PerlStalker's SysAdmin Notes and Tools

Printer Friendly

Representive McInnis, Senator Allard, Senator Cambell,

I am concerned about the amount of news I'm hearing about various corporations such as SCO and Microsoft lobbying against Open Source Software (OSS) including Linux. I urge you to consider the reasons that developers, such as myself, release their software under an Open Source license.

I would like to use myself as an example. I am the Systems Administrator for an ISP in Alamosa named Amigo.Net. We use quite a bit of OSS to provide services to our customers, including e-mail, spam and virus filtering, and web site hosting. Without this inexpensive and high-quality software, Amigo.Net would not be able to compete with the "Big Boys" such as AOL and MSN.

To help support our company, I develop various software tools to help us be more efficient. I know that I'm not the only admin who has faced the various issues that come up and I know that I won't be the last. In an effort to help those that follow me and as a thank you to the developers who's software I depend on day in and day out, I release many of those tools as open source on my web site. (http://perlstalker.amigo.net/) These tools range from simple tools to help test a mail server setup to a network monitor that I call Network Watchman.

I did not release these tools as OSS to hurt the ecomomy or prevent some company from making money. I released them because I thought that they would be useful to someone else and as a sign of gratitude for those who have done the same for me by proving the tools that allow me to serve Amigo.Net's customers and to earn a living.

The same can be said for the developers of many OSS applications including the Linux operating system, Apache web server, and the programming language Perl. These tools make it possible for companies such as Yahoo! and Google to get started. Some groups will tell you that our economy would be better off without OSS. I, on the other hand, ask "Where would we be without OSS?"

Thank you for your time.
Randy Smith