On Proxmox free software

While the original stash of notes and observations, shared in the hope that your independent mind might find them useful, continues to live on, you are welcome to explore this site as it grows beyond it.

Nagware no more - auto-setup utility for Proxmox suite

No more post-install chores. Sets up no-subscription repositories, removes the the pesky “No valid subscription” notice and other marketing-laden warnings. Enjoy the freedom of free software.

Proxmox, free software and the legal take

These pages once started with a single snippet post on NO subscription notice removal in a reaction to censorship of the official channels.   This was despite the supposedly free license having been chosen for the product itself - Proxmox VE can be legitimately obtained by any user under the AGPL license   - a choice Proxmox have made themselves.

The original post - alongside all the others - are now here to bring up the awareness of the meaning of “free” in “free software” - the freedom to modify a piece of software, amongst others.

And so it is perfectly within your legal rights to do so in ANY way you see fit. In fact, it would be a sign associated with non-free software that would have you think otherwise, if only for a moment.

Paid, subscription-only licensing of repositories

As for the other meaning of “free”, Proxmox has been reaping generous profits since at least the last few years. This is arguably thanks to the actual support offerings, but also mere repository access licensing. It is however almost certainly NOT the case that humble subscriptions from non-commercial users would be vital for its survival.

If you are one of such users and feel compelled to “support” an emerging business, perhaps due to mixed marketing messaging over “no valid subscription”, consider that your use of the no-subscription repository already renders support of its own kind. Your systems are part of wider pre-production environment testing of Proxmox.

Removing an anti-feature is the least compensation you deserve as a user of free software, when your contribution to Proxmox actually is the very reason why the packaged product is free of charge.

Not only bugs you help identify reward the vendor by easing off their own Quality Assurance workload. Perhaps counterintuitively, even no reports provide value - from otherwise unattainable level of test environment diversity. You do your part either way.

The ethics of Contributor license agreements

What is also worth considering is that NONE of the external contributions in kind, such as bugfixes - but also bugreports or forum content - are in any way guaranteed to stay within the domain of free software, as Proxmox do take care of licensing them from third parties under very different terms.   They are effectively unconditional donations given in perpetuity.

This means that your bona fide contributions might be currently used to dual-license Proxmox suite itself to select third parties, be entirely re-licensed in the future or simply increase the valuation of Proxmox - the company - should any acquisition come into play at some point and these rights be exercised thereafter.

Whether this proposition is ethical is a matter for you to decide on, but it certainly does not appear to be widely understood and it is non-standard for a free and open source project of this kind nowadays.