Comments on: What is Zoto’s Business Model? http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2008/04/04/what-is-zotos-business-model/ open source software innovation support centre Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:30:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Ross Gardler http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2008/04/04/what-is-zotos-business-model/comment-page-1/#comment-155 Ross Gardler Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:55:10 +0000 http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2008/04/04/what-is-zotos-business-model/#comment-155 The Zoto page on Google removed the "confused" comments for a while, but they are back again now. Currently the page says: <cite>The server and the rest of the Zoto code base is now licensed under the New BSD License. You can read up on the BSD license here and here. Remember, the BSD license basically says any BSD code can be sold or included in proprietary products without any restrictions on the availability of the code or someone's future behavior. As such, the BSD license also allows for the addition of extra commercial licenses. Some companies may desire or require these extra licenses to be able to run the software in their organization. If you require extra licenses to run Zoto's software in a commercial environment, require custom features, or need commercial support, you can contact Kord Campbell at kordless@gmail.com, to inquire about the different licensing and payment options. If you don't, then download it and have fun! </cite> There is nothing wrong with the commercial support option, however, under an open source licence, as your original post states, they cannot restrict commercial use in this way. The Zoto page on Google removed the “confused” comments for a while, but they are back again now. Currently the page says:

The server and the rest of the Zoto code base is now licensed under the New BSD License.

You can read up on the BSD license here and here.

Remember, the BSD license basically says any BSD code can be sold or included in proprietary products without any restrictions on the availability of the code or someone’s future behavior. As such, the BSD license also allows for the addition of extra commercial licenses. Some companies may desire or require these extra licenses to be able to run the software in their organization.

If you require extra licenses to run Zoto’s software in a commercial environment, require custom features, or need commercial support, you can contact Kord Campbell at kordless@gmail.com, to inquire about the different licensing and payment options. If you don’t, then download it and have fun!

There is nothing wrong with the commercial support option, however, under an open source licence, as your original post states, they cannot restrict commercial use in this way.

]]> By: something I said : Zoto: Watching Things Fall Apart http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2008/04/04/what-is-zotos-business-model/comment-page-1/#comment-154 something I said : Zoto: Watching Things Fall Apart Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:15:51 +0000 http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2008/04/04/what-is-zotos-business-model/#comment-154 [...] February and March rolled past. No word from Zoto. Then I found that the CEO had been busy with other projects, and was developing those even as Zoto foundered. So when he popped up on his own blog, in late March, to say that Zoto code was being set out on a BSD open source license at Google Code, and started getting a bit of press (1, 2, 3) about it, I wrote to ask whether he’d be responding to Zoto users soon. I also posted a long comment on the other blogs with the intent of provoking a reponse by bringing it to wider public attention. (I am also doing that here, with the distinction that it’s my own blog, and not subject to someone else’s editorial control.) So far, no reply to those either, but I anticipate that somethying will kick off, maybe later rather than sooner. [...] [...] February and March rolled past. No word from Zoto. Then I found that the CEO had been busy with other projects, and was developing those even as Zoto foundered. So when he popped up on his own blog, in late March, to say that Zoto code was being set out on a BSD open source license at Google Code, and started getting a bit of press (1, 2, 3) about it, I wrote to ask whether he’d be responding to Zoto users soon. I also posted a long comment on the other blogs with the intent of provoking a reponse by bringing it to wider public attention. (I am also doing that here, with the distinction that it’s my own blog, and not subject to someone else’s editorial control.) So far, no reply to those either, but I anticipate that somethying will kick off, maybe later rather than sooner. [...]

]]> By: nunovo http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2008/04/04/what-is-zotos-business-model/comment-page-1/#comment-153 nunovo Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:32:44 +0000 http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/2008/04/04/what-is-zotos-business-model/#comment-153 Please excuse the off-topic response, this is an attempt to get a missing CEO to visit home. Over at the official Zoto webforum, a small group of users have been posting messages about their difficulty doing things like uploading photos, downloading photos, getting their login to work, making template changes. That much is normal. What’s not normal is that there have been no responses from anyone at Zoto for over a month. Not a word. No word of any kind. No routine communications. No mention of the news about going open source, for example. No news about the current situation and future prospects, nor about the cancellation of announced work. Despite that absence, various Zoto users have found bits of information via other websites, such as CEO Kord Campbell’s blog, designer kbarret’s blog, and miscellaneous reports at places like Splunk. Given the absence of communication on the home channels, the users who need help are feeling that they’ve been deliberately cut adrift, ignored for some unknown reasons – or no reason at all. What that means is that while the news about Zoto going open source might be cause for celebration for some people, it does nothing to explain the ongoing negelect of people who’ve paid to use a service and then found that it doesn’t work, and that nobody answers their queries. While this might be relevant to the above story for its implications of Zoto’s ability to sustain their side of any deal, it is really analogous to the wife who has to haul her husband out of the pub in order to get the domestic chores done. Please excuse the off-topic response, this is an attempt to get a missing CEO to visit home.
Over at the official Zoto webforum, a small group of users have been posting messages about their difficulty doing things like uploading photos, downloading photos, getting their login to work, making template changes. That much is normal. What’s not normal is that there have been no responses from anyone at Zoto for over a month. Not a word. No word of any kind. No routine communications. No mention of the news about going open source, for example. No news about the current situation and future prospects, nor about the cancellation of announced work.
Despite that absence, various Zoto users have found bits of information via other websites, such as CEO Kord Campbell’s blog, designer kbarret’s blog, and miscellaneous reports at places like Splunk.
Given the absence of communication on the home channels, the users who need help are feeling that they’ve been deliberately cut adrift, ignored for some unknown reasons – or no reason at all.
What that means is that while the news about Zoto going open source might be cause for celebration for some people, it does nothing to explain the ongoing negelect of people who’ve paid to use a service and then found that it doesn’t work, and that nobody answers their queries.
While this might be relevant to the above story for its implications of Zoto’s ability to sustain their side of any deal, it is really analogous to the wife who has to haul her husband out of the pub in order to get the domestic chores done.

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