[Nut-upsdev] Gamatronic company

Wed Dec 18 01:43:48 UTC 2013

Hi Leon!

Thanks for your effort in reaching out!

I have been involved in Open Source projects and used Open Source for 
years.  Your questions are very common ones for companies interested
in getting involved in Open Source projects, so I will attempt to
provide you with some answers.

NUT is a collaborative effort, but as these projects go there is not
a single person "in charge"  Instead, there is a "core group" of 
developers who write the software.  Because of the way these things
work, basically the developers who contribute the most code on a 
continuing basis have "the most say" as it were.

Surrounding the core group is a larger group of "power users" these
are people who use NUT in production.  Basically,
power users have very little say in what direction the project goes,
but they are very valuable to contribute bug reports back, (as well
as bug fixes, by the power users who know how to write some code and
are able to figure out what might be a problem) and they are valuable
to provide a kind of ad-hoc tech support.  (when it moves them)

Surrounding that core group of power users are the "regular users" who 
basically use the code and contribute nothing back to the mailing list
or the development of the project.  These are the people who will use
the code and if it doesn't work they will just abandon it and run other
code.  Maybe they will check back every few years to see if their 
particular issue is fixed, or if they get new hardware or something.

Now, as for getting your product supported:

The first step is to publish specs.  Usually, companies publish specs 
somewhere on their website, often they copyright the specs.  If you do, 
you also need to publish licensing usage of those specs.  For example 
you may have something patented in the specs.  That is fine as long as 
you also publish a non-revocable license/permission to use your hardware 
specs without charge in an Open Source project like NUT.  You probably 
also will need to include a disclaimer to shield your company from 
liability claims, etc.  Some companies will publish specs in the public 
domain, of course, to avoid all of this.

Without publicly accessible specs your not going to have much chance of 
interesting anyone to work on a module for your products.  I know it 
kind of sounds stupid to say it but there are companies who have stated 
that they want their product supported by an Open Source project and 
want to work with the project, but then want developers to sign NDAs and 
such.

Once the specs are public then you need to interest a developer in
writing a module for NUT that will talk to your product.  Asking 
developers to contact you like in this email of yours is usually not
a very good way to do it.  These folks are usually pretty busy
and usually aren't seeking work from people, usually people are
seeking them for work.  The best way to start is by looking up
each of the developers online and if they have websites or whatever
(a freelancer is likely going to have one) then contact them through
that site.  You want to start with the people who are currently actively
contributing to NUT.  Go to where NUT is hosted:

https://github.com/networkupstools/nut/

and click on Contributors, then there is the list of people who
are developing, with the most active ones at the top.  I would contact
all of them individually if I were you.  Click on each of them and
you will get a developer page that will show the developers contact info.

Before doing that you should try to make some kind of proposal. 
Basically you want to say how easy you think it would be to support your
product.  For example if your product speaks an interface language that 
is very similar to other products that are already supported, a 
developer can easily take an existing module and adapt it, without a lot 
of time and effort.  If it's very radical then it will take more time to 
support.

Obviously if you have a developer on staff who is familiar with the 
coding in NUT and who has the time, then your company can write the 
module and either contribute it to the project, or you can just offer it 
on your website for download.  Although, it's best to contribute it 
since then in the future if another developer wants to change the module 
interface, he will have to do the work to change it in all of the 
modules that are distributed with NUT.

I hope that helps!

Ted

On 12/16/2013 11:55 PM, Leon Vak wrote:
> Greetings to all developers of the Network UPS Tools, and Merry
> Christmas greetings to those of you who celebrate!
>
> I have been looking in to your work from time to time, and I am very
> impressed with your efforts. I think this is a good time to officially
> supply the required information about Gamatronic products to the
> community. Furthermore, I would like to know how our company may
> contribute to the development effort. I hope that relevant people can
> contact me to further discuss these subjects.
>
> BR, and Happy New Year!
>
>
> *Leon Vak*
> Control & Management Manager
>
> cid:image007.jpg at 01CDBD93.8C1BB280 <http://www.gamatronic.com/>
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