I'll just throw an idea out here: there are sites, like RentACoder, where people who need software built can post a bid request, people can bid on them, and collect the fee once the project is completed. Professional western programmers typically don't bid on serious projects, since typical fees are ridiculously low for the work (even for less developed countries).
However, that does mean that if you have a random idea but can't get around to starting work on it, you could perhaps put it as a bid request on there. You might be out say a couple hundred dollars (depending on what you want built), and the code might not be the best quality, but it'll at least work somewhat or you won't have to pay.
And then you can start improving it, refactoring it, whatever you wish... and perhaps release it as open source.
Just an idea - using a site like that to get over your own fear of starting / lack of time or experience.
A new project is not an open source project yet - it's just a project you work on. So just start developing it, just like you would a "closed source project".
Now say you are successful, you manage to create something interesting. Once you have it working, in a state so that other people may be interested in using it, then you could release it. And then, if you happen to pick an open source license for it, it'll be an open source project. But not before.
Sourceforge is full of projects that started out trying to be an "open source project" from the start, but never had any actual code... don't delude yourself.
I believe that a vast majority of software is written not to be sold off the shelf, but custom made for internal use in some company, either by in house developers or by external parties, but still on custom specs.
If you have it developed by an external party, on your specs but with them retaining copyright, the business case for getting an open source license is very clear: no vendor lock-in. It should be no-brainer, except when the externals offer a major price discount for a closed license.
When developing in house, usually no licensing at all is involved, proprietary or OS. But it can still make sense to release internal tools as OSS: for goodwill, and because others may improve your tools for you, and release their changes as well. Since software isn't your main business, there is no harm in sharing some code with other companies (possibly in completely unrelated businesses), but you may well reap some rewards.
So in my opinion, the economic case for OSS is at least as clear as for proprietary software - except in the relatively uncommon case of a company developing software to sell off the shelf.
I thought the whole point of Open Source was doing good for mankind in general, not categorically for the investors...
That's a misconception. People write OSS for all kinds of different reasons, including for profit, and that is great. Sun itself is probably the biggest contributor to open source in existence (with Solaris, Open Office and Java), but they obviously do it because they believe it's good business practice.
Exactly the opposite - if they're suggesting they need a patent deal like this to be allowed to distribute Linux, then they are not allowed to distribute it - see the GPL (For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program).
Isn't it rather an indication that they're doing their job? Data which challenge our current models are the most valuable things scientists can collect, because they give researchers chance to refine their theories.
The thing is, the theory the submitter alludes to isn't the "current model", it's extreme fringe theory (I'm tempted to call it crackpot theory but will leave that to an actual physicist), and the submitter managed to get his troll on Slashdot.
I mean, he's calling the fact that scientists don't agree to a theory on thunderbolts.info as "crippling ignorance".
I mean, Nature, thunderbolts.info, they're about the same in status, don't you agree?
Look at it this way:
If you are better than the rest, you should make sure everyone knows about it and ask for a payrise.
If you are doing worse than others, then you better improve.
Except it isn't that easy, is it? For one thing, the test that gives a correct benchmark of my entire job does not exist; at most it'll measure some small parts of it, badly. Secondly, nobody else in the company has exactly the same job, so it'll always be comparing apples and oranges, but that won't stop them. And thirdly, there will be people who do things like work insane overtime, just to get higher benchmarks - resulting in pressure on me to do that as well, but that's just something I don't have to do. Fourth, a good enough test takes a lot of time, which is frustrating and wasteful. Et cetera/
Set me realistic goals and see if I meet them. The rest is my business.
That's exactly why these news articles shouldn't just say "cure for cancer" - because nobody will know that that encompasses a whole range of completely different diseases. Some caused by bacteria, some by viruses, some by mutations, some by inhaling smoke, etc etc etc. The masses will never understand that if nobody tells them.
Well, the actual tangibles of a company (money in the bank, perhaps ownership of a building, sometimes an inventory, some office furniture) is usually a small part of the company's value. That value is in job contracts with employees, intellectual property, contracts with customers, expected future earnings, brand recognition, et cetera. All totally intangible.
Of course you have a point, but if WoW stuff is tradeable for real cash on some more or less permanent market, then it has real value. Period.
Perhaps humans have had close shaves with extinction in the past (not the relatively recent well-known bottleneck like 50,000 years ago, but close to the split). If that's the case, then the genetic variety within the population would have been lower, giving less potential for successful adaptations. I do believe that genetic variety within the human species is extremely low (lower than within one single group of chimps, I seem to recall, but I can't Google up a reference right now).
Alternatively - to because a successful adaptation, a change must be an advantage both in relation to the environment, but also in relation to the already existing genes within the population. Perhaps having a large brain means that many possible changes weren't an advantage anymore, for instance because the large brain uses up so much of our energy budget.
There's also a difference between "a USB key with a song or two on it", and a string of left behind songs on USB sticks that are part of a campaign that the label signed off on.
I think that once it's clear that the artist is doing it on purpose, on a digital medium, in 2007, with the label's permission - that's implicit license to share it with everybody over the 'Net to your heart's content.
Remember, this is a court order, it's part of a penalty they get for breaking the law. The court decides the terms. Originally they were allowed to pick a reasonable fee themselves (IIRC) but if the court decides they abused that and set an unreasonable fee, well I would certainly expect them to order the info to be free.
Without a license, you do not have the right to copy a work copyrighted by someone else. The GPL is the only thing that gives you the right to copy, modify or distribute Linux. Therefore, you need to abide by its terms, even if you only copy it.
Saying that means you must also always copy the source is idiotic, since that's not what the license says. But since this is commercial copying and/or distribution of a binary, they must choose to adhere to either 3a or 3b - accompany with the source, or a written offer to give any third party the source for a fee no bigger than the cost of physically distributing it.
Since that's for any commercial copying, and to any third party, it doesn't matter at all whether it's leased or bought.
Well... it's make-believe sex, they have all their clothes on, nothing at all is visible. It's just not offensive content in my opinion, no wonder they didn't care that people might find it.
Then they messed up with all the lies and other bad PR moves, that was just totally unnecessary. They should have just admitted there were scenes on the CD that were edited out, but they weren't anything special.
Just not true. For one thing, Google's results are much too noisy. For another, it relies on keywords occurring on pages, and that's rather primitive (it's not always trivial to find good keywords, and even then you might miss the one page your were looking for because they used a synonym or misspelled it).
But the most important reason is that it would be much cooler to have a web where you could say "give me a list of all the goals scored by Romario" and have it list them for me. I don't care about pages, I want information, answers to questions. That's what the Semantic Web is supposed to be a first mini step for.
Not true. Every country has its own rules. Besides those, there's also a European patent court, which isn't actually part of the EU, just a cooperation of European countries. That court officially doesn't allow software patents but does in practice; Germany's patent law is different, I have no idea.
The "EU patent directive" and the fight over software patents that's covered now and then on/. is about a EU proposal to do away with all this and replace it by a single EU system, and about whether software patents should be part of that.
This is "Slashdot knowledge", I have no actual knowledge of law, so...
We're not talking about average users, we're talking about people who might buy a HP or Dell system with Linux pre-installed if it were available. They're not quite the same type.
How about imaging research (stuff like using image processing to learn about the state of food stuffs with infrared cameras), or the hard problems that need to be solved to get to the Semantic Web?
There is a lot of CS work out there. But it's science work, not programming or product development. That's not CS, that's engineering or just programming.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll just throw an idea out here: there are sites, like RentACoder, where people who need software built can post a bid request, people can bid on them, and collect the fee once the project is completed. Professional western programmers typically don't bid on serious projects, since typical fees are ridiculously low for the work (even for less developed countries).
However, that does mean that if you have a random idea but can't get around to starting work on it, you could perhaps put it as a bid request on there. You might be out say a couple hundred dollars (depending on what you want built), and the code might not be the best quality, but it'll at least work somewhat or you won't have to pay.
And then you can start improving it, refactoring it, whatever you wish... and perhaps release it as open source.
Just an idea - using a site like that to get over your own fear of starting / lack of time or experience.
A new project is not an open source project yet - it's just a project you work on. So just start developing it, just like you would a "closed source project".
Now say you are successful, you manage to create something interesting. Once you have it working, in a state so that other people may be interested in using it, then you could release it. And then, if you happen to pick an open source license for it, it'll be an open source project. But not before.
Sourceforge is full of projects that started out trying to be an "open source project" from the start, but never had any actual code... don't delude yourself.
I don't agree. By all means try to make a hobby into your job; just make sure you keep looking around for new hobbies in the meantime.
I believe that a vast majority of software is written not to be sold off the shelf, but custom made for internal use in some company, either by in house developers or by external parties, but still on custom specs.
If you have it developed by an external party, on your specs but with them retaining copyright, the business case for getting an open source license is very clear: no vendor lock-in. It should be no-brainer, except when the externals offer a major price discount for a closed license.
When developing in house, usually no licensing at all is involved, proprietary or OS. But it can still make sense to release internal tools as OSS: for goodwill, and because others may improve your tools for you, and release their changes as well. Since software isn't your main business, there is no harm in sharing some code with other companies (possibly in completely unrelated businesses), but you may well reap some rewards.
So in my opinion, the economic case for OSS is at least as clear as for proprietary software - except in the relatively uncommon case of a company developing software to sell off the shelf.
I thought the whole point of Open Source was doing good for mankind in general, not categorically for the investors...
That's a misconception. People write OSS for all kinds of different reasons, including for profit, and that is great. Sun itself is probably the biggest contributor to open source in existence (with Solaris, Open Office and Java), but they obviously do it because they believe it's good business practice.
Absolutely not!
It was in fact the invention of running Linux on a dead badger, in 2004, that introduced the Web 2.0 age!
That's not a trade deficit, it's a massive spy operation!
Exactly the opposite - if they're suggesting they need a patent deal like this to be allowed to distribute Linux, then they are not allowed to distribute it - see the GPL (For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program).
It would open them up to GPL violation law suits.
Isn't it rather an indication that they're doing their job? Data which challenge our current models are the most valuable things scientists can collect, because they give researchers chance to refine their theories.
The thing is, the theory the submitter alludes to isn't the "current model", it's extreme fringe theory (I'm tempted to call it crackpot theory but will leave that to an actual physicist), and the submitter managed to get his troll on Slashdot.
I mean, he's calling the fact that scientists don't agree to a theory on thunderbolts.info as "crippling ignorance".
I mean, Nature, thunderbolts.info, they're about the same in status, don't you agree?
There's no way society would be able to afford that. If we all lived to 150, you'd see the retirement age raised to 100+.
That said, being retired doesn't mean you do nothing...
Look at it this way:
If you are better than the rest, you should make sure everyone knows about it and ask for a payrise.
If you are doing worse than others, then you better improve.
Except it isn't that easy, is it? For one thing, the test that gives a correct benchmark of my entire job does not exist; at most it'll measure some small parts of it, badly. Secondly, nobody else in the company has exactly the same job, so it'll always be comparing apples and oranges, but that won't stop them. And thirdly, there will be people who do things like work insane overtime, just to get higher benchmarks - resulting in pressure on me to do that as well, but that's just something I don't have to do. Fourth, a good enough test takes a lot of time, which is frustrating and wasteful. Et cetera/
Set me realistic goals and see if I meet them. The rest is my business.
That's exactly why these news articles shouldn't just say "cure for cancer" - because nobody will know that that encompasses a whole range of completely different diseases. Some caused by bacteria, some by viruses, some by mutations, some by inhaling smoke, etc etc etc. The masses will never understand that if nobody tells them.
They may become intelligent, that doesn't make them alive.
And concentrations of those elements are so low in the universe, that they'd need to be mined by other life forms first.
Well, the actual tangibles of a company (money in the bank, perhaps ownership of a building, sometimes an inventory, some office furniture) is usually a small part of the company's value. That value is in job contracts with employees, intellectual property, contracts with customers, expected future earnings, brand recognition, et cetera. All totally intangible.
Of course you have a point, but if WoW stuff is tradeable for real cash on some more or less permanent market, then it has real value. Period.
Perhaps humans have had close shaves with extinction in the past (not the relatively recent well-known bottleneck like 50,000 years ago, but close to the split). If that's the case, then the genetic variety within the population would have been lower, giving less potential for successful adaptations. I do believe that genetic variety within the human species is extremely low (lower than within one single group of chimps, I seem to recall, but I can't Google up a reference right now).
Alternatively - to because a successful adaptation, a change must be an advantage both in relation to the environment, but also in relation to the already existing genes within the population. Perhaps having a large brain means that many possible changes weren't an advantage anymore, for instance because the large brain uses up so much of our energy budget.
Just some more ideas :-)
There's also a difference between "a USB key with a song or two on it", and a string of left behind songs on USB sticks that are part of a campaign that the label signed off on.
I think that once it's clear that the artist is doing it on purpose, on a digital medium, in 2007, with the label's permission - that's implicit license to share it with everybody over the 'Net to your heart's content.
Remember, this is a court order, it's part of a penalty they get for breaking the law. The court decides the terms. Originally they were allowed to pick a reasonable fee themselves (IIRC) but if the court decides they abused that and set an unreasonable fee, well I would certainly expect them to order the info to be free.
Isn't that the same thing? Energy is going to be available, but at a higher price, decreasing our standard of living.
Bullshit, go read the license (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). It's not that long. It covers copying, distribution and modification.
Without a license, you do not have the right to copy a work copyrighted by someone else. The GPL is the only thing that gives you the right to copy, modify or distribute Linux. Therefore, you need to abide by its terms, even if you only copy it.
Saying that means you must also always copy the source is idiotic, since that's not what the license says. But since this is commercial copying and/or distribution of a binary, they must choose to adhere to either 3a or 3b - accompany with the source, or a written offer to give any third party the source for a fee no bigger than the cost of physically distributing it.
Since that's for any commercial copying, and to any third party, it doesn't matter at all whether it's leased or bought.
Well... it's make-believe sex, they have all their clothes on, nothing at all is visible. It's just not offensive content in my opinion, no wonder they didn't care that people might find it.
Then they messed up with all the lies and other bad PR moves, that was just totally unnecessary. They should have just admitted there were scenes on the CD that were edited out, but they weren't anything special.
Just not true. For one thing, Google's results are much too noisy. For another, it relies on keywords occurring on pages, and that's rather primitive (it's not always trivial to find good keywords, and even then you might miss the one page your were looking for because they used a synonym or misspelled it).
But the most important reason is that it would be much cooler to have a web where you could say "give me a list of all the goals scored by Romario" and have it list them for me. I don't care about pages, I want information, answers to questions. That's what the Semantic Web is supposed to be a first mini step for.
Not true. Every country has its own rules. Besides those, there's also a European patent court, which isn't actually part of the EU, just a cooperation of European countries. That court officially doesn't allow software patents but does in practice; Germany's patent law is different, I have no idea.
The "EU patent directive" and the fight over software patents that's covered now and then on /. is about a EU proposal to do away with all this and replace it by a single EU system, and about whether software patents should be part of that.
This is "Slashdot knowledge", I have no actual knowledge of law, so...
But, if we want Linux to be introduced to the masses then we have to assume the masses won't know enough to install it themselves.
Fuck the masses, they're not what this is about.
What the people asking for Dell and HP systems with Linux want is:
More mass exposure for Linux would be a welcome side effect, but it's not where this demand is coming from.
We're not talking about average users, we're talking about people who might buy a HP or Dell system with Linux pre-installed if it were available. They're not quite the same type.
How about imaging research (stuff like using image processing to learn about the state of food stuffs with infrared cameras), or the hard problems that need to be solved to get to the Semantic Web?
There is a lot of CS work out there. But it's science work, not programming or product development. That's not CS, that's engineering or just programming.