[Babel-users] [B.A.T.M.A.N.] Question about Babel

[Sven Eckelmann]

Hi,

On Saturday 07 July 2012 14:12:53 Guido Iribarren wrote:
[...]
> First result on google for "openmesh" yields
> www.open-mesh.com which might be what you're looking for (i didn't
> read your hole thread)

First thing: open-mesh.com != open-mesh.org (in any useful definition that 
comes to my mind right now).

Then to the rest of the related thread part:

The description used by Juliusz Chroboczek seems to sound for some people like 
a black and white situation. On the one site the commercial driven 
B.A.T.M.A.N. guys that just it for profit/customers and on the bright site the 
science team of babel that will bring us a better future.

I cannot speak for the babel people (maybe they will bring us a better 
tommorrow... or a zombie apocalypse). But at least the B.A.T.M.A.N. people 
have a more grayish aura. So we don't have a big company owning/developing 
B.A.T.M.A.N. related software. But it can happen that a company/organization 
will give money to individual persons. For example Google is currently paying 
three projects as part of the GSOC 2012. This does not mean that we get payed 
to merge some solution that we don't like... they just payed someone. And I 
would guess that the two bigger things in the last time were also rewarded 
(maybe using money or some kind of other compensation). These were the two 
research projects from Italy (TT by Antonio Quartulli) and Denmark 
(catwoman/network coding by Martin Hundebøll and Jeppe Ledet-Pedersen). I will 
not judge whether this makes B.A.T.M.A.N. commercial or not, but it does not 
mean that there is a B.A.T.M.A.N. Inc.

And I also find the words "customers" a little bit harsh to describe our 
users. Yes, there are companies that use our code to add new functionality to 
their products. I don't know them (at least most of the time) and some of them 
are even ignoring the GPL license. But still they are not our customers in 
sense of a common customer-supplier relationship with a monetary or other 
valuable consideration. Maybe these companies have them (at least I hope so.. 
otherwise they should think about their strategy again). Will we still hear at 
what these companies say? Yes, when it is something good. But most of the time 
users like Guido Iribarren give more valuable feedback. But still, there is no 
B.A.T.M.A.N. Inc. or customers that tell us what to do... ok, there is a David 
S. Miller but this is another story.

So to give a summary:
 * We don't have a big ACME Coporation behind us that controls everything
 * still some people get some kind of consideration for some of their work
   relating to B.A.T.M.A.N.

And no, this is not against your statement Juliusz. I just want to bring some 
more light so other people can better understand the situation. Your statement 
is not really my problem, but the interpretation of some people. So no need 
for anyone to make this a big thread (at least I will not read it).

Kind regards,
	Sven
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