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Ask Slashdot: What's The Best Place To Suggest New Open Source Software?
dryriver writes:
Somebody I know has been searching up and down the internet for an open source software that can apply GPU pixel shaders (HLSL/GLSL/Cg/SweetFX) to a video and save the result out to a video file. He came up with nothing, so I said "Why not petition the open source community to create such a tool?" His reply was "Where exactly does one go to ask for a new open source software?"
So that is my question: Where on the internet can one best go to request that a new open source software tool that does not exist yet be developed? Or do open source tools only come into existence when someone -- a coder -- starts to build a software, opens the source, and invites other coders to join the fray?
This is a good place to discuss the general logistics of new open source projects -- so leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best place to suggest new open source software?
So that is my question: Where on the internet can one best go to request that a new open source software tool that does not exist yet be developed? Or do open source tools only come into existence when someone -- a coder -- starts to build a software, opens the source, and invites other coders to join the fray?
This is a good place to discuss the general logistics of new open source projects -- so leave your best answers in the comments. What's the best place to suggest new open source software?
No, people won't build shit for you. We will certainly assist people as they build, but the open source community doesn't take requests other than bug fixes on their own work.
Tell your friend to get off his ass and build it himself.
This person has two options:
1: Program their own and release it as open source software.
2: Pay someone to make the software and release it as open source software.
There have got to be tools out there already...
- MPC-HC supports running custom shaders. (Supposedly KMPlayer does too, but I'm not familiar with it.)
I'm not sure if it supports file output. But that's already 99% of the battle already done for you. It supports pixel shaders, loading files through codecs. So even if it doesn't, why not just fork the github, and patch on some super-ugly-yet-functional file output?
But backing up further. What... exactly do you need the shaders for? Does it have to be a shader running on a GPU, or do you simply need filters? Is the task you're attempting really going to take advantage of a GPU?
As for "doing it for you", you can suck my balls. If you're capable of writing shader code, you're capable of dumping frames to a file.
I have to agree. You have to make it yourself. I've been trying to evangelize the idea of "dynamic relational" databases but nobody seems to see the value enough to care until they actually have something to try. You gotta make it first and THEN others will kick the tires to see if it piques their interest.
Table-ized A.I.
Alien source software. n/t
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
You find a contractor through some coders-for-hire or bounty webpages. You negotiate the price. You put in contract that the software will be covered by opensource license of you choosing, be it Apache, BSD, GPL, MIT or any other.
Then you wait for coder to deliver what you've ordered.
:wq
Ok, ill bite. Tell. Me about dynamic relational databases
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Here's one description, but it's kind of meandering:
http://wiki.c2.com/?DynamicRel...
I'm working on a shorter description that I plan to put on github.
Table-ized A.I.
Okay, the Snowflake Meme has been overused. Move on.
Table-ized A.I.
Someone got triggered by the snowflake.
lucm, indeed.
Here's one description, but it's kind of meandering:
http://wiki.c2.com/?DynamicRel...
I'm working on a shorter description that I plan to put on github.
LOL couldn't stop laughing.
> Black and white categorisation is rarely correct.
no, it's always correct
So since /. has finally become google search for the entitled, lazy futurist, where can I go to get smei-nerd news without "do my homework" bullshit entries?
There can be value in such a DB, as stated in the document, for prototyping/demo purposes, as it gives the flexibility to experiment and converge to a solution which you might then pin down to not be dynamic anymore. Thus, one persons "asinine" is another persons "useful". Black and white categorisation is rarely correct.
RFC3252 gives flexibility to experiment and converge to a solution which you might then pin down to not be dynamic anymore. Thus, one persons "asinine" is another persons "useful". Black and white categorization is rarely correct.
Github and SourceForge are good places to look. One of the best things I know to do honestly, is to google "alternative to [software]" and go to the alternativeto website and filter for open source. Another thing you can do is use Twitter and search for #opensource #video and things like that. Everyone uses Twitter differently, but that's how I organize mine (@theouterlinux). Tumblr I use for command line help and tutorials. Also, I post software links and article on TheOuterLinux.com. If there's Linux involved, there is at least source code posted somewhere.
on Windows on could use Avisynth (with https://github.com/mysteryx93/...) to apply HLSL Shaders,..
(not sure if something similar is available for Vapoursynth)
Blender has video editing built in I've heard. It probably also supports shaders. note: I'm only guessing as I have barely used Blender
video editing in blender
That's a broken financial model. The intersection of people with the capabilities, ideas, enthusiasm, and available time is extremely small. Actually, the highly skilled people are least likely to be available because they are most likely to be working already.
My apparently crazy idea is that we need better financial models first. My favorite pipe dream is a kind of a crowd-funding model around clear project proposals. The proposals could be hammered out in group discussions, but the projects should be complete in terms of resources (such as people), budget, schedule, test plans, and, to my way of thinking most importantly, success criteria. At that point people who are interested in using the software would be able to buy "charity shares", and if enough people agree to make the budget, then the project would get the money and charge forward. The donors would get to use the software and even be listed as donors (if they want to be).
Why would programmers want to do it that way? For more control over their own work, either in helping to prepare project proposals they want to work on or in picking projects they want to join.
In case it isn't obvious, I think the same approach could even be used for such websites as Slashdot, though you need to add more project types. Not just feature development, but also ongoing costs and support projects are needed. The system should be designed so that an unfunded feature is only partly disabled, but without breaking the entire system.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
In case you haven't noticed: There's a shortage of good software developers because there is no shortage of programs that need writing. If you want something developed, pay for it and then release it as open source. But you didn't want to give your resources to the open source world, did you? You wanted some programmer to invest time and effort so that you could have your free (as in beer) software. Go away.
While some people who live in their own personal bubble think the Open Source (GNU) model can work for everything, it really does fall apart on a fundamental level.
Maintaining a project over a project life cycle is hard work. Sure you may get some people willing to volunteer their time who are mostly college students or the growling level of retiring tech workers. However your project will need to be sufficiently interesting enough for people to develop, and invest their time in.
As been stated many times before a lot of OSS work needs to be paid for. Sometimes it is by companies who needed a particular problem solved, however they are not interesting is making money off the software, so they may just open source it out and if they are lucky some other companies and people will fix the code for them. However some of the most successful OSS software are often in infrastructure OS's like Linux, Web (err umm) Application Servers like Apache, Development languages from GNU/C to Node.JS these big project handle the infrastructure stuff that many people need and use.
Now as for what the article was asking for, seems rather specialized. No one is going to do some specialized work for free so the requester can make tones of money off of it, even if it is open source. In that case you need to hire or contract a developer to do the work for you. Then you can decide to release the code open source or not. It is your project so you have the choice, you can even duel licence it, so you can sell it to people who may need that feature added to a closed source solution.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's a broken financial model. The intersection of people with the capabilities, ideas, enthusiasm, and available time is extremely small. Actually, the highly skilled people are least likely to be available because they are most likely to be working already. My apparently crazy idea is that we need better financial models first. My favorite pipe dream is a kind of a crowd-funding model around clear project proposals.
No, ideas are a dime a dozen. That's the delusion most of these proposals have, that if only they got to share their great proposal with the world lots of people would come help pay for it and lots of developers would come do it for little or nothing. Your proposal sounds extremely similar to other crowdfunding / bounty / donation proposals that have been done, but most of them amount to "Now I've made a tip jar and put in the first $5, why is nothing happening?"
If you're real lucky you find a project where you put in a feature request and somebody says that's a great idea, I'll do it. If you're hiring at full commercial cost, there's tons of contractors willing to do it. Between there you might find people willing to work on it for everything from beer money to paying the bills, but then they mostly work on what they want, not what you want because they're contributing most of the value. The good thing is that they're usually in control of the scope and complexity of the tasks they agree to, so you usually get what you pay for. Still due to whiny brats it's best to put up a tip jar with no guarantees.
If you're looking for someone to create something that doesn't exist and thus probably is nobody's itch, you probably have to get close to commercial funding. Maybe some will do it for somewhat less since it's non-profit and for open source, but not beer money cheap. That means you have to get lots of people on board, which means mediating between all their pet ideas. And when push comes to shove you have to actually have to both get the funding and find someone willing to do it.
What you describe is the perfect waterfall spec, everything is described up front down to the smallest detail. Everyone who's worked with it in the real world knows it's a giant pain in the ass to create, which is why they go agile. Most likely it will have flaws and then the fun starts dealing with your co-sponsors and developer complaining about any inaccuracy in the spec, delay in delivery and what actually constitutes fulfillment. And you don't have any budget or power to approve change orders. Worst case you have a lawyer on your ass because the developer is fed up and wants to get paid.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Using tools that already exist, create your art and explain how you actually achieved the effect. Then, you get coding geniuses that will want to automate your result to create other art. I've been lucky that some of my madness have inspired coders to automate some of my flows (and very appreciative too). You have to give a little to get more. Not rich, but I heard that rich people implement this philosophy too. :)
Some shameless self promo of things that I concocted and then others actually created automated presets for me afterwards:
ref: http://www.fontplay.com/freeph...
render: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/...
ref: (freehanded using Flame Painter
render: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/...
The irony
The 'make a request and be served for free' thing is what people need to understand doesn't happen. But if multiple people who have the same wish can know about each other, that can enable them to co-ordinate efforts where they could contribute something but not all of it. Connecting people's wishes and efforts is what matters not demanding stuff for free.
John_Chalisque
A reasonable response, but I've often wondered why we haven't seen more efforts to crowdfund OSS.
The free rider effect will obviously be an issue, but I suspect plenty of people (even organizations) would still be very willing to pay into a project that provided reasonable guarantees of a refund if the spec wasn't at least 80% met or something. The existence of a fundraising deadline (such as the one Kickstarter has) would help push back against the free rider effect as people realize it won't happen if no one chips in. Also, those who chip in large amounts (including organizations) could perhaps add to the spec, or at least add stretch goals. And because it's OSS, the entire project would be transparent and technically competent contributors could, if they were interested, help with the development in their free time.
Can someone get on this, like right away? Some of you out of work programmers maybe? Like, put together a serious proposal for a new desktop environment and distro oriented towards power users or something. Stated goals of maximum configurability, GUI tools to handle as much configurability as possible, tabs for any application handled by the DE/WM[1], maybe advertise use of OpenRC instead of systemd, etc.
I'm poor as shit, but I'd still try to scrape together $10 if I saw a crowdfunding effort even for a lowly file browser that sounded like it wouldn't be a complete piece of crap.
1. I'm apparently not the first one to think of this, although if the DE does it the location of the tabs could be easily changed to on the title bar itself (like Chrome on Windows), below the title bar, above the task bar, etc.
Does it use joins? And can it store data in /dev/null for better performance?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've had similar ideas and looked into it a few times in the past, so I can see a few reasons why this is not done. First, if you are working with raw video, then the bandwidth requirement is going to be the bottleneck, and you're not better off offloading the shader to GPU. In order to make good use of GPU, you have to integrate video encoding and decoding into your GPU pipeline as well, and that takes specialized drivers to do. I don't see any way to do it with OpenGL/OpenCL. If it's doable and makes sense to do, it is unlikely to come out of a hobbyist project because of the technical hurdles.
The likely place for an open source project like this to originate is a startup company selling cloud video rendering service using a stash of cheap Raspberry Pis. A company like that may or may not exist already, but it still hinges on whether they are willing to open source their software.
I once had a signature.
Go and make some offer to pay somebody to do it. Then you will get it and you can decide to open source it.
Or are you asking for free work done for exposure?
So a document storage database. That's what it looks like. Can't be relational without defining relations, and can't define relations in your dynamic database.
It doesn't really matter. But on github you have a chance, they find them by themself.
If you want to put them in a resume, just put all relevant urls there. The really relevant stuff doesn't need a url anyway, because they already know the name of the software.
Qt can do this easy-peezy. It won't even take day. I've done a similar thing, though not with shaders, but they added the shader logic recently. My usage was prior to that.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Based on other comments, it sounds like the software this person wants already exists. A couple people mentioned AVISynth.
If they actually need something new, yeah they could champion adding the functionality to an existing project, but to refine that more I'd say find an existing project that serves the same *people* who would benefit from the new functionality. It's not just that the functionality of the software should be similar, you're looking for a group of users / programmers who would like to have the new functionality.
Time for bad analogy. A pita is very similar to a tortilla. If you wanted a new kind of pita sandwich, you wouldn't talk to a mexican restaurant. You're looking for *people* who would benefit from your idea.
If you have a need, you start a project and write code.
So programmers would be the only people who have needs? Or in other words, anybody who has a need had better become a programmer? And people wonder why so many software projects get offshored to Eastern Europe or India or anywhere else
Where in the submission did it say that he doesn't want to pay for it? He simply said that he wanted it to be FOSS: it could be for all the other reasons that FOSS is better, not the least of which is that if its maintainers lose interest in it, someone else can take it up.
Precisely the point. That's the assumption too many people make: just b'cos something is open source implies that it has to be $0.00. It doesn't. Yeah, the fact that a lot of FOSS packages out there are $0.00, probably due to the redistribution rights implicit in the licenses, but there is nothing that says that the price of anything has to be $0.00, as both RMS and ESR have been at pains to emphasize
There is already open source software for pretty much any problem you may have. In your case, a combination of ffmpeg, avisynth and some coding (if you can make your own shaders, you can cobble a shell script together).
Or you mean, how can I get someone to package a nice GUI with all the stuff I want in it? Not how open source works. Open source only amplifies the effort you put in something useful, and if you don't have the skills to make something useful, learn them or buy them.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Sounds awfully like Prolog.
Ezekiel 23:20
I've been working in open source for 20 years, so I'll share my thoughts. I don't have statistics, and it would be hard to define statistics that aren't misleading. For example, counting the number of projects would count a script I wrote in two hours equally with the Linux kernel, or the Apache web server. So counting the number of projects doesn't make much sense.
A very common scenario is work done by a companies that use the software, but don't run the project. At my last job, I spent a lot of time developing Moodle, an open source ecampus software. The university I worked for was one of hundreds of schools and companies that use Moodle. I worked on features in Moodle that would be of use to the college I worked for. I suspect this model accounts for most of the hours spent working on open source, though possibly not most of the people or projects. Moodle was started as a master's thesis (or maybe phd).
I expect that the largest number of *projects* may be hobbyists and school-related (including masters and phd projects). Many, many people have released many, many small projects. Often, these are just enough to do the job, not as highly polished as something that has a marketing team trying to sell it. Sometimes they are well polished, but often not - if it works, that's often enough. These also tend to be projects that hobbyists *use*. Companies tend to sponsor projects used by companies, hobbysts tend to work on projects they use for their hobbies.
I would say that a minority of projects, but often big, important projects, are have a lot of development from a company selling a version of the software or support and related materials. Mysql and RedHat are good examples. These tend to include software used by companies. If thousands of companies are using some software, there is probably an opportunity to create a company providing support to them. Often, these projects started as hobbyist / school projects, and the company was founded after the software was successful.
Another set is formerly proprietary software that has been open sourced and is supported by the company. That would include Netscape/Firefox.
So I'd say the statistics depend on which statistics you look at. Most projects? Hobbyist. Most hours invested? Businesses that use the software. Most important? Often both developed by businesses that use it and a company that coordinates the project.
* After Moodle started being used by different schools, each contributing code, a company was set up to coordinate development, with a QA department, etc. The schools and companies who use Moodle develop features, the Moodle company makes sure that doesn't turn into chaos.
mpv allows the user to supply GLSL scripts using the --opengl-shaders=filename option, and it can save single screenshots to files after those shaders have been applied (Ctrl-S), and mpv is scriptable (in Lua or C), so all you need to do is write a script that single-steps through the video, then writes such a post-processed screenshot to a pipe which you can use as input to "ffmpeg".
But as others already stated: The problem here seems to be the "I won't do it myself, I want others do it for me for free"-mentality.
If you have a need, you start a project and write code.
If you have a food need, cook it. (Why ask a chef?) If you have a house need, design it and build it. (Why ask architects and builders?)
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Exactly. It's like a database equivalent of using hashtags instead of defined categories. Informal categorisation and structuring has its place, but that's an entirely different beast to a relational database. Also, if columns can be "missing" in records and there's no distinction between a missing column and one that didn't exist, how does hashing work? Surely the only reason database lookup is efficient is because of the predictability of the content structure?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Actually, there is a certain class of programmer that's always looking for ideas: the senior CS undergrad -- if you've got to write a program for your final year, why not make it one that someone wants? An "ideas bank" for CS dissertation projects presumably exists out there somewhere....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Funny how every single poster crying "snowflake" here doesn't have the guts to do it with a username. Posting AC makes it look a heck of a lot like simple trolling. If you want to say what you think, say it as you. If you don't want to do that, why are you even saying it in the first place?
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
most open source software starts with a programmer having an itch to scratch. if they have an altrustic lapse, or no easy path to monetize it they can choose to open source it. There's no common open source industry body of programmers you pitch your ideas to for volunteers.
Which I think is a gap in the market. There are plenty of people who are curious about a new area of programming and would benefit from a real-world task to complete. Scratch-an-itch OSS often ends up being rather esoteric, following an ad hoc workflow that the coder hacked together as he developed it (and I say that as someone who has never opened any of my personal tools precisely because the interface is so hacky and idiosyncratic).
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
If such a site existed, I wonder if it would be any better than that 'suggestion box' we often see at companies or businesses. You often wonder if anybody actually reads the suggestions, let alone gives them any weight. You could certainly pay someone to build a custom tool for you, but that can often cost many $ thousands. Perhaps a better idea would be to create a website where people can post stuff like 'I need a solution to problem X. I am willing to pay $10 (or $20, $50,...) for it'. Then others can see your post and add 'I have that same problem and I would contribute too'. If enough people have the problem and the amounts add up to enough to tackle it, someone would probably spend the time and effort to do it. It would kind of be like a 'reverse kickstarter' site.
I interview people and help hire them for my projects (technical lead, not hiring manager). I would prefer github. 1. It means that you're more 'up to date'; 2. it's just easier to use. Honestly though, don't put your software links on your resume unless it is _good_. Having a crappy piece of software on there is concerning, since then you are advertising crap, and you clearly are proud of your crap. Don't want that. You have a reasonable readme for it, it has to build with a script, has to have code comments, be well organized, not have a zillion issues.
You want to impress a developer? Point out where you contributed to a team effort. Find a feature request in a known open source project and implement it, and have it accepted. Or fix a bug, and make a pull request. Then, be able to explain why it fit into the overall effort. If you do that, someone will think to themselves, 'hey, this person makes something other people think is worthwhile, and they worked in a group, and solved a real problem.'
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Errrrrrrrrr...........from the "feature list":
"There is no way to distinguish between a "missing" column and an empty, zero-length column. (This is perhaps a debatable feature, but I personally like it for reasons I'm still trying to articulate.)"
I have no idea why this would be a useful way to do things, but I'm willing to listen to why you might think it would be. It seems as though you'd have no way to tell if there's no value in the column or no column at all. Specifically, how is this useful or beneficial?
-
"Dynamic schema via "Create-on-Write" - Columns and tables can be created just by putting or updating data in them. No explicit schema alteration is required."
As above, what benefit is there in having no explicit schema on which to operate??
-
"Every row automatically get's a read-only auto-number "rowID" field."
I believe this is already the case in Oracle, mySQL/mariaDB, and postgres if I'm not mistaken.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I doubt it. I can change a database that's only used for prototyping and demoing on the fly in less time than it takes to start his code, with a SQL editor. For things that need to enter production someday, I deploy a physical model generated from a logical model. Takes me all of 5 minutes to have a deployable build. With Redgate data generator or similar products you can quickly fill the database.
I fail to see any need for dynamic schemes, unless you want to give a crutch to programmers who don't understand databases. In my opinion, those programmers shouldn't be allowed to change anything in the database at all.
At least, not until they can explain the pros and cons of surrogating keys, the difference between normalization and denormalization, the use of subtypes and supertypes, and why NULL isn't an allowable value in a database - but that's a bonus question :).
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
In every RDBMS I know, you can add an identity column, or a column that is filled by a sequence, or as last resort something that is calculated on save with a trigger. If you want this, you can have it in every RDBMS except the most rudimentary.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
True, although usually a professor has his own list of pet projects they like to see done, and those are the ones you get grades for...
But it's likely that someone who wants to program a bit in a new language or environment might like to do something for which there is a need. Matching need with idea, now that's the issue.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I quite agree with your opening, though I would go farther. I would even say that good ideas are plentiful, practically an inexhaustible resource.
The rest of your reply shows a highly fractured interpretation of what I wrote, but I'm getting quite accustomed to people twisting things to their own mental convenience (and on my interpretation I've largely discounted your reply as unrelated to what I actually think, even if I wrote unclearly (which I doubt)). On Slashdot that twisting often involves burning straw men arguments. I certainly don't think "complete" is equivalent to "perfect". Or perhaps I should just agree with you that there is no "perfect", even in project proposals. No skin off my nose since it has no relation to my suggestion. Well, on second thought I admit it would be nice if the project proposals were perfect, but I certainly have no such expectation. I think the metric of sufficient goodness would be that enough people want to support the project. (One obvious response to a proven lack of funding is to improve the proposal and try again.)
Perhaps it would be better to suggest that my presentation could be taken as a constructive suggestion to improve some of the flaws in crowd funding? At least all of the crowdfunding websites I've investigated suffer from problems that might be addressed by this approach to adding accountability. The problem I have with that suggestion is that I'm approaching the problem from the perspectives of modular software design and cost recovery, with various tweaks such as the metric of a successful architect or lawyer applied to programmers who choose to adopt it. There is quite a bit of research that supports the claim that people enjoy their work more when they have more control over it, and even though some people claim they care only about the salary. (There's also a chronological problem in that most of my suggestion predates my first encounter with Kickstarter.)
Or maybe you are upset that I reject the purist (and non-monetary) philosophy of Stallman? Sorry, but I don't think a pledge of poverty is the only way to be a better person. (Amusingly enough, one part of my suggestion was strongly influenced by a constructive email exchange with rms himself, but so far there is no credit to be shared. Actually, based on that exchange, he'd probably reject it.)
As I see it, the real problem is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, but only in the literal sense. The idiomatic interpretation is quite misleading. These days I have become so casual I just find it amusing to watch the world spin along its increasingly crazy course. #PresidentTweety, for example.
Not sure if you regarded it as a constructive suggestion about hiring contractors, but if you are so wealthy, then I'm glad to send you my congratulations. Even more so if the congratulations would get some money donated to some cause that might make the world better.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The snowflake suffered a meltdown, and now, it's just water
It's important to understand that the Open Source Community is NOT a pool of developers looking to contribute to ANY open source project.
It's not even a single community. It's more along the lines of where every project is a Nation State, each with it's own form of government.
Every software project starts with a need to solve a problem.
Commercial software identifies the potential market share, committing time and resources to solve that problem.
OSS projects typically start with an individual creating a solution without those considerations, solving the problem for their own use, to solve their own problem.
Most OSS projects are only used by the original creator, many have a handful of adopters, and a few become large collaborative efforts.
These large collaborative effort are mistakenly considered to be "the" Open Source Community. They are just a part of it.
In reality, the Open Source Community is only built around a single fundamental belief.
That releasing the source code of a project to the public MAY be useful to others.
Other than a single shared ideal, each Nation State adopts it's own constitution. The Open Source License.
Which creates different factions, without any central Open Source Community body.
However, the EFF could be probably considered the equivalent of the United Nations General Counsel. But that's just a generalization.
With that said, you DO NOT reach out to every country in the World to request someone comes to your neighborhood and clean the streets.
You may get a few polite responses, many will ignore you, and others will simply tell you to 'fuck off'. As you can see in the comments here.
There are only a handful of ways to properly handle your problem.
1. Pick up a broom and do it yourself.
2. Borrow a broom and do it yourself.
3. Hire someone to do it.
4. Reach out the sanitation department in YOUR community.
Most of these options were already covered.
Do it yourself, acquire the skill to do it yourself, hire someone, or find a project or developer that already works with HLSL/GLSL/Cg/SweetFX.
Your project ONLY becomes part of a community when you're out there sweeping by yourself and neighbors come out with their own brooms and help.
Do you mean unique keys or "tables"? Please clarify. An example of what you are trying to achieve or match in a practical sense would help.
Table-ized A.I.
Same way as before. I don't see that as a practical stumbling block, but maybe you have a specific use-case in mind that would muck things up?
Indeed with regard to informal structuring: something easy to get going is often useful for prototyping. One can then lock down this tool incrementally as things settle (or migrate to a static RDBMS).
I've been in rather long debates about the definition of "relational database", and found no clear-cut "failure" to match. Language is subject to interpretation.
Anyhow, the idea is to produce a useful tool. It's formal category or definition is secondary to being useful.
Table-ized A.I.
Sometimes planning is hard. I've been in many situations where the customer doesn't quite know what they want yet, and/or some trial-and-error is needed to settle on an optimum design. Think of it as a prototyping tool.
Have you memorized every domain and customer preference in the world?
Table-ized A.I.
Not really. Prolog is mostly a query-like language; I'm not defining a language. SQL, or at least some variant of it, is good enough; no need for users to relearn the entire wheel.
(I've proposed an alternative to SQL, but it's probably not significantly better enough to dethrone the de-facto standard: SQL, for most uses. But that's a different topic.)
Table-ized A.I.
Interesting. But they do seem like second-class citizens compared to "regular" columns in Maria-DB. It's extra syntax to use them. My approach would allow formality to be incrementally added without changing a column's "type" (mode?) from dynamic to static.
They also seem to require explicit type declarations. I prefer implied or WYSIWYG typing, a bit more like perl's typing model, even if it does complicate comparisons to some degree. (Different readers had diff opinions on how to handle dynamically-typed comparisons. I prefer a symbol next to the comparison operator, such as "#" for numeric: it's short and easy.)
Table-ized A.I.
SQL, or at least some variant of it, is good enough
Yuck! I'm sure Darwen and Date would disagree.
Ezekiel 23:20
> So programmers would be the only people who have needs? Or in other words, anybody who has a need had better become a programmer?
No. Just people who want sotfware "free as in beer" (not counting time and tools).
> The really relevant stuff doesn't need a url anyway, because they already know the name of the software.
The other obscure stuff is also helpful to the recruiter. At least to eleminate you if your side projects are just shit. If your side project made in your free, unlimited time is just badly coded, with poor commit messages, what can a recruiter expect from you code quality on a time-constrained project?
In every RDBMS I know, you can add an identity column, or a column that is filled by a sequence, or as last resort something that is calculated on save with a trigger. If you want this, you can have it in every RDBMS except the most rudimentary.
If you're referring to the rowID field, yes, this appears to be present in virtually every RDBMS that exists. Even if it's an internal ID it can be exposed and used. I'm not sure why he was asking for this since it's already a standard feature of every relational DB on the planet.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Notepad is a bad tool. You need to use emacs
Of course. So put the urls YOU deem relevant into your resume.
Darwen and Date tend to be pedantic and don't focus on things shops actually care about. They spend far more time on chalkboards than in the field.
Plus, SQL, or a variant of it, can be adjusted to fit most of their complaints. That would be more practical than entirely throwing out an established standard and starting over again from scratch.
Again, I have gripes about SQL also, but something typically has to be significantly better to replace a standard, not merely somewhat better. And the SQL standard can be adjusted and expanded as new actual lessons are learned.
Table-ized A.I.
Sure you can. And if you submit your idea to a project like Wine or ReactOS, they might show some interrest, since they're already doing their version of your idea.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If you can find a way to index blobs well, that could serve as a base kit on which to build specialized database-like tools.
Table-ized A.I.
Let me clarify that. The proposal is to allow for a "loose" initial style, but a database instance can gradually be tightened as the requirements settle by adding various existence, type, parsing and/or lookup constraints. It probably cannot be as "tight" as a traditional RDBMS, but perhaps close enough.
It can be "loose" and "medium tight". Few other tools/ideas can straddle even that much.
(Throwing features at it could perhaps allow a really tight database, but I suspect there would be side-effects, such as excess complexity, and/or performance problems.)
Table-ized A.I.
Yes, it can use joins. It can do just about anything one can do with typical SQL and even use SQL (with some minor adjustments in the way comparisons are done).
It's not a new query language, I would note, but more of a new data model for tables (or table-like things). While I'd prefer other query languages, SQL is good enough, as explained in a sister message per learning curves.
I'll assume your dev/null comment is intended as a joke, and file my reply under dev/null.
Table-ized A.I.