It's nice to see such faith in the power of top-down science. I don't think the moon landing was a road to anything at all except several decades of very expensive militrary / space spending. Arpanet is the classic example of successful government-driven research but it stands out exactly because such successes are rare. Arpanet succeeded for many reasons - timing, highly skilled individuals, essence of the problem. I do not think that government funding was essential but that is speculation.
Slashdot readers are such fans of science and technology that they tend to overlook the small issues, such as actually getting results from research.
I'm quite certain of two things:
1. NASA are structurally incapable of doing anything useful with money.
2. Anything called "Nano" is most often hype and vapour.
I'm willing to bet $1000 that nothing significant comes out of this research, and that the programme is quietly scrapped after 5 years, or reincorporated into some other programme and renamed to the hype-du-jour.
And yes, I'm quite amazed that 40 years after we walked on the moon, we are ending the programme, because of falling chunks of foam. There was no open road to competition, just a huge hole and lots of money.
If there's one lesson that the shuttle sage should have taught NASA - even without the many other demonstrations from around the world such as Japan's 5th Generation Computing, the EU's Eureka programme, etc. - is that large-budget top-down science does not produce value for money.
The best motor for innovation is competition, and the main problem with NASA-style science is that it eliminates scientific and engineering competition and replaces it with burocratic competition. Real progress is made by small teams that see risk as opportunity, while NASA-style science is done by large teams that see risk as something to be avoided at all costs.
Let's see research conducted around a much more open competition for the available money, provided more in the form of prizes and awards and less as research grants.
Let's stop paying people on their skills in writing grant applications and start rewarding people for their ability to think in creative and useful ways.
It's charmingly naive to believe that juidicial or legislative bodies are concerned with free trade. Mainly, they represent power interests and as such the laws created by and for those interests. "Free trade" comes onto the agenda when there is an advantage to be gained: mainly, in access to a market otherwise protected by anti-import legislation.
As another poster in this thread pointed out, free trade is rarely done out of principle, not even by institutions such as the WTO that claim this as their reason for existence.
Thus, the USA can subsidise its own cotton farmers to the point where countries like Niger cannot sell their cotton on the world market for a fair price. That's ok. But when Airbus get cheap loans from governments, that's not ok.
"Free trade" is excellent in theory and nice when it actually happens, but don't imagine it's the top priority for many people except economists.
Your games are region-protected because as a consumer, you don't actually have any rights except to spend / not spend your money. If you don't like companies that rip you off, don't buy their products.
Before you write such things, it's probably worth reading the draft proposal. It is in English and remarkably short and clear for a EU document.
It appears to be mainly aimed at non-software infringement, i.e. at stopping the trade in counterfeit goods. The law affects those who intentionally do such acts on a commercial scale. That rules out any attempt to criminalise individual copying.
However, there is one sentence in the document, whereby anyone "inciting" infringementments, and doing this inciting on a commercial scale, is liable.
This sentence was presumably slipped in by the anti-P2P lobbyists, the BSA et al., who are good friends with the Commission. There is no other domain I can think of where people make money from inciting others to break copyright laws.
Making and distributing p2p software is not in itself an incitement to copyright infringement, and doing it without commercial gain would seem to be a loophole in any case. However, running a tracker website, with advertising revenue, which listed copyrighted materials, would be a violation.
The infringement must be "intentional", so e.g. Google could not be sued because they index tracker files.
IMO it's not really a stupid law. If you accept copyright as being a reasonable protection for investment in literary and other creative works, such laws are needed or copyright means nothing.
The biggest mistake people make is to use comments to try to explain unreadable code. It fails because the comments invariably fall behind the code and after a while become worse than useless.
My advice:
1. Comment all variables 2. Be 100% consistent with variable names so that the same data always has the same name 3. If your code is too complex to understand without comments, rewrite it and keep rewriting it until it's clear 4. Comment the unusual, do not comment the obvious 5. Style, clarity, and consistency in your code are worth much more than comments.
In summary: if you write code so that it looks *perfect*, very often it will be perfect and comments will be superfluous.
Writing perfect code is hard work. I do it. Few on my team can, but it's always worthwhile.
Ironically, we also rewrite most of our code many times. The biggest benefit from consistency and clarity comes not from getting working programs but from getting code you can lift and reuse with trivial effort.
I've also been walking the floors of the EP the last few weeks and have had the pleasure of speaking at various conferences where the likes of Francisco Mignorance (who both drafted part of the proposed legislation and now lobbies for it on behalf of the BSA), and Simon Gentry (who's C4C pretends to be on behalf of "creative people" but is actually a pure PR play) also took part.
The pro-patent lobby in Europe is very well funded, organised, and appears to control much of the legislative process itself.
For example, at the last SME roundtable discussion there were three representatives of real technology SMEs, a handful of MEP's assistants, and over 12 lobbyists, claiming to be small firms, but after the meeting, leaving together with Gentry. One of those occasions when I wish I'd had a camera phone.
I've uploaded a short statement that is aimed at MEPs and their assistants. We'll be distributing this to assistants. Anyone who wants to help (early Monday morning, Brussels) please drop me a line.
We've also made a satirical site that attacks the big business interests behind the push for software patents.
Finally, there is a demo in Strasbourg on Tuesday morning, and the FFII is organising busses from most of Europe.
If you can spare the time, put on a suit and tie and get yourself to Strasbourg for 8.00am on Tuesday.
A large and visible demo will help focus MEP's minds. They will probably vote on Wednesday and unless a near-miracle happens, by the end of the week we will be facing the US situation in Europe.
They call themselves the "SABAM" and they "represent" the music publishers. All public use of recorded music is subject to a (negotiable in the sense of "let's be reasonable about it, guvnor") fee that is calculated by square meter, number of places, etc. Normally it applies to all public events. When I asked the organiser of the open-air xmas ice-skating rink why they played such terrible 1960's jingles he just said, "sabam".
An artist who publishes his own music has to register with the SABAM or he won't find anyone to distribute or play it.
So you get insane situations like a group playing their own songs, live, who have to pay the SABAM up front for the concert, then claim the money back, minus a fee.
Or, to produce an album, you have to pay about 500 Euro up front to the SABAM, who may eventually pay this back.
And, if you make a deal with the SABAM then their cousins, the B-vergoed, come knocking, asking for due payment for "the music authors".
Little of the collected money actually goes to any artist. The big labels like PIAS get the largest chunk, the rest is lost in administration.
To be fair, the SABAM are fairly decent about it, and like all Belgian institutions, are happy to interpret the law depending on how much they think you're trying to cheat. I.e. they do not come to your wedding parties, but they will crack down on clubs that aren't paying a fee.
S = intelligence and wit of the script
C = degree of variety and contrast of the characters
W = wise reflection on real life ironies
N = names that you remember
B = budget of producers
I agree with all your points except two. A. it's not a fragile equilibrium but a stablising market of interests. B. yes, there is a near-infinite number of key players, at least until every proto-nerd on the planet is wired up.
The model I described is not the only one - my signature should make that clear - but it's a significant one, in my opinion, after writing open source and thinking long and hard about all the points you raise for a decade and a half.
Open source does work. I think I know more or less why. That's my explanation. Cycnical, yes. Inaccurate? No.
When I started writing free software, in the early 90's, "successful" meant many users. Our web server, Xitami, was successful in this sense. But these days, "successful" means something much more like you describe: achieving technical and functional goals without gaining so many users that the project becomes a support burden.
Xitami, for instance, became such a support burden that we had to stop the project or risk burnout of the team and the company. It's a real risk, and I tried to explain this, and how to work around it, in my text.
Basically you have to create a sound financial structure for those people who work professionally on the project.
Indeed, the product I'd consider most successful (GSL, a code generation language) - because we use it in all our work, and it's incredibly powerful - is almost completely unknown on the Internet. Success does not always mean popularity.
However: the article was intended for a specific public, a large company that is sponsoring an open source development, and for whom "success" means literally gaining as many users as possible and if possible, defining a new standard.
(Taken from a presentation I made explaining open source as a development model for large businesses)...
A common misconception about open source is that because it is "free" it is somehow a charity operation where programmers work bene-vola because they want "to contribute".
This is, however, wrong. When Adam Smith said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest", he was accurately describing a world in which self-interest creates mutually-beneficial structures.
Open source contributors are attracted for different reasons, depending on how far they understand and identify with the technology at hand. We can identify the self-interest of each role, while seeing that the overall structure serves everyone:
* "Users" will evangelise (seeking security in the company of others using the same technology).
* "Power users" will help others who have problems (seeking the kudos that comes from helping others).
* "Pundits" will discuss the technology in public forums (seeking the fame that comes from being able to accurately identify trends and future winners).
* "Insiders" will take on parts of the testing process (seeking better familiarity with a technology that may become an important part of their skill set).
* "Players" will delve into the technology itself, taking on smaller roles in the process (seeking the kudos and fame that can come from being on a winning team).
* "Key players" will take on major roles in the project (seeking to impose their ideas, turn a small project into a major success, or otherwise earn a global reputation).
* "Patrons" will provide financial support to the project (looking to sell services, often to the users, that require the technology to succeed and be widely used).
The naive view of open source focuses only on the players, ignoring the wider economy of interests. A successful open source project must attract and support all these classes of people (and others, such as the "troll", who vocally attacks the project in public forums, thus stiffening the resolve of the users and pundits who defend it).
Thus we can understand the needs of each role:
* Users need a pleasant and impressive product so they can feel proud about showing it to others.
* Power users need forums and mailing lists where they can answer questions.
* Pundits need pre-packaged press releases, insider tips, and the occasional free lunch. Some controversy also helps.
* Insiders need regular releases, frequent improvements, and forums where they can propose ideas for the project.
* Players need extension frameworks where they can write their (often sub-standard) code without affecting the primary project.
* Key players need badges of membership, and access to the right tools and support.
* Patrons need a high-quality and stable product that supports their services and additional products.
The only people working full time, and usually professionally, on an open source project are the key players. All the others will take part in the project as a side-effect of their on-going work or hobbies.
While a traditional software company must pay everyone in this economy except the users, an open source economy must only pay the key players, who make up perhaps 2-5% of the total. Further, the key players will work for significantly less than the market rate, since they also derive a real benefit from working on successful projects, which I call the open source "payload". The most important part of a future programmer's CV is the section titled "Open Source Projects". This is the payload. It translates directly into dollars, proportional to the impact and importance of the open source projects involved.
When compensation plus payload does not cover the cost of working on a project (in terms of loss of compensation for alternative work), the key player will suffer "burnout" after 12-18 months, more or less depending on the person's tenacity.
And yet... 25 years ago, Stallman defined an thesis that today has changed the world. Free software is not an opinion, it's not an ideology. It is a reality, and it happens not because of Stallman's opinion, nor yours or mine, but because it's a natural and efficient way for programmers to collaborate.
Stallman is a visionary, and I'm not a drone for saying that. He recognised the future and put into words and the GPL is that statement.
I've spent much of my life writing free software. Why is that a joke? Is it because you are unable to understand it? Yet it makes perfect (economic) sense to me, the author, to distribute for free what I cannot sell, because it's worth much more to me alive and kicking than dead on a shelf.
Incidentally, free software is most definitely property. It's just communal property, not private property. The distinction is essential.
I was at a FFII panel presentation last week. I spoke to representatives from Alcatel and British Telecom.
Very pro-patent. They argue that patents are all that protect them from "invasion by the Chinese". I asked the woman from Alcatel whether they used Linux. Yes. In house, for much of their development. In their boxes, it's Linux everywhere.
These companies, like Nokia, are profiting from the rising sea of open source and especially Linux, which is more and more becoming an essential ingredient of their production process.
So it's normal that they want to "protect Linux" in some way. What they still have to face, and this is what I told them, is that their precious patents will cause the demise of the open source economy, including Linux, in Europe, and hasten the advance of competitors who do not have the same patent regimes.
Indeed, patents in Europe are a threat to everyone including large vendors like Nokia, and even Microsoft, but people are so panicked that they can't see straight.
Basically the software industry has been hijacked by the patent business - the EPO burocracy and patent attorneys. These people are simple parasites and if they win this battle, they will suck the life out of the software industry.
The reason many open source projects are not being attacked today is because software patents are still settling. There are some attacks but overall the goal of patent owners is to enforce their patents against smaller commercial rivals, collect larger patent portfolios, and only attack open source projects where there is direct and immediate competition.
You are entirely wrong. The language of business is strongly based on terms of war: conquest, crush the opposition, gain territory...
Patents are most definitely weapons, using the same language. Patents are used for offense and for defense and are expensive. The patent industry are arms dealers (again, using the same metaphorical language) and the sale of patents, just like the sale of arms, will enable war and violence between those who want and those who have.
Patents are weapons and unfortunately are used mainly by the strong against the weak.
And Stallman is most definitely sane, and exceptionally clear in his analysis. If you do not understand him, that's OK. It's a bit intellectual. But kindly don't insult one of the visionaries of our age... it just makes you look silly.
The theft is this: the patent officer and patent attorney collaborate to create "property", the patent, using deliberately vague legalistic language that stakes a claim to an idea or domain of work.
In theory, this domain of work is entirely new and the patent is the basis for the investment necessary to exploit it.
In practice, and especially with software patents, no domain of work is truly innovative and no idea is original: rather, we create software by incredibly many incredibly small incremental steps. All creative work in programming is the result of community effort, which is why no-one can develop software in isolation. We need to be part of a community in order to create. To pretend otherwise is to lie, thus all software patent applications start with a falsehood, "I invented this".
To aquire a claim on a domain means that all others working in this domain lose the right to the fruit of their labour. Thus, you can literally see years or decades of hard work being captured and made someone else's property. Where software patents are granted, copyrights are being annulled without due process. Expropriation.
The only route to appeal is through the courts and this is impossible for the majority of people.
If someone steals my life savings, this is theft. If someone steals my life's work, this is theft. No difference except the latter is sponsored and protected by the bureaucrats who sell the patents in the first place.
It's very analagous with the way traditional common lands have been taken from those that lived on them and granted to wealthy newcomers through the use of legal documents backed up by the power of the state.
Basically the software industry has been hijacked.
Software patents are evil. The pro-monopoly lobby is using weasel words like "technical" to hide a loophole through which one can drive freight trains. 50,000 software patents have already been granted by the EPO on this flmsy basis. If you think your softare is protected by copyright, think again - the EPO, backed by legalistic mumbo-jumbo like "technical" has sold your work under the counter to a patent attorney.
Software patents are theft. No two ways about it. Patenting ideas and literary expressions is theft. Expropriation. Corruption.
The lady, and she knows who she is, who invented this particular weasel word will go down in history as a villain.
The commoditisation of software that open source represents is a rising tide. There are two ways to handle a rising tide: float or sink.
Siebel, like many big software firms, are unable to float. They don't use open source for their processes, so don't benefit from it. They are stuck in a niche, so are basically anchored to the sea floor while the water rises around them. Their customers have the choice of remaining anchored with them, and drowing as well, or cutting free and floating.
It's a bit sad if you're in the position of the drowing man. But it's been the same in Big Auto, Big Steel, Big Textile, Big Science, Big Pharma, Big Business... competition is a tough game.
The smart money is on those firms that learn to float. IBM, CA, Novell, Apple. Maybe Sun and SAP. Apparently not Siebel, definitely not Microsoft.
Ubuntu does "get" it, yes, but Xandros has been doing this for two years or so. Exactly as you describe: trivial install, one tool for each job, and all nicely integrated in a file manager that lets you access network resources and devices seamlessly.
Ubuntu has the main advantage of being entirely free which makes it the "here's Linux, now go off and don't bother me again" choice. Xandros sell their product but I've no objection to that. It's certainly worth the $50 or so.
Hmmm, perhaps you have an issue with Xandros selling their package, but it's not crap.
I've used Xandros since version 1 and it runs most of the Linux workstations in our company. It is easy to install, complete, and elegant. Basically it's a Debian distribution with Xandros' custom file manager, which provides very nice integration with the network and devices.
Linspire... I tried it and it was too garish. But it worked well.
Gratuitous insults are not useful nor "insightful". If you have criticisms it's more useful to state what you actually base them on.
What he describes are a series of as many as five "wget" commands along with the Slahdot effect. Wget is a standard Linux tool for downloading a web site. It is hardly a standard or even potent DDoS tool... more likely it is either a regular "web leech" copying the entire site for off-line review...
I've seen real organised DDoS attacks and comparing this to one of those is just a sick joke.
Allow me to quote you some of the pertinent statements from Suering's page:
"it certainly doesn't appear that logical steps were taken to mitigate the attacks."
"the total of five lines of logs that I received"
"...the biggest cyber attack in history any media company was ever subject to!"
You are suggesting that because (e.g.) the stream must be secured, that the user interface cannot be improved upon, translated, whatever?
The two issues can be separated, more or less easily. A secure application can run on top of an open platform, and vice-versa. It requires a clean API, documentation and run time binding (rather than build-time binding). All perfectly feasible. This is why, for instance, I can run Linux on proprietary hardware, something we all take for granted, but which is fundamentally exactly the same issue.
Further, a clean separation between the two makes GPL compliance easy while still encouraging people to play with and improve the open layers.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to see such faith in the power of top-down science. I don't think the moon landing was a road to anything at all except several decades of very expensive militrary / space spending. Arpanet is the classic example of successful government-driven research but it stands out exactly because such successes are rare. Arpanet succeeded for many reasons - timing, highly skilled individuals, essence of the problem. I do not think that government funding was essential but that is speculation.
Slashdot readers are such fans of science and technology that they tend to overlook the small issues, such as actually getting results from research.
I'm quite certain of two things:
1. NASA are structurally incapable of doing anything useful with money.
2. Anything called "Nano" is most often hype and vapour.
I'm willing to bet $1000 that nothing significant comes out of this research, and that the programme is quietly scrapped after 5 years, or reincorporated into some other programme and renamed to the hype-du-jour.
And yes, I'm quite amazed that 40 years after we walked on the moon, we are ending the programme, because of falling chunks of foam. There was no open road to competition, just a huge hole and lots of money.
If there's one lesson that the shuttle sage should have taught NASA - even without the many other demonstrations from around the world such as Japan's 5th Generation Computing, the EU's Eureka programme, etc. - is that large-budget top-down science does not produce value for money.
The best motor for innovation is competition, and the main problem with NASA-style science is that it eliminates scientific and engineering competition and replaces it with burocratic competition. Real progress is made by small teams that see risk as opportunity, while NASA-style science is done by large teams that see risk as something to be avoided at all costs.
Let's see research conducted around a much more open competition for the available money, provided more in the form of prizes and awards and less as research grants.
Let's stop paying people on their skills in writing grant applications and start rewarding people for their ability to think in creative and useful ways.
It's charmingly naive to believe that juidicial or legislative bodies are concerned with free trade. Mainly, they represent power interests and as such the laws created by and for those interests. "Free trade" comes onto the agenda when there is an advantage to be gained: mainly, in access to a market otherwise protected by anti-import legislation.
As another poster in this thread pointed out, free trade is rarely done out of principle, not even by institutions such as the WTO that claim this as their reason for existence.
Thus, the USA can subsidise its own cotton farmers to the point where countries like Niger cannot sell their cotton on the world market for a fair price. That's ok. But when Airbus get cheap loans from governments, that's not ok.
"Free trade" is excellent in theory and nice when it actually happens, but don't imagine it's the top priority for many people except economists.
Your games are region-protected because as a consumer, you don't actually have any rights except to spend / not spend your money. If you don't like companies that rip you off, don't buy their products.
Before you write such things, it's probably worth reading the draft proposal. It is in English and remarkably short and clear for a EU document.
It appears to be mainly aimed at non-software infringement, i.e. at stopping the trade in counterfeit goods. The law affects those who intentionally do such acts on a commercial scale. That rules out any attempt to criminalise individual copying.
However, there is one sentence in the document, whereby anyone "inciting" infringementments, and doing this inciting on a commercial scale, is liable.
This sentence was presumably slipped in by the anti-P2P lobbyists, the BSA et al., who are good friends with the Commission. There is no other domain I can think of where people make money from inciting others to break copyright laws.
Making and distributing p2p software is not in itself an incitement to copyright infringement, and doing it without commercial gain would seem to be a loophole in any case. However, running a tracker website, with advertising revenue, which listed copyrighted materials, would be a violation.
The infringement must be "intentional", so e.g. Google could not be sued because they index tracker files.
IMO it's not really a stupid law. If you accept copyright as being a reasonable protection for investment in literary and other creative works, such laws are needed or copyright means nothing.
It's as much about what you leave out...
The biggest mistake people make is to use comments to try to explain unreadable code. It fails because the comments invariably fall behind the code and after a while become worse than useless.
My advice:
1. Comment all variables
2. Be 100% consistent with variable names so that the same data always has the same name
3. If your code is too complex to understand without comments, rewrite it and keep rewriting it until it's clear
4. Comment the unusual, do not comment the obvious
5. Style, clarity, and consistency in your code are worth much more than comments.
In summary: if you write code so that it looks *perfect*, very often it will be perfect and comments will be superfluous.
Writing perfect code is hard work. I do it. Few on my team can, but it's always worthwhile.
Ironically, we also rewrite most of our code many times. The biggest benefit from consistency and clarity comes not from getting working programs but from getting code you can lift and reuse with trivial effort.
Keep it simple.
The biggest danger to Firefox is that you forget the key reasons people like this browser... compact, fast, and secure.
It's the "winamp" lesson.
I've also been walking the floors of the EP the last few weeks and have had the pleasure of speaking at various conferences where the likes of Francisco Mignorance (who both drafted part of the proposed legislation and now lobbies for it on behalf of the BSA), and Simon Gentry (who's C4C pretends to be on behalf of "creative people" but is actually a pure PR play) also took part.
The pro-patent lobby in Europe is very well funded, organised, and appears to control much of the legislative process itself.
For example, at the last SME roundtable discussion there were three representatives of real technology SMEs, a handful of MEP's assistants, and over 12 lobbyists, claiming to be small firms, but after the meeting, leaving together with Gentry. One of those occasions when I wish I'd had a camera phone.
I've uploaded a short statement that is aimed at MEPs and their assistants. We'll be distributing this to assistants. Anyone who wants to help (early Monday morning, Brussels) please drop me a line.
We've also made a satirical site that attacks the big business interests behind the push for software patents.
Finally, there is a demo in Strasbourg on Tuesday morning, and the FFII is organising busses from most of Europe.
If you can spare the time, put on a suit and tie and get yourself to Strasbourg for 8.00am on Tuesday.
A large and visible demo will help focus MEP's minds. They will probably vote on Wednesday and unless a near-miracle happens, by the end of the week we will be facing the US situation in Europe.
They call themselves the "SABAM" and they "represent" the music publishers. All public use of recorded music is subject to a (negotiable in the sense of "let's be reasonable about it, guvnor") fee that is calculated by square meter, number of places, etc. Normally it applies to all public events. When I asked the organiser of the open-air xmas ice-skating rink why they played such terrible 1960's jingles he just said, "sabam".
An artist who publishes his own music has to register with the SABAM or he won't find anyone to distribute or play it.
So you get insane situations like a group playing their own songs, live, who have to pay the SABAM up front for the concert, then claim the money back, minus a fee.
Or, to produce an album, you have to pay about 500 Euro up front to the SABAM, who may eventually pay this back.
And, if you make a deal with the SABAM then their cousins, the B-vergoed, come knocking, asking for due payment for "the music authors".
Little of the collected money actually goes to any artist. The big labels like PIAS get the largest chunk, the rest is lost in administration.
To be fair, the SABAM are fairly decent about it, and like all Belgian institutions, are happy to interpret the law depending on how much they think you're trying to cheat. I.e. they do not come to your wedding parties, but they will crack down on clubs that aren't paying a fee.
You have it right, I feel, especially the trap Microsoft is in,
You may have missed some aspects:
- Apple's competition with IBM over high-end servers, as a cause for the break-up between these two companies.
- HP's adoption of Linux, enabling it to compete against IBM for server sales.
For the rest, a powerful and convincing projection.
Here's mine:
S = intelligence and wit of the script
C = degree of variety and contrast of the characters
W = wise reflection on real life ironies
N = names that you remember
B = budget of producers
And the formula is:
(S + C + W + N) / B
That'll be 5c, please.
I agree with all your points except two. A. it's not a fragile equilibrium but a stablising market of interests. B. yes, there is a near-infinite number of key players, at least until every proto-nerd on the planet is wired up.
The model I described is not the only one - my signature should make that clear - but it's a significant one, in my opinion, after writing open source and thinking long and hard about all the points you raise for a decade and a half.
Open source does work. I think I know more or less why. That's my explanation. Cycnical, yes. Inaccurate? No.
I totally agree.
When I started writing free software, in the early 90's, "successful" meant many users. Our web server, Xitami, was successful in this sense. But these days, "successful" means something much more like you describe: achieving technical and functional goals without gaining so many users that the project becomes a support burden.
Xitami, for instance, became such a support burden that we had to stop the project or risk burnout of the team and the company. It's a real risk, and I tried to explain this, and how to work around it, in my text.
Basically you have to create a sound financial structure for those people who work professionally on the project.
Indeed, the product I'd consider most successful (GSL, a code generation language) - because we use it in all our work, and it's incredibly powerful - is almost completely unknown on the Internet. Success does not always mean popularity.
However: the article was intended for a specific public, a large company that is sponsoring an open source development, and for whom "success" means literally gaining as many users as possible and if possible, defining a new standard.
Here is an online version of the relevant part of the presentation:
http://imatix.net/opus/opensource.html
(Taken from a presentation I made explaining open source as a development model for large businesses)...
A common misconception about open source is that because it is "free" it is somehow a charity operation where programmers work bene-vola because they want "to contribute".
This is, however, wrong. When Adam Smith said: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest", he was accurately describing a world in which self-interest creates mutually-beneficial structures.
Open source contributors are attracted for different reasons, depending on how far they understand and identify with the technology at hand. We can identify the self-interest of each role, while seeing that the overall structure serves everyone:
* "Users" will evangelise (seeking security in the company of others using the same technology).
* "Power users" will help others who have problems (seeking the kudos that comes from helping others).
* "Pundits" will discuss the technology in public forums (seeking the fame that comes from being able to accurately identify trends and future winners).
* "Insiders" will take on parts of the testing process (seeking better familiarity with a technology that may become an important part of their skill set).
* "Players" will delve into the technology itself, taking on smaller roles in the process (seeking the kudos and fame that can come from being on a winning team).
* "Key players" will take on major roles in the project (seeking to impose their ideas, turn a small project into a major success, or otherwise earn a global reputation).
* "Patrons" will provide financial support to the project (looking to sell services, often to the users, that require the technology to succeed and be widely used).
The naive view of open source focuses only on the players, ignoring the wider economy of interests. A successful open source project must attract and support all these classes of people (and others, such as the "troll", who vocally attacks the project in public forums, thus stiffening the resolve of the users and pundits who defend it).
Thus we can understand the needs of each role:
* Users need a pleasant and impressive product so they can feel proud about showing it to others.
* Power users need forums and mailing lists where they can answer questions.
* Pundits need pre-packaged press releases, insider tips, and the occasional free lunch. Some controversy also helps.
* Insiders need regular releases, frequent improvements, and forums where they can propose ideas for the project.
* Players need extension frameworks where they can write their (often sub-standard) code without affecting the primary project.
* Key players need badges of membership, and access to the right tools and support.
* Patrons need a high-quality and stable product that supports their services and additional products.
The only people working full time, and usually professionally, on an open source project are the key players. All the others will take part in the project as a side-effect of their on-going work or hobbies.
While a traditional software company must pay everyone in this economy except the users, an open source economy must only pay the key players, who make up perhaps 2-5% of the total. Further, the key players will work for significantly less than the market rate, since they also derive a real benefit from working on successful projects, which I call the open source "payload". The most important part of a future programmer's CV is the section titled "Open Source Projects". This is the payload. It translates directly into dollars, proportional to the impact and importance of the open source projects involved.
When compensation plus payload does not cover the cost of working on a project (in terms of loss of compensation for alternative work), the key player will suffer "burnout" after 12-18 months, more or less depending on the person's tenacity.
And yet... 25 years ago, Stallman defined an thesis that today has changed the world. Free software is not an opinion, it's not an ideology. It is a reality, and it happens not because of Stallman's opinion, nor yours or mine, but because it's a natural and efficient way for programmers to collaborate.
Stallman is a visionary, and I'm not a drone for saying that. He recognised the future and put into words and the GPL is that statement.
I've spent much of my life writing free software. Why is that a joke? Is it because you are unable to understand it? Yet it makes perfect (economic) sense to me, the author, to distribute for free what I cannot sell, because it's worth much more to me alive and kicking than dead on a shelf.
Incidentally, free software is most definitely property. It's just communal property, not private property. The distinction is essential.
I was at a FFII panel presentation last week. I spoke to representatives from Alcatel and British Telecom.
Very pro-patent. They argue that patents are all that protect them from "invasion by the Chinese". I asked the woman from Alcatel whether they used Linux. Yes. In house, for much of their development. In their boxes, it's Linux everywhere.
These companies, like Nokia, are profiting from the rising sea of open source and especially Linux, which is more and more becoming an essential ingredient of their production process.
So it's normal that they want to "protect Linux" in some way. What they still have to face, and this is what I told them, is that their precious patents will cause the demise of the open source economy, including Linux, in Europe, and hasten the advance of competitors who do not have the same patent regimes.
Indeed, patents in Europe are a threat to everyone including large vendors like Nokia, and even Microsoft, but people are so panicked that they can't see straight.
Basically the software industry has been hijacked by the patent business - the EPO burocracy and patent attorneys. These people are simple parasites and if they win this battle, they will suck the life out of the software industry.
The reason many open source projects are not being attacked today is because software patents are still settling. There are some attacks but overall the goal of patent owners is to enforce their patents against smaller commercial rivals, collect larger patent portfolios, and only attack open source projects where there is direct and immediate competition.
You are entirely wrong. The language of business is strongly based on terms of war: conquest, crush the opposition, gain territory...
Patents are most definitely weapons, using the same language. Patents are used for offense and for defense and are expensive. The patent industry are arms dealers (again, using the same metaphorical language) and the sale of patents, just like the sale of arms, will enable war and violence between those who want and those who have.
Patents are weapons and unfortunately are used mainly by the strong against the weak.
And Stallman is most definitely sane, and exceptionally clear in his analysis. If you do not understand him, that's OK. It's a bit intellectual. But kindly don't insult one of the visionaries of our age... it just makes you look silly.
The theft is this: the patent officer and patent attorney collaborate to create "property", the patent, using deliberately vague legalistic language that stakes a claim to an idea or domain of work.
In theory, this domain of work is entirely new and the patent is the basis for the investment necessary to exploit it.
In practice, and especially with software patents, no domain of work is truly innovative and no idea is original: rather, we create software by incredibly many incredibly small incremental steps. All creative work in programming is the result of community effort, which is why no-one can develop software in isolation. We need to be part of a community in order to create. To pretend otherwise is to lie, thus all software patent applications start with a falsehood, "I invented this".
To aquire a claim on a domain means that all others working in this domain lose the right to the fruit of their labour. Thus, you can literally see years or decades of hard work being captured and made someone else's property. Where software patents are granted, copyrights are being annulled without due process. Expropriation.
The only route to appeal is through the courts and this is impossible for the majority of people.
If someone steals my life savings, this is theft. If someone steals my life's work, this is theft. No difference except the latter is sponsored and protected by the bureaucrats who sell the patents in the first place.
It's very analagous with the way traditional common lands have been taken from those that lived on them and granted to wealthy newcomers through the use of legal documents backed up by the power of the state.
Basically the software industry has been hijacked.
Software patents are evil. The pro-monopoly lobby is using weasel words like "technical" to hide a loophole through which one can drive freight trains. 50,000 software patents have already been granted by the EPO on this flmsy basis. If you think your softare is protected by copyright, think again - the EPO, backed by legalistic mumbo-jumbo like "technical" has sold your work under the counter to a patent attorney.
Software patents are theft. No two ways about it. Patenting ideas and literary expressions is theft. Expropriation. Corruption.
The lady, and she knows who she is, who invented this particular weasel word will go down in history as a villain.
The commoditisation of software that open source represents is a rising tide. There are two ways to handle a rising tide: float or sink.
Siebel, like many big software firms, are unable to float. They don't use open source for their processes, so don't benefit from it. They are stuck in a niche, so are basically anchored to the sea floor while the water rises around them. Their customers have the choice of remaining anchored with them, and drowing as well, or cutting free and floating.
It's a bit sad if you're in the position of the drowing man. But it's been the same in Big Auto, Big Steel, Big Textile, Big Science, Big Pharma, Big Business... competition is a tough game.
The smart money is on those firms that learn to float. IBM, CA, Novell, Apple. Maybe Sun and SAP. Apparently not Siebel, definitely not Microsoft.
Ubuntu does "get" it, yes, but Xandros has been doing this for two years or so. Exactly as you describe: trivial install, one tool for each job, and all nicely integrated in a file manager that lets you access network resources and devices seamlessly.
Ubuntu has the main advantage of being entirely free which makes it the "here's Linux, now go off and don't bother me again" choice. Xandros sell their product but I've no objection to that. It's certainly worth the $50 or so.
Hmmm, perhaps you have an issue with Xandros selling their package, but it's not crap.
I've used Xandros since version 1 and it runs most of the Linux workstations in our company. It is easy to install, complete, and elegant. Basically it's a Debian distribution with Xandros' custom file manager, which provides very nice integration with the network and devices.
Linspire... I tried it and it was too garish. But it worked well.
Gratuitous insults are not useful nor "insightful". If you have criticisms it's more useful to state what you actually base them on.
What he describes are a series of as many as five "wget" commands along with the Slahdot effect. Wget is a standard Linux tool for downloading a web site. It is hardly a standard or even potent DDoS tool... more likely it is either a regular "web leech" copying the entire site for off-line review...
I've seen real organised DDoS attacks and comparing this to one of those is just a sick joke.
Allow me to quote you some of the pertinent statements from Suering's page:
"it certainly doesn't appear that logical steps were taken to mitigate the attacks."
"the total of five lines of logs that I received"
"...the biggest cyber attack in history any media company was ever subject to!"
Oh, and posting as AC is pretty sad. ... :-) He says, clicking on "Post Anonymously" by accident. ROTFL.
You are suggesting that because (e.g.) the stream must be secured, that the user interface cannot be improved upon, translated, whatever?
The two issues can be separated, more or less easily. A secure application can run on top of an open platform, and vice-versa. It requires a clean API, documentation and run time binding (rather than build-time binding). All perfectly feasible. This is why, for instance, I can run Linux on proprietary hardware, something we all take for granted, but which is fundamentally exactly the same issue.
Further, a clean separation between the two makes GPL compliance easy while still encouraging people to play with and improve the open layers.