SFLC will love the 7th Circuit

[Philippe Verdy]

Chris DiBona [mailto:cdibona at gmail.com] wrote:
> First off, the mirror where you can find rpms and source rpms can be
> found at this link:
> 
> http://code.google.com/gsa.html
> 
> You were right, It was absurdly hard for a non-,er, me, to find, I'll
> fix that very soon so it is easier to find, but as to the rest, you
> complain about price, the availability of trial versions, build
> quality, and other issues that I have no say on or opinion about. Nor
> will I debate them as I wouldn't be able to in any substantive way.
> 
> As to the entire search appliance being open source I don't think
> we've (the google we) ever asserted such a thing, and I know I didn't
> do so myself, as it would be a mistake.
> 
> You seem awfully upset about this and I can't really see any good
> reason why. Did you buy one and did it not work for you? Do you need
> to be put in touch with thier support folks? I can help a little bit
> there...

Well i twas good to ask, because the only available links we could find,
even when using the general Google search engine itself, or the
site-specific search tool, was leading us only to pages stating that this
was impossible, not supported, or no more supported (links going to
nowhere).

So may be the GSA is open-source (at least its modified Linux OS), I still
don't know if this includes the GSA application running on it (may be it's
the same software as on Desktop Search, but with just more document type
filters implemented, and a larger database size (according to the service
licence)...

May be the GSA is effectively a standard PC in a rack, just built with
well-tested and well supported hardware devices and drivers optimized for
better performance without the inherited code inserted in generic drivers
just to allow more device models to be supported as well.

I don't know the content, I've never seen this source before. But the
existing FAQ on the commercial GSA pages are just saying the opposite
(except when there's a single sibylline sentence that indicates it is
running some Google-modified version of Linux, without indicating anything
about the extent of its licence.

I admit that selling the Box with the software will avoid you many problems
trying to solve compatibility issues with various hardware platforms that
you have not tested yourself, but then, with this wellknown platform, the
cost of support only by email for one year because extremely high, despite
it is simpler and will cost much for Google than for Microsoft supporting
Windows sold at a much lower price per unit. And I'm really not sure that
the price per unit is so high, even if you include the cost of your support
(so we are very far from the requirements of the GPL, which admits covering
the costs of the covered work at a price not exceeding the costs generated
on you).

So to compute the cost of your support offer from your sell price, I'll just
take the price for the one year renewal: this makes the hardware incredibly
more overpriced between the Mini and the GSA, despite this is exactly the
same support for the basically same system. I can compare also the price of
the upgrades to index more documents on the same system (it is exactly
similar to the price of the one-year support renewal). But the difference
remains still quite high for covering the cost of hardware and delivery of
the Linux OS (the OS delivery cost is already included in the hardware used
to transport it).

Things would be clearer if the proposed sale contracts included a detailed
composition of this price: price of the hardware, price of the warranty for
the hardware, price of the OS (free), price for supporting the OS
(independent of the number of indexed documents, then price for the search
software service and supporting it (independent of the data), and finally
the price for the added value of the service (which is most probably the
only reason why this depends on time of usage, and volume of data).
Accounting based on actual costs can help making the billing much clearer
(and is in fact mandatory for many public markets, at least in Europe) and
comparable (bundled sales with artificial prices for the initial purchase of
an unbreakable bundle is difficult to justiy).

Anyway, thanks for pointing the place of the sources (according to the GPL
this should have been indicated to all users, even to anyone that is still
not a licensee).

If I am interested in this source, it's not much for the GSA indexing
software itself (I don't have so many documents that I would need an
external appliance for finding them), but for the way the Linux kernel has
been strengthened (because it will interest all Linux developers,
contributors and most Linux administrators trying to fix bugs or security
holes in their installation).