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Ground control to Major Trial

(virtualize.sh)
474 points plam503711 | 6 comments | 16 May 25 12:03 UTC | HN request time: 1.299s | source | bottom
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florbnit ◴[16 May 25 12:21 UTC] No.44004552[source]▶
> We’re not going to waste days chasing them. But at some point, this goes beyond saving a few bucks: it becomes performance art.

Oh for the love of tech, do chase them. This absolutely has to be in void of the terms of your trial take them to court. If not, then at the very least name and shame the company, so some dumb manager orchestrating this silly theft will get fired and someone more mature can be rotated in.

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plam503711 ◴[16 May 25 12:29 UTC] No.44004613[source]▶
I’m actually considering reaching out directly to the CEO and telling the full story. But honestly? There’s a good chance he’s fully aware — and totally fine with it. That’s part of what makes it so disappointing.

We’re not rushing into legal action — it’s not worth the energy for now — but publicly calling out the behavior felt necessary. It also sends a message to others in the ecosystem about the kind of nonsense OSS maintainers sometimes face.

And yes, while I’m still holding off on naming the company directly… I haven’t ruled it out.

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1. threeseed ◴[16 May 25 13:14 UTC] No.44005106[source]▶
> There’s a good chance he’s fully aware — and totally fine with it

Why would you think that a CEO would involve himself in matters like this ?

Especially given that whichever aerospace company it is would be far more concerned with issues like tariffs, geopolitics, recession risks etc than whether or not a company is using an open source versus a community edition of some forgettable infrastructure component.

Also choosing to pursue legal action instead of simply blocking them from downloading more free trials seems childish and short sighted.

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2. plam503711 ◴[16 May 25 13:23 UTC] No.44005199[source]▶
"forgettable infrastructure component": this is what runs their entire IT. We build both the hypervisor and the backup/orchestration for it. Our stack could kill their entire operations if it's down because $whatever. 4000 virtual machines running isn't just the print server or the coffee machine.
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3. actionfromafar ◴[16 May 25 13:34 UTC] No.44005352[source]▶
Huh? Blocking them seems much more "actual fight" and disruptive than going for legal action. Legal action was invented to settle disputues without resorting to raw power.
4. threeseed ◴[16 May 25 13:55 UTC] No.44005577[source]▶
No they run their entire IT. Not you.

They can easily move to the hundreds of alternative platforms which do exactly the same thing.

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5. plam503711 ◴[16 May 25 14:08 UTC] No.44005735{3}[source]▶
I'm not sure you are aware about the cost of migrating from one virtualization platform to another, especially when you have 4000 VMs. I can tell you it's not exactly easy, and that's even our business now (migrating from VMware to our stack).

It's not like changing a light bulb.

6. Disposal8433 ◴[16 May 25 18:59 UTC] No.44008763[source]▶
> 4000 virtual machines

At that point I would have created some scripts to randomly reboot or fuck with their VMs. How long will you accept this? They won't pay ever.