =20
of it's time to
Nagios, he legitimately create a support enterprise behind it, "Nagios =20
Enterprise". The
Icinga fork came from community members that are also employees of =20
another society that
supports Nagios : Netways. If the GPLv2 license of Nagios was =20
respected, it seems more
like a business fork than a foss one for the nagios author. That had =20
irritate Nagios
author and the major part of the community have stay in the Nagios project.

Unfortunately, this story have a side effect : we are thinking Ethan =20
began to turn
against the community, and this open spirit that allow this fork, by =20
ignore even more the
community and refuse to answer to code enhancement proposals.
Last but not least affront : he ask the DNS entry of the French nagios =20
community site
(http://www.nagios-fr.org) to be give to him so he can raised a new =20
community, more
corporate : in this site we can see some posts about the felon (but =20
open source and
nagios relative) Icinga project! This fork seem to have finally more =20
cut Ethan author and
the community than the community into two parts.

That's the last straw for a community who want to be as free as foss =20
it supports. In Open
Source, we have "free as in beer" but also "free as in speech". I, as =20
the leader of the
French community, and with the support of community members, answer =20
him that it will be
be tolerated to be dictate laws about what the community can speak =20
about. To do not risk
an hypothetical sue from Nagios Enterprise (for trademark protection), =20
we have decided to
migrate the site to monitoring-fr.org and to gave the nagios-fr.org =20
site to Nagios
enterprise when the migration will be finished.

With this open letter entitle "The nagios community wants to keep its =20
open soul", the
community ask where the project is going and if it will still be open =20
and ethically
respectful of the open source spirit. Some question raised about the =20
real open aspect of
the Nagios future by freezing the current open source part and put it =20
into a close
solution (Nagios XI, close application based on Nagios, soon available =20
from Nagios
Enterprise) that seem to be the only part that will evolve in the =20
future. The community
also ask how it's seen in the Nagios project, if it still have is its =20
place into it and
if it must hold its tongue about what is not "corporate" for Nagios =20
Enterprise.

The community want to help on the industrialization and support of =20
Nagios by free
software business, but still want to keep its soul. The community wish =20
Nagios keep it's
first rank, that was give to it by the community, and the project came =20
back to "the old
good time" when foss developers and people who just want to help had =20
yet their words to
say against marketing communication.

We wish this open letter will not be a dead letter, because this will =20
finish to dig the
gap between the author and its community, that represent a major part =20
of the project's
power, and will not finish by a fork that will divided again the =20
community, and will add
another ta

...[email truncated]...


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