I don't think that companies actually have problems with the concept of contributing to open source. Many of them do. Big example: Eclipse, with a LOT of corporate support.
I think the reason is that they are trying to keep their legal burden to a minimum. Requiring legal assistance to determine what is proprietary and what is open, assurance of provenance (did not borrow/steal from O/S), etc, is just too much for some companies and their teams to worry about. A considerable amount of documentation would need to be maintained to delineate the border between contributing and not contributing. A rule of "don't contribute" is the simple, clean and easy way to avoid it. Possibly if there were some commonly agreed-upon public and open mechanism to assist in this, there would be much more O/S contribution, especially from smaller firms.
When Win9x support was dropped, it was in order to end the dependency on legacy code and to enable new features. And I am sure that a complete Mozilla build on Win9x was pure hell.
This discussion does not mention software issues at all, but merely the level of effort for official (paid?) support. So I would not be surprised if Firefox continued working on Win2k for a while. Will their compiler -really- check OS level?
Inner Fence's attempt to deflect criticism by redirecting complaints to http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-labs-help-text-messaging/topics is so unfair to the honest service users who were already there. People who really need, or offer information or help are being buried in an avalanche of whiny tripe.
So Inner Fence has punished another group of people, this time innocent.
Actually, it looks like the people working on the session code are doing an excellent job, and doing the best they can to create a quality package. It just appears that, unfortunately, either Ubuntu or Gnome made a release cut in the midst of the session package's gradual migration from one IPC mechanism to another. The session code itself is not an issue, as far as I can tell. So, where was the problem generated, and who gets blamed? I see 3 points of contact, with 2 or 3 different organizations. Even with everyone doing the right thing, mistakes can happen.
My only issue with the posting is the idea that the user-developer relationship is a one-way thing, with users driving the development, and receiving free labor in return. That is not how it is (or should) work.
Open source is a collaboration between users and developers with mutual respect among all. They share ideas, goals, designs, etc, for the benefit of everyone. Developers -need- user feedback, SME info, the "second pair of eyes," etc. This frees the developer from the narrow focus on the work they are doing. Otherwise the package is a hothouse flower which is useful to nobody.
And it is a fair relationship, because a developer of one package is a user of all others.
What is the incentive for unpaid developers to abandon their private lives to go into crunch mode developing something for some(thankless)one else? A thousand "me too" on a bug tracker or a million "+1"s have yet to purchase a cup of coffee. "Market share" and "exposure" have little value to encourage altruism in project members. But endless bitching has enormous power to discourage it.
A smart member of this project would neither post to nor reply to that bugtracker thread.
But that's only because this discussion is missing the point. The value of user-developer communication is for the fostering of ideas efforts for everyone's benefit. It is -not- a mob government to drive the project's direction, nor is it a help desk.
You beat me to it. I despise that "magic screen" and get the feeling that they are pandering and condescending at the same time. Like we should be so amazed by their wizardly skills. How exactly does it add value to their news product? If they want to show tech for its own inherent value, maybe they should just play some Demoscene or something.
If you can't read German yet, then maybe it's time to learn. This has always been one of the best computer magazines in print. It's in-depth and hands-on. I built one of their hardware projects once (an SBC). Possibly still have it. http://www.heise.de/ct/
Reverse-biased zener diodes make an excellent noise source for true physical randomness. You want quantum quality? Use a tunnel diode. And some military radios use FM discriminator or PLL noise as a generator for crypto.
I've always thought that Java as a first language was a mistake. Students are forced to learn two concepts, structured programming and object orientation, at the same time. They should master one, then the other. For object orientation being second, it is not just a programming style, it is also an essential facet of design.
Functional programming can come third. I know that a lot of FP people would disagree. But I really don't think that the beginner student would have a clear grasp of scope, stack frames, or method references until they learn something easier first. But, hey, third semester is not so late.
You are mixing the concepts of rights and privileges. Rights belong to you. Privileges are given to you by someone else. They are like a licence. If they can be given, they can be taken away. Rights have no such limit.
Maybe with the new administration it could be a rule that an FCC employee who is involved in regulation cannot work for a telecommunications company or one of their contractors or agents, for 10 years prior, or 10 years after employment.
It's reaching, I know, but it's a dream I have. Real honesty, and no more corporate ass-kissing.
The CTIA and their minions have a special place in Hell.
Free speech and free press should, by default, be transcendent over property, reputation, religion, and even security. The laws and judicial opinions we have today are full of cruft from old moments of political expediency.
The "'Fire!' in a theater" argument is an example of a poor decision that is often used to justify continued eroding of free speech. People are born with all rights; as they grow older they allow them to be taken away. They justify it by their need to live in a pink and fluffy padded cell.
It is up to each individual to decide for themselves what to say and think. If I don't want to say something to hurt someone's feelings, then it is my decision, not the law's.
People should use the tool that best supports their productivity. If it is Git, then fine. If Subversion, then also fine. The loaded summary makes it seem as if misinformed or misguided people are resisting the moral imperative to move to Git. Leave the Bolshevism at home.
Actually, I have moved a couple of projects from SVN to Mercurial rather than to Git, since I think that Hg's better for my particular needs.
I think that the theory of allowing an unregulated free market to operate a public service has been pretty much tossed into the dustbin. "Run it like a business" is not really a positive thing to say at the moment.
Have you ever seen Perl 5 source code? It's a big disorganized mess. Many years of add-ons and patches have probably made porting it from C to a VM language less than it is worth. Perl on a VM would need to be developed from scratch.
Slashdot Mirror
It has exactly what you need, an html-like format, but tagged by meaning, not presentation. The project has tools to convert it to printable formats.
The spec: http://www.docbook.org/
The tools: http://docbook.sourceforge.net/
I don't think that companies actually have problems with the concept of contributing to open source. Many of them do. Big example: Eclipse, with a LOT of corporate support.
I think the reason is that they are trying to keep their legal burden to a minimum. Requiring legal assistance to determine what is proprietary and what is open, assurance of provenance (did not borrow/steal from O/S), etc, is just too much for some companies and their teams to worry about. A considerable amount of documentation would need to be maintained to delineate the border between contributing and not contributing. A rule of "don't contribute" is the simple, clean and easy way to avoid it. Possibly if there were some commonly agreed-upon public and open mechanism to assist in this, there would be much more O/S contribution, especially from smaller firms.
When Win9x support was dropped, it was in order to end the dependency on legacy code and to enable new features. And I am sure that a complete Mozilla build on Win9x was pure hell.
This discussion does not mention software issues at all, but merely the level of effort for official (paid?) support. So I would not be surprised if Firefox continued working on Win2k for a while. Will their compiler -really- check OS level?
Actually, I think that announcing it on the show is an attempt at a graceful way to say "no."
If you read the article, you will see that it is likely that the vote will be 8-7 against this proposal.
Inner Fence's attempt to deflect criticism by redirecting complaints to http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-labs-help-text-messaging/topics is so unfair to the honest service users who were already there. People who really need, or offer information or help are being buried in an avalanche of whiny tripe.
So Inner Fence has punished another group of people, this time innocent.
I don't mean ignore users, nor put out bad code.
Actually, it looks like the people working on the session code are doing an excellent job, and doing the best they can to create a quality package. It just appears that, unfortunately, either Ubuntu or Gnome made a release cut in the midst of the session package's gradual migration from one IPC mechanism to another. The session code itself is not an issue, as far as I can tell. So, where was the problem generated, and who gets blamed? I see 3 points of contact, with 2 or 3 different organizations. Even with everyone doing the right thing, mistakes can happen.
My only issue with the posting is the idea that the user-developer relationship is a one-way thing, with users driving the development, and receiving free labor in return. That is not how it is (or should) work.
Open source is a collaboration between users and developers with mutual respect among all. They share ideas, goals, designs, etc, for the benefit of everyone. Developers -need- user feedback, SME info, the "second pair of eyes," etc. This frees the developer from the narrow focus on the work they are doing. Otherwise the package is a hothouse flower which is useful to nobody.
And it is a fair relationship, because a developer of one package is a user of all others.
What is the incentive for unpaid developers to abandon their private lives to go into crunch mode developing something for some(thankless)one else? A thousand "me too" on a bug tracker or a million "+1"s have yet to purchase a cup of coffee. "Market share" and "exposure" have little value to encourage altruism in project members. But endless bitching has enormous power to discourage it.
A smart member of this project would neither post to nor reply to that bugtracker thread.
But that's only because this discussion is missing the point. The value of user-developer communication is for the fostering of ideas efforts for everyone's benefit. It is -not- a mob government to drive the project's direction, nor is it a help desk.
You beat me to it. I despise that "magic screen" and get the feeling that they are pandering and condescending at the same time. Like we should be so amazed by their wizardly skills. How exactly does it add value to their news product? If they want to show tech for its own inherent value, maybe they should just play some Demoscene or something.
And it has been around forever, and quite likely is exactly the required prior art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RACF
If you can't read German yet, then maybe it's time to learn. This has always been one of the best computer magazines in print. It's in-depth and hands-on. I built one of their hardware projects once (an SBC). Possibly still have it. http://www.heise.de/ct/
I quit reading Byte when it changed from a resource for tech info to a shopping guide.
Reverse-biased zener diodes make an excellent noise source for true physical randomness. You want quantum quality? Use a tunnel diode. And some military radios use FM discriminator or PLL noise as a generator for crypto.
I've always thought that Java as a first language was a mistake. Students are forced to learn two concepts, structured programming and object orientation, at the same time. They should master one, then the other. For object orientation being second, it is not just a programming style, it is also an essential facet of design.
Functional programming can come third. I know that a lot of FP people would disagree. But I really don't think that the beginner student would have a clear grasp of scope, stack frames, or method references until they learn something easier first. But, hey, third semester is not so late.
Sounds good, but from what I can see, that never happens. Only the political lawyer/MBA scum seem to be involved.
You are mixing the concepts of rights and privileges. Rights belong to you. Privileges are given to you by someone else. They are like a licence. If they can be given, they can be taken away. Rights have no such limit.
Maybe with the new administration it could be a rule that an FCC employee who is involved in regulation cannot work for a telecommunications company or one of their contractors or agents, for 10 years prior, or 10 years after employment.
It's reaching, I know, but it's a dream I have. Real honesty, and no more corporate ass-kissing.
The CTIA and their minions have a special place in Hell.
Free speech and free press should, by default, be transcendent over property, reputation, religion, and even security. The laws and judicial opinions we have today are full of cruft from old moments of political expediency.
The "'Fire!' in a theater" argument is an example of a poor decision that is often used to justify continued eroding of free speech. People are born with all rights; as they grow older they allow them to be taken away. They justify it by their need to live in a pink and fluffy padded cell.
It is up to each individual to decide for themselves what to say and think. If I don't want to say something to hurt someone's feelings, then it is my decision, not the law's.
I am so happy that he has volunteered to do this. I was afraid that the article might be about wanting someone ELSE to do the work.
Then using a cell phone rather than a radio would be very unwise.
Done!
People should use the tool that best supports their productivity. If it is Git, then fine. If Subversion, then also fine. The loaded summary makes it seem as if misinformed or misguided people are resisting the moral imperative to move to Git. Leave the Bolshevism at home. Actually, I have moved a couple of projects from SVN to Mercurial rather than to Git, since I think that Hg's better for my particular needs.
That oft-repeated statement is not true. Everything is a right until someone takes it away from you.
I think that the theory of allowing an unregulated free market to operate a public service has been pretty much tossed into the dustbin. "Run it like a business" is not really a positive thing to say at the moment.
Have you ever seen Perl 5 source code? It's a big disorganized mess. Many years of add-ons and patches have probably made porting it from C to a VM language less than it is worth. Perl on a VM would need to be developed from scratch.