You forget that mutuals are a matter of trust. To start a mutual for fiber you would need to find people who are known and trusted by everyone and who understand the technology. Besides that they would need a good feeling for marketing because they have to convince enough people to participate.
It is no coincidence that until now there hasn't been one succesfull case of a mutual cabling a whole city with fiber.
First you should start some infrastructure so that users can help each other. A newsgroup might well do this. You will need to monitor this newsgroup, so that you can pick up relevant information (bugs, non-intuitive interface, user wishes), but you can basically leave the users to themselves. consider at least two newsgroups: one for programmers and one for end-users.
A users should have two options:
- he gets the program for free from your website and he will have to support himself with the newsgroup and other users. If het really wants support from you he will have to pay.
- he can buy the program from you. He will get a nice disk, a printed manual and a support contract for 6 months. This support contract applies of course only when they use the program as you provided it (no source code modifications). When a new release comes available you notice them so that they can upgrade. You should expect most customer questions to be simple, so have someone available for those basic questions and don't bother your star programmer.
Customers who really want source code modifications should pay you by the hour for support if they do it themselves. If they leave it to you you can either charge hours or make an offer for the project.
And look at some opensource companies how they do it. I think the most interesting is Lutris (maker of Enhydra). You could also check TheKompany. If you have done your homework you could even contact them for some advice.
Companies like Nusphere and AbriaSoft are probably less interesting because they support an existing product (in this case MySQL).
A few months ago I attended a speach of Eric Raymond in which he said that his biggest activity regarding software patents at the moment was to get opensource software recognized as prior art. Does anybody know more about this?
I am rather worried about the effects of a the proposed filing system. We would provide a nice list of our best inventions to anyone who borrows to read them. So far so good. But we aren't lawyers and we don't think like them either. So the site might become a mining ground for treasure hunters with follow up patents. Suppose for instance someone publishes a real alternative for MPEG-4. Next some guy grabs that idea and patents the idea to use the protocol for television, surveyance camera's and whatever he can think of that the publisher forgot to mention. Is it really necessary to provide our best ideas in such a vulture friendly way???
Somehow people here seem to have forgotten the not so distant past. When Netscape ruled the browser market they bragged that some day they would take over the whole look and feel of the desktop and that the operating system would become something anonymous below.
Just image for one second that they would have succeeded. Then most people would now be running a cheap browser with probably Linux below it. So consumers would have hugely benefitted if this plan succeeded.
However, when Netscape lost its marketshare (= its power to set the standard) and Microsoft started to integrate the browser into the operating system they lost the opportunity to accomplish this.
I am the first to admit that it would have been a hard job to do even if Microsoft had not sabotated it. But whether it was doable at all we will never know...
I copied the following message from http://www.phpbuilder.com/annotate/message.php3?id =1001760:
The opensource Interbase is alive and well: At:
http://firebird.sourceforge.net
http://www.ibphoenix.com
http://www.interbase2000.com
And in newslists at http://www.mers.com
Generally it's called Firebird, and Inprise don't want to know or link to us.
To ask Slashdot do the following:
- select on the leftbar of your Slashdot Window "Submit Story".
- in the screen that opens then you go to the scrolldown fields under "topics and section". Select the right one (with "article") and go down one item to arrive at "Ask Slashdot".
An example of how different patent systems work is the case of laser barcode readers. Symbol has some patents that are only recognized in the US. Other countries think that they are about well known facts.
Manufacturers from Europe and Asia have declined to license those patents in the US as that would mean that they would have to license them in the rest of the world too. As a consequence Symbol has a near monopoly in the US.
Who is this foolish moderator who thinks that gay frustrations are on topic for this item?
What about:
- SDL (http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/)
- PLIB (http://plib.sourceforge.net/) for games
- mesa (http://www.mesa3d.org/) for openGL
And if you are going really 3D you can try CAD/GIS libraries like opencascade (http://www.opencascade.org/)
I have some experience with internet over satellite (a friend uses it) and I think you are wrong.
The main problem with it is that you need to direct your satellite dish very accurate (much more than for your TV signal!), so it is also very vulnerable for heavy winds and other disturbances. For the rest it has the same problem as cable: with a lot of users it becomes crowded.
However, our provider has also a special download canal. You can indicate which files you want and then they are scheduled for download. It usually takes a couple of hours before the download starts but then it is very fast. There is no CRC check (you disconnect your telephone after you have placed your "order") but I haven't seen problems yet.
If it was just for downloading files I think that satellite would be the ideal system.
Slashdot Mirror
It is no coincidence that until now there hasn't been one succesfull case of a mutual cabling a whole city with fiber.
A users should have two options:
- he gets the program for free from your website and he will have to support himself with the newsgroup and other users. If het really wants support from you he will have to pay.
- he can buy the program from you. He will get a nice disk, a printed manual and a support contract for 6 months. This support contract applies of course only when they use the program as you provided it (no source code modifications). When a new release comes available you notice them so that they can upgrade. You should expect most customer questions to be simple, so have someone available for those basic questions and don't bother your star programmer.
Customers who really want source code modifications should pay you by the hour for support if they do it themselves. If they leave it to you you can either charge hours or make an offer for the project.
And look at some opensource companies how they do it. I think the most interesting is Lutris (maker of Enhydra). You could also check TheKompany. If you have done your homework you could even contact them for some advice.
Companies like Nusphere and AbriaSoft are probably less interesting because they support an existing product (in this case MySQL).
I am rather worried about the effects of a the proposed filing system. We would provide a nice list of our best inventions to anyone who borrows to read them. So far so good. But we aren't lawyers and we don't think like them either. So the site might become a mining ground for treasure hunters with follow up patents. Suppose for instance someone publishes a real alternative for MPEG-4. Next some guy grabs that idea and patents the idea to use the protocol for television, surveyance camera's and whatever he can think of that the publisher forgot to mention. Is it really necessary to provide our best ideas in such a vulture friendly way???
Just image for one second that they would have succeeded. Then most people would now be running a cheap browser with probably Linux below it. So consumers would have hugely benefitted if this plan succeeded.
However, when Netscape lost its marketshare (= its power to set the standard) and Microsoft started to integrate the browser into the operating system they lost the opportunity to accomplish this.
I am the first to admit that it would have been a hard job to do even if Microsoft had not sabotated it. But whether it was doable at all we will never know...
I copied the following message from http://www.phpbuilder.com/annotate/message.php3?id =1001760:
The opensource Interbase is alive and well: At: http://firebird.sourceforge.net
http://www.ibphoenix.com
http://www.interbase2000.com
And in newslists at http://www.mers.com
Generally it's called Firebird, and Inprise don't want to know or link to us.
To ask Slashdot do the following:
- select on the leftbar of your Slashdot Window "Submit Story".
- in the screen that opens then you go to the scrolldown fields under "topics and section". Select the right one (with "article") and go down one item to arrive at "Ask Slashdot".
An example of how different patent systems work is the case of laser barcode readers. Symbol has some patents that are only recognized in the US. Other countries think that they are about well known facts.
Manufacturers from Europe and Asia have declined to license those patents in the US as that would mean that they would have to license them in the rest of the world too. As a consequence Symbol has a near monopoly in the US.
Who is this foolish moderator who thinks that gay frustrations are on topic for this item?
What about: - SDL (http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/) - PLIB (http://plib.sourceforge.net/) for games - mesa (http://www.mesa3d.org/) for openGL And if you are going really 3D you can try CAD/GIS libraries like opencascade (http://www.opencascade.org/)
Another interesting project is the Danish Cashcow project (http://www.cashcow.dk/Home/).
The original source is still available on the site of Psychosis: ftp://ftp.psychosis.com/openccvs.
I have some experience with internet over satellite (a friend uses it) and I think you are wrong. The main problem with it is that you need to direct your satellite dish very accurate (much more than for your TV signal!), so it is also very vulnerable for heavy winds and other disturbances. For the rest it has the same problem as cable: with a lot of users it becomes crowded. However, our provider has also a special download canal. You can indicate which files you want and then they are scheduled for download. It usually takes a couple of hours before the download starts but then it is very fast. There is no CRC check (you disconnect your telephone after you have placed your "order") but I haven't seen problems yet. If it was just for downloading files I think that satellite would be the ideal system.