I worked a summer working nightshirt at a factory, grinding electrical enclosures. I was standing right next to a group of guys, but with the noise, you can't hear anyone. During the day, I was home when everyone else was at work. It was a lonely time, but the technology had nothing to do with it.
I was one of those sending e-mail to my teammate in the next cube. I would still do it. It documents the discussion.
What I wish I read and have not, is that workers need to get over the idea that work life is social life. What happens when the job is over? People need a varied social life to be mentally healthy.
I may sound like I'm contradicting my self, but I'm not. Making regular eye to eye contact does help social relationships. I worked in a team that wrote custom software for the overseas offices. My relations with one engineer were a little stressed. I worked in his office for a bit, and it did help.
So use the technology. If things get stressed, get together. And make friends outside work.
This attitude is a dead end. I compare what is happening to Linux distributions to what happened to Personal computer in the 80's. There were advocates for several platform, (my closet computer is Atari Falcon), but over time they all moved on. Why?
Being involved with computers is only interesting contributes to something that grows. A growing user base is the sign that you got it right. It's like the audience of a standup comic. When the average guy leaves for something else, your project has truly died.
Debian does not have to die. It just needs to reorient it's self. It needs to become the best at listening, and making everyone a contributer in some way.
What I'm not hearing is some commonly held principles of what is misuse of e-mail and what measures are permitted or required to respond to such abuse.
I wish that all e-mail readers had a "Reject" button. That each ISP passed the reject statistics up the pipeline. If rejection statistics that show they are the source, the ISP should respond on by shutting down the perpetrators. Within minutes not years. That ISP provided e-mail catalogs so that legitimate businesses had a legitimate way to reach new customers.
This is so weird. Last night I checked out Lifestreams by David Gelernter. This is it! They may not be using his OS, but it is the same idea.
The best write up that I found on Lifestreams was an old Wired story. After a few pages his points started making sense. To make it work, you would need to draw a line between your public and private life. No one really wants a complete record of their private life, agreed? But having an accurate record of your public life, contracts, and work submitted in a form that all parties and an arbitrator could recognize and trust would be useful.
Similarly, this makes sense for chronicling projects, particularly highly sensitive projects. Do must of your work informally. Then, when you know what you're doing, go into record mode and do the job for real and for posterity.
I didn't get mugged at the St. Paddy's day parade yesterday. I'm not a big intimidating guy, so it wasn't out of fear. The only way I can understand it is that people generally respect my right to walk the public streets without taking advantage of me.
I wrote a shareware program. It's still available. As far as I know no one knows about it, has any need for it, or can't afford to pay for it.
I'm not bent out of shape about the state of affairs. What Does bug me is the volume of posts here to the effect that people have a right to take advantage of me.
It seems to me that you guys are throwing a lot of different types of programs in the same pot when you say shareware. For quick single function utilities that you could do just as well your self - write you're own. If it's bad software. Don't use it. If it is worth keeping an icon on your desktop - then it deserves the name shareware.
My opinion is that shareware is like freeware but with some self respect. Share ware is like commercial software, but magnanimous.
If you believe some shareware should be open source, why not send the owner an e-mail. State why you want/need a different terms.
In any case, don't encourage with you're posts that shareware authors deserve to be taken advantage of. You don't expect that on a public street. You should not expect it on the net.
Some posters are suggesting we need something closer to a disciplined corporate structure. All the corporate structure in the world is not going to help without a clear sense of what will make the end users life better. OpenSource needs to change its focus from pleasing the coder to pleasing the end user.
That type of change may not be as drastic as you think. Linux, I believe, was made by people who wanted the respect of their peers. The project was an operating system. The programmer was the customer. Now our customers are ordinary people. That doesn't make their respect less worth earning.
What we do need to do is talk too ordinary people. We need to convince them we are here to take the thorn from the paw. Listen to people. We have many more ears then MS. Then make software that makes peoples lives better.
I think your goal is laudable, but you're ignoring the real question - who should pay the development cost of these standards? Since it is so easy to copy each others work, maybe some involvement by industry associations and universities is needed.
Lawyers have to do some pro bono work to stay in their professional association. Could industry associations make the same requirement? To stay in the association, you must contribute to the standards effort or compensate those who do.
Why not make a business school project to gather DTD? Make the donations cost tax deductible?
Slashdot Mirror
If I had mod points I would mode this up.
I worked a summer working nightshirt at a factory, grinding electrical enclosures. I was standing right next to a group of guys, but with the noise, you can't hear anyone. During the day, I was home when everyone else was at work. It was a lonely time, but the technology had nothing to do with it.
I was one of those sending e-mail to my teammate in the next cube. I would still do it. It documents the discussion.
What I wish I read and have not, is that workers need to get over the idea that work life is social life. What happens when the job is over? People need a varied social life to be mentally healthy.
I may sound like I'm contradicting my self, but I'm not. Making regular eye to eye contact does help social relationships. I worked in a team that wrote custom software for the overseas offices. My relations with one engineer were a little stressed. I worked in his office for a bit, and it did help.
So use the technology. If things get stressed, get together. And make friends outside work.
This attitude is a dead end. I compare what is happening to Linux distributions to what happened to Personal computer in the 80's. There were advocates for several platform, (my closet computer is Atari Falcon), but over time they all moved on. Why?
Being involved with computers is only interesting contributes to something that grows. A growing user base is the sign that you got it right. It's like the audience of a standup comic. When the average guy leaves for something else, your project has truly died.
Debian does not have to die. It just needs to reorient it's self. It needs to become the best at listening, and making everyone a contributer in some way.
What I'm not hearing is some commonly held principles of what is misuse of e-mail and what measures are permitted or required to respond to such abuse.
I wish that all e-mail readers had a "Reject" button.
That each ISP passed the reject statistics up the pipeline.
If rejection statistics that show they are the source, the ISP should respond on by shutting down the perpetrators. Within minutes not years.
That ISP provided e-mail catalogs so that legitimate businesses had a legitimate way to reach new customers.
This is so weird. Last night I checked out Lifestreams by David Gelernter. This is it! They may not be using his OS, but it is the same idea.
The best write up that I found on Lifestreams was an old Wired story. After a few pages his points started making sense. To make it work, you would need to draw a line between your public and private life. No one really wants a complete record of their private life, agreed? But having an accurate record of your public life, contracts, and work submitted in a form that all parties and an arbitrator could recognize and trust would be useful.
Similarly, this makes sense for chronicling projects, particularly highly sensitive projects. Do must of your work informally. Then, when you know what you're doing, go into record mode and do the job for real and for posterity.
I didn't get mugged at the St. Paddy's day parade yesterday. I'm not a big intimidating guy, so it wasn't out of fear. The only way I can understand it is that people generally respect my right to walk the public streets without taking advantage of me.
I wrote a shareware program. It's still available. As far as I know no one knows about it, has any need for it, or can't afford to pay for it.
I'm not bent out of shape about the state of affairs. What Does bug me is the volume of posts here to the effect that people have a right to take advantage of me.
It seems to me that you guys are throwing a lot of different types of programs in the same pot when you say shareware. For quick single function utilities that you could do just as well your self - write you're own. If it's bad software. Don't use it. If it is worth keeping an icon on your desktop - then it deserves the name shareware.
My opinion is that shareware is like freeware but with some self respect. Share ware is like commercial software, but magnanimous.
If you believe some shareware should be open source, why not send the owner an e-mail. State why you want/need a different terms.
In any case, don't encourage with you're posts that shareware authors deserve to be taken advantage of. You don't expect that on a public street. You should not expect it on the net.
Some posters are suggesting we need something closer to a disciplined corporate structure. All the corporate structure in the world is not going to help without a clear sense of what will make the end users life better. OpenSource needs to change its focus from pleasing the coder to pleasing the end user. That type of change may not be as drastic as you think. Linux, I believe, was made by people who wanted the respect of their peers. The project was an operating system. The programmer was the customer. Now our customers are ordinary people. That doesn't make their respect less worth earning. What we do need to do is talk too ordinary people. We need to convince them we are here to take the thorn from the paw. Listen to people. We have many more ears then MS. Then make software that makes peoples lives better.
I think your goal is laudable, but you're ignoring the real question - who should pay the development cost of these standards? Since it is so easy to copy each others work, maybe some involvement by industry associations and universities is needed.
Lawyers have to do some pro bono work to stay in their professional association. Could industry associations make the same requirement? To stay in the association, you must contribute to the standards effort or compensate those who do.
Why not make a business school project to gather DTD? Make the donations cost tax deductible?