Well, you fail to explain how the advertising clause would help you, if by your own interpretation it amounts to credits spewed by a command-line switch or in the about box. (The fine print of a commercial or add could have contained all the "CERN wrote part of this shite" disclaimers you want, wouldnt have mattered a bit )
Secondly, you fail to explain how the GPL would not have accomplished what you sought, when in fact it is the only license that would have done so. An open code base would have certainly prevented mozilla from becoming netscape to start with.
Thirdly, you blindly champion incompatibility with the premier technology of the open source movement (Free software), with no reason why except that it is some form of "prion". So the best you can come up with is that you get mad cow disease from the GPL.
You chose the commercializable BSD, so you got commercialized, I cannot imagine why that should be a shock.
The author of that license seems to hold a deep grudge against the GPL, and specifically coded his license to make it incompatible (explicitly!!).
Anecdotally, it actually seems very common for BSD advocates to hate on the GPL. GPL users have no problem incorporating most BSD stuff with compatible licenses, because the product is GPL'd its not going to bother them.
The BSD crowd dont seem to be afraid that proprietary interests will advance the code such that the free version atrophies, but they do seem concerned that a rebadged GPL version could do just that: become the new "official" version. That would preclude any more commercial forking they had planned.
Personally, I thought the commercial fork pipe-dream was last used successfully by bill joy. I dont know why it still has so many adherents- proprietary is clearly not the wave of the future.
The GPL specifically says that no futher restrictions on use of the code may be added by a redistributor or creator of a derived work.
So if you want to combine some GPL code from one project with the X source unedr this (stupid) new license, and distribute a derived work of the two you will be afoul of both copyrights and the owner of either could insist you cease distribution.
Apache is the top web server, running over 2/3 of the sites on the Internet. Why is it that Microsoft's IIS, at less than 20% of web sites, is the one that keeps getting exploited?
You can call apache a "monopoly" (loosely) but you cannot call it a "monoculture" because those apache numbers include different builds of apache, with different modules and extensions loaded, running on various different operating systems.
It is unlikely that a single worm that could exploit them all is even possible, realistically.
hrm, nice rant.
"LCD" is certainly not a math term, no doubt.
However, I think its meaning is logical in this context: Its not the least denominator, but the least value of the things being factored. If you simply apply least to the right object, it makes perfect sense.
So its the common functionality of even the least implementation.
I actually use C++ for portability, not speed or generic programming (which are nice to have).
If you avoid platform, compiler, and processor specific features, C++ is even more portable than Java. Java on the other hand tends to drag all platforms down to the least common denominator, then requires the use of contorted logic and platform extensions just to attain acceptable performance.
People seem to have forgotten the original intention of C: portable code.
Actually, I was under the impression they were only charging for the technique of putting long filenames into legacy FAT filesystems, being as that is all they have patents on...
I do cap my upload speed, but bt works on a tit-for-tat algorithm, so a capped uproute still hurts my download. Also, sometimes I really do want to upload large files.
(I run a iptables firewall with customized user-land firewall packet manglers, so im u to speed on that end. it doesnt have qos compiled in tho,..)
Upside: Freenet has distributed caching, which may help with bandwidth distribution.
Downside: freenet uses Java as its primary development platform, and it has been the cause of numerous development problems. It probably would have been more portable had it been written in C/C++.
Well, thats a good point: sites with crappy upload speeds will not be valuable participants in P2P networks.
This may actually benefit the network by weeding out those nodes which are asymmetric leech-only types.
I have DSL too, and it sucks hard not being able to use my inroute to help my downroute (Bittorrent), or to lose download capacity whenever someone hits my website.
If a decent ISP shows up with non extortionist pricing for symmetric connections, and static adressing (v4 or v6) then Im definitely switching.
If a person is vaguely interested in your copyrighted data, but either cannot or will not afford to pay for it, then there are two possible outcomes: one where they get it, and one they dont.
In neither case do they have the capability to steal from you, because your bank account will not be reduced, nor would it have been increased in exchange for the copy. In fact, if they do make a copy, there is a chance they will become rabid fans of yours, and positively affect your bank account.
So in fact, by not making a copy of your material, they are in fact stealing from you, by your own (stupid) definition (loss of potential earnings==theft).
That last point is particularly nasty. How many people in your group? No more than a dozen I'd guess. Imagine a programming effort with 50 or more people in it.
This has been an excellent discussion, but I think you have hit on one of the truths and misunderstandings about programming: It does not scale.
Unlike mass production, you cannot sweatshop a project up te 50 developers doing meaningful programming. Itll always come down to a core of 1-12 people. Any more applied to a single project will be underutilized and bogged down by various inefficiencies. ( a project with 50 devs may take longer to do the same job as a group of 8, and will probably end up with something worse, but ceratinly something larger )
(You cannot have 9 women produce a baby in 1 month, no amount of administrative capacity can change that.)
When you have large numbers of programmers the correct solution is divide things clearly into separate projects and insist upons standards compliance for interfaces, imo.
Each of the small groups will hopefully be a self-selected as possible, and be run internally by group consensus building if possible. (its not really that rare, Ive seen it happen at least informally on every project Ive worked on)
Mass-programming is still the holy grail, for now programmers are like artisans- they scale very poorly.
Anyway, thanks for the talk... (About the manager, well it was his choice, noone forced him to take the role.)
Good project management doesn't pretend to know everything (who can?) or try to tell everybody what to do (they'd just get ignored). It earns the respect and cooperation of the rest of the team, and makes sure people understand the consequences of breaking the rules (like fiddling with new features when you're supposed to be stomping showstopper bugs).
Oh thats impressive. PM sounds like a job you need common sense and a calm personality for. (Wow. So basically a secretary without the word processing skills.) If you want respect and cooperation you have to have *some* form of merit aside from the polite lobbying skills expected from a 12 yr old. Otherwise your place is out of the way.
If you don't understand that kind of coordination, either you've never had the good luck to work with a good PM (very likely) or you're just to full of yourself to be capable of real teamwork.
Or I'm a big boy now and dont need a baby sitter.
Seriously, where I work the programmers get along just fine. We can work out our differences on new features, and always know that showstopper bugs are called that for a reason. We give everyone a chance to comment on architectural or important decisions. Our Manager is an ex-programmer, but hes so burdened with administrative duties he doesnt get much time to develop. (poor bastard)
Its almost as if the company was full of professional adults. Maybe they dont need an inflated-ego type with MS Project telling them when to jump.
You might notice that most Free projects dont have PM's. Thats because its a non-job.
In a well-run shop, a good PM is worth a dozen engineers, never mind coders. That's because the PM does all the resource-managment, schedule juggling, workflow info distribution, and other organizational scutwork that would otherwise drastically impact the engineering man-month
Nonesuch.
If you are incapable of coding you cannot understand the problem.
If you cant understand the problem, you certainly cant predict its workflow or interactions.
A good project manager has to be an "Engineer" and a "coder" too.
So in that sense they are the same, no point in giving them different titles, they are all "coders".
A "thinking" computer is not a violation of any natural law,
That is your logical fallacy. We, as a race, do NOT understand how thinking works. We do not understand our own minds. There is no cogent theory that explains the function of the brain.
Given our current science, there is no way we will ever duplicate the human mind. There's a much stronger basis for time-travel than that.
A computer will remain a tool for the brain to use for the foreseable future. A tool *amplifies* the minds power. That means that a weak mind, at your "lower entry level", will not be able to duplicate the feats of a well trained one using the same tool.
"If you don't understand how your car works, and can't fix it yourself, you will be walking everywhere."
Thats a bad analogy. A car enhances your muscles: you should never need to understand it anymore than you need to understand your legs. (a little practice and go, right)
A computer can be used for many types of jobs. Some of those jobs could require little to no understanding of logic.
For thinking jobs however, you will need some competence to be good at them. In this case the issue is not so much "understanding the computer", as it is "understanding the problem".
There will never be a star-trek like computer, competent enough to "do what you mean and not what you say" in a non-disastrous fashion.
Xouvert as lame fork with people who may not be able to deal with it.
FreeDesktop org as last bastion for people like Keith Packard and Jim Gettys to fix all the stuff.
Umm, you may not realize this, but Xouvert *is* Keith Packard's fork. Once it gets off the ground, it is likely it may become the new trunk. Dont be so quick to berate what you do not understand.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you fail to explain how the advertising clause would help you, if by your own interpretation it amounts to credits spewed by a command-line switch or in the about box. (The fine print of a commercial or add could have contained all the "CERN wrote part of this shite" disclaimers you want, wouldnt have mattered a bit )
Secondly, you fail to explain how the GPL would not have accomplished what you sought, when in fact it is the only license that would have done so. An open code base would have certainly prevented mozilla from becoming netscape to start with.
Thirdly, you blindly champion incompatibility with the premier technology of the open source movement (Free software), with no reason why except that it is some form of "prion". So the best you can come up with is that you get mad cow disease from the GPL.
You chose the commercializable BSD, so you got commercialized, I cannot imagine why that should be a shock.
Read the openssl license sometimes.
The author of that license seems to hold a deep grudge against the GPL, and specifically coded his license to make it incompatible (explicitly!!).
Anecdotally, it actually seems very common for BSD advocates to hate on the GPL. GPL users have no problem incorporating most BSD stuff with compatible licenses, because the product is GPL'd its not going to bother them.
The BSD crowd dont seem to be afraid that proprietary interests will advance the code such that the free version atrophies, but they do seem concerned that a rebadged GPL version could do just that: become the new "official" version. That would preclude any more commercial forking they had planned.
Personally, I thought the commercial fork pipe-dream was last used successfully by bill joy. I dont know why it still has so many adherents- proprietary is clearly not the wave of the future.
The GPL specifically says that no futher restrictions on use of the code may be added by a redistributor or creator of a derived work.
So if you want to combine some GPL code from one project with the X source unedr this (stupid) new license, and distribute a derived work of the two you will be afoul of both copyrights and the owner of either could insist you cease distribution.
Apache is the top web server, running over 2/3 of
the sites on the Internet. Why is it that
Microsoft's IIS, at less than 20% of web sites, is the one that keeps getting exploited?
You can call apache a "monopoly" (loosely) but you cannot call it a "monoculture" because those apache numbers include different builds of apache, with different modules and extensions loaded, running on various different operating systems.
It is unlikely that a single worm that could exploit them all is even possible, realistically.
hrm, nice rant.
"LCD" is certainly not a math term, no doubt.
However, I think its meaning is logical in this context: Its not the least denominator, but the least value of the things being factored. If you simply apply least to the right object, it makes perfect sense.
So its the common functionality of even the least implementation.
I actually use C++ for portability, not speed or generic programming (which are nice to have).
If you avoid platform, compiler, and processor specific features, C++ is even more portable than Java. Java on the other hand tends to drag all platforms down to the least common denominator, then requires the use of contorted logic and platform extensions just to attain acceptable performance.
People seem to have forgotten the original intention of C: portable code.
(a)- right, i mixed up those acronyms.
(b)- I would imagine leet audiophiles think even CD's are already lossily encoded, much less accept more loss on top of that.
(c)- vorbis and mp3 are competing for the compressed music niche, if you want high bitrates switch to flac or something.
Actually, I was under the impression they were only charging for the technique of putting long filenames into legacy FAT filesystems, being as that is all they have patents on...
How much demand was there for AC3 before the ipod.
(Hint: none)
Apple users will take whatever Jobs shovels at them, assuming the quality is acceptable and its "blessed" by Apple.
The real asnwer is this: DRM.
They wont offer unencumbered format support, aside from those with massive user demand (read MP3), if they dont have to.
Think of the iPod as a tie in to iTunes music store, they certainly want to steer you towards the encumbered formats.
If quality was the only concern, it would be ogg+vorbis support without question.
When there's lots of excess bandwidth i do fine.
You're right its not nearly 1:1 or itd be useless for me.
Even then, like i said, sometimes i want to seed, ya' know.
now that is a damn good link.
Thanks, ill look into them.
I do cap my upload speed, but bt works on a tit-for-tat algorithm, so a capped uproute still hurts my download. Also, sometimes I really do want to upload large files.
(I run a iptables firewall with customized user-land firewall packet manglers, so im u to speed on that end. it doesnt have qos compiled in tho,..)
Freenet Vs MUTE:
Upside: Freenet has distributed caching, which may help with bandwidth distribution.
Downside: freenet uses Java as its primary development platform, and it has been the cause of numerous development problems. It probably would have been more portable had it been written in C/C++.
Well, thats a good point: sites with crappy upload speeds will not be valuable participants in P2P networks.
This may actually benefit the network by weeding out those nodes which are asymmetric leech-only types.
I have DSL too, and it sucks hard not being able to use my inroute to help my downroute (Bittorrent), or to lose download capacity whenever someone hits my website.
If a decent ISP shows up with non extortionist pricing for symmetric connections, and static adressing (v4 or v6) then Im definitely switching.
Sadly, I think this is what most people think of when they think of open source.
Why is that sad?
I think its appropriate that people look to the best of breed among Open Source, Free, and even proprietary software licenses.
If a person is vaguely interested in your copyrighted data, but either cannot or will not afford to pay for it, then there are two possible outcomes: one where they get it, and one they dont.
In neither case do they have the capability to steal from you, because your bank account will not be reduced, nor would it have been increased in exchange for the copy. In fact, if they do make a copy, there is a chance they will become rabid fans of yours, and positively affect your bank account.
So in fact, by not making a copy of your material, they are in fact stealing from you, by your own (stupid) definition (loss of potential earnings==theft).
Thats right, NON-FILESHARERS ARE THIEVES!
That last point is particularly nasty. How many people in your group? No more than a dozen I'd guess. Imagine a programming effort with 50 or more people in it.
This has been an excellent discussion, but I think you have hit on one of the truths and misunderstandings about programming: It does not scale.
Unlike mass production, you cannot sweatshop a project up te 50 developers doing meaningful programming. Itll always come down to a core of 1-12 people. Any more applied to a single project will be underutilized and bogged down by various inefficiencies. ( a project with 50 devs may take longer to do the same job as a group of 8, and will probably end up with something worse, but ceratinly something larger )
(You cannot have 9 women produce a baby in 1 month, no amount of administrative capacity can change that.)
When you have large numbers of programmers the correct solution is divide things clearly into separate projects and insist upons standards compliance for interfaces, imo.
Each of the small groups will hopefully be a self-selected as possible, and be run internally by group consensus building if possible. (its not really that rare, Ive seen it happen at least informally on every project Ive worked on)
Mass-programming is still the holy grail, for now programmers are like artisans- they scale very poorly.
Anyway, thanks for the talk...
(About the manager, well it was his choice, noone forced him to take the role.)
Good project management doesn't pretend to know everything (who can?) or try to tell everybody what to do (they'd just get ignored). It earns the respect and cooperation of the rest of the team, and makes sure people understand the consequences of breaking the rules (like fiddling with new features when you're supposed to be stomping showstopper bugs).
Oh thats impressive. PM sounds like a job you need common sense and a calm personality for. (Wow. So basically a secretary without the word processing skills.) If you want respect and cooperation you have to have *some* form of merit aside from the polite lobbying skills expected from a 12 yr old.
Otherwise your place is out of the way.
If you don't understand that kind of coordination, either you've never had the good luck to work with a good PM (very likely) or you're just to full of yourself to be capable of real teamwork.
Or I'm a big boy now and dont need a baby sitter.
Seriously, where I work the programmers get along just fine. We can work out our differences on new features, and always know that showstopper bugs are called that for a reason. We give everyone a chance to comment on architectural or important decisions. Our Manager is an ex-programmer, but hes so burdened with administrative duties he doesnt get much time to develop. (poor bastard)
Its almost as if the company was full of professional adults. Maybe they dont need an inflated-ego type with MS Project telling them when to jump.
You might notice that most Free projects dont have PM's. Thats because its a non-job.
In a well-run shop, a good PM is worth a dozen engineers, never mind coders. That's because the PM does all the resource-managment, schedule juggling, workflow info distribution, and other organizational scutwork that would otherwise drastically impact the engineering man-month
Nonesuch.
If you are incapable of coding you cannot understand the problem.
If you cant understand the problem, you certainly cant predict its workflow or interactions.
A good project manager has to be an "Engineer" and a "coder" too.
So in that sense they are the same, no point in giving them different titles, they are all "coders".
Just some coders are better than others.
If, indeed, the police are treating this issue as secondary to illegal pornography, then I would say they are on the right track.
If it wasnt for illegal pornography why would anybody bother with computers at all?
A "thinking" computer is not a violation of any natural law,
That is your logical fallacy. We, as a race, do NOT understand how thinking works. We do not understand our own minds. There is no cogent theory that explains the function of the brain.
Given our current science, there is no way we will ever duplicate the human mind. There's a much stronger basis for time-travel than that.
A computer will remain a tool for the brain to use for the foreseable future. A tool *amplifies* the minds power. That means that a weak mind, at your "lower entry level", will not be able to duplicate the feats of a well trained one using the same tool.
Thats a bad analogy.
A car enhances your muscles: you should never need to understand it anymore than you need to understand your legs. (a little practice and go, right)
A computer can be used for many types of jobs.
Some of those jobs could require little to no understanding of logic.
For thinking jobs however, you will need some competence to be good at them. In this case the issue is not so much "understanding the computer", as it is "understanding the problem".
There will never be a star-trek like computer, competent enough to "do what you mean and not what you say" in a non-disastrous fashion.
Xouvert as lame fork with people who may not be able to deal with it.
FreeDesktop org as last bastion for people like Keith Packard and Jim Gettys to fix all the stuff.
Umm, you may not realize this, but Xouvert *is* Keith Packard's fork. Once it gets off the ground, it is likely it may become the new trunk. Dont be so quick to berate what you do not understand.
Although they are probably bankrupt you can still take away their childrens' college fund
How is revenge supposed to help? Its certainly not going to produce the source code, nor will it repair your reputation with your customers.
Escrow is and always will be a risk.
> No more restarting apps to write multilingual Japanese/Portuguese texts!
Do you use im-ja ?