I'm playing editor for Open Hardware Journal. I'll be in and out this evening, and will be able to answer questions from Slashdotters, maybe with some delay.
Try OpenWRT. It might have some bug fixes missing from DD-WRT. It has the advantage of being fully Open Source, while DD-WRT wants you to pay for some features and some platforms. The development version runs well and is updated continuously. It has so many packages that it looks like a desktop/server Linux distribution. It seems to be directed at a more advanced user.
The Netgear WNDR-3700v2 is powerful, reasonably cheap, and well-supported. It also is the target of the CeroWRT project, which deals with bufferbloat, and should be of interest to advanced users at this point. Bufferbloat changes are also being adopted into stock OpenWRT and the Linux kernel, so eventually will make it to more routers.
People will burn in pure oxygen without the addition of a combustible substance (an "accelerant") rather than an oxydizer. But the things around them would likely go up as well. It's the fact of a body burning without its surroundings being damaged that is odd. What if for some reason the man's lungs were filled with pure oxygen? Oxygen can be in homes for medical purposes. Or perhaps it could be let into a home by foul play. You wouldn't find the oxygen afterward, but if it's from medical use in the home you would find a cylinder.
Good point about signal processing. For my home modem, with 11000 feet of copper (long enough to limit my bandwidth), there is indeed a high ping time of 41-45 ms. But that ping is not to the DSLAM in Albany, California. It's to the ATM call termination in Pleasanton, a good deal farther away. I can't really tell how much of the problem is the modem and DSLAM, and how much is elsewhere in ATT's network.
Hm, why do you think we haven't evolved with perfect memory? Could there be a good reason?
Well, I know that people with really hot tempers usually have bad memories. They'd not be able to live with anyone else, or probably themselves, if they didn't.
I think that what we really want is really selective memory. Like for rapid learning of languages.
If you just want to remember facts, there are some memory tricks that work pretty well. Oops, I've forgotten the links:-)
This license protects You as a contributor as well as the HPCC Systems platform and its users; it does not change your rights to use
your own contributions for any other purpose.
That sounds like a license-back to me. I'll get that clarified.
I'm the main designer of the strategy, so you can explain this to me.
1. No paperwork needed.
Um, not really. You now have a large collection of copyright holders to keep satisfied perpetually - not for just three years - and you do indeed have to keep track of them enough to know what work is your own property and what is not. And whose work is what blurs with each additional edit until the ownership of your system is undeterminable. I believe that this would be demotivating for the company.
2. Keeps the original authors in the loop and engaged.
Well, let's look at the Linux kernel. Certainly there are a lot of folks in the loop and engaged, but even with that project it is very much a revolving door. Developers stay engaged long enough to get their work done and then go on to other things, leaving us to maintain their work. Or leave unintentionally. I knew one who had the entire SCSI subsystem at the time of his passing, and one who had a major filesystem when he was incarcerated. What I am trying to do is engineer a cooperation that works better than the others I know of. A really big problem is taking on the janitorial function, which the community is not able to handle on a volunteer basis. We are really lucky that we get to pay people to do that on Linux, but that is rare. I want to pay those guys reliably. I want to generate income to do that.
3. Gives the original authors less motivation to fork - even unsuccessful forks cause damage
Actually, I don't believe that forks cause damage. My experience is otherwise. If the partnership with LN doesn't work, there will be a healthy fork and that is fair. But my experience is that forks happen when the technical folks aren't allowed to do their work, and rarely for any other reason.
4. Makes their project more attractive to potential contributors
Obviously this is something I am trying to balance so that it is sufficiently attractive to contributors while motivating the company.
5. The can get rid of the whole "if in 3 years..." bit as well as the questions surrounding how it would be monitored and enforced
Look at all of the questions around enforcing the license on the kernel (along with the wild press like on LinuxInsider yesterday.) I think what would happen is that we would trade one set of questions for another. We would definitely trade a 3-year partnership per patch for a forever partnership with legal terms attached and interpreted forever.
Doesn't prevent individual authors licensing their code to GPLv2 projects, so less of a disincentive to participate
I am not yet sure that the prospective developers for this project care at all about contributing to GPL2 projects. At this point I would rather have GPL3 or AGPL3, as I don't want to have Google take my work inside and modify it heavily, never releasing it once, and I don't want to have Tivo marrying it to DRM.
7. They will receive sufficient rights to legally protect their commercial product.
I think we have been OK with having a collective work in Open Source because we want compliance more than we want damages or enforcement. Having multiple owners does reduce the potential to enforce with the prospect of large damages. If you look at what Software Freedom Conservancy wants for a settlement, it's really a token amount, so that they never have to deal with the question of whether their client is the damaged party.
I'm entertained that you tell us that we need to grow up, and then call us dirty smelly booger-eating neckbeard loons:-)
You seriously think we're not being respected when a company takes a project of this value and invites us on board? I've been with their executive committee, and never heard any neckbeard loon stuff from them.
In other words, they've done the equivalent of Tivo-ising the code wrt commercial use.
Not sure you're really clear on this. When I release my own code under AGPL 3.0, you don't get to commercial license it. The only code you have a chance to commercial license in that case is your own. Now, maybe you're complaining because this doesn't license-back to you your own code in a way that you could commercially license. But it would still be a fragment of an overall AGPL 3.0 program, and you would not be able to commercial-license it unless you created some stand-alone version of your own code that didn't require any of the rest of the system. None of this has anything to do with tivo-izing.
Surely the developer can just give HPCC a license to the code which includes the right to relicense the code under any commercial license they wish so long as they continue to support and release an open source version.
In building a balance that will motivate multiple parties to participate, you have to consider all of their needs. In the case of HPCC's needs, this allows them to continue to own their entire product, and to list their entire product as an asset.
I don't really expect them to act like some character from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (I had to look it up). But I will bring to their attention the concern about multiple products and see what they think.
You still haven't explained why having the developer grant a non-exclusive license to dual-license the code to the business for use in their pooducts is better than assigning copyright.
Someone else explained that. But I'll give it a try as well. There are no doubt a number of strategies that would be even better for the Open Source developer. The problem with those strategies is: what motivates a company to participate in those strategies? Especially a company that has invested a significant fraction of a Billion on the product, and we have so far invested nothing?
Well, sure. But they were picked up in a way that left Sun stockholders with $9.50/share, which was a lot better than $0, and too bad for the folks who bought it at $250. Bankruptcy is what happens if you can't have the fire sale because your indebtedness is too large for anyone to be interested.
If my AGPL 3.0 code gets BSD licensed, it's not the end of the world. It's still Free Software. If a company's product gets BSD licensed, it might be the end of the world for them.
Generally, I code faster, and better, the second time around. Given that the re-use would in general be a port (or there'd be no reason not to use AGPL 3.0) it would be at least in part a rewrite. Nobody's keeping you from doing that.
Also, this objection would be mooted by license-back.
Well, I'll discuss with their attorney whether there is a need for a change in terms specific to bankruptcy. But if the company goes bankrupt, they didn't benefit from the Open Source cooperation sufficiently anyway. So, I'm not sure how much we need to flog that horse. It seems unlikely that Oracle is going to pick up such a product in an asset sale and suddenly make a smash hit out of it.
It's aimed at keeping the company from going private with the contributions of the community. For a company that wants to have a paid commercial-licensed version, a promise to BSD license their product is a poison pill. They would probably go far to avoid activating it.
Slashdot Mirror
I am happy to do that if the Slashdot folks want to run one. It's been a long time since I've done an Ask Slashdot, anyway.
I'm playing editor for Open Hardware Journal. I'll be in and out this evening, and will be able to answer questions from Slashdotters, maybe with some delay.
Try OpenWRT. It might have some bug fixes missing from DD-WRT. It has the advantage of being fully Open Source, while DD-WRT wants you to pay for some features and some platforms. The development version runs well and is updated continuously. It has so many packages that it looks like a desktop/server Linux distribution. It seems to be directed at a more advanced user.
The Netgear WNDR-3700v2 is powerful, reasonably cheap, and well-supported. It also is the target of the CeroWRT project, which deals with bufferbloat, and should be of interest to advanced users at this point. Bufferbloat changes are also being adopted into stock OpenWRT and the Linux kernel, so eventually will make it to more routers.
People will burn in pure oxygen without the addition of a combustible substance (an "accelerant") rather than an oxydizer. But the things around them would likely go up as well. It's the fact of a body burning without its surroundings being damaged that is odd. What if for some reason the man's lungs were filled with pure oxygen? Oxygen can be in homes for medical purposes. Or perhaps it could be let into a home by foul play. You wouldn't find the oxygen afterward, but if it's from medical use in the home you would find a cylinder.
Good point about signal processing. For my home modem, with 11000 feet of copper (long enough to limit my bandwidth), there is indeed a high ping time of 41-45 ms. But that ping is not to the DSLAM in Albany, California. It's to the ATM call termination in Pleasanton, a good deal farther away. I can't really tell how much of the problem is the modem and DSLAM, and how much is elsewhere in ATT's network.
The problem isn't copper, it's bufferbloat.
Harrison Bergeron was here.
Well, I know that people with really hot tempers usually have bad memories. They'd not be able to live with anyone else, or probably themselves, if they didn't.
I think that what we really want is really selective memory. Like for rapid learning of languages.
If you just want to remember facts, there are some memory tricks that work pretty well. Oops, I've forgotten the links :-)
That sounds like a license-back to me. I'll get that clarified.
Yes, but no business person would ever want to torture himself and destroy his business that way. If you don't understand that, I just can't help.
I am signing off of this conversation, further attempts from you will be ignored.
You can't mean that.
No, you really can't mean that.
You want a company to track ownership of their product per character through an ever increasing string of edits.
I get the feeling I'm wasting my time here.
Um, not really. You now have a large collection of copyright holders to keep satisfied perpetually - not for just three years - and you do indeed have to keep track of them enough to know what work is your own property and what is not. And whose work is what blurs with each additional edit until the ownership of your system is undeterminable. I believe that this would be demotivating for the company.
Well, let's look at the Linux kernel. Certainly there are a lot of folks in the loop and engaged, but even with that project it is very much a revolving door. Developers stay engaged long enough to get their work done and then go on to other things, leaving us to maintain their work. Or leave unintentionally. I knew one who had the entire SCSI subsystem at the time of his passing, and one who had a major filesystem when he was incarcerated. What I am trying to do is engineer a cooperation that works better than the others I know of. A really big problem is taking on the janitorial function, which the community is not able to handle on a volunteer basis. We are really lucky that we get to pay people to do that on Linux, but that is rare. I want to pay those guys reliably. I want to generate income to do that.
Actually, I don't believe that forks cause damage. My experience is otherwise. If the partnership with LN doesn't work, there will be a healthy fork and that is fair. But my experience is that forks happen when the technical folks aren't allowed to do their work, and rarely for any other reason.
Obviously this is something I am trying to balance so that it is sufficiently attractive to contributors while motivating the company.
Look at all of the questions around enforcing the license on the kernel (along with the wild press like on LinuxInsider yesterday.) I think what would happen is that we would trade one set of questions for another. We would definitely trade a 3-year partnership per patch for a forever partnership with legal terms attached and interpreted forever.
I am not yet sure that the prospective developers for this project care at all about contributing to GPL2 projects. At this point I would rather have GPL3 or AGPL3, as I don't want to have Google take my work inside and modify it heavily, never releasing it once, and I don't want to have Tivo marrying it to DRM.
I think we have been OK with having a collective work in Open Source because we want compliance more than we want damages or enforcement. Having multiple owners does reduce the potential to enforce with the prospect of large damages. If you look at what Software Freedom Conservancy wants for a settlement, it's really a token amount, so that they never have to deal with the question of whether their client is the damaged party.
You seriously think we're not being respected when a company takes a project of this value and invites us on board? I've been with their executive committee, and never heard any neckbeard loon stuff from them.
Give the project some time to develop.
Not sure you're really clear on this. When I release my own code under AGPL 3.0, you don't get to commercial license it. The only code you have a chance to commercial license in that case is your own. Now, maybe you're complaining because this doesn't license-back to you your own code in a way that you could commercially license. But it would still be a fragment of an overall AGPL 3.0 program, and you would not be able to commercial-license it unless you created some stand-alone version of your own code that didn't require any of the rest of the system. None of this has anything to do with tivo-izing.
In building a balance that will motivate multiple parties to participate, you have to consider all of their needs. In the case of HPCC's needs, this allows them to continue to own their entire product, and to list their entire product as an asset.
I don't really expect them to act like some character from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (I had to look it up). But I will bring to their attention the concern about multiple products and see what they think.
Maybe you should discuss how MySQL operated with Monty. They, purportedly, worked pretty much in the way you propose. It made him very unhappy.
Someone else explained that. But I'll give it a try as well. There are no doubt a number of strategies that would be even better for the Open Source developer. The problem with those strategies is: what motivates a company to participate in those strategies? Especially a company that has invested a significant fraction of a Billion on the product, and we have so far invested nothing?
Well, sure. But they were picked up in a way that left Sun stockholders with $9.50/share, which was a lot better than $0, and too bad for the folks who bought it at $250. Bankruptcy is what happens if you can't have the fire sale because your indebtedness is too large for anyone to be interested.
If my AGPL 3.0 code gets BSD licensed, it's not the end of the world. It's still Free Software. If a company's product gets BSD licensed, it might be the end of the world for them.
Also, this objection would be mooted by license-back.
Sun didn't go into a "chapter" proceeding, they were sold.
I agree that licensing your contribution back to you is desirable. I'll include that in the feedback I'm sending them.
Well, I'll discuss with their attorney whether there is a need for a change in terms specific to bankruptcy. But if the company goes bankrupt, they didn't benefit from the Open Source cooperation sufficiently anyway. So, I'm not sure how much we need to flog that horse. It seems unlikely that Oracle is going to pick up such a product in an asset sale and suddenly make a smash hit out of it.
It's aimed at keeping the company from going private with the contributions of the community. For a company that wants to have a paid commercial-licensed version, a promise to BSD license their product is a poison pill. They would probably go far to avoid activating it.