Yes, ditto on the PD measurement. I did find once that if I called the eye doctor back after the fact, the office could give it to me. And Zenni probably has some way you can measure it, on their web site, if you trust yourself that much to get it just right...
The prices in the summary are why some of our family have started using https://www.zennioptical.com/ (no connection except as customer). One family member got very basic lenses & frames for $9 if memory serves (could be off but it wasn't even $40 with shipping), Mine were more but had more features. It was worth getting the account and submitting photos to "try on" glasses, but one order I placed would have been better if I had paid attention to the posted length of the temple and actual frame & lens dimensions: next one I did better and it is good now.
(My one complaint is that their customer service gave info that was overconfident -- they didn't really know. And their site EULA had terms I didn't like, and nobody was willing to discuss it, either at the posted contact info or the customer service. But the site FAQs etc were helpful for other things, and I was able to adjust frames myself, etc.)
I think requiring agreements that typical individuals (or the target market for whatever company) cannot easily understand violates both honesty and the Golden Rule. I wrote more detailed discussion on that here: http://lukecall.net/e-92233720...
(I try to save copies of agreements I have read, with the name and date, and I have a very simple script I use sometimes to compare versions of contracts to see what changed, if anyone wants a copy -- it basically uses fmt, diff, and less. See footer of link above if you want a copy. Also, there are sites that say they review or summarize such agreements for reader convenience)
OneModel (text-only) would work over ssh. You can host it (AGPL) for yourself, and I'd be happy to provide setup tips & answer questions (I'm the author). It is very stable and the best (at least for my work-style), that I've found. Details & contact info are at the web site in link in the sig.
Other good things to consider in a peer code review (or self-done code-review) are reflected in other comments here. Some are: "will it have unintended consequences later", does it need design work?, does it create technical debt and if so when should/will it be paid?, etc.
I started making personal checklists for when I learned lessons or got burned by a mistake, different process steps, and reviewed them more until they became habits, then less often. Something like the "anki" software does with learning other topics--reminders until something is more habitual.
At my last job there was an internal wiki with best practices captured in a handful or so of maturity models (MMs). Much work from senior engineers went into those, and the QA group asked teams periodically to report a consensus on their working level in each the various models, and then those simple metrics (like a number 1-5 per model) were captured on a simple dashboard per team, and made available on the wiki for everyone to see. There wasn't always a lot of management pressure to be at a certain point--reaching goals was the higher priority--but most or everyone wanted to do a good job, and the MMs seemed very helpful.
MMs covered topics like i18n/l10n, testing, continuous deployment & operations, and probably others like design principles and technology choices (like how well they were using web services or something). (There were also clear standards and expectations about language choice etc--so we could move across teams more easily as priorities and projects evolved.)
Each MM topic had a landing page in the wiki, with a table, showing across the top the maturity levels (0=do nothing, 1 might be ad-hoc, ~5=doing it all and optimizing/improving the maturity model's effectiveness/usefulness), and on the x-axis (down the side) were sub-aspects of the general topic, and text in the table describing what it is to be at that level, for that subtopic, and then text on the rest of the page for discussion, instruction on when or why something fits or matters, and references to learn more. Maybe there was (or should be) something about MM maintenance and removing parts that are no longer useful. Of course the wiki should preserve the discussion and history. (There was also a recognition program for developing skills in certain areas, where the topics, levels, and learning resources were written down and somewhat evolving, study groups sometimes formed, something like the maturity models, and evaluators were tech managers or designated staff from across all the teams).
For code quality and reviews, I had started some writing and early discussions to add another MM on that topic. Really my motive was code quality/maintainability, using code reviews as the main mechanism. Level 1 would be ad-hoc but at least something by a teammate before committing to the master branch (I think everyone was already at this level), and other levels would start very simple (to not put someone off who really just doesn't want to think about it right now), including things like using a simple checklist (search the web for the "checklist manifesto"), checking for clarity and maintainability ("would you want to maintain this?"), if code is properly tested, if code comments explain *why* when necessary, if any documentation needs to be kept current, if another team or area needs to be notified about the changes that affect them, standards compliance (ie, with the team's expectations relative to the other maturity models), reviews should be asynchronous (if the reviewer needs you to walk them through the code for the review, how do we know they can understand it when it comes time for maintenance??), doing at least a quick self-review before asking a teammate, ongoing improvement, etc.
I also advocated that every team team should have a wiki page listing the things they maintained or directly related to (ie, when joining a team, what systems do I care about getting up to speed on), and that each project should have a page (from a template you can just copy/paste and fill in or type "n/a", the "10-minute" documentation solution for any system). It included things like: where is the source code, who are the customers, generally what does it depend on, how is build/testing/deployment done, where does it run, what backups are done and who, and a few other things. I just hated having that info only in the minds of the few experts, as it made it seem like depending on individuals and not a well-run team working together. Probably each team should also summarize in the wiki their team-level expectations and practic
I wish I could see a way to mod this up, as well as its follow-up that suggests an additional law (in spite of the unfortunate profanity; maybe I don't have enough karma or am just blind to the feature at the moment or something). It seems an intelligent suggestion in the discussion toward realistic solutions.
It seems like Esperanto should be everyone's 2nd language, simply because it's so easy to learn yet seems ~"complete", and more importantly, has been shown to make learning other languages easier to the point that overall you learn, say, more French if you learn Esperanto first, than if one spent the entire time studying French. So learn whatever you would have learned as a 2nd language, for the 3rd, and you saved time and got farther, overall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-language_acquisition). And it seems to me the easiest way for someone to better understand the grammar of their own native language, by seeing a simple & clean example.
Then there's the side benefit of being by far the cheapest effective global route to everyone being able to talk to and understand each other, even if haltingly. For some people, learning English is simply too hard. For the rest, it's still a very big effort, and Esperanto is extremely easy by comparison. In terms of global cost/benefit, Esperanto seems like a big win. And it's fun!
(PS: There are other interesting constructed languages each with their pros & cons, but none with nearly the same amount of traction or interest as Esperanto. It's interesting to consider, given all that has been learned in the field so far, how to "optimize" a constructed human language, considering various factors like ease, familiarity, beauty, efficiency, computability, or whatever one sees as most important. Also, feel free to point me to how link text should be covered with a url when posting.)
I am hoping to learn enough to get a working business, but it competes with other priorities in life. In addition to reading from a variety of sources and just thinking, I bought a few business books based on amazon reviews (the "quick MBA" type). The best by far was "start your own business" from entrepreneur magazine. It was loaded (really, not a buzzword) with practical things like how to choose what form of corporation (and when/whether to bother), how to choose a name (& how much to bother), kinds of businesses to consider, how to evaluate a market to improve your odds, pros & cons of franchises, how to choose one, legal & tax issues, etc.
No relation other than I bought it and studied some chapters, skimmed others carefully. It has a good index & table of contents. The other books i bought seem like they could be useful for specific topics, later on, if/when I get to that point.
I also recommend the Covey "7 habits" book, just to make sure your ladder is leaning against the right wall, and for the basic issues like honesty that I think are required for any kind of real success in life. There are probably some other good books mentioned in this discussion but I seriously would mistrust those that have a "take over the world" angle: I think the fundamentals of life are what matter most, and treating people with courtesy, taking an honest look at things and seeing what service would be beneficial to others, really do matter. Some things are more important than dominance, control and money.
Agreed with parent: scala (for me at least) hits the sweet spot between fixing java, not getting in my way and having all the right features, including immutable types, type safety which is great when you need to refactor, and both OO and functional, etc. About using a "style guide", what I would add is that depending on who will probably be working on the project, use a carefully defined subset of scala, as it is possible to write hard-to-read code. Or, just make sure the code reviews catch anything that looks hard to maintain (as for any language), and rewrite those in a simpler style that is more java-esque or whatever fits best.
I think a java programmer in 1-3 hours can learn the subset of scala that fixes java's annoying parts, and lets then lets you move forward productively. Then if there is someone else on the team willing to answer the occasional question, or they are willing to search for an answer occasionally, they are set. Not rocket science unless you insist that it be hard. But if you want the hard things, they are available. Ie, easy to start, but with all the headroom you will likely ever want. I like things that start easy (enough) but have lots of headroom, libraries, power, a supportive community that has people I want to learn from, and the likely longevity to make it worth my time learning it.
Scala fits that for me, and I think twitter and others might have had even more success with the "choose the best subset for you" etc approach I suggest here.
I haven't looked hard yet, but do they ever break this down by states, within the USA? (A skimmable source for it would be nicest.) If they do, that would be more interesting, useful, and relevant to summarize in news, given how the US constitution has reserved most powers to the states.
My solution (though my connection is fast enough) is to turn off images and javascript (and cookies) all the time, specifying some sites as exceptions, and leaving the browser config tab open for the rare one-off exception when I want to see images for one page refresh. I also separate browsing activities by my multiple user accounts, depending on the type (eg, banking in a separate account from general browsing), and either use separate consoles (Ctrl-Alt-Fn) for the accounts or put them on the same X desktop with "ssh -X..." for most things, "ssh -Y..." for very few, and some convenience scripts to automate starting some apps that way. This has worked well enough for me on multiple free OSes.
The benefits include speed, simplicity, I don't have to see garbage ads or images of things I just don't want in my mind, and hopefully a lower attack surface thus more secure browsing. The stuff I want is almost always in the form of text anyway, and I don't mind text ads.
I don't mind if some groups try this, but *please* not at the federal level in the USA. Doing it at the federal level is bad because: 1) it violates the very wise parts of the constitution which say that all non-enumerated powers are left to the people and the states, and, 2) means that nobody else gets to try a different, better approach, but we are all forced to pay our money to what many will see as yet another mismanaged federal system to take money and use it inefficiently for bureaucrats to expand their domains and make rules for others. E.g., forced charity.
I believe we are responsible before God to help each other, and will be judged for our choices, but that giving charitably should not be done by force. If the federal government wouldn't take so much of our money, some people could do a better job with charity than the government does with our money now. And if these things are tried at the state level the opportunities are there for states to try different things and learn from each other.
I know of an organization where they would sometimes have "beauty contests" to make tech decisions: allow multiple ideas to be tried and take the one that worked best. If it's done at the federal level that becomes almost impossible to try different things within the USA. We can still learn from other countries but not as effectively for local situations, if the same solution is imposed on all states. And if done at the state (or other, lower) level, local decisions can be made to suit local circumstances. Or one can move. Yay!
I also favor the GPL (or AGPL), for reasons others have explained here.
But I read once somewhere(?) that the BSD license can be more useful in the limited case of promoting use of a protocol (or maybe to enable higher-quality use of the protocol).
I'd be interested in others' perspectives on that, from those who normally prefer the GPL/AGPL. Especially if you know of examples.
The GPL doesn't require opening the code if it is just running on a server that someone accesses. The AGPL (or "Affero GPL") was created to fill that gap: it requires making source code available to users for web apps, for example.
The BSD licenses and the Apache license are simpler but they fail to prevent someone from taking your hard work, making improvements (or incorporating it into their own product), releasing that, and you can't necessarily benefit from their improvements, and they sell your code back to you, which you provided freely. So one factor is whether that matters to you. The GPL and AGPL have been debated thoroughly. Wikipedia has quick overviews of them, in case one find that helpful.
Thanks much for pointing that out. I knew of some others but not that one. Had I known of it back then I might have bought it and loved it.
OM has a different long-term vision, related to "all mankind's knowledge", and how to enable structuring, integrating, and using it most effectively, beyond what wikis or PIMs can do. The current state is a stepping stone (i like to hope anyway) in that direction.
I forgot to mention: It also has a more *structured* concept for knowledge, such that in the future I'll be saying: think of it like wikipedia + evernote, but with power of internal code (so your to-do list becomes an to-do object model with full power of code and structured objects), and structured sharing/distributed use/collaboration between instances.
I have tried and thought about many things until finally writing my own tool that is extremely fast, powerful, and flexible. Currently it could be seen as org-mode replacement that addresses some of the key challenges (hard to learn, awkward) while keeping some key benefits (efficient from keyboard, extremely flexible), and adding huge flexibility in what can be done: http://onemodel.org/ (AGPL). It is a personal organizer, is something like really fast mind maps but (currently) keyboard-driven and handles very large amounts of interlinked data, different topics at once or mixed etc: the beginning of a platform to change how individuals (or mankind) manage knowledge overall. Future features involve much more than note-taking, but exploiting the internals for collaboration, anki-like repetition, to-do reminders, and more. For current org-mode or evernote users: The app has export (& import) features to convert anything to (or from) an indented plain-text outline. The FAQs have links to a discussion of a more detailed comparison with org-mode that seemed somewhat well-received at the time (link is on this page which discusses evernote: http://onemodel.org/1/e-922337... ).
Feedback would be much appreciated. If one has any interest at all, I suggest signing up for the (~monthly?) announcements list, and participating in discussions on the general list, for suggestions & input on things going forward.
I have been avoiding any product or web site with long, required TOS for a long time. One of the great things about Free software is that whey it says "BSD" or "GPL" or such, you know what you're getting and that's nice. When my doctor's office wants me to update my symptoms online, I remind them that the terms contained promises I knew I might not keep, so I strongly prefer not to use that site (they're very good about it, fortunately!).
And I talk to people about it. I was going to comment online on an letter published by a local newspaper, but wrote the editors instead saying why I didn't: because not even the lawyers who wrote the terms would actually read such things in most sites they use, and it's not honest to expect people to agree to things almost no one reads, and they don't really expect anyone to read.
Now if the rest of you would do what I'm doing, maybe after a while they would pay more attention...? It's a request.
(Most sites don't actually require you to agree first. There are a couple of sites I use anyway, where I had to agree. But I read and saved those terms with a date, and they're the exceptions that were really worth it to me. If anyone asks in the next day or so I can share the letter I sent to those newspaper editors and you can do similarly. I read some years ago that some of those terms -- the ones that say you agree to any changes without notice by continuing to use the site -- were struck down in the USA's 9th circuit court, but I don't know the latest on that.)
If we all quietly accept a status of making laws no one follows, and agreeing to terms no one reads, we move farther on a fast slippery slope toward the rule of men, instead of the rule of law, because now everyone is a lawbreaker and can be manipulated by people. Students of history know it's been done. Right??
I imagine I read slashdot's terms once, but it's been a long time and I don't remember. It's hard to be perfect at this. Sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, ditto on the PD measurement. I did find once that if I called the eye doctor back after the fact, the office could give it to me. And Zenni probably has some way you can measure it, on their web site, if you trust yourself that much to get it just right...
The prices in the summary are why some of our family have started using https://www.zennioptical.com/ (no connection except as customer). One family member got very basic lenses & frames for $9 if memory serves (could be off but it wasn't even $40 with shipping), Mine were more but had more features. It was worth getting the account and submitting photos to "try on" glasses, but one order I placed would have been better if I had paid attention to the posted length of the temple and actual frame & lens dimensions: next one I did better and it is good now.
(My one complaint is that their customer service gave info that was overconfident -- they didn't really know. And their site EULA had terms I didn't like, and nobody was willing to discuss it, either at the posted contact info or the customer service. But the site FAQs etc were helpful for other things, and I was able to adjust frames myself, etc.)
I think requiring agreements that typical individuals (or the target market for whatever company) cannot easily understand violates both honesty and the Golden Rule. I wrote more detailed discussion on that here:
http://lukecall.net/e-92233720...
(I try to save copies of agreements I have read, with the name and date, and I have a very simple script I use sometimes to compare versions of contracts to see what changed, if anyone wants a copy -- it basically uses fmt, diff, and less. See footer of link above if you want a copy. Also, there are sites that say they review or summarize such agreements for reader convenience)
OneModel (text-only) would work over ssh. You can host it (AGPL) for yourself, and I'd be happy to provide setup tips & answer questions (I'm the author).
It is very stable and the best (at least for my work-style), that I've found. Details & contact info are at the web site in link in the sig.
Other good things to consider in a peer code review (or self-done code-review) are reflected in other comments here. Some are: "will it have unintended consequences later", does it need design work?, does it create technical debt and if so when should/will it be paid?, etc.
I started making personal checklists for when I learned lessons or got burned by a mistake, different process steps, and reviewed them more until they became habits, then less often. Something like the "anki" software does with learning other topics--reminders until something is more habitual.
At my last job there was an internal wiki with best practices captured in a handful or so of maturity models (MMs). Much work from senior engineers went into those, and the QA group asked teams periodically to report a consensus on their working level in each the various models, and then those simple metrics (like a number 1-5 per model) were captured on a simple dashboard per team, and made available on the wiki for everyone to see. There wasn't always a lot of management pressure to be at a certain point--reaching goals was the higher priority--but most or everyone wanted to do a good job, and the MMs seemed very helpful.
MMs covered topics like i18n/l10n, testing, continuous deployment & operations, and probably others like design principles and technology choices (like how well they were using web services or something). (There were also clear standards and expectations about language choice etc--so we could move across teams more easily as priorities and projects evolved.)
Each MM topic had a landing page in the wiki, with a table, showing across the top the maturity levels (0=do nothing, 1 might be ad-hoc, ~5=doing it all and optimizing/improving the maturity model's effectiveness/usefulness), and on the x-axis (down the side) were sub-aspects of the general topic, and text in the table describing what it is to be at that level, for that subtopic, and then text on the rest of the page for discussion, instruction on when or why something fits or matters, and references to learn more. Maybe there was (or should be) something about MM maintenance and removing parts that are no longer useful. Of course the wiki should preserve the discussion and history. (There was also a recognition program for developing skills in certain areas, where the topics, levels, and learning resources were written down and somewhat evolving, study groups sometimes formed, something like the maturity models, and evaluators were tech managers or designated staff from across all the teams).
For code quality and reviews, I had started some writing and early discussions to add another MM on that topic. Really my motive was code quality/maintainability, using code reviews as the main mechanism. Level 1 would be ad-hoc but at least something by a teammate before committing to the master branch (I think everyone was already at this level), and other levels would start very simple (to not put someone off who really just doesn't want to think about it right now), including things like using a simple checklist (search the web for the "checklist manifesto"), checking for clarity and maintainability ("would you want to maintain this?"), if code is properly tested, if code comments explain *why* when necessary, if any documentation needs to be kept current, if another team or area needs to be notified about the changes that affect them, standards compliance (ie, with the team's expectations relative to the other maturity models), reviews should be asynchronous (if the reviewer needs you to walk them through the code for the review, how do we know they can understand it when it comes time for maintenance??), doing at least a quick self-review before asking a teammate, ongoing improvement, etc.
I also advocated that every team team should have a wiki page listing the things they maintained or directly related to (ie, when joining a team, what systems do I care about getting up to speed on), and that each project should have a page (from a template you can just copy/paste and fill in or type "n/a", the "10-minute" documentation solution for any system). It included things like: where is the source code, who are the customers, generally what does it depend on, how is build/testing/deployment done, where does it run, what backups are done and who, and a few other things. I just hated having that info only in the minds of the few experts, as it made it seem like depending on individuals and not a well-run team working together. Probably each team should also summarize in the wiki their team-level expectations and practic
I wish I could see a way to mod this up, as well as its follow-up that suggests an additional law (in spite of the unfortunate profanity; maybe I don't have enough karma or am just blind to the feature at the moment or something). It seems an intelligent suggestion in the discussion toward realistic solutions.
(ignore my stupid question about the link text)
It seems like Esperanto should be everyone's 2nd language, simply because it's so easy to learn yet seems ~"complete", and more importantly, has been shown to make learning other languages easier to the point that overall you learn, say, more French if you learn Esperanto first, than if one spent the entire time studying French. So learn whatever you would have learned as a 2nd language, for the 3rd, and you saved time and got farther, overall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-language_acquisition). And it seems to me the easiest way for someone to better understand the grammar of their own native language, by seeing a simple & clean example.
I don't think aficionados usually see it as a replacement for a first (or native) language, though that has been done intentionally by some (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., or search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for "native").
Then there's the side benefit of being by far the cheapest effective global route to everyone being able to talk to and understand each other, even if haltingly. For some people, learning English is simply too hard. For the rest, it's still a very big effort, and Esperanto is extremely easy by comparison. In terms of global cost/benefit, Esperanto seems like a big win. And it's fun!
An excellent, persuasive explanation from Claude Piron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
(PS: There are other interesting constructed languages each with their pros & cons, but none with nearly the same amount of traction or interest as Esperanto. It's interesting to consider, given all that has been learned in the field so far, how to "optimize" a constructed human language, considering various factors like ease, familiarity, beauty, efficiency, computability, or whatever one sees as most important. Also, feel free to point me to how link text should be covered with a url when posting.)
I am hoping to learn enough to get a working business, but it competes with other priorities in life. In addition to reading from a variety of sources and just thinking, I bought a few business books based on amazon reviews (the "quick MBA" type). The best by far was "start your own business" from entrepreneur magazine. It was loaded (really, not a buzzword) with practical things like how to choose what form of corporation (and when/whether to bother), how to choose a name (& how much to bother), kinds of businesses to consider, how to evaluate a market to improve your odds, pros & cons of franchises, how to choose one, legal & tax issues, etc.
No relation other than I bought it and studied some chapters, skimmed others carefully. It has a good index & table of contents. The other books i bought seem like they could be useful for specific topics, later on, if/when I get to that point.
I also recommend the Covey "7 habits" book, just to make sure your ladder is leaning against the right wall, and for the basic issues like honesty that I think are required for any kind of real success in life. There are probably some other good books mentioned in this discussion but I seriously would mistrust those that have a "take over the world" angle: I think the fundamentals of life are what matter most, and treating people with courtesy, taking an honest look at things and seeing what service would be beneficial to others, really do matter. Some things are more important than dominance, control and money.
Discussion of those thoughts is welcome.
Agreed with parent: scala (for me at least) hits the sweet spot between fixing java, not getting in my way and having all the right features, including immutable types, type safety which is great when you need to refactor, and both OO and functional, etc. About using a "style guide", what I would add is that depending on who will probably be working on the project, use a carefully defined subset of scala, as it is possible to write hard-to-read code. Or, just make sure the code reviews catch anything that looks hard to maintain (as for any language), and rewrite those in a simpler style that is more java-esque or whatever fits best.
I think a java programmer in 1-3 hours can learn the subset of scala that fixes java's annoying parts, and lets then lets you move forward productively. Then if there is someone else on the team willing to answer the occasional question, or they are willing to search for an answer occasionally, they are set. Not rocket science unless you insist that it be hard. But if you want the hard things, they are available. Ie, easy to start, but with all the headroom you will likely ever want. I like things that start easy (enough) but have lots of headroom, libraries, power, a supportive community that has people I want to learn from, and the likely longevity to make it worth my time learning it.
Scala fits that for me, and I think twitter and others might have had even more success with the "choose the best subset for you" etc approach I suggest here.
Maybe referring to the one mentioned in this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I haven't looked hard yet, but do they ever break this down by states, within the USA? (A skimmable source for it would be nicest.) If they do, that would be more interesting, useful, and relevant to summarize in news, given how the US constitution has reserved most powers to the states.
My solution (though my connection is fast enough) is to turn off images and javascript (and cookies) all the time, specifying some sites as exceptions, and leaving the browser config tab open for the rare one-off exception when I want to see images for one page refresh. I also separate browsing activities by my multiple user accounts, depending on the type (eg, banking in a separate account from general browsing), and either use separate consoles (Ctrl-Alt-Fn) for the accounts or put them on the same X desktop with "ssh -X ..." for most things, "ssh -Y ..." for very few, and some convenience scripts to automate starting some apps that way. This has worked well enough for me on multiple free OSes.
The benefits include speed, simplicity, I don't have to see garbage ads or images of things I just don't want in my mind, and hopefully a lower attack surface thus more secure browsing. The stuff I want is almost always in the form of text anyway, and I don't mind text ads.
Suggestions/critiques welcome.
A wise person said ~"the greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the greater the sense of entitlement."
I realize you're joking. It sounds like Venezuela, which hasn't gone well.
I don't mind if some groups try this, but *please* not at the federal level in the USA. Doing it at the federal level is bad because:
1) it violates the very wise parts of the constitution which say that all non-enumerated powers are left to the people and the states, and,
2) means that nobody else gets to try a different, better approach, but we are all forced to pay our money to what many will see as yet another mismanaged federal system to take money and use it inefficiently for bureaucrats to expand their domains and make rules for others. E.g., forced charity.
I believe we are responsible before God to help each other, and will be judged for our choices, but that giving charitably should not be done by force. If the federal government wouldn't take so much of our money, some people could do a better job with charity than the government does with our money now. And if these things are tried at the state level the opportunities are there for states to try different things and learn from each other.
I know of an organization where they would sometimes have "beauty contests" to make tech decisions: allow multiple ideas to be tried and take the one that worked best. If it's done at the federal level that becomes almost impossible to try different things within the USA. We can still learn from other countries but not as effectively for local situations, if the same solution is imposed on all states. And if done at the state (or other, lower) level, local decisions can be made to suit local circumstances. Or one can move. Yay!
I also favor the GPL (or AGPL), for reasons others have explained here. But I read once somewhere(?) that the BSD license can be more useful in the limited case of promoting use of a protocol (or maybe to enable higher-quality use of the protocol). I'd be interested in others' perspectives on that, from those who normally prefer the GPL/AGPL. Especially if you know of examples.
The GPL doesn't require opening the code if it is just running on a server that someone accesses. The AGPL (or "Affero GPL") was created to fill that gap: it requires making source code available to users for web apps, for example.
The BSD licenses and the Apache license are simpler but they fail to prevent someone from taking your hard work, making improvements (or incorporating it into their own product), releasing that, and you can't necessarily benefit from their improvements, and they sell your code back to you, which you provided freely. So one factor is whether that matters to you. The GPL and AGPL have been debated thoroughly. Wikipedia has quick overviews of them, in case one find that helpful.
Thanks much for pointing that out. I knew of some others but not that one. Had I known of it back then I might have bought it and loved it.
OM has a different long-term vision, related to "all mankind's knowledge", and how to enable structuring, integrating, and using it most effectively, beyond what wikis or PIMs can do. The current state is a stepping stone (i like to hope anyway) in that direction.
I forgot to mention: It also has a more *structured* concept for knowledge, such that in the future I'll be saying: think of it like wikipedia + evernote, but with power of internal code (so your to-do list becomes an to-do object model with full power of code and structured objects), and structured sharing/distributed use/collaboration between instances.
I have tried and thought about many things until finally writing my own tool that is extremely fast, powerful, and flexible. Currently it could be seen as org-mode replacement that addresses some of the key challenges (hard to learn, awkward) while keeping some key benefits (efficient from keyboard, extremely flexible), and adding huge flexibility in what can be done: http://onemodel.org/ (AGPL).
It is a personal organizer, is something like really fast mind maps but (currently) keyboard-driven and handles very large amounts of interlinked data, different topics at once or mixed etc: the beginning of a platform to change how individuals (or mankind) manage knowledge overall. Future features involve much more than note-taking, but exploiting the internals for collaboration, anki-like repetition, to-do reminders, and more.
For current org-mode or evernote users: The app has export (& import) features to convert anything to (or from) an indented plain-text outline. The FAQs have links to a discussion of a more detailed comparison with org-mode that seemed somewhat well-received at the time (link is on this page which discusses evernote: http://onemodel.org/1/e-922337... ).
Feedback would be much appreciated. If one has any interest at all, I suggest signing up for the (~monthly?) announcements list, and participating in discussions on the general list, for suggestions & input on things going forward.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...
says "The option has already be[en] reverted in the packaging git."
I have been avoiding any product or web site with long, required TOS for a long time. One of the great things about Free software is that whey it says "BSD" or "GPL" or such, you know what you're getting and that's nice. When my doctor's office wants me to update my symptoms online, I remind them that the terms contained promises I knew I might not keep, so I strongly prefer not to use that site (they're very good about it, fortunately!).
And I talk to people about it. I was going to comment online on an letter published by a local newspaper, but wrote the editors instead saying why I didn't: because not even the lawyers who wrote the terms would actually read such things in most sites they use, and it's not honest to expect people to agree to things almost no one reads, and they don't really expect anyone to read.
Now if the rest of you would do what I'm doing, maybe after a while they would pay more attention...? It's a request.
(Most sites don't actually require you to agree first. There are a couple of sites I use anyway, where I had to agree. But I read and saved those terms with a date, and they're the exceptions that were really worth it to me. If anyone asks in the next day or so I can share the letter I sent to those newspaper editors and you can do similarly. I read some years ago that some of those terms -- the ones that say you agree to any changes without notice by continuing to use the site -- were struck down in the USA's 9th circuit court, but I don't know the latest on that.)
If we all quietly accept a status of making laws no one follows, and agreeing to terms no one reads, we move farther on a fast slippery slope toward the rule of men, instead of the rule of law, because now everyone is a lawbreaker and can be manipulated by people. Students of history know it's been done. Right??
I imagine I read slashdot's terms once, but it's been a long time and I don't remember. It's hard to be perfect at this. Sigh.