ou seem to have the mistaken notion that a developer cares about who else can use the code. That is very seldom the case.
Bull. You're addressing an issue completely peripheral to topic at hand. A project is pointless if it doesn't have, and care about, and audience. Even in the trivial case you raise, you care about whether or not the software is usable by its target audience: you.
Furthermore, if you're just randomly dropping off code you dashed out, not participating in the broader community activity of trying to accumulate actual useful software that is accessible to person who would otherwise be using proprietary solutions, then you shouldn't be endorsing the idea of the broader movement as being consistent with what you're doing, because it's not. You're doing something else, and it may contribute, but if you do it carelessly, it won't, and you're no help at all.
You're mixing apples and oranges. If you read some of the rest of my posts, and some of the ones I'm agreeing with you'll get a better idea of what I'm getting at, I think.
A quick example: If you're contributions to the Open Source community consist of something on the order of developing a word processor or a web browser for general use, the implication is definitely that you care that people use it. If you care that people use it, you should bend some effort to make it accessible to them, else the won't use it, and it will die on the vine.
The author of the article was simply pointing out the things OSS develpers can do that would make their work more accessible. If you don't want to do those things, just don't whine when people say that your crap web browser or word processor just doesn't work, doesn't get the job done, and will never replace Word. They'll blow off free software to use Word because it accomplishes their goals, and you will have participated in perpetuating proprietary, commercial crap software because you considered that if your piece of the project didn't work for me, it not your problem, and you hadn't done anyting "wrong".
I'd just as soon all the wannabe software develpers took packed up their toys and left, myself. It would clear the field for those of us who would like to see OSS develop a reputation for quality, not schoolyard politics.
The most long-term viable software was typically developed by individuals or very small groups, anyway. The C Language, anyone? Perl? How many coders worked on VI? Windows is the most obvious example of what happens to a project when you keep throwing half-trained developers at it....
.... and if you thought that article was a flame -- or any of the posts here in support of it were flames, you really should spend some time in usenet to determine the meaning of the term...
People ARE getting their very useful stuff for free.
By definition, it's not useful if they can't use it. Which is too often the case with open source and free software. That's what the article is about, I think. "Free" isn't much good if poor quality renders it useless.
These are people with exceptional skills who are working, not for free, but for ego-strokes. Of COURSE you get arrogant egocentrics.
I don't agree with the first part of your statement here. I think the majority of of the coders who are the subject of the author's critique are basically script kiddies on steriods who are arrogant because they feel they're lashing out at the system. The people who really are good -- Linus Torvaldus might be an obvious example -- don't tend to exhibit the kind of arrogance most of these little snots do. The whiners yelling about "I don't owe you anything you fscking commie!" are the problem with open source, not the solution. Most of the code I've seen that these folks produce would not have got past my CS 101 instructor... They don't have the chops to be arrogant, and if they did, they wouldn't have to be.
You know, I have a brother in law that is seriously into motorcycles. He goes on and on about minutae of bikes that I barely understand. Elitist? Perhaps. But, he does not require or expect me to share his interest or desires. And, I do not expect him to explain things to "my level". Why is it, then, that we expect open source and free software programmers to "owe" something to society? Ironic how free software, wrongly criticized for being "communist" suffers under accusers far more "red" than it's protagonists.
I think your analogy here is flawed. I have a friend who likes to rebuild automobile engines. He's very good at it, and very into it. He can and does go on and on about the merits of this model, this engine over that... stuff that I care little about, and cannot claim to fully understand. What I do know is that when he has "built" a car, it will run and run well. I can drive it. I can accomplish my own purposes with it.
I would rather have him give me a beater that he has rebuilt than go out and buy a new car. Not only is it cheaper, but I have a much higher degree of confidence the vehicle than I do in one that just rolled off the assembly line. And chances are it will perform better.
He does what he does because he likes it, often at his own expense. He feels he owes it to himself to do a good job. It's a point of pride. He does not expect me to learn to rebuild an engine in order to drive one of his cars, although if I want to rebuild an engine, he'd be happy to show me how.
If I apply those precepts to software development, I produce software that is "driveable" by anyone with basic driving skills. It's not about the Open Source community "owing" me anything, it's very simply that if they produce something that is too much hassle to use, no one will use it. Some developers don't have a problem with that. I personally think it's just short-sited and basically ignorant. If you don't care about your users, go back to coding for windows. Your product will be short-lived, and useless to the majority of the community, anyway.
Bottom line is, I don't think we need fewer users. I think we need fewer developers. I don't need L33Tist crap software, free or otherwise. It's simpler just to write it myself than to clean up some kiddie's mess.
If there is going to be a body of usable Open Source Software, it's not going to be produced by a bunch of whiners crying "I don't owe you anything", it's going to be produced by developers who take pride in doing a thing right. As in any other field...
You'd rather we just slap them around and chastise them for not picking up a C++ and learning how to program. Elitist, indeed.
Yup. However, (as I'm sure the poster you're replying to understands), for proprietary software, arrogantly chastising the user and slapping them around a bit is a viable business model. Just ask Microsoft....
It is that attitude (the one exhibitted by the poster you were replying to), that that stymies the growth of open source software. Combine that attitude with lousey code and non-existant documentation and you have a death knell... Gates would be proud.
There is another approach to motivation that can be implmented easily within the community. That is if the members of the commutity would hold each other to higher standards. Simply give more "geek creds" to the authors of better software and better documentation. Reserve whole-hearted endorsement for a complete package. Geeks, who arguably are doing this stuff purely for peer approval, anyway, are a susceptible to peer pressure as anyone...
That said, I don't agree fully that motivation is the only issue. I think a big part of it is that many Open Source coders started on non-unix systems, and never learned the philosophy behind it. This is not really all their fault, but I believe it to be true, never-the-less. As an example, look at Gnome and KDE: these are two seperate approaches to re-writing X Windows from scratch. Throw out all the existing widget sets, break compatibility with all existing X applications (unless, of course, you maintain both copies of ALL the widget sets and their associated configuration objects), and just start over. No wonder they're not any further along than they are... And at what point was the project decision taken that "We will replace the X resource configurations [ala X/app-defaults] with all these larger, more cleverly hidden, undocumented configuration options." ?? I'm serious. Was that decision made conciously, or is this just a bunch of newbies thinking to themselves "Oh cool, I can write code that draws a button!" ??
It really seems to me that a fundamental unfamiliarity with the whole GUI paradigm as implemented in X windows (and other parts of *nix, for that matter) plays a much larger part in some of these problems than lack of motivation.
The awards idea is good one, though. It would give something to strive for. Maybe I'll implement my own system of rewards with prizes for e.g. the individual who fully documents XPI, RDF, and why the "BlogThis" plugin fails on install under Firefox 0.8. For all that the author explicitly excepted Firefox from her critique, hours of searching on my part failed to turn up explicit instructions on a) how to build Firefox from Mozilla sources, and b) WTF-anything on what could be wrong with the extension installer code for extensions that don't install (that was repeated hours-searches over multiple days -- I finally gave up and did a work-around). As much trouble as I had with this stuff, I would cringe to reccomend the package to anyone less experienced... And I actually LIKE Firefox. Yes, I do understand it's still beta...
All in all I found the article to be very to-the-point.
January 2000 [... ] If it didn't happen then, I doubt either of us will see it . ..
I don't know. I'm looking at 2006/2007 timeframe. I don't expect that the elections in 2008 will be allowed to procede. That's a whole nuther rant, though. Wait, are you saying you don't expect us to survive til then?
The majority of beatnik/hippy/counter-culture revolutionaries are political shills in a different guise
True, but the persona I was adoption for the purposes of dissembling about it wouldn't be expected to know that...;)
f you mean I was on the verge of making an ad hominem argument, you are mistaken.
So I see. I will have to add the term "ad hominem" to my vocabulary cache...
You are a conspiracy theorist.
Am not!
I think you will see this if you are honest with yourself.
Am so!
How is that relevant to the discussion?
Only insofar as I thought you were endeavouring to employ a personal attack to discredit me... I stand corrected. [see below]
And is it such a bad thing?
Well, yes, I think it is unless it is a term is used among friends. As a matter of practicality, the term is often used to dismiss anything and everything I might say out-of-hand. That has happened often enough that I do get a little hyper-sensitive about it, I suppose...
You might have a bit of a conditioned response to expect that from people "like" me . ..
Okay, I confesss. That is exactly what happened. I apologize. My knee jerked, and you handled it most gracefully, thank-you.
. . . and I may have a bit of a conditioned response to expect a populist adjenda from (people I initially perceive to be) "Bush haters."
I can sympathize with that. I find that I pretty much have nothing in common with people who actively dislike Bush. They tend to get pissy when I put on "Everyting Zen" or "Chemicals Between Us" and avail myself of all the available 400 watts to (over-)drive the poor speakers. I also get tired of the smart-ass remarks from the adjoining cubes about the level I choose for my headphones... Bush is one of my favorite bands. I can't decide which album i like the best, though. Right now I'm leaning towards "The Science of Things" as fav, but it's a near thing. What's a "populist" agenda? I'll have to look that one up... usually just call the haters "assholes" and leave it at that.
Anyway. It's always nice, and altogether too rare, to be understood. Thanks again.
I mean, first I had this H1B guy come from India to compete with me for wages on my turf, then my company outsources my job to India and lays us both (me and the H1B guy) off; the H1B guy goes back home to work at my job over there.
So, if I go to his country to compete with him for wages, will I get a shot at the same work I was doing here?
Just wondering. This H1B and outsourcing stuff is a two-way street, right?
You are correct, medical device manufacturers do in fact use Windows in some cases, and I find it plausible that they use OS/2, although I am not directly aware of an instance.
However, I would also point out that medical device manufacturers are not held to development process standards or testing requirements as stringent as those applied in the aerospace industry. I won't get into the possible reasons for that, but the medical industry is a lot more self-regulating.
In my experience, "critical" in medical industry software means somewhat else than it does in my field. This based on having interviewed for some of those types of positions....
Thanks for the 'Government Computer News: US Navy Ship stalled because of Windows NT' Anecdote. That one sure gets recycled a lot.
And for good reason. It was a clear case of Microsoft having bribed a congressional committee, and the first clue that many of us outside Microsoft got that El Senor Gates' ambitions reached beyond mere global domination of the software industry and great wealth. I think that aspect of it was not as widely discussed in the media, though.
I take it that tactical (?battlefield CCC?) is essentially written from scratch "inhouse" then? If so, that's a very good thing IMO. Gotta be damned difficult tho.
Well, that's part of the point, here. Green Hills is going after that market as a "COTS" (Commecial Off-The-Shelf) vendor. There are a couple other vendor companies who are in, or aspire to, that niche, and Green Hills apparently fears that some Linux-based outfit, trying to adapt Linux to the task, will give them additional competition. Hence the use of "Linux" in the FUD, as opposed to, say, NetBSD.
I would bet that Linux is no better or worse for the purpose than whatever codebase Green Hills started with. They are just trying to apply negative leverage due using what little bit people know and fear about open source. FUD is the term to describe it. Definitely. It will cost them customers in the long run, once the marketting people bring the Green Hills pitch to the engineers...
Well, yes, he does have a vested interest and is trying to sell his product, but maybe why his company devised this product, because they felt their was a need and market for it.
Definitely a need, and absolutely there is a market. There is also intense competition for the market. There are few players.
Frankly, even as a faithful Linux user, I still have to agree with him. Our missile defense systems should not be running the same software as my home PC whether it is a commercial or open-source product.
Oh, I don't know. Personally, I want to be able to perform missile launch and guidance control from my Linux desktop; the apparent performance degradation that would accompany the kernel revisions required to make it a true RTOS would be more than made up for by all the cool things you could do with it. Esp since the newer, faster hardware would make the deterministic scheduler appear to perform as well on the new hardware as the current scheduler performs on existing hardware. Just think of the possiblities.... It adds a whole new dimension to the idea of "fighting SPAM" or "nuking" an offensive banner ad...
You're almost certainly wrong in your assertion about Windows. Perhaps you work for a vendor who likes things that way, because they'd rather not build on a Windows platform.
No, he's not, your assertion that "Windows could easily be qualified, by a team under NDA with a source license for Windows." is just plain laffable. And I say that as one who has been working in DO-178b certification efforts for the last 8 years or so. Believe me when I tell you that I have already laffed out loud at that sort of a statement more than once, both on and off the job.
Take a look at the cost per line of code for the typical level A cert and you will find that just the sheer volume of code in Windows makes any such effort impractical. Then there's the issue of the man-hours of effort per line of code...
Also, saftey-critical code is requirements driven. That is, the requirements are defined, then the code is written to implement the requirements. Using this approach, even if you could find something in Windows that fit your requirements, by the time you removed everything else, it wouldn't be Windows anymore. There would likely be no requirement for the user interface, for example.
That said, it is notable that most operating systems that exist today have similar issues. The bottom line is, none of them can be considered an RTOS, so if an RTOS is what you need, they won't do.
Smaller kernels have a better chance if you're trying to make one compliant, and the scheduler is the most useful piece, since it a) is what is needed (otherwise an OS wouldn't be needed, a monolithic embedded application would suffice), and b) it must be completely reliable, incapable of allowing race conditions, priority inversions, lockups, etc.
As for Green Hills, the fact is that Green Hills has the reputation in the industry for having produced the only (there may be another, but this is their rep I'm speaking of) actual OS that has qualified under DO-178b.
There have been several tries to produce others, but to date none has qualified, afaik. I have been, and continue to be, invovled in those efforts, so I am properly a competitor to Green Hills, since I am not a Green Hills employee, and have not worked with their OS.
I have, however, been involved in attempts to bring the Linux kernel into compliance with both DO-178b and ARINC 653 (the document desribing the partitioned RTOS model for "Loadable Software Airplane Parts," that is expected to be used in the future, starting with RTOSs like the one sold by Green Hills). While the Linux kernel port is considered doable, the cost of the effort was more than that client chose to bear. Again, the critical part of the port was to make the scheduler provably deterministic. Without that, the OS can't be considered.
The marketting hype (FUD) included in the piece is standard marketting hype, and is completely beside the point from an engineering standpoint, but plays well with suits, who typically don't understand what they're trying to build (software-wise), anyway.
Also, if you take a look at the experience the US Navy had trying to use Windows NT for engine control applications, you will get an idea of a) the relative simplicity of making it function as an RTOS, b) the degree of effort Microsoft was willing to expend towards the reliability of their software for a critical system, c) what a dumb idea it was, and d) why anyone with any understanding of the problem will not trust their life to software made by Microsoft, NDAs notwithstanding.
Finally, regarding the Open Source/Cathedral/Bazaar argument: When creating saftey critical requirements and the implementation of them, it is pretty much impossible to have too many eyes on the work. Practicality and economics are the constraints. That, and security, in the case of military or other sensitive applications.
I hate to sound all Princess Leia, but they keep piling this nonsense on, and we keep ignoring it/circumventing it (and ignoring the laws against circumvention). At some point the whole thing becomes a joke and enforcement becomes impossible.
I remember having a very similar conversation about weed back in the 1970's. The idea being that, even if marijuana wasn't legalized, it would be ubiquitous, and the laws against it unenforceable.
Now we have the "War on Drugs", and the lies about pot that are fed down from on high are even more henious, and the enforcement, while arguably rare, is vicious beyond our wildest imaginings back then.
The fascist corporate types must be nipped in the bud (or as closely as we can get at this late date). Given the long term potential for abuse of power, they must be stopped, not just circumvented or ignored. "Kill it before it grows" can cut both ways. If we don't erradicate idiocy like DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, etc etc we, and our childrens children will still be suffering from it decades from now.
"Kill them all! Now, before it's too late." --the voice in Rand's head.
Despite President George W. Bush's rhetoric about withdrawing our forces from the Balkans, we can expect a strong continuing U.S. presence there.
Why? It's all about the transportation of massive oil resources from the Caspian Sea through the Balkans, and maintaining U.S. hegemony in the region.
Although NATO ostensibly bombed Yugoslavia to stop ethnic cleansing, the bombing was actually part of a strategy of containment, to keep the region safe for the Trans-Balkan oil pipeline that will transport Caspian Sea oil through Macedonia and Albania. The pipeline is slated to carry 750,000 barrels a day, worth about $600 million a month at current prices.
The following quote concerning the potential existence of said pipeline:
"... a Corridor 8 pipeline project through the Balkans. I have been intimately involved with this project since its inception. Let me state that contrary to the article, it is a crude oil pipeline."
... This from someone identifying themselves as
"Gligor Tashkovich, Executive Vice President, AMBO Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline Project". I leave it to the reader to call this guy and get him to confirm or deny. That's beyond my scope.
And with those tidbits I think I will rest my case to the effect that
The idea of a Bosnia/Oil connection is not an idea that I personally came up with
The idea is not totally new or unknown to persons who look beyond the CNN/FoxNews one-liners.
A fairly trivial google search on the topic will turn up quite a bit more information than I could possibly supply myself.
I encourage you to form an opinion based on the articles and to argue your position with the authors of those articles; they are certainly better equipped to defend or "prove" their various stances than I.
I personally feel that the more I look into this, the more compelling the evidence becomes, however, I again encourage you to do your own research and make up your own mind.
Lastly, I commend to you the following sources...
The book written by Zbigniew Brzezinski circa 1997, which book I can't remember the title of
If a bug was discovered in Konqueror's handling of ms-its urls that resulted in a security hole, would there be anyone claiming Konqueror shouldn't be part of KDE?blockquote>
Konqueror is part of KDE, not part of GNU/Linux. But IE is part of Windows.
Wait, it sounds like you're calling Windows an operating system...? Windows was not part of GNU/Linux, last I checked. Has it been integrated into FreeBSD or MacOS, now?
We test exhaustively, we test with third parties, and we had in excess of three million online operational hours in which nothing had ever exercised that bug,' says Unum.
I feel obliged to point out 2 things about this statement:
3,000,000 is not a very big number when you're talking about computerized systems.
If we're talking about 3 million hours of operation of this system, then it was a very old system by digital computing sytem standards. Have the system maintenance records been examined?
Systems designed to operate for 3 million unbroken hours without failure should have been tested both before release, and after release using information gathered during operation.
I would expect (were this my system, for instance) to have to periodically redesign software and upgrade hardware. Accountants might hate it, but it has to be done if you want to garuntee your uptime.
And finally (and all you EE's out there please consider careful before you decide I need my clock cleaned for this remark): this is the kind of thing you can expect to happen when you send electrical engineers to a software engineering job. (And don't all you kiddies who consider yourselves Software Engineers get too excited patting yourselves on the back, either; you haven't heard my thoughts on the current state of software engineering programs, yet; there are good reasons the EE's still dominate the embedded and real-time fields)
The testing required and at least some part of the requirements analysis should have involved software engineers. The fact that there probably were no software engineers when this system was designed and implemented just highlights the fact that the corps invovled were too busy trying to prevent distributed power technology from catching hold to maintain and upgrade their existing systems as new technology became available -- esp in the software side. Imo.
It was my understanding that it was the watchdog that was supposed to raise the alarm when the field comms went down that failed. I.e. It was not a single point failure. This is the impression I got from the news coverage immeadiately following the blackout, at least.
It sounded to me as though there was an alarm mechanism in place, but it was not redundant.
It is an interesting point that the system was not displaying real-time data. I did visit a power control station once some years ago (a small one, belonging to a Gerogia Power), and remember being impressed with the fact that much of the control software was (appeared to be) real-time, in that operators could manually switch grids in and out using a terminal that resembled a Pacman game -- flat, tabletop display with a crolling map controlled by a trackball.
That does not speak to the monitorring and alarm systems, though, which were quite different. If anyone had asked, I would have thought that all the power monitoring and control systems were considered "hard real-time" applications.I wonder now if the monitoring system was properly integrated with real-time control system.
At any rate, there are saftey-criritcal systems that have to meet (more-or-less) independant standards of robustness. E.g. RTCA DO-178b for software in aircraft. Are there similar standards for critical untility systems software, and if not, perhaps there should be. Power grids and phone systems can be life-critical sytems under a variety of circumstances, and I don't know that this has been addressed by any authoritative independant body...
Sorry, I didn't mean that your mind isn't part of the Universe. I meant, do you have any sort of concrete, articulable reason to believe this, or it is purely a creation of your own mind.
LoL. I'm starting to like you, I think. So, if it's a creation of my own mind it's not concrete or articulable? That's a very polite way of putting it, at least. Perhaps this will help clear it up: The concrete, articulable, objective Universe is a creation of my own mind. You can quote me on that, if you like, but do give yourself credit. I will.
Here's some common ground between us. Politically I am more or less a Libertarian. I think that politics, politicians, and government are mostly unnecessary evils.
You're right, this is common ground between us...
This (obviously?) wasn't the case when I enlisted. That experience strengthened my convictions about minimalizing government.
...though I have not served. Yet. I used to think I was too old. Now I'm guessing that this will come to a different sort of battle, in the "end", and I may yet get my chance. The main thing I've learned from everyone I've talked to that has gone is that pretty much whatever premis for War is publicized is not the real reason....
I would not take that bet. I think that you have misjudged me. I am only too aware of how little I know. OTOH, when I do decide I "know" something I do like for it to be a hair more concrete than "Uh, I think some dude told me about this. Wasn't on CNN, so it must be true."
Okay, fair enough. I have been trying to tell you, though, that this whole Bosnia/oil thing is not something I can prove. I would direct you to my source, but in all fairness, I cannot. And that for some very mundane reasons. It is some things told to me, though, with supporting arguments; not my own idea. My imagination does not run to coming up with those kinds of relationships. Fwiw, you have banged on it enough you have re-piqued my curiosity, so I will see what I can find out. Damnit. One day when you know me better I will explain why I am so reluctant in this particular instance...
I'm sorry, were you walking down the street and I jumped out of the bushes, grabbed you and started shaking you, demanding "Prove the connection! I want evidence!"?
Uhm. Well, yeah, something like that. I was standing there in a rest area on the information superhighway next to the map thing readnig a pamphlet (maybe I was mouthing the words as I read) and BAM! Here you come hollering "PROOF! PROOF! STOP THAT 0x0000, HE JUST SAID SOMETHING HE CAN'T PROVE! GET BACK HERE AND PROOVE THAT STATEMENT OR ELSE, YOU POSSIBLY IRRATIONAL PEICE OF INTERNET ROADKILL!"... you get the idea. Having been caught right out, my response amounting to: "Uh, I dunno. I was just standing there and some chick in a black sweater came up to me and handed me this leaflet. The idea sounded reasonable to me. She didn't *look* like a politician. I only ran away because there was this crazy looking guy hollering at me. He looked like a vet, and I thought maybe he was having a flashback or something. This *is* kind of a weird neighborhood, you know. etc"
You keep waving the word "truth" around like a talisman, but your definition of truth seems to be that you heard it somewhere besides CNN. You aren't on CNN, ergo I should believe you. Bizzare.
I beg to differ. I believe I only used the world "truth" in the context of a reference to a set of definitions of dis-information techniques. Perhaps once or twice otherwise, but I was hardly "waving [it] around like a talisman". I do have a few talismans that I do wave around occassionally, and if you saw me do that, you would understand the difference. I don't have a webcam handy or I'd dem
Perhaps I am missing something here, but if I am, I think it's because the first couple pages of the discussion listing seems to be all messages about OSX security?
While security may indeed be an issue with the system as described, I'd like to see a couple other, rather basic points addressed. Like:
Isn't this "all app pieces in one directory" approach a throwback to the way apps were designed e.g. under MS-DOS?
And: What happens to commonality of binary code? I mean, isn't that why we started using dynmical load libraries to start with? So we could write certain common code once, and use it over and over?
I mean, if One App, One Directory is a good idea, why not carry it out: give each app it's own virtual processor and it's own virtual fill system?
Forgive me, please, but this whole idea appears to be a fundamental shift away from the basic idea of resource conservation by code re-use and leveraging commonality. The trade off for all this beauteous simplicity has got to be code bloat and hardware cost. Does each application get its own registry? What about network device drivers. What if I create a plugin that runs in more than one app? What if I want to extend an app? Is my now part of the existing app, or is the existing app part of mine? Does the existing app have to live in my directory?
Slashdot Mirror
Bull. You're addressing an issue completely peripheral to topic at hand. A project is pointless if it doesn't have, and care about, and audience. Even in the trivial case you raise, you care about whether or not the software is usable by its target audience: you.
Furthermore, if you're just randomly dropping off code you dashed out, not participating in the broader community activity of trying to accumulate actual useful software that is accessible to person who would otherwise be using proprietary solutions, then you shouldn't be endorsing the idea of the broader movement as being consistent with what you're doing, because it's not. You're doing something else, and it may contribute, but if you do it carelessly, it won't, and you're no help at all.
You're mixing apples and oranges. If you read some of the rest of my posts, and some of the ones I'm agreeing with you'll get a better idea of what I'm getting at, I think.
A quick example: If you're contributions to the Open Source community consist of something on the order of developing a word processor or a web browser for general use, the implication is definitely that you care that people use it. If you care that people use it, you should bend some effort to make it accessible to them, else the won't use it, and it will die on the vine.
The author of the article was simply pointing out the things OSS develpers can do that would make their work more accessible. If you don't want to do those things, just don't whine when people say that your crap web browser or word processor just doesn't work, doesn't get the job done, and will never replace Word. They'll blow off free software to use Word because it accomplishes their goals, and you will have participated in perpetuating proprietary, commercial crap software because you considered that if your piece of the project didn't work for me, it not your problem, and you hadn't done anyting "wrong".
I'd just as soon all the wannabe software develpers took packed up their toys and left, myself. It would clear the field for those of us who would like to see OSS develop a reputation for quality, not schoolyard politics.
The most long-term viable software was typically developed by individuals or very small groups, anyway. The C Language, anyone? Perl? How many coders worked on VI? Windows is the most obvious example of what happens to a project when you keep throwing half-trained developers at it....
It's called "cyberturfing". They get paid to do it.
.... and if you thought that article was a flame -- or any of the posts here in support of it were flames, you really should spend some time in usenet to determine the meaning of the term...
By definition, it's not useful if they can't use it. Which is too often the case with open source and free software. That's what the article is about, I think. "Free" isn't much good if poor quality renders it useless.
I don't agree with the first part of your statement here. I think the majority of of the coders who are the subject of the author's critique are basically script kiddies on steriods who are arrogant because they feel they're lashing out at the system. The people who really are good -- Linus Torvaldus might be an obvious example -- don't tend to exhibit the kind of arrogance most of these little snots do. The whiners yelling about "I don't owe you anything you fscking commie!" are the problem with open source, not the solution. Most of the code I've seen that these folks produce would not have got past my CS 101 instructor... They don't have the chops to be arrogant, and if they did, they wouldn't have to be.
I think your analogy here is flawed. I have a friend who likes to rebuild automobile engines. He's very good at it, and very into it. He can and does go on and on about the merits of this model, this engine over that... stuff that I care little about, and cannot claim to fully understand. What I do know is that when he has "built" a car, it will run and run well. I can drive it. I can accomplish my own purposes with it.
I would rather have him give me a beater that he has rebuilt than go out and buy a new car. Not only is it cheaper, but I have a much higher degree of confidence the vehicle than I do in one that just rolled off the assembly line. And chances are it will perform better.
He does what he does because he likes it, often at his own expense. He feels he owes it to himself to do a good job. It's a point of pride. He does not expect me to learn to rebuild an engine in order to drive one of his cars, although if I want to rebuild an engine, he'd be happy to show me how.
If I apply those precepts to software development, I produce software that is "driveable" by anyone with basic driving skills. It's not about the Open Source community "owing" me anything, it's very simply that if they produce something that is too much hassle to use, no one will use it. Some developers don't have a problem with that. I personally think it's just short-sited and basically ignorant. If you don't care about your users, go back to coding for windows. Your product will be short-lived, and useless to the majority of the community, anyway.
Bottom line is, I don't think we need fewer users. I think we need fewer developers. I don't need L33Tist crap software, free or otherwise. It's simpler just to write it myself than to clean up some kiddie's mess.
If there is going to be a body of usable Open Source Software, it's not going to be produced by a bunch of whiners crying "I don't owe you anything", it's going to be produced by developers who take pride in doing a thing right. As in any other field...
Yup. However, (as I'm sure the poster you're replying to understands), for proprietary software, arrogantly chastising the user and slapping them around a bit is a viable business model. Just ask Microsoft....
It is that attitude (the one exhibitted by the poster you were replying to), that that stymies the growth of open source software. Combine that attitude with lousey code and non-existant documentation and you have a death knell... Gates would be proud.
There is another approach to motivation that can be implmented easily within the community. That is if the members of the commutity would hold each other to higher standards. Simply give more "geek creds" to the authors of better software and better documentation. Reserve whole-hearted endorsement for a complete package. Geeks, who arguably are doing this stuff purely for peer approval, anyway, are a susceptible to peer pressure as anyone...
.. And I actually LIKE Firefox. Yes, I do understand it's still beta...
That said, I don't agree fully that motivation is the only issue. I think a big part of it is that many Open Source coders started on non-unix systems, and never learned the philosophy behind it. This is not really all their fault, but I believe it to be true, never-the-less. As an example, look at Gnome and KDE: these are two seperate approaches to re-writing X Windows from scratch. Throw out all the existing widget sets, break compatibility with all existing X applications (unless, of course, you maintain both copies of ALL the widget sets and their associated configuration objects), and just start over. No wonder they're not any further along than they are... And at what point was the project decision taken that "We will replace the X resource configurations [ala X/app-defaults] with all these larger, more cleverly hidden, undocumented configuration options." ?? I'm serious. Was that decision made conciously, or is this just a bunch of newbies thinking to themselves "Oh cool, I can write code that draws a button!" ??
It really seems to me that a fundamental unfamiliarity with the whole GUI paradigm as implemented in X windows (and other parts of *nix, for that matter) plays a much larger part in some of these problems than lack of motivation.
The awards idea is good one, though. It would give something to strive for. Maybe I'll implement my own system of rewards with prizes for e.g. the individual who fully documents XPI, RDF, and why the "BlogThis" plugin fails on install under Firefox 0.8. For all that the author explicitly excepted Firefox from her critique, hours of searching on my part failed to turn up explicit instructions on a) how to build Firefox from Mozilla sources, and b) WTF-anything on what could be wrong with the extension installer code for extensions that don't install (that was repeated hours-searches over multiple days -- I finally gave up and did a work-around). As much trouble as I had with this stuff, I would cringe to reccomend the package to anyone less experienced.
All in all I found the article to be very to-the-point.
I don't know. I'm looking at 2006/2007 timeframe. I don't expect that the elections in 2008 will be allowed to procede. That's a whole nuther rant, though. Wait, are you saying you don't expect us to survive til then?
True, but the persona I was adoption for the purposes of dissembling about it wouldn't be expected to know that... ;)
So I see. I will have to add the term "ad hominem" to my vocabulary cache...
Am not!
Am so!
Only insofar as I thought you were endeavouring to employ a personal attack to discredit me... I stand corrected. [see below]
Well, yes, I think it is unless it is a term is used among friends. As a matter of practicality, the term is often used to dismiss anything and everything I might say out-of-hand. That has happened often enough that I do get a little hyper-sensitive about it, I suppose...
Okay, I confesss. That is exactly what happened. I apologize. My knee jerked, and you handled it most gracefully, thank-you.
I can sympathize with that. I find that I pretty much have nothing in common with people who actively dislike Bush. They tend to get pissy when I put on "Everyting Zen" or "Chemicals Between Us" and avail myself of all the available 400 watts to (over-)drive the poor speakers. I also get tired of the smart-ass remarks from the adjoining cubes about the level I choose for my headphones... Bush is one of my favorite bands. I can't decide which album i like the best, though. Right now I'm leaning towards "The Science of Things" as fav, but it's a near thing. What's a "populist" agenda? I'll have to look that one up... usually just call the haters "assholes" and leave it at that.
Anyway. It's always nice, and altogether too rare, to be understood. Thanks again.
If I move to India, will I be able to get work?
I mean, first I had this H1B guy come from India to compete with me for wages on my turf, then my company outsources my job to India and lays us both (me and the H1B guy) off; the H1B guy goes back home to work at my job over there.
So, if I go to his country to compete with him for wages, will I get a shot at the same work I was doing here?
Just wondering. This H1B and outsourcing stuff is a two-way street, right?
You are correct, medical device manufacturers do in fact use Windows in some cases, and I find it plausible that they use OS/2, although I am not directly aware of an instance.
However, I would also point out that medical device manufacturers are not held to development process standards or testing requirements as stringent as those applied in the aerospace industry. I won't get into the possible reasons for that, but the medical industry is a lot more self-regulating.
In my experience, "critical" in medical industry software means somewhat else than it does in my field. This based on having interviewed for some of those types of positions. ...
And for good reason. It was a clear case of Microsoft having bribed a congressional committee, and the first clue that many of us outside Microsoft got that El Senor Gates' ambitions reached beyond mere global domination of the software industry and great wealth. I think that aspect of it was not as widely discussed in the media, though.
Well, that's part of the point, here. Green Hills is going after that market as a "COTS" (Commecial Off-The-Shelf) vendor. There are a couple other vendor companies who are in, or aspire to, that niche, and Green Hills apparently fears that some Linux-based outfit, trying to adapt Linux to the task, will give them additional competition. Hence the use of "Linux" in the FUD, as opposed to, say, NetBSD.
I would bet that Linux is no better or worse for the purpose than whatever codebase Green Hills started with. They are just trying to apply negative leverage due using what little bit people know and fear about open source. FUD is the term to describe it. Definitely. It will cost them customers in the long run, once the marketting people bring the Green Hills pitch to the engineers...
It shows a pretty complete lack of understanding of the state of the industry, as well...
Somebody mod this up! "Sleeper agents" aren't all cab drivers and pizza deliver drivers....
Definitely a need, and absolutely there is a market. There is also intense competition for the market. There are few players.
Oh, I don't know. Personally, I want to be able to perform missile launch and guidance control from my Linux desktop; the apparent performance degradation that would accompany the kernel revisions required to make it a true RTOS would be more than made up for by all the cool things you could do with it. Esp since the newer, faster hardware would make the deterministic scheduler appear to perform as well on the new hardware as the current scheduler performs on existing hardware. Just think of the possiblities.... It adds a whole new dimension to the idea of "fighting SPAM" or "nuking" an offensive banner ad...
No, he's not, your assertion that "Windows could easily be qualified, by a team under NDA with a source license for Windows." is just plain laffable. And I say that as one who has been working in DO-178b certification efforts for the last 8 years or so. Believe me when I tell you that I have already laffed out loud at that sort of a statement more than once, both on and off the job.
Take a look at the cost per line of code for the typical level A cert and you will find that just the sheer volume of code in Windows makes any such effort impractical. Then there's the issue of the man-hours of effort per line of code...
Also, saftey-critical code is requirements driven. That is, the requirements are defined, then the code is written to implement the requirements. Using this approach, even if you could find something in Windows that fit your requirements, by the time you removed everything else, it wouldn't be Windows anymore. There would likely be no requirement for the user interface, for example.
That said, it is notable that most operating systems that exist today have similar issues. The bottom line is, none of them can be considered an RTOS, so if an RTOS is what you need, they won't do.
Smaller kernels have a better chance if you're trying to make one compliant, and the scheduler is the most useful piece, since it a) is what is needed (otherwise an OS wouldn't be needed, a monolithic embedded application would suffice), and b) it must be completely reliable, incapable of allowing race conditions, priority inversions, lockups, etc.
As for Green Hills, the fact is that Green Hills has the reputation in the industry for having produced the only (there may be another, but this is their rep I'm speaking of) actual OS that has qualified under DO-178b.
There have been several tries to produce others, but to date none has qualified, afaik. I have been, and continue to be, invovled in those efforts, so I am properly a competitor to Green Hills, since I am not a Green Hills employee, and have not worked with their OS.
I have, however, been involved in attempts to bring the Linux kernel into compliance with both DO-178b and ARINC 653 (the document desribing the partitioned RTOS model for "Loadable Software Airplane Parts," that is expected to be used in the future, starting with RTOSs like the one sold by Green Hills). While the Linux kernel port is considered doable, the cost of the effort was more than that client chose to bear. Again, the critical part of the port was to make the scheduler provably deterministic. Without that, the OS can't be considered.
The marketting hype (FUD) included in the piece is standard marketting hype, and is completely beside the point from an engineering standpoint, but plays well with suits, who typically don't understand what they're trying to build (software-wise), anyway.
Also, if you take a look at the experience the US Navy had trying to use Windows NT for engine control applications, you will get an idea of a) the relative simplicity of making it function as an RTOS, b) the degree of effort Microsoft was willing to expend towards the reliability of their software for a critical system, c) what a dumb idea it was, and d) why anyone with any understanding of the problem will not trust their life to software made by Microsoft, NDAs notwithstanding.
Finally, regarding the Open Source/Cathedral/Bazaar argument: When creating saftey critical requirements and the implementation of them, it is pretty much impossible to have too many eyes on the work. Practicality and economics are the constraints. That, and security, in the case of military or other sensitive applications.
Aye. In fact, time has already told....
I remember having a very similar conversation about weed back in the 1970's. The idea being that, even if marijuana wasn't legalized, it would be ubiquitous, and the laws against it unenforceable.
Now we have the "War on Drugs", and the lies about pot that are fed down from on high are even more henious, and the enforcement, while arguably rare, is vicious beyond our wildest imaginings back then.
The fascist corporate types must be nipped in the bud (or as closely as we can get at this late date). Given the long term potential for abuse of power, they must be stopped, not just circumvented or ignored. "Kill it before it grows" can cut both ways. If we don't erradicate idiocy like DMCA, RIAA, MPAA, etc etc we, and our childrens children will still be suffering from it decades from now.
"Kill them all! Now, before it's too late." --the voice in Rand's head.Okay, I made the call and did the search. Here is what I found:
From a Google search using the terms "balkan oil pipeline cheney" ....
... This from someone identifying themselves as "Gligor Tashkovich, Executive Vice President, AMBO Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline Project". I leave it to the reader to call this guy and get him to confirm or deny. That's beyond my scope.
The URL for the posting is http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/200110/msg00390.html (this one was #5 on the first page of google hits).
And with those tidbits I think I will rest my case to the effect that
I encourage you to form an opinion based on the articles and to argue your position with the authors of those articles; they are certainly better equipped to defend or "prove" their various stances than I.
I personally feel that the more I look into this, the more compelling the evidence becomes, however, I again encourage you to do your own research and make up your own mind.
Lastly, I commend to you the following sources...
... and leave you with a quote from my source concerning this whole matter:
In my firefox (SuSE 8.2 / FVWM2) it gives me a "Protocol mailto: not defined" error. heheh.
In the interest of accurate analogy, here, I think this particular rope was Made in Redmond by Microsoft Corp...
I feel obliged to point out 2 things about this statement:
Systems designed to operate for 3 million unbroken hours without failure should have been tested both before release, and after release using information gathered during operation.
I would expect (were this my system, for instance) to have to periodically redesign software and upgrade hardware. Accountants might hate it, but it has to be done if you want to garuntee your uptime.
And finally (and all you EE's out there please consider careful before you decide I need my clock cleaned for this remark): this is the kind of thing you can expect to happen when you send electrical engineers to a software engineering job. (And don't all you kiddies who consider yourselves Software Engineers get too excited patting yourselves on the back, either; you haven't heard my thoughts on the current state of software engineering programs, yet; there are good reasons the EE's still dominate the embedded and real-time fields)
The testing required and at least some part of the requirements analysis should have involved software engineers. The fact that there probably were no software engineers when this system was designed and implemented just highlights the fact that the corps invovled were too busy trying to prevent distributed power technology from catching hold to maintain and upgrade their existing systems as new technology became available -- esp in the software side. Imo.
It was my understanding that it was the watchdog that was supposed to raise the alarm when the field comms went down that failed. I.e. It was not a single point failure. This is the impression I got from the news coverage immeadiately following the blackout, at least.
It sounded to me as though there was an alarm mechanism in place, but it was not redundant.
It is an interesting point that the system was not displaying real-time data. I did visit a power control station once some years ago (a small one, belonging to a Gerogia Power), and remember being impressed with the fact that much of the control software was (appeared to be) real-time, in that operators could manually switch grids in and out using a terminal that resembled a Pacman game -- flat, tabletop display with a crolling map controlled by a trackball.
That does not speak to the monitorring and alarm systems, though, which were quite different. If anyone had asked, I would have thought that all the power monitoring and control systems were considered "hard real-time" applications.I wonder now if the monitoring system was properly integrated with real-time control system.
At any rate, there are saftey-criritcal systems that have to meet (more-or-less) independant standards of robustness. E.g. RTCA DO-178b for software in aircraft. Are there similar standards for critical untility systems software, and if not, perhaps there should be. Power grids and phone systems can be life-critical sytems under a variety of circumstances, and I don't know that this has been addressed by any authoritative independant body...
LoL. I'm starting to like you, I think. So, if it's a creation of my own mind it's not concrete or articulable? That's a very polite way of putting it, at least. Perhaps this will help clear it up: The concrete, articulable, objective Universe is a creation of my own mind. You can quote me on that, if you like, but do give yourself credit. I will.
You're right, this is common ground between us...
...though I have not served. Yet. I used to think I was too old. Now I'm guessing that this will come to a different sort of battle, in the "end", and I may yet get my chance. The main thing I've learned from everyone I've talked to that has gone is that pretty much whatever premis for War is publicized is not the real reason. ...
Okay, fair enough. I have been trying to tell you, though, that this whole Bosnia/oil thing is not something I can prove. I would direct you to my source, but in all fairness, I cannot. And that for some very mundane reasons. It is some things told to me, though, with supporting arguments; not my own idea. My imagination does not run to coming up with those kinds of relationships. Fwiw, you have banged on it enough you have re-piqued my curiosity, so I will see what I can find out. Damnit. One day when you know me better I will explain why I am so reluctant in this particular instance...
Uhm. Well, yeah, something like that. I was standing there in a rest area on the information superhighway next to the map thing readnig a pamphlet (maybe I was mouthing the words as I read) and BAM! Here you come hollering "PROOF! PROOF! STOP THAT 0x0000, HE JUST SAID SOMETHING HE CAN'T PROVE! GET BACK HERE AND PROOVE THAT STATEMENT OR ELSE, YOU POSSIBLY IRRATIONAL PEICE OF INTERNET ROADKILL!" ... you get the idea. Having been caught right out, my response amounting to: "Uh, I dunno. I was just standing there and some chick in a black sweater came up to me and handed me this leaflet. The idea sounded reasonable to me. She didn't *look* like a politician. I only ran away because there was this crazy looking guy hollering at me. He looked like a vet, and I thought maybe he was having a flashback or something. This *is* kind of a weird neighborhood, you know. etc"
I beg to differ. I believe I only used the world "truth" in the context of a reference to a set of definitions of dis-information techniques. Perhaps once or twice otherwise, but I was hardly "waving [it] around like a talisman". I do have a few talismans that I do wave around occassionally, and if you saw me do that, you would understand the difference. I don't have a webcam handy or I'd dem
Perhaps I am missing something here, but if I am, I think it's because the first couple pages of the discussion listing seems to be all messages about OSX security?
While security may indeed be an issue with the system as described, I'd like to see a couple other, rather basic points addressed. Like:
Isn't this "all app pieces in one directory" approach a throwback to the way apps were designed e.g. under MS-DOS?
And: What happens to commonality of binary code? I mean, isn't that why we started using dynmical load libraries to start with? So we could write certain common code once, and use it over and over?
I mean, if One App, One Directory is a good idea, why not carry it out: give each app it's own virtual processor and it's own virtual fill system?
Forgive me, please, but this whole idea appears to be a fundamental shift away from the basic idea of resource conservation by code re-use and leveraging commonality. The trade off for all this beauteous simplicity has got to be code bloat and hardware cost. Does each application get its own registry? What about network device drivers. What if I create a plugin that runs in more than one app? What if I want to extend an app? Is my now part of the existing app, or is the existing app part of mine? Does the existing app have to live in my directory?
Maybe I should read the articles....