A question for the open source people

Mark Haney mhaney at ercbroadband.org
Thu Jun 19 14:16:28 UTC 2008


Michael Harpe wrote:
> What I have always been curious about is this: how many of you actually take advantage of the open source? In other words, how many of you really take the source code and do something with it?
> 
> Personally I don't. I can program in C, i'm pretty good at it. I've just never felt the need to alter the software I use. I'm fine with waiting for the new versions as they come out.
> 
> I'm really not trying to start a fight. I am just curious. I love free software. I think the free software movement has enabled a lot of people who could not afford to operate a computer to do so. Having Linux source code available has trained a generation of system programmers. There's no disputing the value of free, open source software.
> 
> Anyway, that's my question. Feel free to respond to me directly.
> 
> Mike Harpe
> Sellersburg, IN USA


I can't say my company is intensively modifying code, but we do make 
mods for our internal use for apps like MRTG, Nagios and such.  We're 
also pretty active filing bug reports and testing patches for various 
things.  Okay, at least I am.  We're a small shop and networking is our 
core business (we're a non-profit ISP in NC) so we deal a lot with 
monitoring software, which in some case requires some creative changes 
to make it do things we want it to do.  Being the Sr. SysAdmin here, I'm 
  responsible for a large part of that, but it's more of a team effort 
here for things.

Not to mention all the custom work I've done on updating RPMs for newer 
OS versions of things we use here.  Although that is becoming less an 
issue now.  Our main work is in modifying monitoring software to fit our 
needs.





-- 
Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt -- Caius Julius Caesar


Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

Call (866) ERC-7110 for after hours support




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