[Openvds-devel] Introduction, History of FreeVSD

[Paul Marshall]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Paul Marshall and some of you may know me or remember me from the 
early FreeVSD days. During the early days of FreeVSD I took part in numerous 
discussions, provided, tips, workarounds and fixes for a variety of issues. In 
addition, I also carried on discussions with Idaya and some of the developers 
regarding features as well as marketing and the future direction of FreeVSD. I 
backed out of the community as a result of these discussions. It was clear that 
the only one Idaya wanted to make money on this project was Idaya. I also had 
suspicions that they would be closing of source and releasing a commercial 
product. I knew a revolt would be coming, but I didn't want to cause havoc by 
making a negative post in the lists. Instead, I just backed away and waited for 
the shit to hit the fan. Sure enough, it did and here we are. 

I don't have a problem with Idaya wanting to make money for their work. 
However,  I feel that they have gone too far. While their recent actions may be 
legal, they certainly aren't ethical. My problem with what they are doing is 
the fact that they are basing commercial software on open source software. In 
addition, instead of integrating submitted code, the took the ideas and rewrote 
them so it was their code, which is what allowed them to create ProVSD. 
Originally, they said that Idaya was funding some of the development and that 
they were only going to sell the control panels and that is where they were 
going make their money. They assured us that FreeVSD would remain Open Source. 
Fortunately, karma comes back and hits you like a semi-truck. They have the 
lost the most valuable asset they had, their community. An as a result, their 
product will fail. Mark my words. 

Before I give you some background on myself, let me tell you a little bit about 
the history of Virtual Servers and FreeVSD. For those of you who are new, this 
may be interesting. As far as I know, virtual servers were first used by 
iServer, now owned by Verio. It was a similar implementation of what we have 
now, however, it ran on BSD. Not FreeBSD, but the original BSD. iServer had a 
set of command line commands, a web based control panel, and a Java based 
control panel for the desktop. They did not chroot you into your directory, 
however, which made their system insecure. From 97-99, most people offering 
Virtual Servers, like myself, were iServer resellers. In 1998, virtuald was 
written for Linux by Brian Ackerman, at least he did the How-To. The daemon is 
the core of the VSD system. Virtuald also had a few utilities for dealing with 
mail, user, accounts, etc, but they were very basic. The first program to 
become an interface to virtuald was VirtFS, which used a command line menu 
system. FreeVSD could be thought of as the third generation. FreeVSD simply 
refined the system adding more security, the VSD protocol, skels, and the 
modified packages. FreeVSD was a dramatic improvement over what was available, 
but as those of us who have used it, know it isn't perfect. In fact, the last 
version I used was 1.4.6 because I have made so many modifications to my setup 
that upgrading would be a nightmare unless I did it on another machine. 

Now a little bit about myself. Originally, I have a sales and marketing 
background, however, I have been an Internet consultant in San Rafael, 
California since 1996. I am experienced in nearly every aspect of this industry 
from sales, consulting, project management, information architecture, 
usability, design, backend/database development, system administration, system 
integration, maintenance, and marketing. I can go on, but you get the idea. I 
have always created long term relationships with my clients with hosting, 
maintenance, and marketing programs. As a result, I host most of my clients 
sites, and manage all of them. Since I have limited resources to provide 
support, I don't offer hosting on it's own. Since I have always administered my 
clients sites, and they rarely need to do anything themselves, I have little 
need for the control panels. When I began using FreeVSD, I tore it apart. I 
have intimate knowledge of the internals. While I haven't used the latest 
versions, I am sure they haven't changed much.

I have a lot to offer this project and I would like to be involved. However, I 
can't do this as a charitable project. While I believe in free and Open Source 
software, I don't believe in working for free. While I enjoy contributing to 
the community and sharing my knowledge, I can only go so far. I am willing to 
put forth a considerable amount of time, resources, and energy toward this 
project, as long as there is a return. I am not looking to get rich, but I have 
to make a living. In order for this to happen, one of two things needs to 
happen.

1. I need to be able to offer commercial support to anyone who needs it. I 
tried to offer this to the FreeVSD community, however, Idaya asked me not to 
post about it at the last minute. Obviously because they didn't want me to 
compete with them on the support weren't offering anyway. 

2. An ISP or ISPs need to come on board to fund this project. This was a 
benefit to FreeVSD project and many others, however, Idaya abused it. Based on 
what I have seen, we don't have a comprehensive set of skills covered. We are 
going to need programmers with skills that I don't think any of us have. For 
instance, I haven't seen any mention of any hardcore C/C++ or kernel developers 
stepping forward, however, I could be wrong. Nonetheless, If we are going to 
develop a top-notch system, then we need top-notch people. We are talking about 
software that is used to make money. We definitely need some project leads who 
can direct and manage the project, as well as maintaining focus and direction. 
In addition, we need to have people who are experienced in the different areas 
of system administration. Someone needs to deal with sendmail, someone else 
with apache, someone else with DNS. This way we will get the best experience in 
the right areas. 

I have several ideas for products and solutions using this system that are not 
practical for me to offer. However, these could be valuable to an ISP. I can 
help them leverage this system into a money maker. If we can find some ISPs to 
come on board I am willing to work with them to develop those products and 
solutions. At the same time, any OpenVSD development will contributed back to 
the community. 

Over the next day or so I will post a couple more messages regarding my 
thoughts on the architecture, VSD protocol, and control panels.

Take care,

Paul



 
Paul Marshall -- President, Senior Consultant
Protelligence
Internet Consulting and Marketing
http://www.protelligence.com  415-721-0123