What most developers don't think is "Hey, I didn't contribute anything. Nobody I know has contributed anything. Why will my project be any different?"
Here's the real problem with this myth: desire to contribute, and ability to contribute, is nothing in the face of lack of premission to contribute.
Not suprisingly, a lot of people who contribute patches and development effort to OSS projects work in the field - they're developers themselves. Since they're most likely to work on OSS to "scratch an itch", it's got a pretty good chance of being related to whatever they're working on for their employer. Soooo... if you're in this situation, what are the chances that:
1) Your employer will not have any problems with you giving away something that may benefit a competitor?
2) The OSS project accepting your contribution without the requirement for a copyright assignment (see question #1)?
I've talked to developers who said they were pushing hard to get permission from their employers to "give back" to the OSS world. Easy enough to do in a small corporation. Much, much harder in a large one, even if your proposed contribution has zero relevance to the company's bottom line.
Does your company have a policy on OSS software contributions in place? If not, be prepared to argue... and argue... and argue, probably all the way up to the CEO; because whether you're talking about major patches to a large OSS project or a one-line fix for a one-person project on SourceForge, you will need to convince your management hierarchy that it is in their best interest to give something away..
Assuming you get past this point, you still need to get approval for your specific change. You've got to convince your immediate management. You're probably going to end up waiting on approval from legal, because they need to look over the license to make sure that this isn't going to result in any liability for the company. If they OK it, you might be lucky enough to just be able to send the patch out on the authority of your manager; but you may also have to get Joe/Jane VP to approve each and every patch. You're going to have to do that anyways, if you need that copyright assignment for the OSS project to even look at your patch...
Understanding of how OSS development works is really just starting to make its way into most corporate environments. I wouldn't be surprised if the next 10 years saw a notable increase in the total # of OSS contributors, simply because the pioneers will ahve cleared a corporate trail that others will be able to follow. A project will still probably have trouble getting solid contributors, though, because there will probably also be an increase in the number of OSS projects available in the wild:-/
IMO, the constant signpost reminder of IDE deficiencies has always been the need to preserve Notepad on Windows.
Heh. Well, I'm pretty much using either an IDE (Eclipse) or Cygwin + vi under windows these days... each has it's own strengths. Then again, Eclipse is a lot closer to emacs-as-IDE, in that it's the first GUI IDE I've ever worked with that gives me the opportunity to substantially alter the environment to suit how I want it to work. It may be a sports car, but if it is, it was designed by someone who knows that "sports car" means different things to different people.
Every year I have some yahoo come in and say how one IDE can do this, that, and the other thing - the best thing since sliced bread...
Emacs is fully extensible, and interfaces with all of the tools above.
"IDE" stands for "Integrated Development Environment". While the vast majority of IDEs are the kind that expect to run under some sort of windowing system - Win32, X, what have you - there is no absolute requirement that an IDE be a purely GUI-based tool.
IMHO, emacs was one of the first successful IDEs. You yourself pointed out how well it "interfaces" with the tools you use... same idea, different i-word.
Go ahead and disparage others because you think they lack deep technical understanding about how their tools work, or because you think they choose a set of tools (IDE) that you consider inferior. Mocking them for using an IDE when you use emacs... well, pot, kettle, black.
That you draw NOTHING from the public pool of knowledge, and borrow NOTHING from ideas that, in your view, would be owned by someone else?
Your view of "society" is remarkably similar to the idea of the "company store" in an old mining town. It's the only place you're allowed to shop, and the price for what you want always just happens to be slightly more than what you have on you. The way you describe things, it's even worse - I've been forced into a job (born into this society), told that I have to buy the tools I need to do the job (repay society for 5000+ years of civilization and development), and anything I make will go to pay a crushing debt that would have been paid long ago if it wasn't for questionable accounting. Today's society has already be paid for - it exists, after all. If I owe anyone, it's tomorrow's society, and I'd argue that it's in their best interest to encourage me to create rather than to consume.
You're granted a brief monopoly over the redistribution of your derivative idea...
Based on your final comment, I think you're mixing up copyright and patent law... FWIW, I think the current copyright situation is ludicrous, but I don't think that eliminating copyrights is the answer to the problem; and I think taking your view (that it is society that graciously allows me to retain the rights to my own work, rather than taking it from me by force) is a dangerously close step towards a totalitarian state. YMMV.
When IP protection is weak, as it was in (say) Germany at the turn of the century, innovation booms.
If you're talking about industrial innovation, then we're no longer discussing copyright - we're off into the area of patent law, which is an entirely different thing altogether. In my understnading, copyright is for protecting, for a limited time, works that can be cheaply mass-produced, and which must be massed produced in order to be useful. Patent law is a value-for-value exchange with the government: in return for a state-enforced monopoly for a limited period of time, we will disclose the details of something that would otherwise be a trade secret (and possibly never made available to the public).
Copyright law, if used as it was intended, encourages creative effort. Patent law, if used as it was intended, encourages cooperative effort. Neither seems to be workking quite the way it was intended anymore, though, at least not in the USA.
The value of data is not only about how much money it's worth, you know.
He wasn't talking about how much money the data was worth, in and of itself - he was talking about how much you were willing to spend to protect and preserve your data. Two entirely different things, really. An example: my Grandfather's old 8mm video is almost certainly worthless out in the marketplace, but we were willing to spend a good chunk of change to have it preserved and transfered to VHS a few years back.
And please - before you go saying "Ah-HA! Those 8mm tapes must have had value to you, because you spent so much to preserve them!", think about that for a second. The only reason you know they have some value to me is because I told you that I spent some effort (time, $$$, materials) to preserve them. If I told you that I left them lying in a puddle in the basement for 20 years, you could quite reasonably conclude that I didn't care what happened to them.
I think that is the point the original poster was trying to make: the higher the perceived value of data, the more you are willing to spend in order to archive it.
You DO NOT own the work you hold copyright on - it is the property of society, whose resources you used to create it. You do own the rights to a temporary monopoly on the reproduction of that work.
Are you sure of that? Every explanation of copyright I've ever come across has pointed out that, after some limited time, ownership of a work reverts to the public domain. IOW - the government allows you to "own" your work for a period of time, and then takes it from you. AFAICT, US and international copyright law supports this notion - that the creator owns the copyright for a limited time, at which point it is taken from them by the government.
...it is the property of society, whose resources you used to create it.
Please explain to me how the time, effort, and resources I epxend to create a copyrighted work are any different from the time, effort and resources I might expend to create a physical object. Assuming that I am gainfully employed, I am (presumably) already contributing to society to cover my various needs. I'm paying taxes to support local, state and federal government infrastructure. I'm contributing to the economy by maintaining gainfull employment in my chosen profression. I'm being a productive member of society in multiple ways already... and you claim that I owe you my creative capacity, for no reason other than I created it?
Please.
Feel free to make any other argument you want - but society does not, intrinsically, deserve to or have a claim on anything I create, phsyical or intellectual. If you do feel that I owe society something, then, by all means, tell me what it is, and I'll pay that debt - so long as every other member of society is expected to pay as well. From my point of view, society is functioning quite well without my little contributions... so, as I see it, society owes me a debt for providing something of worth and value above and beyond my regular participation as a member.
On the other hand, if you're just going to jump up and scream "MINE!" when you see me create something nice and shiny, well, you know what? I don't have any real reason to do so, other than to solve an immediate problem of my own. I'll just mill around with the other mindless, grasping drones, waiting for some poor, deluded schmuck to create something I can snatch up and consume. Your "creators owe society" stand results in nothing more than a society of consumers, the vast majority unwilling to create because creation isn't even a zero-sum game anymore. With no reward for creation, the act of creating anything results in loss to the creator, such that only the most trivial creations are even worth considering.
Be honest - your developers don't need root access. From your comments, I'm guessing that they're working on internal software intended to run as part of your IT infrastructure; while that's a common situation, it's not the only development situation out there.
I happen to work in a position where I occaisionally need to act as root, though I spend the majority of the time logged in under a regular user account. If I wasn't working where I am right now, though, I'd probably never notice (nor particularly care) if I didn't have root access to my own machine[1].
[1] Not having root access is one thing. Having draconian admin policies that prevent me from installing tools (editors, utilities, etc.) that make my job simpler is a whole 'nother ball of wax.
I may get modded down for the opinion, but let developers focus on developping, sysadmins focus on their systems, security admin focus on security, and have them LISTEN to each other.
I think one of the big problems is that, sometimes, the various parties don't know (or are unwilling) to say anything other than "It HAS to be done THIS way! Why? BECAUSE!"
When developers and admins can talk in terms of required capabilities (ie, "I need to be able to transfer data nightly to an external vendor" vs. "I need to have port xyz open"), then everything goes much more smoothly, because you're working together to solve a mutual problem.
Conflict arises when the problem is seen as being in, or is put into, a context where the solution is no longer mutual. One person or the other is unwilling to compromise, and insists that their solution to a problem is the one that must be followed, no matter how much it affects the other parties in the exchange.
My wife and I got into playing Gauntlet together over 10 years ago. To this day, we still get out once a year or so to blow a pocketfull of quarters playing Gauntlet Legends at whatever local arcade has it at the moment. It's got a good mix of strategy, action, and teamwork that we both enjoy. I think I've seen it available on consoles - if you can find it, you might want to give it a try.
I'm a software developer, I work in an open office environment, and I'm not antisocial. Quite frankly, there are days at work where it seems like I spend the majority of my time talking to people - work-related and otherwise. Various small tasks get handled in the 10-20 minute increments between rounds of discussion.
Other times, though, I need to be able to go heads-down and concentrate on a single task for 4-5 hours. When I have to do that, I sometimes really regret not having a door to close. Not all the time - but often enough that I notice it:-/.
The problem with solutions like an open office is that you don't always want an open office. If you plan for it (8 individual offices around a central meeting area, with doors open by default, etc.) you can get most of the advantages of an open office, while retaining all of the advantages of individual offices.
IMHO, there are reasons for and against going with an open office plan. If saving $$$ on office space is your primary reason for choosing an open plan, then you've essentially said that things like productivity, employee functionality, and a lot of other things that (logically) have more of an impact on your bottom line are less important to you than a short-term savings on rent. Generally not an indication of a healthy, well-run company.
See, it's a probability thing - if they make it common knowledge abotu how to create new viruses, what are the chances that someone will create a new virus that can only be cured using one of their 6,500 patents? </cynicism>
I guess you'd have to argue that a credit card itself was "merchandise" - don't know how well that would hold up in court. While the use and purpose of credit cards is fairly well-known, you might be able to argue that an unasked for, unsolicted line of credit - in whatever form - is essentially a free gift of money. Maybe this would take care of those stupid "by cashing this $1 check, you agree to switch phone service" sort of mailings, too...
In any case, you can always contact the USPS about it:
If you are aware of violations of the federal law prohibiting the mailing of unordered merchandise, or if you have personally had difficulty with such items--especially if you are sent statements demanding payment for the merchandise--you should contact you local postmaster or the nearest Postal Inspector.
It has to be said that Red Hat Inc.
does not claim any real-time behaviour.
SO... they compared a RTOS with an (admitedly) non-realtime OS? I'm not surprised at the results.
RedHat markets ELDS as an OS for embedded systems. Not all embedded systems require realtime performance. Heck, even systems that require realtime performance don't always require the level of performance that QNX can deliver. There's a large number of embedded systems for which even plain Linux without any performance enhancements is a good choice.
If you're really looking for a version of Linux that supports hard real time requirements, take a look at something other than ELDS - <shameless plug> TimeSys Linux, for example </shameless plug>
If your application is not licensed under GPL or compatible OSI license approved by MySQL AB and you intend to distribute MySQL software (be that internally or externally), you must first obtain a commercial license to the MySQL software in question.
Is this spelled out in the license agreement that comes with a MySQL distribution?
If it is, then it would appear that their claim that MySQL is under the GPL is false - they place additional limits on distribution, which IIRC the GPL prohibits.
If additional conditions on distribution are not spelled out in the license, then anyone receiving a MySQL distribution from any source can distribute them so long as they're in accordance with the GPL. MySQL AB can complain all they want about how they think you need to come to them for a commercial distribution license, but thier position is no more valid than SCO's claims that people they have never met owe them money for Linux runtime licenses..
Yah, yah, yah. IANAL and all that. There's a contradition here, though. Is MySQL GPL'd, or isn't it?
And just what part of that is so difficult to understand?
It's not difficult to understand at all. If you go back and take a look at my original post, though, you'll see that my main problem is when you say that... and then want to pay me, in whole or in part, with a share of your business.
At that point, as far as I'm concerned, the employer-employee relationship goes out the window. I'm at least an investor, and possibly even a junior partner, depending on what you've promised me. In that situation, I don't care if you're Moses himself - if I see a situation that I don't like, I'll ask and expect an explanation of you.
I'm not a lawyer - but I know enough about licensing issues to spot -- and can you spot them better than my lawyer, whom I am paying to spot them?
Spot a conflict between two licenses? No. Spot that there's a situation the your lawyers aren't ware of, because they're not cognizant of everything going on in the software development world? Absolutely. Not as big a deal if you're writing 100% proprietary code, but it can make a difference in a mixed proprietary/OSS shop, where someone else's license problems can quickly become yours as well.
Having said all that (and a few other posts), I'll comment that, in reality, I run my company under very unique principles, based on the organization of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which involves respecting the uniqueness of each individual.
Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Honestly, we're no very different in terms of viewpoints. Taking aside the employee-as-investor issue I mentioned, every instance of employees acting outside their realm of expertise was an example of someone acting out a cautionary role. In other words, you've made a decision, and they look at it and say, "Uh-oh. Does he know that...?" The purpose isn't to say "Look here, this is broke, this is how you fix it" - it's to ask you (the driver) if you noticed the "Bridge Out" sign a quarter mile back, because it was kind of hard to see and you seemed a little distracted and you haven't slowed down and the bridge is coming up...
From the sound of it, you don't make arbitrary decisions without employee feedback - which helps you avoid this type of situation. In the typical business world, though, it's very common for management to make a decision without bothering to ask those it will affect whether it actually makes sense at all - and then put the blame on the employee(s) who point out the potential problems.
Goback and re-read my post. You missed my point - that your post comes across as "I'm the boss, what I say goes."
I have no idea what kind of business you run right now. There are many where that sort of attitude is not only beneficial, it's pretty much a requirement for a successful business. There are other businesses where a single person can't reasonably be expected to understand all the ramifications of a particular decision.
I'm not a lawyer - but I know enough about licensing issues to spot, and raise an issue with, potential legal problems in that area. I'm not in sales, but based on 10 years experience in software development, I've got some idea of sales strategies that have been tried at other companies, and which have failed and which have succeeded. I'm not in HR, but I've got an understanding of state and federal regulations regarding the interview process. Each and every person in my workplace has a similar mish-mash of experience that is in no way, shape, or form related to their current position.
So if I tell you that I think we may have licensing issues with a widget we're thinking about using, I expect you to listen. If Joe in accounting tells you that the when he worked for Fooblitz, they spent $10 million on a certain type of marketing for a $1 million return, I expect you to listen. If Jane in sales tells you that a contact at Barfoo Corp tell her they've been having problems with the federal government accounts because of Section 508 compiance, I expect you to listen.
You may not actually do anything because of it. You may know exactly why Section 508 compliance isn't something you need to worry about, or why the Fooblitz marketing strategy was a failure, or why the widget license is perfectly OK to use in our circumstances. On the other hand, you may not know anything about any of these issues. Scorning an employee concern in this circumstance, solely because it happens to be outside their area of expertise, is hardly sensible.
It's my experience that identifying good employee input from bad is generally not a difficult thing. I'd actually be surprised if you never listened to a software developer expound on anything except software development, for example. I'm just arguing that pigeonholing someone based on what you hired them to do has the fundamental problem of ignoring what they are capable of doing... and I've never seen a business that couldn't benefit from getting more than what they paid for.
Also, from a management point of view, an employee like you describe does not seem to grasp their role in the company and what their true responsibilities are.
Depends on where you work, doesn't it? Over the past ten years, I haven't had a job where stock options (or straight stock) wasn't included as part of the compensation plan.
Believe me, if you plan on offering me part of the company's future success as an incentive to work today, you had better be willing to put up with me questioning what looks like an obviously bad move. You had better be willing to explain it to me as well - if you are effectively risking part of my compensation, I want to know why. And you had better have counted for the possibility of me walking out on you when you give me an answer I don't like.
Now, you may not be in that situation. Even if you're not, you had better realize that, particularly in the technology field, you hire people for their expertise. Tell me why you would hire someone for their knowlege and experience, and then ignore their opinions on the areas they are uniquely quilified to comment on?
Sure - a developer telling you how to maximize your sales leads, or a salesman telling you which technology to use is probably too much. The opposite is the desired situation, though, and you're being rash if you don't at least acknowledge the experience and ability of someone offering you an opinion. Despite the opinion you have of your abilities, you are not perfect, and you will make mistakes. Listening to an employee who has experience you personally lack can help you avoid making mistakes you otherwise might blunder into.
Going from memory, here. But IIRC, the differences are significant - one the order of 10% of the text. CT translations are missing, among other things, the Great Comission, references to Christ as deity, and the Johannine Comma. Proponents of the CT like to insist that the differences cause no fundamental change in doctrine, ignoring the doctrine of preservation. The early writings of the Church fathers also tend to support the TR over the CT, for example:
Well, now they had my attention and interest, but I still wasn't convinced. Finally, after I had bought the entire 11 volume set of early church writings (Ante-Nicene Fathers) from Jesus' time to 300 AD, I noticed that it had a Scripture reference for every single scripture quoted every where in all 10 volumes (11th. is the reference volume). I got an idea. I started to look up all the verses that were supposedly changed or omitted by the modern translations as compared to the KJV. The verses quoted by the early fathers don't read exactly like any translation we have, but guess what?
Yes. In every case, not only did one, but two or three early church pastors, elders, bishops in different times, in different geographical areas (as communication wasn't so good back then), quote the verses essentially with the same content and similar words as the KJV or NKJV. I also found them quoting the verses that were omitted in the new translations. I used to have a detailed study of each verse, who quoted it and how it was worded, by the KJV and modern translation. In every case, it was similar to the KJV.
Now that convinced me. There can be no logical argument against that. If the Textus Receptus had added words and verses to the pure text, as claimed by our smiling modern scholars, then why did the early church have the same ones added to their quotations? It is true that the modern translations are based on the oldest semi-complete N.T. manuscripts: Sinaiaticus, Vaticanicus, and Alexandrius, but they ignore the early church's earlier testimony, including the 5,000 complete, but newer manuscripts (after 500 AD), and the fragments we DO have of 1st. & 2nd. century manuscripts which basically support the Textus Receptus as well.
You might also be interested in reading In Defense of Erasmus for a similar view. Keep in mind that the KJV is a translation, and is not inspired - it is a good, accurate, and useful translation, but it itself is not inspired. The difference between the two views can be significant.
Not to nitpick, but Steel is not made in Pittsburgh.
Well, hey - I'm a Pittsburgher, too. I was using "Pittsburgh" in the traditional "talking to non-natives, Southwestern Pennsylvania tri-state area" kinda way:-) While steelmaking in the city of Pittsburgh is long gone, steelmaking in and around the Pittsburgh area is still fairly active. It just isn't the mammoth industry that it used to be.
Oddly enough, I work for IBM, the company sending jobs overseas.
Former Transarc employee?
Oh, and if you ever get the opportunity to tour the Braddock mill operation, take it. Watching Steel being made is pretty damn cool.
True! I've toured Allegheny Ludlum, and a couple of other plants - got my undergrad degree in metallurgical engineering, and concentrated on steelmaking my senior year because it was interesting. Got to tour a lot of interesting places.
You want to know something? Steel is still made in Pittsburgh. It's just not the low-grade, kiloton a day of cheap (in quality and price) steel that people think of when they bemoan the death of the "steel industry". Instead of huge steel plants churning out the same consumer-grade steel day after day, there are a number of smaller, independent steel plants. They make small batches of expensive specialty steels that require a lot of technical expertise to produce correctly.
Software's probably going to go the same way, eventually. Probably not to the same extent, but to some degree. Companies like IBM and Microsoft and others will move development of the cheap, commodity software offshore. Those software companies and software developers that remain in the US will spend less time working on commodity software and more time working on specialty solutions - vertical market, business-critical software.
Re:I'd like to weigh in ...
on
Eclipse in Action
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I dislike the way that Eclipse seems to handle projects.
Then let the team know.
They're currently working on the 3.0 release for Eclipse - one of the topics discussed on the development mailing lists a while back was properly supporting sub-projects. The primary Eclipse team was asking users to submit information on how they would like to see Eclipse support nested projects. If you look through their bug database, you should be able to find the relevant bugzilla entries along with the attached discussions.
...but the first time it falls over with an "Out of Cheese" error...
Bah! "Out of Cheese" errors are so... so... so Year of the Antiquated Ferret. Dried frog pills will get his site up and running, and keep it up and running longer tha...
+++ REALITY DOMAIN ERROR
+++ REINSTALL UNIVERSE AND REBOOT
Looks like TrollTech is once again stealing KDE's ideas.
What - you mean, they're implementing a publicly available standard again?
How dare they do something that... that... that immoral!
Why, next thing you know, they'll be claiming they did it to provide an implementation of a uniform cross-platform scripting environment for Qt users. As if we're foolish enough to believe that!
Well, too bad, Trollies - thank's to good ol' Anonymous Coward, we're on to you now!!
With the leadership of this country seriously questionable, the developement of these bombers may further encourage irresponsible wars/police actions/whatever.
You're absolutely right. The US has spent decades and literally billions of dollars propping up the UN. It's far past time we got our money's worth from that investment!
If we the American people feel the need for questionable leadership and an irresponsible wars or two, we should just leave it to the UN. After all, when it comes to questionable leadership, overall irresponsbility and uselessness, everyone knows you can't beat the UN!
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the real problem with this myth: desire to contribute, and ability to contribute, is nothing in the face of lack of premission to contribute.
Not suprisingly, a lot of people who contribute patches and development effort to OSS projects work in the field - they're developers themselves. Since they're most likely to work on OSS to "scratch an itch", it's got a pretty good chance of being related to whatever they're working on for their employer. Soooo... if you're in this situation, what are the chances that:
I've talked to developers who said they were pushing hard to get permission from their employers to "give back" to the OSS world. Easy enough to do in a small corporation. Much, much harder in a large one, even if your proposed contribution has zero relevance to the company's bottom line.
Does your company have a policy on OSS software contributions in place? If not, be prepared to argue... and argue... and argue, probably all the way up to the CEO; because whether you're talking about major patches to a large OSS project or a one-line fix for a one-person project on SourceForge, you will need to convince your management hierarchy that it is in their best interest to give something away. .
Assuming you get past this point, you still need to get approval for your specific change. You've got to convince your immediate management. You're probably going to end up waiting on approval from legal, because they need to look over the license to make sure that this isn't going to result in any liability for the company. If they OK it, you might be lucky enough to just be able to send the patch out on the authority of your manager; but you may also have to get Joe/Jane VP to approve each and every patch. You're going to have to do that anyways, if you need that copyright assignment for the OSS project to even look at your patch...
Understanding of how OSS development works is really just starting to make its way into most corporate environments. I wouldn't be surprised if the next 10 years saw a notable increase in the total # of OSS contributors, simply because the pioneers will ahve cleared a corporate trail that others will be able to follow. A project will still probably have trouble getting solid contributors, though, because there will probably also be an increase in the number of OSS projects available in the wild :-/
Heh. Well, I'm pretty much using either an IDE (Eclipse) or Cygwin + vi under windows these days... each has it's own strengths. Then again, Eclipse is a lot closer to emacs-as-IDE, in that it's the first GUI IDE I've ever worked with that gives me the opportunity to substantially alter the environment to suit how I want it to work. It may be a sports car, but if it is, it was designed by someone who knows that "sports car" means different things to different people.
"IDE" stands for "Integrated Development Environment". While the vast majority of IDEs are the kind that expect to run under some sort of windowing system - Win32, X, what have you - there is no absolute requirement that an IDE be a purely GUI-based tool.
IMHO, emacs was one of the first successful IDEs. You yourself pointed out how well it "interfaces" with the tools you use... same idea, different i-word.
Go ahead and disparage others because you think they lack deep technical understanding about how their tools work, or because you think they choose a set of tools (IDE) that you consider inferior. Mocking them for using an IDE when you use emacs... well, pot, kettle, black.
Your view of "society" is remarkably similar to the idea of the "company store" in an old mining town. It's the only place you're allowed to shop, and the price for what you want always just happens to be slightly more than what you have on you. The way you describe things, it's even worse - I've been forced into a job (born into this society), told that I have to buy the tools I need to do the job (repay society for 5000+ years of civilization and development), and anything I make will go to pay a crushing debt that would have been paid long ago if it wasn't for questionable accounting. Today's society has already be paid for - it exists, after all. If I owe anyone, it's tomorrow's society, and I'd argue that it's in their best interest to encourage me to create rather than to consume.
Based on your final comment, I think you're mixing up copyright and patent law... FWIW, I think the current copyright situation is ludicrous, but I don't think that eliminating copyrights is the answer to the problem; and I think taking your view (that it is society that graciously allows me to retain the rights to my own work, rather than taking it from me by force) is a dangerously close step towards a totalitarian state. YMMV.
If you're talking about industrial innovation, then we're no longer discussing copyright - we're off into the area of patent law, which is an entirely different thing altogether. In my understnading, copyright is for protecting, for a limited time, works that can be cheaply mass-produced, and which must be massed produced in order to be useful. Patent law is a value-for-value exchange with the government: in return for a state-enforced monopoly for a limited period of time, we will disclose the details of something that would otherwise be a trade secret (and possibly never made available to the public).
Copyright law, if used as it was intended, encourages creative effort. Patent law, if used as it was intended, encourages cooperative effort. Neither seems to be workking quite the way it was intended anymore, though, at least not in the USA.
He wasn't talking about how much money the data was worth, in and of itself - he was talking about how much you were willing to spend to protect and preserve your data. Two entirely different things, really. An example: my Grandfather's old 8mm video is almost certainly worthless out in the marketplace, but we were willing to spend a good chunk of change to have it preserved and transfered to VHS a few years back.
And please - before you go saying "Ah-HA! Those 8mm tapes must have had value to you, because you spent so much to preserve them!", think about that for a second. The only reason you know they have some value to me is because I told you that I spent some effort (time, $$$, materials) to preserve them. If I told you that I left them lying in a puddle in the basement for 20 years, you could quite reasonably conclude that I didn't care what happened to them.
I think that is the point the original poster was trying to make: the higher the perceived value of data, the more you are willing to spend in order to archive it.
Are you sure of that? Every explanation of copyright I've ever come across has pointed out that, after some limited time, ownership of a work reverts to the public domain. IOW - the government allows you to "own" your work for a period of time, and then takes it from you. AFAICT, US and international copyright law supports this notion - that the creator owns the copyright for a limited time, at which point it is taken from them by the government.
Please explain to me how the time, effort, and resources I epxend to create a copyrighted work are any different from the time, effort and resources I might expend to create a physical object. Assuming that I am gainfully employed, I am (presumably) already contributing to society to cover my various needs. I'm paying taxes to support local, state and federal government infrastructure. I'm contributing to the economy by maintaining gainfull employment in my chosen profression. I'm being a productive member of society in multiple ways already... and you claim that I owe you my creative capacity, for no reason other than I created it?
Please.
Feel free to make any other argument you want - but society does not, intrinsically, deserve to or have a claim on anything I create, phsyical or intellectual. If you do feel that I owe society something, then, by all means, tell me what it is, and I'll pay that debt - so long as every other member of society is expected to pay as well. From my point of view, society is functioning quite well without my little contributions... so, as I see it, society owes me a debt for providing something of worth and value above and beyond my regular participation as a member.
On the other hand, if you're just going to jump up and scream "MINE!" when you see me create something nice and shiny, well, you know what? I don't have any real reason to do so, other than to solve an immediate problem of my own. I'll just mill around with the other mindless, grasping drones, waiting for some poor, deluded schmuck to create something I can snatch up and consume. Your "creators owe society" stand results in nothing more than a society of consumers, the vast majority unwilling to create because creation isn't even a zero-sum game anymore. With no reward for creation, the act of creating anything results in loss to the creator, such that only the most trivial creations are even worth considering.
Be honest - your developers don't need root access. From your comments, I'm guessing that they're working on internal software intended to run as part of your IT infrastructure; while that's a common situation, it's not the only development situation out there.
I happen to work in a position where I occaisionally need to act as root, though I spend the majority of the time logged in under a regular user account. If I wasn't working where I am right now, though, I'd probably never notice (nor particularly care) if I didn't have root access to my own machine[1].
[1] Not having root access is one thing. Having draconian admin policies that prevent me from installing tools (editors, utilities, etc.) that make my job simpler is a whole 'nother ball of wax.
I think one of the big problems is that, sometimes, the various parties don't know (or are unwilling) to say anything other than "It HAS to be done THIS way! Why? BECAUSE!"
When developers and admins can talk in terms of required capabilities (ie, "I need to be able to transfer data nightly to an external vendor" vs. "I need to have port xyz open"), then everything goes much more smoothly, because you're working together to solve a mutual problem.
Conflict arises when the problem is seen as being in, or is put into, a context where the solution is no longer mutual. One person or the other is unwilling to compromise, and insists that their solution to a problem is the one that must be followed, no matter how much it affects the other parties in the exchange.
My wife and I got into playing Gauntlet together over 10 years ago. To this day, we still get out once a year or so to blow a pocketfull of quarters playing Gauntlet Legends at whatever local arcade has it at the moment. It's got a good mix of strategy, action, and teamwork that we both enjoy. I think I've seen it available on consoles - if you can find it, you might want to give it a try.
I'm a software developer, I work in an open office environment, and I'm not antisocial. Quite frankly, there are days at work where it seems like I spend the majority of my time talking to people - work-related and otherwise. Various small tasks get handled in the 10-20 minute increments between rounds of discussion.
Other times, though, I need to be able to go heads-down and concentrate on a single task for 4-5 hours. When I have to do that, I sometimes really regret not having a door to close. Not all the time - but often enough that I notice it :-/.
The problem with solutions like an open office is that you don't always want an open office. If you plan for it (8 individual offices around a central meeting area, with doors open by default, etc.) you can get most of the advantages of an open office, while retaining all of the advantages of individual offices.
IMHO, there are reasons for and against going with an open office plan. If saving $$$ on office space is your primary reason for choosing an open plan, then you've essentially said that things like productivity, employee functionality, and a lot of other things that (logically) have more of an impact on your bottom line are less important to you than a short-term savings on rent. Generally not an indication of a healthy, well-run company.
<cynicism>
Oh, no - it makes perfect sense.
Really!
See, it's a probability thing - if they make it common knowledge abotu how to create new viruses, what are the chances that someone will create a new virus that can only be cured using one of their 6,500 patents?
</cynicism>
I wonder if you could claim that it's a gift?
I guess you'd have to argue that a credit card itself was "merchandise" - don't know how well that would hold up in court. While the use and purpose of credit cards is fairly well-known, you might be able to argue that an unasked for, unsolicted line of credit - in whatever form - is essentially a free gift of money. Maybe this would take care of those stupid "by cashing this $1 check, you agree to switch phone service" sort of mailings, too...
In any case, you can always contact the USPS about it:
Taken from the article you reference:
SO... they compared a RTOS with an (admitedly) non-realtime OS? I'm not surprised at the results.
RedHat markets ELDS as an OS for embedded systems. Not all embedded systems require realtime performance. Heck, even systems that require realtime performance don't always require the level of performance that QNX can deliver. There's a large number of embedded systems for which even plain Linux without any performance enhancements is a good choice.
If you're really looking for a version of Linux that supports hard real time requirements, take a look at something other than ELDS - <shameless plug> TimeSys Linux, for example </shameless plug>
(yes, I am a TImeSys employee).Is this spelled out in the license agreement that comes with a MySQL distribution?
If it is, then it would appear that their claim that MySQL is under the GPL is false - they place additional limits on distribution, which IIRC the GPL prohibits.
If additional conditions on distribution are not spelled out in the license, then anyone receiving a MySQL distribution from any source can distribute them so long as they're in accordance with the GPL. MySQL AB can complain all they want about how they think you need to come to them for a commercial distribution license, but thier position is no more valid than SCO's claims that people they have never met owe them money for Linux runtime licenses..
Yah, yah, yah. IANAL and all that. There's a contradition here, though. Is MySQL GPL'd, or isn't it?
It's not difficult to understand at all. If you go back and take a look at my original post, though, you'll see that my main problem is when you say that... and then want to pay me, in whole or in part, with a share of your business.
At that point, as far as I'm concerned, the employer-employee relationship goes out the window. I'm at least an investor, and possibly even a junior partner, depending on what you've promised me. In that situation, I don't care if you're Moses himself - if I see a situation that I don't like, I'll ask and expect an explanation of you.
Spot a conflict between two licenses? No. Spot that there's a situation the your lawyers aren't ware of, because they're not cognizant of everything going on in the software development world? Absolutely. Not as big a deal if you're writing 100% proprietary code, but it can make a difference in a mixed proprietary/OSS shop, where someone else's license problems can quickly become yours as well.
Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Honestly, we're no very different in terms of viewpoints. Taking aside the employee-as-investor issue I mentioned, every instance of employees acting outside their realm of expertise was an example of someone acting out a cautionary role. In other words, you've made a decision, and they look at it and say, "Uh-oh. Does he know that...?" The purpose isn't to say "Look here, this is broke, this is how you fix it" - it's to ask you (the driver) if you noticed the "Bridge Out" sign a quarter mile back, because it was kind of hard to see and you seemed a little distracted and you haven't slowed down and the bridge is coming up...
From the sound of it, you don't make arbitrary decisions without employee feedback - which helps you avoid this type of situation. In the typical business world, though, it's very common for management to make a decision without bothering to ask those it will affect whether it actually makes sense at all - and then put the blame on the employee(s) who point out the potential problems.
I have no idea what kind of business you run right now. There are many where that sort of attitude is not only beneficial, it's pretty much a requirement for a successful business. There are other businesses where a single person can't reasonably be expected to understand all the ramifications of a particular decision.
I'm not a lawyer - but I know enough about licensing issues to spot, and raise an issue with, potential legal problems in that area. I'm not in sales, but based on 10 years experience in software development, I've got some idea of sales strategies that have been tried at other companies, and which have failed and which have succeeded. I'm not in HR, but I've got an understanding of state and federal regulations regarding the interview process. Each and every person in my workplace has a similar mish-mash of experience that is in no way, shape, or form related to their current position.
So if I tell you that I think we may have licensing issues with a widget we're thinking about using, I expect you to listen. If Joe in accounting tells you that the when he worked for Fooblitz, they spent $10 million on a certain type of marketing for a $1 million return, I expect you to listen. If Jane in sales tells you that a contact at Barfoo Corp tell her they've been having problems with the federal government accounts because of Section 508 compiance, I expect you to listen.
You may not actually do anything because of it. You may know exactly why Section 508 compliance isn't something you need to worry about, or why the Fooblitz marketing strategy was a failure, or why the widget license is perfectly OK to use in our circumstances. On the other hand, you may not know anything about any of these issues. Scorning an employee concern in this circumstance, solely because it happens to be outside their area of expertise, is hardly sensible.
It's my experience that identifying good employee input from bad is generally not a difficult thing. I'd actually be surprised if you never listened to a software developer expound on anything except software development, for example. I'm just arguing that pigeonholing someone based on what you hired them to do has the fundamental problem of ignoring what they are capable of doing... and I've never seen a business that couldn't benefit from getting more than what they paid for.
Depends on where you work, doesn't it? Over the past ten years, I haven't had a job where stock options (or straight stock) wasn't included as part of the compensation plan.
Believe me, if you plan on offering me part of the company's future success as an incentive to work today, you had better be willing to put up with me questioning what looks like an obviously bad move. You had better be willing to explain it to me as well - if you are effectively risking part of my compensation, I want to know why. And you had better have counted for the possibility of me walking out on you when you give me an answer I don't like.
Now, you may not be in that situation. Even if you're not, you had better realize that, particularly in the technology field, you hire people for their expertise. Tell me why you would hire someone for their knowlege and experience, and then ignore their opinions on the areas they are uniquely quilified to comment on?
Sure - a developer telling you how to maximize your sales leads, or a salesman telling you which technology to use is probably too much. The opposite is the desired situation, though, and you're being rash if you don't at least acknowledge the experience and ability of someone offering you an opinion. Despite the opinion you have of your abilities, you are not perfect, and you will make mistakes. Listening to an employee who has experience you personally lack can help you avoid making mistakes you otherwise might blunder into.
Going from memory, here. But IIRC, the differences are significant - one the order of 10% of the text. CT translations are missing, among other things, the Great Comission, references to Christ as deity, and the Johannine Comma. Proponents of the CT like to insist that the differences cause no fundamental change in doctrine, ignoring the doctrine of preservation. The early writings of the Church fathers also tend to support the TR over the CT, for example:
You might also be interested in reading In Defense of Erasmus for a similar view. Keep in mind that the KJV is a translation, and is not inspired - it is a good, accurate, and useful translation, but it itself is not inspired. The difference between the two views can be significant.Whoa. Score 5, Troll. Not often you see that. Congratulations.
Well, hey - I'm a Pittsburgher, too. I was using "Pittsburgh" in the traditional "talking to non-natives, Southwestern Pennsylvania tri-state area" kinda way :-) While steelmaking in the city of Pittsburgh is long gone, steelmaking in and around the Pittsburgh area is still fairly active. It just isn't the mammoth industry that it used to be.
Former Transarc employee?
True! I've toured Allegheny Ludlum, and a couple of other plants - got my undergrad degree in metallurgical engineering, and concentrated on steelmaking my senior year because it was interesting. Got to tour a lot of interesting places.
You want to know something? Steel is still made in Pittsburgh. It's just not the low-grade, kiloton a day of cheap (in quality and price) steel that people think of when they bemoan the death of the "steel industry". Instead of huge steel plants churning out the same consumer-grade steel day after day, there are a number of smaller, independent steel plants. They make small batches of expensive specialty steels that require a lot of technical expertise to produce correctly.
Software's probably going to go the same way, eventually. Probably not to the same extent, but to some degree. Companies like IBM and Microsoft and others will move development of the cheap, commodity software offshore. Those software companies and software developers that remain in the US will spend less time working on commodity software and more time working on specialty solutions - vertical market, business-critical software.
Then let the team know.
They're currently working on the 3.0 release for Eclipse - one of the topics discussed on the development mailing lists a while back was properly supporting sub-projects. The primary Eclipse team was asking users to submit information on how they would like to see Eclipse support nested projects. If you look through their bug database, you should be able to find the relevant bugzilla entries along with the attached discussions.
Bah! "Out of Cheese" errors are so... so... so Year of the Antiquated Ferret. Dried frog pills will get his site up and running, and keep it up and running longer tha...
+++ REALITY DOMAIN ERROR
+++ REINSTALL UNIVERSE AND REBOOT
What - you mean, they're implementing a publicly available standard again?
How dare they do something that... that... that immoral!
Why, next thing you know, they'll be claiming they did it to provide an implementation of a uniform cross-platform scripting environment for Qt users. As if we're foolish enough to believe that!
Well, too bad, Trollies - thank's to good ol' Anonymous Coward, we're on to you now!!
You're absolutely right. The US has spent decades and literally billions of dollars propping up the UN. It's far past time we got our money's worth from that investment!
If we the American people feel the need for questionable leadership and an irresponsible wars or two, we should just leave it to the UN. After all, when it comes to questionable leadership, overall irresponsbility and uselessness, everyone knows you can't beat the UN!