>And if BEST had ever made a better qaulity product than APC, I would have
>done BEST a the favor. Since APC has always made the superior product
>and have scalable devices and native hotswap, do you go with second place
>(or the first loser) or a winner?
Hmmm... Well, I will grant that your experience with UPS's is
certainly FAR FAR greater than mine. No contest.
I prefer BEST nonetheless due to experiences of others with
compatibility, and lots of very good reports from Best users.
And some from first hand experience. I've never seen a Best UPS
die, nor heard of it from anyone I deal with. However, as I
said, you're expertise in this is certainly much more extensive.
I've had very good experience talking with Best, and with working
with their hardware. As such, I prefer them over APC. My
viewpoint however is different though as well, so...
>Yes, it was a nightmare of the worst kind. Linux/opensource
>won another fight, thus I owe RMS and GNU a debt of graditude.
I agree. ;o)
>Mike Harris wins the door prize for kicking a sleeping TIGER,
>`SQUARE IN THE "BALLS"!!!!' with both feet. Thus the former
>came to my aid/council to weave through the mine field; mean
>while, I lob the "FAT MAN" (1940's) based on a document web
>search to CMA and CYA.
Hehhe. My fuse just gets lit in a rather uncontrollable way when
I see some company abusing GPL and the other free software
projects that I advocate and stand up for. I feel someone needs
to protect what we have or it doesn't mean much. It has caused
some very heated debate and name calling though! For the most
part every time things work out good in the end, and the fire
settles with much agreement and things worked out. ;o)
>For the record, I never had any internal docs/specs on their product line.
>They were amazed that any idoit would lob characters at the device and see
>what happens. They new it what theoritcally possible to create "apcupsd",
>but never thought is was possible.
Hheheeh. That shows them how "special" their protocol is doesn't
it? ;o)
>Did someone say Linux in '92 and where are we today. I did it
>more so to prove them wrong, and encourage them to the
>opensource community.
A very admirable effort indeed!
>They almost jumped with opensource with the USB-UPS protocol, I
>hinted for the API for USB to port into Linux and it almost
>happened............another day.
;o)
>We one the point of clean room design, but the price was that I had to
>ship the package to Denmark to require international law to be invoked.
I wasn't aware of that part. What part of international law
affected the project's release?
>Get the point, so go easy on APC.......I still have high level
>access and open discussions to continue a convincing dialog on
>the merits of opensourse.
Well, now that your program is GPL, I am certainly fairly
indifferent to APC from the point of attacking them and whatnot.
I vote with my wallet, and encourage others to do the same,
however if APC were to "see the light" in an honest way, I could
very well change my strong opinion of them indeed.
If I could obtain new batteries for my UPS at a reasonable cost
(or free) and could actually evaluate the fruit of all of the
debate (and your labors) I'd possibly feel better about the
company as well. My UPS unfortunately has dead batteries now,
which met their untimely demise approx 2 days prior to your GPL
release... ;o(
>> APC: made it difficult for Andre to write his programme and release
>> the source. (and it's not like Andre got loads of spec's and help
>> from them AFAIK).
>
>Again, for the record, I never had any internal docs/specs on their products.
That just made it more fun... come on, admit it. ;o)
>> Best: wrote their own upsd, and have the source openly available on
>> their website.
>
>Duh, have you ever tried to read and understand "three card monty"
>design of "CheckUPS II". It is as bad as the canned packages that create
>the miniport interface for M$'s API.
I can't really give an opinion on that as I haven't really
looked.
>> which one do you trust/respect the most?
>
>Company or Hardware?
>Something born of OpenSource fighting to live?
> or
>Three Card Monty, that claims to be a token gift.
A lot of things must be considered to answer that, and it will
vary from individual to individual, from experience, and from
morals/values/ethics/cause/whatever...
For company: Best
because they do support Linux to start with, even if some people
feel that it isn't the best form of support.
Hardware: Best
Why? Because I've had nothing but trouble with my APC UPS, and
other people that I've discussed with as well. So although my
statistics may be wrong in the bigger picture, I have no way of
knowing currently, as I can only postulate based on my own
experience, and Best UPS's have not had any problems in my
experience, and that of close others..
Having the APC UPS for about 10 months or so without any working
software in Linux caused a big problem for me a couple of times,
and as such, their UPS was unreliable in my situation. Mostly
due to lack of Linux support from them, and the fact that I
couldn't get the apcupsd to work which was ALSO their fault
because of the way they forced you more or less to not release
source. I was ticked off as you know, and am glad that you won
in the end! Certainly a victory for us, and open-source indeed!
>Now for the final note:: >
>They have one or two guys.......
> or
>All of opensource and many of the finest minds in computing to day!!!
Well, that said, I agree from a software perspective, however I
still have a bad taste about APC - the company. I don't want to
support them partially for a similar reason I won't support
Microsoft. I like friendly companies that are more open,
companies like Corel for example, or open-source companies.
Companies that choose to not support my platform, and not to
allow others to do so as well, are simply not going to get used
by me or recommended by me, even if they are the superior product
- except in certain circumstances where it is in my best interest
for a particular situation.
Nonetheless, it is interesting seeing this discussion resurface a
bit in a more casual way. Much better than the lava discussions
last year! ;o)
Take care Andre!
P.S. <CHOKE>Do you know a good place I could buy APC batteries
for my SmartUPS 600? Even though it would be supporting them.
;o) </CHOKE>
Even better, if APC were to send them to me for free, I could
possibly be swayed a bit, and gargle the bad taste away with some
Lavoris... ;o)
TTYL
-- Mike A. Harris Linux advocate GNU advocate Computer Consultant Open Source advocateTea, Earl Grey, Hot...
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