Please don't make the mistake of comparing Ruby to Rails. Ruby is a language, Rails is a framework implemented in that language. Also, Ruby is not "new" (it's older than Java), but it is fun. Your implication that that makes it unsuitable for "large-scale" or "high-traffic" sites is, however, completely specious.
I couldn't conceivably take the "Ivy-Leaguer" comment personally. I have difficulty even seeing how you might have inferred that from my reply, but that's probably my shortcoming.
I have no interest whatsoever in dissuading you or anyone else from continuing to do what works. I meant only to suggest that parts of the methodology you champion don't work for everyone, and dismissing new ideas about how it may be done as the product of failed "doers" and pseudo-visionaries is irrational and counter-productive. There are certainly best practices which should be kept and even expounded upon (eg., design, unit testing, document everything, etc.), but that's exactly what Software Craftsmanship does. In no way does McBreen suggest that testing, design, and documentation be eliminated. In fact, your criticism seems a bit more like general frustration with the field than anything to do with the book being reviewed.
Software Craftsmanship, as I understand it, is mostly just a reaction to the mistaken idea that programmers are interchangeable cogs in a code-churning machine, and that a project's success is a function of how many warm bodies you have rather than the qualifications of the team members. It's focus is on the "quantifiable" part of the software engineering definition, and not so much the "systematic" or "disciplined" part.
We've already figured out how to manage software projects. We've understood what works and what doesn't for at least a couple of decades. The field is fairly well researched, so there is plenty of material available about software engineering, and all you have to do is go look it up. There's NO NEED to keep trying to change the process.
Yeah! We've got this locomotion problem licked! Fie on you and your talk of this fancy "internal combustion engine"! Who needs it when we've got perfectly good steam engines?!
Seriously -- what planet have you been working on, and: what's their immigration policy? I've been "working full time as a programmer" since 1993, and I've yet to see an environment in which the project management was "figured out". It's more my experience that every project starts out well, but more or less rapidly degrades into a Death March, and it's almost never because of "an aggressive little ivy-league grad that wants to make a name for himself". It's usually because people get set in their ways and stop learning, questioning, and trying to better themselves and their code.
The Project History and Credits section of the OpenSSH website would seem to refute your assertion:
OpenSSH is a derivative of the original free ssh 1.2.12 release from Tatu Ylönen. This version was the last one which was free enough for reuse by our project. Parts of OpenSSH still bear Tatu's license which was contained in that release. This version, and earlier ones, used mathematical functions from the libgmp library. That library was also included with these early ssh versions. The libgmp library is made available under the (LGPL) Lesser GNU Public Licence, although versions of that era were under the regular (GPL) GNU Public Licence.
Rapidly after the 1.2.12 release, newer versions bore successively more restrictive licenses, even though libgmp was still included and neccesary for using the software. Earlier restrictive licenses forbade people from making a Windows or DOS version. Later licenses restricted the use of ssh in a commercial environment, instead requiring companies to buy an expensive version from Datafellows.
The original license contained the following text:
As far as I am concerned, the code I have written for this software can be used freely for any purpose. Any derived versions of this software must be clearly marked as such, and if the derived work is incompatible with the protocol description in the RFC file, it must be called by a name other than "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
While I can't personally vouch for the veracity of the OpenSSH history, it and the original license not only seem to directly contradict your assertion that "you couldn't use it for commercial purposes", but also seems to imply that if a derived version of the original is compatible with the protocol description, then he has no problem with someone referring to it as "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
Also, The SSH transport and user authentication protocols have been submitted to the IETF by Ylönen himself, which I believe qualifies as "submit[ting] as an open standard". As a matter of fact, it's currently the main focus of the Secure Shell (secsh) IETF working group.
All in all, this parallels the "one click" scenario pretty closely, with the difference being that SSH was far more novel and complex an idea than "one click" shopping. If Mr Ylönen had released it as a commercial product, or even just released it under a more restrictive license, there would be no debate. As it stands, though, it reeks of dodgy business practices brought on by stockholder pressure and OpenSSH's success.
Abused the Initial Application part of the patent process to retroactively obtain patents on as-yet-undeveloped industry standards.
Flagrantly disregarded the patent disclosure statutes of JEDEC in order to gain an unfair advantage over the other members.
While these actions by themselves aren't examples of "using the courts" directly, using their bogus patents to extract licensing fees from technology they didn't invent seems pretty much like "beat[ing] them in the courtroom" to me.
This, unfortunately, is a case of confusing a legal issue with a moral one, however. It's fairly easy to observe that immoral actions aren't always illegal, and that moral ones sometimes go against the law.
Yes... but free speech is not an international convention. It's a right guaranteed under the US Constitution, and I imagine some other countries have similar rights for their citizens, but the 'I' in IOC stands for 'International', meaning that the US Constitution (and the others) don't apply.
You're fundamentally misunderstanding what a "gift culture" is. A gift culture is not one in which I am obligated to reciprocate any gift you give me -- that's an exchange culture. A gift culture (at least as Homesteading the Noosphere defines it) is one in which social status is determined by what you give away.
Your post indicates a misunderstanding of Open Source, as well. The cool thing about it is not its commerical potential -- it's the community which springs up to support and improve it. Because of this, the only way to truely "backstab" the Open Source world would be to refuse to participate in it to the extent your skills allow you to.
There are also plenty of examples of Open Source authors who have no trouble providing for themselves and their families. Software needs to be written whether it is bought or not, and there will (hopefully) always be people who will pay to have it written.
I suspect when you say "don't bother defending it with...", you really mean "I don't have a counter-argument for...".
I, and I suspect all but the most rabid "/.ers" have absolutely no problem with Metallica defending their copyright against their fans; they may be being a bit short-sighted, but they're completely within their rights. They, however, are not a corporation with a bevy of lawyers and billions of dollars to spend.
Corporations, on the other hand, have far greater access to litigious, economic, and legislative power than any one citizen on her own, and so should not be accorded the same protections as she is. Copyright laws exist to promote sharing of information, not to encourage corporate hegemonies that exist by stifling progress and litigating everyone with a competitive idea into bankruptcy.
Most of the arguments (the well-informed ones, at least) I've heard against IP here have railed against the misuse of copyright, not copyright itself. The RIAA's and MPAA's complaints are thinly-veiled reactions to the loss of control, cloaked in "we're for the artist" rhetoric, and nothing more. If they were truely concerned about how the "artist" is being treated, they'd have been among the first people to embrace a technology that is capable of expanding their market and enabling more people to access their work. As it is, the new technologies represent a loss of control to them, so naturally they trot out copyright as a trojan horse for their own agenda, and it's that hypocrisy that people object to.
Well, you could also use CGI::Debug, which will solve most problems you'll encounter. Or, if you can't install it for some reason, put this at the top of your file:
$SIG{__WARN__} = sub { print STDOUT "<!-- @_ -->\n" };
This will cause all warnings emitted (ie., what -w turns on) to be injected into STDOUT as HTML comments. This will not help if you get warnings before you print the HTTP header, but it works for most runtime stuff.
It's entirely possible that my experience is different than anyone else's, but I have nothing but good things to say about my ThinkPad 390E, which has run only Linux since the first day I got it.
I don't have the sound problems you describe -- a simple rmmod and insmod after resume fixes sound for me. I am running the commercial OSS Solo driver, so maybe that's the difference, but it works like a charm.
I also haven't had any problems with APM. All events work, and scripts run fine. Network card and all other devices continue to perform as expected after APM resume.
The WinModem is annoying, but that's probably my only gripe. My ThinkPad has travelled with me everywhere, and aside from needing a new keyboard after a mishap with spilled liquid, it has been operational 24/7 for me. It continues to be a great little machine today.
I bought mine, and would definitely consider buying another one. I'm not embarrassed at all. I consider it to have been a very solid investment.
There is a critical difference that must be acknowledged when comparing Windows and Linux, however: the fact that Linux is yours. Many people get lost in the 'costless' part of the free software equation, and miss entirely the 'unencumbered' part. It's free because no one person can tell how you can or can't use it.
It's yours to do with as you please, provided you aren't restricting someone else's use of it, which doesn't preclude hacking it to do what you want (and in your case, to not do what you don't want). Linux is really a concept, a core of functionality around which revolves an increasing bulk of other stuff which really isn't Linux itself, but a reflection of how people use Linux. StarOffice isn't Linux. Emacs isn't Linux. Hell, even the GNU tools aren't Linux, though one would be hard-pressed to separate the two.
My point is: if Windows has bloat, you just have to suck it up, 'cause only Microsoft can change what 'Windows' is. If you think Linux has bloat, there's nothing stopping you from whittling off the cruft yourself. Hell, there'll probably be people that'll agree with you on the bloat issue, and help you with the whittling.
I currently maintain a project which has about 30k lines of perl code, all of which has been developed with very strict coding guidelines by professional (ie., not the 'Perl for Dummies' readers) programmers, and because of my experiences with this project and many others, I have to object to your characterization of Perl.
Perl is a tool, like any other, and can be misused like any other. Professional programming is an art, not an assembly line job, and some artists are more passionate about the artistry of their creations than others. Your suggestion that no one should use Perl just because some people create heinous Perl code is tantamount to suggesting that no one should paint pictures anymore just because your third grade cousin turns out finger paintings of "Mommy and Daddy" that look more like Roschach tests than human figures. If you don't like Perl, there is, of course, no one holding a gun to your head, and you're free to choose another language. I suspect you will find that the same principles apply to those languages, too.
If you really wish to understand Perl, and want to learn to use it professionally, I'd suggest that you look for examples outside of the crap you have apparently had dumped in your lap. Like with any language, there is much reward to be gained by transcending that first 'scripting' stage of Perl; rewards which are only accessable to those with more than a passing interest in it.
Oh. One more thing:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict;
Anyone that writes Perl code that will have to be maintained should have those two lines (or their analog) somewhere in their file. They will eliminate about 90% of your maintainability problems.
I was at the MySQL: A faster database engine presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Monterey just a few days ago, and the developers announced that they were indeed releasing 3.20 under the GPL The newer versions remain under their usual (free unless you are selling it) license.
To the extent that they said it themselves, it's a sure thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Please don't make the mistake of comparing Ruby to Rails. Ruby is a language, Rails is a framework implemented in that language. Also, Ruby is not "new" (it's older than Java), but it is fun. Your implication that that makes it unsuitable for "large-scale" or "high-traffic" sites is, however, completely specious.
I couldn't conceivably take the "Ivy-Leaguer" comment personally. I have difficulty even seeing how you might have inferred that from my reply, but that's probably my shortcoming.
I have no interest whatsoever in dissuading you or anyone else from continuing to do what works. I meant only to suggest that parts of the methodology you champion don't work for everyone, and dismissing new ideas about how it may be done as the product of failed "doers" and pseudo-visionaries is irrational and counter-productive. There are certainly best practices which should be kept and even expounded upon (eg., design, unit testing, document everything, etc.), but that's exactly what Software Craftsmanship does. In no way does McBreen suggest that testing, design, and documentation be eliminated. In fact, your criticism seems a bit more like general frustration with the field than anything to do with the book being reviewed.
Software Craftsmanship, as I understand it, is mostly just a reaction to the mistaken idea that programmers are interchangeable cogs in a code-churning machine, and that a project's success is a function of how many warm bodies you have rather than the qualifications of the team members. It's focus is on the "quantifiable" part of the software engineering definition, and not so much the "systematic" or "disciplined" part.
I apologize for any misdirected bitterness.
Yeah! We've got this locomotion problem licked! Fie on you and your talk of this fancy "internal combustion engine"! Who needs it when we've got perfectly good steam engines?!
Seriously -- what planet have you been working on, and: what's their immigration policy? I've been "working full time as a programmer" since 1993, and I've yet to see an environment in which the project management was "figured out". It's more my experience that every project starts out well, but more or less rapidly degrades into a Death March, and it's almost never because of "an aggressive little ivy-league grad that wants to make a name for himself". It's usually because people get set in their ways and stop learning, questioning, and trying to better themselves and their code.
So... how low is low? And what's the street value of a UID, say, lower than 1000? Kidding!
The Project History and Credits section of the OpenSSH website would seem to refute your assertion:
The original license contained the following text:
While I can't personally vouch for the veracity of the OpenSSH history, it and the original license not only seem to directly contradict your assertion that "you couldn't use it for commercial purposes", but also seems to imply that if a derived version of the original is compatible with the protocol description, then he has no problem with someone referring to it as "ssh" or "Secure Shell".
Also, The SSH transport and user authentication protocols have been submitted to the IETF by Ylönen himself, which I believe qualifies as "submit[ting] as an open standard". As a matter of fact, it's currently the main focus of the Secure Shell (secsh) IETF working group.
All in all, this parallels the "one click" scenario pretty closely, with the difference being that SSH was far more novel and complex an idea than "one click" shopping. If Mr Ylönen had released it as a commercial product, or even just released it under a more restrictive license, there would be no debate. As it stands, though, it reeks of dodgy business practices brought on by stockholder pressure and OpenSSH's success.
Under Rambus, you forgot:
While these actions by themselves aren't examples of "using the courts" directly, using their bogus patents to extract licensing fees from technology they didn't invent seems pretty much like "beat[ing] them in the courtroom" to me.
This, unfortunately, is a case of confusing a legal issue with a moral one, however. It's fairly easy to observe that immoral actions aren't always illegal, and that moral ones sometimes go against the law.
Yes... but free speech is not an international convention. It's a right guaranteed under the US Constitution, and I imagine some other countries have similar rights for their citizens, but the 'I' in IOC stands for 'International', meaning that the US Constitution (and the others) don't apply.
You're fundamentally misunderstanding what a "gift culture" is. A gift culture is not one in which I am obligated to reciprocate any gift you give me -- that's an exchange culture. A gift culture (at least as Homesteading the Noosphere defines it) is one in which social status is determined by what you give away.
Your post indicates a misunderstanding of Open Source, as well. The cool thing about it is not its commerical potential -- it's the community which springs up to support and improve it. Because of this, the only way to truely "backstab" the Open Source world would be to refuse to participate in it to the extent your skills allow you to.
There are also plenty of examples of Open Source authors who have no trouble providing for themselves and their families. Software needs to be written whether it is bought or not, and there will (hopefully) always be people who will pay to have it written.
I suspect when you say "don't bother defending it with...", you really mean "I don't have a counter-argument for...".
I, and I suspect all but the most rabid "/.ers" have absolutely no problem with Metallica defending their copyright against their fans; they may be being a bit short-sighted, but they're completely within their rights. They, however, are not a corporation with a bevy of lawyers and billions of dollars to spend.
Corporations, on the other hand, have far greater access to litigious, economic, and legislative power than any one citizen on her own, and so should not be accorded the same protections as she is. Copyright laws exist to promote sharing of information, not to encourage corporate hegemonies that exist by stifling progress and litigating everyone with a competitive idea into bankruptcy.
Most of the arguments (the well-informed ones, at least) I've heard against IP here have railed against the misuse of copyright, not copyright itself. The RIAA's and MPAA's complaints are thinly-veiled reactions to the loss of control, cloaked in "we're for the artist" rhetoric, and nothing more. If they were truely concerned about how the "artist" is being treated, they'd have been among the first people to embrace a technology that is capable of expanding their market and enabling more people to access their work. As it is, the new technologies represent a loss of control to them, so naturally they trot out copyright as a trojan horse for their own agenda, and it's that hypocrisy that people object to.
Well, you could also use CGI::Debug, which will solve most problems you'll encounter. Or, if you can't install it for some reason, put this at the top of your file:
This will cause all warnings emitted (ie., what -w turns on) to be injected into STDOUT as HTML comments. This will not help if you get warnings before you print the HTTP header, but it works for most runtime stuff.
It's entirely possible that my experience is different than anyone else's, but I have nothing but good things to say about my ThinkPad 390E, which has run only Linux since the first day I got it.
I don't have the sound problems you describe -- a simple rmmod and insmod after resume fixes sound for me. I am running the commercial OSS Solo driver, so maybe that's the difference, but it works like a charm.
I also haven't had any problems with APM. All events work, and scripts run fine. Network card and all other devices continue to perform as expected after APM resume.
The WinModem is annoying, but that's probably my only gripe. My ThinkPad has travelled with me everywhere, and aside from needing a new keyboard after a mishap with spilled liquid, it has been operational 24/7 for me. It continues to be a great little machine today.
I bought mine, and would definitely consider buying another one. I'm not embarrassed at all. I consider it to have been a very solid investment.
There is a critical difference that must be acknowledged when comparing Windows and Linux, however: the fact that Linux is yours. Many people get lost in the 'costless' part of the free software equation, and miss entirely the 'unencumbered' part. It's free because no one person can tell how you can or can't use it.
It's yours to do with as you please, provided you aren't restricting someone else's use of it, which doesn't preclude hacking it to do what you want (and in your case, to not do what you don't want). Linux is really a concept, a core of functionality around which revolves an increasing bulk of other stuff which really isn't Linux itself, but a reflection of how people use Linux. StarOffice isn't Linux. Emacs isn't Linux. Hell, even the GNU tools aren't Linux, though one would be hard-pressed to separate the two.
My point is: if Windows has bloat, you just have to suck it up, 'cause only Microsoft can change what 'Windows' is. If you think Linux has bloat, there's nothing stopping you from whittling off the cruft yourself. Hell, there'll probably be people that'll agree with you on the bloat issue, and help you with the whittling.
I currently maintain a project which has about 30k lines of perl code, all of which has been developed with very strict coding guidelines by professional (ie., not the 'Perl for Dummies' readers) programmers, and because of my experiences with this project and many others, I have to object to your characterization of Perl.
Perl is a tool, like any other, and can be misused like any other. Professional programming is an art, not an assembly line job, and some artists are more passionate about the artistry of their creations than others. Your suggestion that no one should use Perl just because some people create heinous Perl code is tantamount to suggesting that no one should paint pictures anymore just because your third grade cousin turns out finger paintings of "Mommy and Daddy" that look more like Roschach tests than human figures. If you don't like Perl, there is, of course, no one holding a gun to your head, and you're free to choose another language. I suspect you will find that the same principles apply to those languages, too.
If you really wish to understand Perl, and want to learn to use it professionally, I'd suggest that you look for examples outside of the crap you have apparently had dumped in your lap. Like with any language, there is much reward to be gained by transcending that first 'scripting' stage of Perl; rewards which are only accessable to those with more than a passing interest in it.
Oh. One more thing:
Anyone that writes Perl code that will have to be maintained should have those two lines (or their analog) somewhere in their file. They will eliminate about 90% of your maintainability problems.
Better than that, configure it to send something like
Hey, it's set, isn't it? =:)I was at the MySQL: A faster database engine presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Monterey just a few days ago, and the developers announced that they were indeed releasing 3.20 under the GPL The newer versions remain under their usual (free unless you are selling it) license.
To the extent that they said it themselves, it's a sure thing.