Should SodiumSuite Be Open Source
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@openit said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
By the way, what happened to Sodium, it was some relevant software I believe?
Being rebuilt. Company ended up with other money making projects that pushed it to the wayside when there was team turnover and it's very much in process, but there are ERP systems rolling out to production ahead of it unfortunately.
Why don't you just open source it and let others help?
It's been kicked around but adds a ton of complication to any monetization strategy. But has its benefits, of course. We've definitely talked about it, but the consensus thus far has been that keeping it closed makes the most sense.
Monetization might be a little harder but security and trust are higher.
Shouldn't be, since there isn't a guarantee that something being open is what is run in a SaaS model.
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@stacksofplates remember that SodiumSuite is a service. Talking about a service purely in terms of source is weird because it's not software. It uses software, but isn't itself software. So open source applies to components of the service, but not all of it. Nessus, however, is only software. So source applies to all of it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@stacksofplates remember that SodiumSuite is a service. Talking about a service purely in terms of source is weird because it's not software. It uses software, but isn't itself software. So open source applies to components of the service, but not all of it. Nessus, however, is only software. So source applies to all of it.
I'm not talking about a service purely in terms of source. I'm reiterating what you have stated before.
This applies to on prem source code and source code for services.
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
I'm reiterating what you have stated before.
You are quoting something I said about software in reference to a service. I fail to see the applicability. Why bring up what I think about Nessus software in a discussion about this service?
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
This applies to on prem source code and source code for services.
Notice that I even pointed out that I was talking about 1. software and 2. security.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
This applies to on prem source code and source code for services.
Notice that I even pointed out that I was talking about 1. software and 2. security.
It's still software that runs your service. And you've stated this before which is clearly talking about using a service that's open source.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
This applies to on prem source code and source code for services.
Notice that I even pointed out that I was talking about 1. software and 2. security.
Yes the security that's given by using open source. Not just security software.
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
It's still software that runs your service. And you've stated this before which is clearly talking about using a service that's open source.
I feel like this is stretching things, a lot. I didn't state that GitHub is open or closed, I don't know. I just know it is MS and GitLab is not. GitLab I can download and use myself. When choosing between those two essentially identical services, the addition of not being MS and also being available as open source software makes GitLab a pretty clear winner.
That's not going to be a comparison to Sodium Suite. SS doesn't have an alternative, and won't be available to download. It's not software, it's purely a service.
Bottom line, there is no consideration of making SS as a product for people to download. Open or closed, doesn't really matter as it is purely a service offering that's being considered. It's absolutely fine to not like that, it's absolutely fine to want to go make software that does the same thing. We think that the value is in being offered as a service, not in being software, and making it as software won't be monetizeable. So this line of thought isn't "hey it would be great if it was open", it's "hey, it would be great if it never got off the ground and didn't happen." Going open here isn't an option, it's just another way of saying "the project should be canceled" unless there is some magic monetization strategy that no one has thought of that you want to propose.
It's not software. It uses software. Some of that software will be open. Some almost certainly closed. But until something huge changes, SS is purely a service offering with no consideration for it to be software.
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It's no secret that I feel open source licensing is always superior to closed source for the customer when getting software. Absolutely. I stick by that. And the discussions from me above were always about software, as is clear in the quotes.
If you look around you'll also find that I've said over and over again that there are plenty of times that closed source is fine or great, and that it's about products, not licensing, at the end of the day. And if a closed source product is superior as a product, the source license improvement isn't enough to make a big difference.
No number of times quoting something we already know to be true... that open licenses are better than closed for end users of software will change anything here because I'm not disagreeing with it. Never have, never will. It's better, all other things being equal.
But there are problems with trying to make all software (or things that use software) be open. A big one is financing. Would Microsoft make MS Office if they couldn't make it closed source? No, we know that they would not have invested in it. And pretty much everyone agrees that MS Office is the best product on the market. Not worth the price tag, but the best if it were free. That the license is closed isn't enough of a problem to make it not the best. (The cost might be, though.)
So you have to balance what software you want to exist at all, with which ones you want to be open.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
I didn't state that GitHub is open or closed, I don't know. I just know it is MS and GitLab is not
I never said you stated anything about GitHub. You clearly said "Gitlab is open source software that you can download yourself, examine the code, contribute to, and you can also use their free, hosted service that runs the same code". This clearly shows you care about the fact that the service is also open source. And that's why you chose it over GitHub.
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
I didn't state that GitHub is open or closed, I don't know. I just know it is MS and GitLab is not
I never said you stated anything about GitHub. You clearly said "Gitlab is open source software that you can download yourself, examine the code, contribute to, and you can also use their free, hosted service that runs the same code". This clearly shows you care about the fact that the service is also open source. And that's why you chose it over GitHub.
Right. But I don't see how it applies here. GitLab is very different software, in a very different market. If SS was available closed source and something almost identical as open source, and I was an end user, then that source licensing (and not being MS) would be really important.
But that's not the case. It doesn't exist in any form, let alone in two forms. Would GitHub have been able to create its market if it had used GitLab's model up front? Maybe, maybe not. But good chance on the "not". Most markets need a closed source product to open the market. Open source tends to follow (and then innovate because closed source vendors tend to stagnate.)
Your point is valid, in its context. But you have to look at it from "how would GitLab have financed developing the ecosystem if GitHub hadn't done that for them" back before GitHub existed?
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Some day, we can dream, SS will have created a standard model for how to manage systems. And open source competitors will follow. And maybe SS will get open sourced after it has managed to get enough monetization to keep the ball rolling. But it can't boot strap that way. Open sourcing it would literally be the same as shutting it down. Not that it isn't a great idea to have mentioned, and it's awesome that the idea is good enough that people have the passion to fight for that.
But from a purely business and economic perspective, it needs the monetization options that not closed source, but service only, brings to the table. Not unlike Amazon Cloud, which uses lots of open source but is itself closed source service-only as an offering. Without that, the core development just doesn't have any real chance, nor does the operational side of things. No one is going to invest what it takes to make and run a system of that nature, at this time, in an open setting or even in a software one. Too much investment with too much risk, the big fear being that anyone with VC money will take the source and run a large scale operations of it overnight leaving nothing for the software team because 100% of the monetization is in the operations, not in the software.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
I didn't state that GitHub is open or closed, I don't know. I just know it is MS and GitLab is not
I never said you stated anything about GitHub. You clearly said "Gitlab is open source software that you can download yourself, examine the code, contribute to, and you can also use their free, hosted service that runs the same code". This clearly shows you care about the fact that the service is also open source. And that's why you chose it over GitHub.
Right. But I don't see how it applies here. GitLab is very different software, in a very different market. If SS was available closed source and something almost identical as open source, and I was an end user, then that source licensing (and not being MS) would be really important.
But that's not the case. It doesn't exist in any form, let alone in two forms. Would GitHub have been able to create its market if it had used GitLab's model up front? Maybe, maybe not. But good chance on the "not". Most markets need a closed source product to open the market. Open source tends to follow (and then innovate because closed source vendors tend to stagnate.)
Your point is valid, in its context. But you have to look at it from "how would GitLab have financed developing the ecosystem if GitHub hadn't done that for them" back before GitHub existed?
Except there are competitors. There's hosted KACE, Atera is hosted, I'm sure if I looked for even a few minutes I could find a host more.
The market and type of software is a weak argument. It means nothing that it's a "different type of software." If anything I want the software that is managing my systems to be auditable (audit able?, idk) to ensure security.
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Counter Argument: If SS was open source, support contracts for companies wanting to run it on their own would be an option to monetize similar to what GitLab does.
So yes, it's not zero ability to monetize in a software mode. But it is minimal. SS is a large investment product and while it would also be quite complex for someone to run on their own, it would also require large scale support to support it as a software product rather than as a service. It would potentially make a little money there, but also require a ton of expensive support people to cover the needs. Extremely difficult to make profitable, even with tons of customers.
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
Except there are competitors. There's hosted KACE, Atera is hosted, I'm sure if I looked for even a few minutes I could find a host more.
None of those are competitors that I'm aware of. They are great options for the OP, who is looking for RMM, which they are. But SS isn't really RMM, but in the Venn diagram, they have a lot of overlap. The SS idea is rather different from those. If it isn't really different, it's not all that valuable, IMHO. Not that they aren't valuable, I just mean that they already do traditional RMM well and SS wouldn't want to go after the traditional RMM market.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
Except there are competitors. There's hosted KACE, Atera is hosted, I'm sure if I looked for even a few minutes I could find a host more.
None of those are competitors that I'm aware of. They are great options for the OP, who is looking for RMM, which they are. But SS isn't really RMM, but in the Venn diagram, they have a lot of overlap. The SS idea is rather different from those. If it isn't really different, it's not all that valuable, IMHO. Not that they aren't valuable, I just mean that they already do traditional RMM well and SS wouldn't want to go after the traditional RMM market.
KACE does exactly what SS does. We used it at my last company as a Windows config management system. It gave us reports on software (even Linux systems) and allowed the Windows team to manage all of their systems. We didn't use it for the Linux stuff because we were using Ansible, but it also did Linux as well.
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I don't have any direct experience with Atera, but from what I've seen it's at least very similar.
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The idea behind SS, and I'll fork this thread in a few minutes, is completely to be ground breaking and disruptive. If (when) it gets the full steam ahead nod the only reason that it is being done at all is to do stuff that no one else is doing. It's not meant to improve on an existing model or product category. RMM is the easiest category to point to as being similar, so the comparison is easy to make. And I'll not argue that SS should eventually cover all RMM functionality, but intends to do so in a totally different way than, AFAIK, any RMM maker does it or plans to do it.
If we were making a competitor to any existing RMM, I'd 100% agree that open source is the way to do that. I'd also say that there is likely no real market for it and the project should not get the green light.
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@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
KACE does exactly what SS does.
It's been a long time since I used KACE first hand. But looking at their site, either they are totally misrepresenting what they make (in a way that wouldn't make sense by underplaying what they can do) or I think the idea and goals of SS have been missed.
Most of the details of SS game plan were only divulged off camera at MangoCon 2. What makes it special has never been talked about publicly. Not that it's a huge secret, but it's not at a stage where we talk about it on ML because firms with deep pockets could use the design ideas to get market.
But from looking at KACE, they don't promote their product as being very similar to SS other than they overlap in "doing IT tasks" in the general sense.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
@stacksofplates said in Looking for free RMM kind, or at least with H/W and S/W inventory software with agent.:
KACE does exactly what SS does.
It's been a long time since I used KACE first hand. But looking at their site, either they are totally misrepresenting what they make (in a way that wouldn't make sense by underplaying what they can do) or I think the idea and goals of SS have been missed.
Most of the details of SS game plan were only divulged off camera at MangoCon 2. What makes it special has never been talked about publicly. Not that it's a huge secret, but it's not at a stage where we talk about it on ML because firms with deep pockets could use the design ideas to get market.
But from looking at KACE, they don't promote their product as being very similar to SS other than they overlap in "doing IT tasks" in the general sense.
Well having used both, the initial SS and KACE they were very similar.
