The thing is, the way record contracts are made, they're basically saying that you are an employee, when you're in actuality just a self-employed person selling made-to-order music to them.
The way things are currently laid out, it would be like saying I'm employing McDonalds because I bought a cheeseburger.
If there's any case that is heavily weighted on our side, it's this one.
What would you prefer, that the GPL remain in legal limbo while people keep testing the edges without drawing enough attention to bring it to a full-on legal battle? At least we'll know one way or the other whether it's enforcable. Beats finding out 5 years from now when there's more open-source software out there.
Mobster: Gee, I wouldn't want anything to happen to your Linux server, would you? (waves his club near the rack) Customer: I swear, Tony, I'll get you the money! Don't sue me!
Of course, if you've ever had a pilonidal cyst you wouldn't think of it so lightly...
I mean, sure, he should have been conscriptable a month later (he's no less of a draft-dodger;), but that does not lessen the fact that it's not quite so simple as you point it out.
OpenDarwin has announced the availability of version 6.6.1 for PowerPC and x86 (http://www.opendarwin.org/en/news.php#26). You can order a CD-R disc from us for $15 plus shipping from our site at:
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/order.shtml
(and so on)
Almost the same as the original announcement, only this time it doesn't imply that it's your announcement, and not OpenDarwin's, and it doesn't imply that buying a CD is somehow the only way to get it.
Or you can do nothing, your job isn't to satisfy me unless you feel there is something to change. I'm just giving my $0.02. No matter what good or ill your project does, it's losing a lot of karma with plenty of people in the way it presents itself. There's no one thing to point to and say "this is wrong!" But the overall impression I get is one of shutting yourself off from the rest of the community, while continuing to take advantage of what it offers.
Giving credit on "hey, we have a port for xroach" is a bit different than "we have a new Darwin release available".
And like I said before, nothing that was done was "wrong", it just seems like there is often a deliberate attempt to blur the line between the things you've actually contributed and the things you get from others.
I know GNU-Darwin developers have contributed Darwin code and such; I'm not saying you haven't accomplished anything. I am saying that it seems like GNU-Darwin likes to put everything it associates itself with in an umbrella of re-branding that makes it unclear what belongs to who, to the detriment of those who actually did it. A generic link on the front web page is a step in the right direction, but isn't really an acknowlegement.
As with most things GNU-Darwin, it's not the action that gives me pause, it's the intent.
There's nothing wrong with providing CDs, but you're charging $15 plus shipping to send a burned CD to someone, and despite mentioning "OpenDarwin", implying that it's GNU-Darwin's release, and not the hard work of OpenDarwin. One of the best things about the open-source community is the community, and the fact that there tends to at least be a little bit of courtesy when using someone else's code, even if it's not legally required of you. Whenever GNU-Darwin makes an announcement, it always seems as if that courtesy (at least mentioning the shoulders you stand on) is skipped.
I know that if I spent a week putting together a release and then 8 hours later saw someone selling it without even a thank you, I'd be peeved.
GNU-Darwin just happens to be the best-selling UNIX on the market today mostly because of the Mac OS X GUI layer running on top of it.
No matter how much the GNU-Darwin people want you to think otherwise, Apple (more specifically OpenDarwin and people in the BSD group at Apple) are the ones doing all the work on Darwin.
Yup, although there are also companies like where I work. It was formed about 3 years ago (right as the dot-com bubble was heading to the peak) but we actually had a business plan. We didn't do crazy things, and we're now working our asses off towards profitability. Whether or not we make it is up to us, but at least we didn't jump in with bad expectations, and we're in a position where we can actually make it happen.
Our first CEO has now passed off control to one with more experience growing small companies to medium-sized businesses, and gone on to start another business.
Now he's doing exactly what you're talking about, starting with just a few people, putting together a service people will actually use, and handling funding himself. The goal is to start off with something immediately (albeit marginally) profitable, and then talk with venture capitalists when it's time to grow the business.
It's certainly a lot saner than "here's a huge wad of cash, start a company!"
Seems to me that this method is different in that the storage has it's own memory, so you wouldn't be maxing out bandwidth on the memory being used for the rest of the system. Otherwise your programs would be half as slow at accessing memory, and the other half of that bandwidth would be taken by accessing storage (obviously depending on the app).
I'm really hoping Advanced Tracker takes off, he's got a great design but nothing much yet, code-wise.
I've also been working off and on on getting CheeseTracker going on MacOSX, but it's got a lot of weird GTK issues. Reduz is working on porting it to Qt right now, though, so maybe it'll be a possibility in the future.
All I know is, there's crap for trackers on OSX (and Linux for that matter) now. Here's to finding something that works, dammit!:)
So what you're saying is, "I built/bought a house in an area that is clearly behind the technology curve infrastructure-wise, but I want it I want it I want it, and I'm not willing to pay extra even though it costs X times as much to bring it to my area."
Sure, I bet many people think it would be nice to have things up-to-date in rural areas, but guess what: it won't ever happen that way. That's one of the things you signed on for when you decided to live away from a population center.
InSoc broke up shortly after I saw them in St. Louis (with Anything box and Tea42 opening -- it was actually InSoc's last show ever, I later found out).
I'm not sure about them signing AB, but the tour definitely helped them. I'd actually found them by accident (one of those "let's try this $1 tape" kind of things); I was totally stoked that they were opening for them.
I've seen good arguments from both sides, but the thing that annoys me most is there have been a number of allusions to "anyone can contribute!" by the X core team, but that's BS. I can't help but think of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when they're told they should have known their planet was being destroyed, the plans were locked in a basement only a few parsecs away...
The truth is, the XFree86 web page very heavily implies that they don't welcome any outside help. Up until this new mailing list was created, the closest thing to a public technical list was a newbies list. There's no suitable place for non-core members to discuss code, there's no place on the web site saying "here is how you submit code for inclusion in XFree86".
Sure they're not out-and-out saying "we don't want your code", but they did everything they could short of it. The entirety of their patch submission policy is "send an e-mail to fixes@xfree86.org".
It's fine and dandy if they don't want to be a community-run system, but they shouldn't pretend they are when they're basically ignoring the tools that make community participation viable.
...It's kind of a running gag, we write embedded stuff so people don't really see them.
I wrote the backup/restore code, after calling backup "backup", I decided restore would be called "unbackup". =)
We've also got "spank" (it restarts everything, someone off-the-cuff had mentioned spanking the appliance after it was behaving badly).
I've also got a wrapper for forking processes in a way that matches up with the rest of our startup called "forkme".
Hrm, what else. Oh, yeah, one to remove everything in the database "smokingHole". And to get a list of understood SNMP traps, you would run the "trap-yanker".
By the time it gets it gets to being queued, it's already been accepted by the MTA, which means it would only delay *local* delivery. The goal of this software is to do it while their sending data to you. If you do it with the qfilter, by the time it's getting filtered, it's too late.
There is a working package -- the problem is not with perl itself, but what our upgrade path will be for all of the binary perl modules Fink handles. Making a perl package is the easy part. =)
It looks like one of the core Fink maintainers is working on a 5.6.1 package for now (that will at least be easier, procedure-wise, since it's binary-compatible with 5.6.0) as a stop-gap that will let us transition easier, and give people a considerably less buggy perl than we've got now. Long term it's still undecided how we'll handle it. Hopefully Apple will maybe put out 5.8 with 10.3 or something, and then it will just be a regular part of the 10.3 transition Fink will invariably have to go through.
There's been some unofficial discussion among Darwin folks about waiting for 5.8.1 and then looking into a new perl release, but I don't know how that will get affected by other deadlines and such (or if the people I talked to are even the decision-makers on the issue, for that matter).
Actually that is not the reason perl isn't in Fink, it's because we haven't found a good way to provide it without screwing things up for people that have already built modules against 5.6.
A couple of people have proposed solutions, but no one has yet had enough time or inclination to come up with a solution that has a halfway feasible upgrade path.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is, the way record contracts are made, they're basically saying that you are an employee, when you're in actuality just a self-employed person selling made-to-order music to them.
The way things are currently laid out, it would be like saying I'm employing McDonalds because I bought a cheeseburger.
Depends on what you mean by "native". KDE is already working with X11 on OSX.
We're still working on making it build with Qt/Mac.
How does this stop you from having metadata describing it's place in a hierarchy?
This gives the ability to treat the data as a superset of a hierarchical layout, not in lieu of.
If there's any case that is heavily weighted on our side, it's this one.
What would you prefer, that the GPL remain in legal limbo while people keep testing the edges without drawing enough attention to bring it to a full-on legal battle? At least we'll know one way or the other whether it's enforcable. Beats finding out 5 years from now when there's more open-source software out there.
yes it is... it's on the FTP site (qt-mac-free-3.2.0.sit)
...the "SCO protection racket."
Doesn't this sound exactly like a mob racket?
Mobster: Gee, I wouldn't want anything to happen to your Linux server, would you? (waves his club near the rack)
Customer: I swear, Tony, I'll get you the money! Don't sue me!
Of course, if you've ever had a pilonidal cyst you wouldn't think of it so lightly...
I mean, sure, he should have been conscriptable a month later (he's no less of a draft-dodger ;), but that does not lessen the fact that it's not quite so simple as you point it out.
What I am saying is pretty straightforward:
Almost the same as the original announcement, only this time it doesn't imply that it's your announcement, and not OpenDarwin's, and it doesn't imply that buying a CD is somehow the only way to get it.
Or you can do nothing, your job isn't to satisfy me unless you feel there is something to change. I'm just giving my $0.02. No matter what good or ill your project does, it's losing a lot of karma with plenty of people in the way it presents itself. There's no one thing to point to and say "this is wrong!" But the overall impression I get is one of shutting yourself off from the rest of the community, while continuing to take advantage of what it offers.
Giving credit on "hey, we have a port for xroach" is a bit different than "we have a new Darwin release available".
And like I said before, nothing that was done was "wrong", it just seems like there is often a deliberate attempt to blur the line between the things you've actually contributed and the things you get from others.
I know GNU-Darwin developers have contributed Darwin code and such; I'm not saying you haven't accomplished anything. I am saying that it seems like GNU-Darwin likes to put everything it associates itself with in an umbrella of re-branding that makes it unclear what belongs to who, to the detriment of those who actually did it. A generic link on the front web page is a step in the right direction, but isn't really an acknowlegement.
As with most things GNU-Darwin, it's not the action that gives me pause, it's the intent.
There's nothing wrong with providing CDs, but you're charging $15 plus shipping to send a burned CD to someone, and despite mentioning "OpenDarwin", implying that it's GNU-Darwin's release, and not the hard work of OpenDarwin. One of the best things about the open-source community is the community, and the fact that there tends to at least be a little bit of courtesy when using someone else's code, even if it's not legally required of you. Whenever GNU-Darwin makes an announcement, it always seems as if that courtesy (at least mentioning the shoulders you stand on) is skipped.
I know that if I spent a week putting together a release and then 8 hours later saw someone selling it without even a thank you, I'd be peeved.
GNU-Darwin just happens to be the best-selling UNIX on the market today mostly because of the Mac OS X GUI layer running on top of it.
No matter how much the GNU-Darwin people want you to think otherwise, Apple (more specifically OpenDarwin and people in the BSD group at Apple) are the ones doing all the work on Darwin.
It's amazing Shantonu even bothers making the OpenDarwin distribution anymore when the GNU-Darwin folks immediately start reselling it at a $15 premium (check the timestamps on those e-mails...).
Yup, although there are also companies like where I work. It was formed about 3 years ago (right as the dot-com bubble was heading to the peak) but we actually had a business plan. We didn't do crazy things, and we're now working our asses off towards profitability. Whether or not we make it is up to us, but at least we didn't jump in with bad expectations, and we're in a position where we can actually make it happen.
Our first CEO has now passed off control to one with more experience growing small companies to medium-sized businesses, and gone on to start another business.
Now he's doing exactly what you're talking about, starting with just a few people, putting together a service people will actually use, and handling funding himself. The goal is to start off with something immediately (albeit marginally) profitable, and then talk with venture capitalists when it's time to grow the business.
It's certainly a lot saner than "here's a huge wad of cash, start a company!"
Seems to me that this method is different in that the storage has it's own memory, so you wouldn't be maxing out bandwidth on the memory being used for the rest of the system. Otherwise your programs would be half as slow at accessing memory, and the other half of that bandwidth would be taken by accessing storage (obviously depending on the app).
But it fits into my code bounty. :)
I'm really hoping Advanced Tracker takes off, he's got a great design but nothing much yet, code-wise.
I've also been working off and on on getting CheeseTracker going on MacOSX, but it's got a lot of weird GTK issues. Reduz is working on porting it to Qt right now, though, so maybe it'll be a possibility in the future.
All I know is, there's crap for trackers on OSX (and Linux for that matter) now. Here's to finding something that works, dammit! :)
So what you're saying is, "I built/bought a house in an area that is clearly behind the technology curve infrastructure-wise, but I want it I want it I want it, and I'm not willing to pay extra even though it costs X times as much to bring it to my area."
Sure, I bet many people think it would be nice to have things up-to-date in rural areas, but guess what: it won't ever happen that way. That's one of the things you signed on for when you decided to live away from a population center.
You forgot:
"You can't fight in here! This is the WAR room!"
InSoc broke up shortly after I saw them in St. Louis (with Anything box and Tea42 opening -- it was actually InSoc's last show ever, I later found out).
I'm not sure about them signing AB, but the tour definitely helped them. I'd actually found them by accident (one of those "let's try this $1 tape" kind of things); I was totally stoked that they were opening for them.
...that JKH is working on an UltraSparc port.
Sparclar is coming!
I've seen good arguments from both sides, but the thing that annoys me most is there have been a number of allusions to "anyone can contribute!" by the X core team, but that's BS. I can't help but think of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when they're told they should have known their planet was being destroyed, the plans were locked in a basement only a few parsecs away...
The truth is, the XFree86 web page very heavily implies that they don't welcome any outside help. Up until this new mailing list was created, the closest thing to a public technical list was a newbies list. There's no suitable place for non-core members to discuss code, there's no place on the web site saying "here is how you submit code for inclusion in XFree86".
Sure they're not out-and-out saying "we don't want your code", but they did everything they could short of it. The entirety of their patch submission policy is "send an e-mail to fixes@xfree86.org".
It's fine and dandy if they don't want to be a community-run system, but they shouldn't pretend they are when they're basically ignoring the tools that make community participation viable.
Me: "Now there's just this one drawback..."
What, can't find it? =)
...It's kind of a running gag, we write embedded stuff so people don't really see them.
I wrote the backup/restore code, after calling backup "backup", I decided restore would be called "unbackup". =)
We've also got "spank" (it restarts everything, someone off-the-cuff had mentioned spanking the appliance after it was behaving badly).
I've also got a wrapper for forking processes in a way that matches up with the rest of our startup called "forkme".
Hrm, what else. Oh, yeah, one to remove everything in the database "smokingHole". And to get a list of understood SNMP traps, you would run the "trap-yanker".
By the time it gets it gets to being queued, it's already been accepted by the MTA, which means it would only delay *local* delivery. The goal of this software is to do it while their sending data to you. If you do it with the qfilter, by the time it's getting filtered, it's too late.
There is a working package -- the problem is not with perl itself, but what our upgrade path will be for all of the binary perl modules Fink handles. Making a perl package is the easy part. =)
It looks like one of the core Fink maintainers is working on a 5.6.1 package for now (that will at least be easier, procedure-wise, since it's binary-compatible with 5.6.0) as a stop-gap that will let us transition easier, and give people a considerably less buggy perl than we've got now. Long term it's still undecided how we'll handle it. Hopefully Apple will maybe put out 5.8 with 10.3 or something, and then it will just be a regular part of the 10.3 transition Fink will invariably have to go through.
There's been some unofficial discussion among Darwin folks about waiting for 5.8.1 and then looking into a new perl release, but I don't know how that will get affected by other deadlines and such (or if the people I talked to are even the decision-makers on the issue, for that matter).
[crosses fingers]
Actually that is not the reason perl isn't in Fink, it's because we haven't found a good way to provide it without screwing things up for people that have already built modules against 5.6.
A couple of people have proposed solutions, but no one has yet had enough time or inclination to come up with a solution that has a halfway feasible upgrade path.
It is true that perl is not yet in Fink, however.
...it's time to allow women to vote!
Seriously, while it's good they're finally doing it, why weren't they doing it years ago?