Had I been presented with an educational program based on games, I would have hated it.
The very first program I wrote did real work that I needed done. All programs that I've written since then have also done real work. In this, I was assisted in this by the fact that I was a communication arts major and could choose my own path in learning computer science without the interference of an instructor. I went on to work at Pixar and to be credited in their films, and to be one of the founders of the Open Source movement in software, etc.
I've never liked games very much, and to be able to do something real with the computer made it much more exciting.
I read recently that the decay of garbage in LEO is actually lower than expected due to the extended sunspot minimum. It seems that sunspots have a significant effect on Earth's thermosphere, a tenuous portion of the atmosphere that extends into LEO and - although it's a millionth as thick as the atmosphere at sea level - exerts drag that eventually brings LEO satellites down.
Perhaps the orbit of ISS does not decay as quickly as Skylab did - because there was more thermosphere in the '70's.
Does this mean that there will be an increase in LEO decay once we get a strong sunspot cycle? This cycle is not so strong, and it could be several cycles before we get a really big one again.
This is the main phone system for my business, so of course it uses real telephones, which don't have video. My client is Asterisk 1.8 on Debian, which connects to SIP phones and an ATA for the POTS phones, which is actually an IP08 from Rowetel, which runs Asterisk 1.6 and is Open Hardware.
For video conferencing, we have Linux systems running Ekiga. Asterisk can route this, but I don't have it doing so right now.
Google Voice/Talk/Gmail Chat/ works excellently and is built on open protocols. XMPP, ulaw, etc. There are some proprietary extensions but they are documented or at least have been reverse-engineered. It works with Asterisk. It could be made to work with other Open Source clients easily enough. I have it set up to ring normal phones here.
Here's a paper on the reaction, by different people at the same university, and there's also this 2003 patent by two people named Erling Andersen, who don't seem to be at Barcelona, and a corresponding European patent EP1301433. The Andersen patent is cited in the Barcelona paper. I didn't find a patent on the battery application by the folks who made the model car. It looks like there's abundant prior art for the Andersen patent. This whole thing reads like a parody of patent abuse.
And I'm sure that refiners have recovered the hydrogen from that process. This isn't inventing new chemistry, just a new application. And IMO, not a very good one.
Aluminum takes a terrible lot of energy to refine from ore. The one good thing about that is that it's really easily recycled, so those aluminum cans sometimes get to be part of something again. But when you dissolve it in draino, and then, inevitably, dispose of the result in your landfill or sewer, you lose all of that energy and make some nasty pollution. What you get back in energy isn't a tiny fraction of what went in.
But they got a patent. Because the patent office doesn't care if your work is good, only that it's original. So, a lot of ignorant people will be impressed by their "innovation".
This would have been cool for a high-school science-fair project. Much too much bad science runs here.
I think both people and companies are much more willing to assign copyrights to a non-profit than they would be to a for-profit. FSF uses copyright assignment.
Oracle has three things of value for the community:
The Copyrights
Oracle still owns the copyrights of OpenOffice. Everybody will be able to use, modify, and distribute OpenOffice under the rights granted in the license, which never terminates. That license is LGPL2 for versions before 3.0, and LGPL3 for 3.0 beta and later, and the PDL for documentation. However, if the copyrights were transferred to a non-profit foundation, that foundation would be able to re-license OpenOffice as licenses develop. Laws change over time, and licenses must change to meet them. It would also be possible for the non-profit to enforce the larger part of the copyright rights. Currently, individual contributors or the project as their representative can enforce the copyright rights and license terms only on post-Oracle modifications. It would also be able to protect OpenOffice against pernicious changes in the commercial copyright holder. Products and companies get sold and change management. Remember that SCO was a "friendly" Linux company called Caldera before they went on their legal rampage. 501(c)3's, however, can devise covenants that keep their copyrights public property forever, and are legally limited to disburse their holdings only to other 501(c)3's on dissolution.
The Domain
OpenOffice.org is well known, and most instances of the software on user systems still reference it. Transferring this to a non-profit would be helpful.
Patents
Oracle might hold patents that read on OpenOffice, or could be used to defend it against other companies that bring patent suits. We can use Oracle's patents that are embedded in OpenOffice under the terms of the LGPL2 and LGPL3. But it would be nice to have some help in defending the program.
How Oracle Can Hurt
Oracle can hurt by trying to muscle the non-profit into accepting some sort of control from Oracle, be it a board position or something else. We have ample evidence that the project, since 1999, did poorly in gaining developers under a corporation's control. And if anything, Oracle makes other companies less comfortable than Sun would have. It's time for the project to be independent. The project should reject any offers that come with a demand for continuing control.
Regarding the violation, please notify Bradley Kuhn and do not publicly harangue them. It's my understanding that Bradley prefers to be the one to make the contact, rather than having the company dragged through publicity first.
I regularly speak to perfectly intelligent lawyers who work for companies with billions of dollars, and have trouble getting their companies to adopt a company-wide compliance program. When I had a management position with HP, I found that from my section-manager equivalent position it was very difficult to get the whole company marching in the same direction, even with support from higher-level executives. It was easier for me than it is for folks in some companies overseas, who will destroy their careers if they make the wrong step, regardless of whether they are right or not. Often they hire me to say things to their management that an insider could not say safely.
I am also available to talk to the company, but I'd try to sell them my own services to implement a compliance program. So, you can give me their name or not, as you please. Company email is bruce at perens dot com, and company phone is 510-4PERENS.
I'm told it's a GPL3 version of GPG. In that case, they'd have to remove the GPL3 version, and document their compliance with the remaining GPL2 software to the copyright holder (who would probably be represented by one Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy and SFLC). Not the end of the world.
Rather than trolling, consider that it's from someone who doesn't like tivo-ization, and doesn't understand that much as some of us might like if it did, GPL2 doesn't give anyone the legal ammunition to go after tivo-ization. Next question: are sources provided correctly? That is something that can be enforced under GPL2.
Unless it contains a recent version of Samba, it is unlikely that there is GPL3 stuff in there. I didn't check, I'm working on other stuff today.
If the company or its attorneys need help with a compliance issue, I'm happy to look deeper. But I charge as much as their attorneys do for my expertise. If they don't need my help, I generally leave this stuff to Bradley Kuhn to handle.
CNC would be overkill for this project. What I need is something that takes the end of a 1.5x1.5 tube, drills a hole in all four sides.75 inches from the end, and then steps the tube forward 1.5 inches, registering the newly-drilled holes in steel pins to enforce the uniformity of the next set of holes. Step forward another 1.5 inches and repeat the process until there is less than.75 inches of tubing left.
I like my 80/20 catalog, but yes, the demo projects are absurd, and the costs out of the hobbyist range.
Welding is great for production work off of an assembly line. Grid-Beam is for things you might eventually replace. The welded frames can't be reused, they are mostly recycled at a high energy cost into lower-grade metal for rebar, etc. The grid-beam frames can be dismantled and turned into other working equipment.
I really like Grid-Beam for this sort of building. Square metal tubing is not expensive if you buy it undrilled. It's incredibly pricey with the holes in it. I've been thinking about how to build an automated rig to drill the tubing. It would use up drills and cutting fluid, but maybe it would be possible to drive the price down.
My consulting firm helps law firms and their customers come into compliance with the GPL and other Free Software licenses - both before and after they distribute the product. I can tell you they do take it seriously when they run into trouble, because there is not just the threat of a lawsuit, but the threat of having infringing products prohibited from being imported into the nations where they wish to sell them.
What a lot of companies are having problems with is establishing a compliance program before they get that letter from the Software Freedom Conservancy (which has sued about 40 companies, no kidding). Too many of them fix the problem after it's happened.
Tivo-ization is not one of the things the companies are in trouble for, because the software in question is under GPL2, not GPL3. The problems are from simple non-compliance with the license terms.
10 years ago or so there was a guy, somewhat famous or infamous, who believed he had a data compressor that could compress its own output iteratively. It worked using "the spaces between the bits". He had a prototype with some "bugs" which made it lossy. He kept bothering me about it. I finally told him I didn't believe it could ever work, and if he wanted to prove me wrong he could come back when it did work, because it would obviously make him rich if it did. That's the last I heard of him.
Yes, there was a story about faith, but a stupid story. People who believe in science believe in the scientific method. This does not mean that your two choices are faith or to understand all of physics from first principles.
Do you understand how meaningless a statement like "The physical universe is not a closed system" is? Obviously not. Don't bother answering, you can't compose meaningful statements about the world.
I think this is more like "We really screwed up with the community, and now let's do the only thing possible to make them forget what turkeys we've been".
Slashdot Mirror
Had I been presented with an educational program based on games, I would have hated it.
The very first program I wrote did real work that I needed done. All programs that I've written since then have also done real work. In this, I was assisted in this by the fact that I was a communication arts major and could choose my own path in learning computer science without the interference of an instructor. I went on to work at Pixar and to be credited in their films, and to be one of the founders of the Open Source movement in software, etc.
I've never liked games very much, and to be able to do something real with the computer made it much more exciting.
Not everybody learns the same way.
I read recently that the decay of garbage in LEO is actually lower than expected due to the extended sunspot minimum. It seems that sunspots have a significant effect on Earth's thermosphere, a tenuous portion of the atmosphere that extends into LEO and - although it's a millionth as thick as the atmosphere at sea level - exerts drag that eventually brings LEO satellites down. Perhaps the orbit of ISS does not decay as quickly as Skylab did - because there was more thermosphere in the '70's. Does this mean that there will be an increase in LEO decay once we get a strong sunspot cycle? This cycle is not so strong, and it could be several cycles before we get a really big one again.
This is the main phone system for my business, so of course it uses real telephones, which don't have video. My client is Asterisk 1.8 on Debian, which connects to SIP phones and an ATA for the POTS phones, which is actually an IP08 from Rowetel, which runs Asterisk 1.6 and is Open Hardware.
For video conferencing, we have Linux systems running Ekiga. Asterisk can route this, but I don't have it doing so right now.
Google Voice/Talk/Gmail Chat/ works excellently and is built on open protocols. XMPP, ulaw, etc. There are some proprietary extensions but they are documented or at least have been reverse-engineered. It works with Asterisk. It could be made to work with other Open Source clients easily enough. I have it set up to ring normal phones here.
Here's a paper on the reaction, by different people at the same university, and there's also this 2003 patent by two people named Erling Andersen, who don't seem to be at Barcelona, and a corresponding European patent EP1301433. The Andersen patent is cited in the Barcelona paper. I didn't find a patent on the battery application by the folks who made the model car. It looks like there's abundant prior art for the Andersen patent. This whole thing reads like a parody of patent abuse.
And I'm sure that refiners have recovered the hydrogen from that process. This isn't inventing new chemistry, just a new application. And IMO, not a very good one.
I suppose I should have put the period after "the patent office doesn't care."
This happens much, much too often on Slashdot.
Aluminum takes a terrible lot of energy to refine from ore. The one good thing about that is that it's really easily recycled, so those aluminum cans sometimes get to be part of something again. But when you dissolve it in draino, and then, inevitably, dispose of the result in your landfill or sewer, you lose all of that energy and make some nasty pollution. What you get back in energy isn't a tiny fraction of what went in.
But they got a patent. Because the patent office doesn't care if your work is good, only that it's original. So, a lot of ignorant people will be impressed by their "innovation".
This would have been cool for a high-school science-fair project. Much too much bad science runs here.
Yes. Now, it would be interesting to figure out which ones they own. Some of them probably incorporate third-party proprietary software.
Except for Mozilla. Which is interesting, since OSAF was in many ways similar, and fell on its face.
I think both people and companies are much more willing to assign copyrights to a non-profit than they would be to a for-profit. FSF uses copyright assignment.
Then the board can elect them. It's forcing their way in that I think would be a problem.
Oracle has three things of value for the community:
The Copyrights
Oracle still owns the copyrights of OpenOffice. Everybody will be able to use, modify, and distribute OpenOffice under the rights granted in the license, which never terminates. That license is LGPL2 for versions before 3.0, and LGPL3 for 3.0 beta and later, and the PDL for documentation. However, if the copyrights were transferred to a non-profit foundation, that foundation would be able to re-license OpenOffice as licenses develop. Laws change over time, and licenses must change to meet them. It would also be possible for the non-profit to enforce the larger part of the copyright rights. Currently, individual contributors or the project as their representative can enforce the copyright rights and license terms only on post-Oracle modifications. It would also be able to protect OpenOffice against pernicious changes in the commercial copyright holder. Products and companies get sold and change management. Remember that SCO was a "friendly" Linux company called Caldera before they went on their legal rampage. 501(c)3's, however, can devise covenants that keep their copyrights public property forever, and are legally limited to disburse their holdings only to other 501(c)3's on dissolution.
The Domain
OpenOffice.org is well known, and most instances of the software on user systems still reference it. Transferring this to a non-profit would be helpful.
Patents
Oracle might hold patents that read on OpenOffice, or could be used to defend it against other companies that bring patent suits. We can use Oracle's patents that are embedded in OpenOffice under the terms of the LGPL2 and LGPL3. But it would be nice to have some help in defending the program.
How Oracle Can Hurt
Oracle can hurt by trying to muscle the non-profit into accepting some sort of control from Oracle, be it a board position or something else. We have ample evidence that the project, since 1999, did poorly in gaining developers under a corporation's control. And if anything, Oracle makes other companies less comfortable than Sun would have. It's time for the project to be independent. The project should reject any offers that come with a demand for continuing control.
Thanks
Bruce
Regarding the violation, please notify Bradley Kuhn and do not publicly harangue them. It's my understanding that Bradley prefers to be the one to make the contact, rather than having the company dragged through publicity first.
I regularly speak to perfectly intelligent lawyers who work for companies with billions of dollars, and have trouble getting their companies to adopt a company-wide compliance program. When I had a management position with HP, I found that from my section-manager equivalent position it was very difficult to get the whole company marching in the same direction, even with support from higher-level executives. It was easier for me than it is for folks in some companies overseas, who will destroy their careers if they make the wrong step, regardless of whether they are right or not. Often they hire me to say things to their management that an insider could not say safely.
I am also available to talk to the company, but I'd try to sell them my own services to implement a compliance program. So, you can give me their name or not, as you please. Company email is bruce at perens dot com, and company phone is 510-4PERENS.
Thanks
Bruce
I'm told it's a GPL3 version of GPG. In that case, they'd have to remove the GPL3 version, and document their compliance with the remaining GPL2 software to the copyright holder (who would probably be represented by one Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy and SFLC). Not the end of the world.
Thanks! How does one lubricate the second hole when through-drilling? Is it enough to dribble oil down the drill through the first hole?
Rather than trolling, consider that it's from someone who doesn't like tivo-ization, and doesn't understand that much as some of us might like if it did, GPL2 doesn't give anyone the legal ammunition to go after tivo-ization. Next question: are sources provided correctly? That is something that can be enforced under GPL2.
Unless it contains a recent version of Samba, it is unlikely that there is GPL3 stuff in there. I didn't check, I'm working on other stuff today.
If the company or its attorneys need help with a compliance issue, I'm happy to look deeper. But I charge as much as their attorneys do for my expertise. If they don't need my help, I generally leave this stuff to Bradley Kuhn to handle.
CNC would be overkill for this project. What I need is something that takes the end of a 1.5x1.5 tube, drills a hole in all four sides .75 inches from the end, and then steps the tube forward 1.5 inches, registering the newly-drilled holes in steel pins to enforce the uniformity of the next set of holes. Step forward another 1.5 inches and repeat the process until there is less than .75 inches of tubing left.
I like my 80/20 catalog, but yes, the demo projects are absurd, and the costs out of the hobbyist range.
Welding is great for production work off of an assembly line. Grid-Beam is for things you might eventually replace. The welded frames can't be reused, they are mostly recycled at a high energy cost into lower-grade metal for rebar, etc. The grid-beam frames can be dismantled and turned into other working equipment.
I really like Grid-Beam for this sort of building. Square metal tubing is not expensive if you buy it undrilled. It's incredibly pricey with the holes in it. I've been thinking about how to build an automated rig to drill the tubing. It would use up drills and cutting fluid, but maybe it would be possible to drive the price down.
My consulting firm helps law firms and their customers come into compliance with the GPL and other Free Software licenses - both before and after they distribute the product. I can tell you they do take it seriously when they run into trouble, because there is not just the threat of a lawsuit, but the threat of having infringing products prohibited from being imported into the nations where they wish to sell them.
What a lot of companies are having problems with is establishing a compliance program before they get that letter from the Software Freedom Conservancy (which has sued about 40 companies, no kidding). Too many of them fix the problem after it's happened.
Tivo-ization is not one of the things the companies are in trouble for, because the software in question is under GPL2, not GPL3. The problems are from simple non-compliance with the license terms.
10 years ago or so there was a guy, somewhat famous or infamous, who believed he had a data compressor that could compress its own output iteratively. It worked using "the spaces between the bits". He had a prototype with some "bugs" which made it lossy. He kept bothering me about it. I finally told him I didn't believe it could ever work, and if he wanted to prove me wrong he could come back when it did work, because it would obviously make him rich if it did. That's the last I heard of him.
That's not Oracle. We'll see what happens...
Yes, there was a story about faith, but a stupid story. People who believe in science believe in the scientific method. This does not mean that your two choices are faith or to understand all of physics from first principles.
Do you understand how meaningless a statement like "The physical universe is not a closed system" is? Obviously not. Don't bother answering, you can't compose meaningful statements about the world.
I think this is more like "We really screwed up with the community, and now let's do the only thing possible to make them forget what turkeys we've been".