[Lincoln LUG] Linux Server Admin/Network Manager vacancy, Lincoln

[Terry Froy]

On 01/02/15 16:50, Rich Harley wrote:

> Hello all
> 
> This message posted by Terry has come to my attention. I’d like to
> briefly respond. The time Terry is referring to is 2011 when the company
> had two employees - myself, and the developer mentioned.

Hi Rich,

I would like to point out that the founder of the business, the
aforementioned developer, completed the installation of the 'free
server' that we gave him on the 1st May 2008.

> We were trying to start the business via an open source model but it quickly
> became apparent this model was not working.

Many open source projects start out as a hobby project and then progress
on to full-blown businesses; also, offering paid-for SaaS alongside
enterprise level support is *not* incompatible with providing the
underlying source code to the project (ala Red Hat).

> The UK school MIS (management information system) market is simply not geared
> up for open source.

That may be so but it did not stop the developer from asking Sourceforge
to pull the source code for 1.0 release that had already been published;
this is what tipped us off that the product had gone closed-source and
we patiently waited to find out when your business would bother to
notify us.

> Potential customers told us free software was not a viable option for
> them for many reasons (financial stability being a large one).

There is free software, there is open-source software and there is free
open-source software; it was *always* our understanding that ScholarPack
would offer the software as a pay-for ready-to-use externally hosted
SaaS with an open-source release which a school could install and use
internally.

Schools who host externally would pay more for the added infrastructure
costs but schools who opted for the second option would be able to
purchase support if they so wished.

> It was not possible to fund the development costs of a project this large in
> scope via a freemium model and make it work in a short (3-5 year)
> timeframe.

Eh ?

The developer got to v1.0 entirely on his own, while working on the
project in his spare time (with his day job being at a school which
actively deployed the software and used it).

> We pivoted to a paid for model, took on private investment
> and 4 years later we are 22 employees with over 300 schools, still based
> in Lincoln.

Good for you.

We 'funded' the server infrastructure and bandwidth used to support the
project in its' early years *and* provided a development server for the
purposes of speeding up the development process.

> Open source is great, but it’s a tough gig in many markets,
> school MIS being one (happy to debate this if anyone is interested).

You keep using the words 'open source' and 'free' interchangeably.

I do not think you understand the difference between the two.

> To the original point, I was unaware of the ‘free for open source’
> projects deal hosting Terry and his company provided. I joined
> ScholarPack a year or two after the lead developer began the project as
> a solo project.Terry’s server was organised before I arrived.

So... you became CEO of a company at a time when there was precious
little financial income and you were totally unaware of who one of your
key benefactors of infrastructure was ?

I have a hard time believing that.

Did you not wonder who was *paying* for the development infrastructure
used by your business ?

> I remember we did use a server from Terry to host our website for a little
> bit but by mid 2011 we’d moved everything to our own development
> servers.

I remember your 'move'.

Your developer e-mailed me in a mad panic in January 2011 asking me to
investigate a potential server compromise and all that had happened was
one of your employees (apparently *not* the developer) had 'rm -rf /'d
the server and CTRL+C'd it shortly after it had finished demolishing
most of /bin but not the entire filesystem.

He did ask us to invoice him for the work involved in diagnosing this
snafu but I really didn't have the heart to charge for something which
gave me, and now the readers of this mail, so much laughter and amusement.

So I can certainly appreciate *why* you need a professional Linux
sysadmin :-P

> Changing business model quickly was not an easy time, so Terry
> please accept my apologies on behalf of the company for not informing
> yourself. Neither myself or the other developer at the time would have
> deliberately mislead anyone on purpose.

http://web.archive.org/ has snapshots of http://www.scholarpack.org/ and
http://www.scholarpack.com/ at various dates over the last decade or so;
anyone who wishes to validate any of the information you have provided
is free to do so.

It is worthwhile pointing out to all who read this mail that at no point
have you disputed that we provided 'free' services to the developer and
your business but at no point in this e-mail have you used the words
'thanks', 'appreciated' or 'gratitude' for what my business provided, at
our cost, to support your business during the critical years of its'
existence.

To me, this demonstrates a lack of manners as well as ethics.

> Applying for this job would not mean leaving ‘ethics at the door’. We
> would not have grown to the size we are by having those values,

Money buys big office buildings and big headcounts - you said it
yourself that you took private investment!

Some of us remember the dotcom bubble back in the early 2000s only too well.

All Linux LUGs and their members owe a debt of gratitude to both free
and open-source software authors plus the unsung heroes who donate
servers and bandwidth out of their own pockets to fund download mirrors
and critical infrastructure required to support those projects because
*they* believe in the importance of that project - hence why I feel this
message is on topic and why I felt that I needed to speak out on this.

> especially in the education sector where reliability and integrity are
> absolutely fundamental.

Reliability = rm -rf / ?

I seem to need a new dictionary as my well-worn copy of Merriam Webster
defines integrity as 'the quality of being honest and fair' - I leave it
to the reader to decide whether your business has been exactly that or not.

> We’re the only new player to break into this
> market in a big way in the last decade.

Again, good for you.

I remember your developer telling me that the whole reason why he
started the project was to reduce and eliminate the stranglehold of
proprietary educational MIS software on the UK market.

This was precisely the reason why we chose to donate server hardware and
bandwidth to aid him in his cause.

Now I realize that we were merely helping enforce the current status quo
in that market :-(

> Right now, we’d like some new faces to join the technical team so we
> can continue to grow. I can assure you we are a friendly and meritocratic
> organisation. 

I wish you luck in your quest.

Regards,
Terry
-- 
Terry Froy
Spilsby Internet Solutions
http://www.spilsby.net/