[BlueOnyx:13120] Re: Active Monitor "Support/Maintenance" messages

[Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet]

On 5/28/2013 12:51 PM, Gerald Waugh wrote:
> I would also like to see the documentation for using NewLinQ.
> Some of our users, me included may be developing packages and will need
> access to NewLinQ,
> since that appears to be the preferred method to move packages to the
> server.
> Although I was previously using Solarspeed method effectively, and was
> simpler for my clients.
> Is NewLinQ a closed, proprietary, system in our Open Source BlueOnyx
> admin application.

Well, first a bit of history according to Chris... and believe me when I 
say that everything I type is typed with the utmost respect for Greg, 
Michael, and other contributors.

If I'm remembering right, I believe that NewLinQ is simply the re-badged 
version of BlueLinQ, which was the way that Cobalt rolled out updates 
"back in the day".   Again, IIRC, back in the days of the Cobalt OS, we 
were on a customized version of RedHat 7.x (this predates the Fedora / 
Enterprise split) and we didn't have something so fancy as the YUM 
package manager.   So Cobalt used BlueLinQ.

As BlueLinQ is a registered trademark now belonging to Oracle, and tied 
back to mothership at Sun, Gregg announced back in 2009 that he was 
re-working BlueLinQ to "NewLinQ" and would use that as a way to deliver 
the packages that he was developing as well as those that he had taken 
over development on from Brian / NuOnce.

That said, it seems that NewLinQ is nothing that would be particularly 
proprietary, since it has been largely reverse-engineered from the 
BlueLinQ code that Sun open-sourced.  I have never been able to locate 
any documentation on Blue/NewLinQ myself.

In an ideal world, we could go back to the days of downloading PKG files 
and installing them ourselves, since that certainly provides substantial 
convenience when managing multiple servers.  However, I recognize that 
not everybody may be completely forthcoming about how many instances of 
a particular package they have installed, and therefore the developers 
of those packages stand to lose income when they are not compensated 
appropriately.   So of course we have this method known as NewLinQ that 
can cope with the licensing.

The system is far from perfect IMHO, but as I said before, it's really 
the best option as of now.

Speaking for myself, I would personally love to see one or a combination 
of the following options integrated into the package delivery method:

1. Documentation as to how other parties might deliver their PKGs via 
NewLinQ.

2. A method for 3rd party developers to submit their PKGs for inclusion 
in the BlueOnyx Shop.

3. Streamlined PKG management for datacenters / resellers.

4. Better underlying system redundancy and performance, especially as it 
relates to connections in North America.

I may be talking to myself here (because I'm not sure that anyone else 
is really interested in what I'm saying) but I believe that we could 
take a page from the book of successful projects like WordPress, Joomla, 
WHMCS etc.  Those projects (2 are Open Source, one is proprietary) have 
all embraced a developer community with clear documentation and some 
amount of transparency.   By creating a larger marketplace, they have 
also broadened the appeal of the core software.

So maybe this thread has gone a little OT, and perhaps I've entered a 
bit of <rantmode> (although I've really tempered some of my comments, 
and excluded whole paragraphs!) but I think it's worthy of discussion & 
consideration.

I continue to have a good deal of excitement and optimism with regard to 
BlueOnyx.  There is a lot of good stuff in the pipe.   My concern is we 
don't waste any momentum by failing to recognize marketing potential. 
It will be truly disappointing if all the work on the new GUI, the port 
to Enterprise Linux 6, and other considerations and updates land with a 
thud because we don't have adequate "app-ability".

-- 
Chris Gebhardt
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