Code dying on the vine is part of the Darwinistic process that maintains the quality of Open Source. If nobody cares about it, nobody will develop it. What I suspect in this case is that there might be a community willing to carry on this project. It's an interesting product.
Although Google has said they plan to Open Source the Wave software, there has only been a partial release so far. Can we have the whole thing, please? Of course Open Source is a good way to make sure that some good comes of a discontinued product.
Part of preserving one's independence is being inured to "I'm disappointed in you this time and you're really not the guy I thought you were" statements. I have, and will continue to, put forth ideas that many people don't like, even if they were previously fans. I don't, after all, hold an election before I say something, and I don't sell out to you any more than I would sell out to money.
Sure, we all gave away code when it helped everyone. The problem comes when there's a social imbalance, and two companies collect the majority of benefit (not just payment, but the community and so on) from the work that we all do. IMO it's a real problem.
"Do not be drawn into a tribal argument on behalf of Ubuntu" meant that the people he was talking to considered Ubuntu to be their tribe. Unfortunately don't be drawn in also means don't engage, and don't listen and don't learn that you're the wrong one. But we can respect them. From a distance.
I contend that these discussions aren't "tribal" and that they are painful but necessary. There are real problems with Ubuntu that we really should discuss with their community. But they've been warned not to engage.
Think more about maximizing freedom while blocking the obvious abuses. IMO they stem from a conflict of interest that's a given for for-profit distributions. How can we do their job without the conflict, and how can we structure licensing, etc., so that they don't get the upper hand over a non-profit effort.
is the problem really that there are gatekeepers, or that the current gatekeepers are simply *branded aggregators* at their core?
I think you could have a non-profit branded aggregator without a conflict of interest.
How can application developers keep aggregators from presenting their work as part of a branded, monolithic whole - without destroying the distribution network?
I don't think you have to prevent it. It's not the aggregation but the motives behind it.
I'm sorry that the thread was that hard to follow.
The point I was trying to make was that Mark's company will of course influence Mark's opinion such that he says what's good for Ubuntu. IMO the tribes were "Ubuntu" vs. Everything Else, which would make it doubly his own interest.
From there, it diverged into whether Ubuntu is good for Free Software (I don't believe it is), and whether we are really doing the right thing to enable firms like Ubuntu with our code.
I am not dismissing different opinions. I am considering, very seriously, whether it is better for users to be running Microsoft or Apple than for Linux distributions to continue to win market share. This is something I've never done before.
I think you should seriously consider that your home users would be better off running Microsoft or Apple systems. Microsoft and Apple do not pretend to be Open Source, they are very clear about being a for-profit company. They don't have a community of free contributors that they abuse. They pay the people who write their code.
Well, I think it's an overall negative for Free Software to create rich and powerful corporations who stand between the users and the developers. It's a matter of their profits coming before principle. It's going to be the same, IMO, for any for-profit distribution - you have to consider that they are in this to operate a profitable company, not to do good for the world. We really should have done something about it before Red Hat became a Billion dollar company, and Ubuntu is no different given Mark's capitalization of Canonical.
I think it would be best for you to use, and assist when possible, a non-profit distribution. That doesn't mean Fedora, they are too thoroughly controlled by Red Hat. Hopefully Debian still has sufficient independence from Ubuntu. I don't know about the others.
I talk with Michael Dell once in a while. It's easy enough to do. I've only emailed with Larry Ellison.
I think a Debian-like project would work better with different ground-rules at the start. The way it worked out, it was taken for granted that a developer could put a package in the system on his/her own, and the only folks who could pull it were a group of FTP site managers who were not really part of the developer structure.
There are other things I'd change. Sure, your communications shouldn't offend people, but if you are too easy to offend you shouldn't be on the project either. I know of a well-meaning geek feminist who essentially keeps a list of speakers who have offended her. At some point that becomes negative.
Well, obviously not command. But I think in general things will work better if they get Free Software from Free Software developers, even if these are non-profit agregators like Debian. It's about lobbying our own users.
I have been offered the online-perception-management services I'm talking about while managing at HP and Sourcelabs. If you are not aware of companys concern for their online perception and what they do about it, and won't take my word for it, there isn't much point in arguing about it with you.
Mark's hypocracy doesn't have so much to do with his character as it has to do with the fact that his company's goals and those of the free software community are simply not compatible. If you consider how different they are, I shouldn't have to argue this one. What made his statement hypocritical is that he was asking the Free Software community to all line up and pull in one direction, with the effect that Ubuntu would be able to harvest more of our software for its own purposes. It's not really anything for the community's own good - we need our differences.
The problem with the user being paramount is that there is often no quid-pro-quo whatsoever with the user. Of course they don't pay us. They don't contribute to the project. They don't help us when we ask for political lobbying against things that hurt us.
This was tolerable when we had a direct relationship with the users, because we could at least sometimes get them to help. When Ubuntu or Red Hat stand between us and the users, we generally can't even communicate with those users.
It's going to be difficult to balance but I'd like to work on it. It is not desirable to restrict distribution for a reasonable fee or support that supports the whole community, even if paid or sponsored. There'd have to be more thought on what makes the gate-keepers harmful. But I can think of a number of problems to be addressed:
The fact that when we go to lobby our users on issues important to us, they don't know us, they know Red Hat or Ubuntu even when we really wrote their software. Red Hat or Ubuntu get to form their opinions. It's a distance that is harmful to us.
Contrast this to the fact that generation 1 Free Software projects were often user-hostile, at least as the users saw it. That is something that Ubuntu has been more successful with than us, and we must fix that.
Proprietary device drivers should clearly not be allowed, to the extent that we can enforce that with contract or copyright law.
The lack of help from distributions on issues like software patenting that are important to Free Software is frustrating.
Consider the difference between a troll and an unpopular opinion. What I made was a posting of unpopular (at least with some folks) opinion. A troll would be intended to inflame rather than to sincerely argue a point.
some people purport that it an idealogical struggle so by releasing software they are fighting against a future owned by corporations that create for profit software.
Exactly. The problem is that Canonical / Ubuntu are just the kind of corporation I was trying to fight. If Open Source / Free Software won't fight them, I need something else that will.
Well, if it hopes to reassure you I'm entirely sincere in posting it. I am seriously thinking that I will license future work with a Linux-distribution-hostile license. It won't be Open Source, and so it's going against some of what I've stood for for 20 years to save the rest. But this is too important to me.
It's not Eric's Open Source model. It was happening quite well before Eric came along, and the Open Source Definition existed for most of a year before he got involved. What you're really saying is that you liked The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
I have run Debian "unstable" for 12 years and only had one downtime day because of it. Its quality is pretty close to that of a released distribution. And it is updated daily. Perhaps the failure was that Debian didn't market it.
RMS expects folks to understand the merits of Free Software a priori. I am very fond of Richard but it's necessary to accept that his mental wiring does not give him any empathy for folks who don't think the way he does. So, Open Source is a way to introduce the benefits of Free Software to people who don't think like Richard. This makes it necessary, of course, for those people to take the second step on their own: we hope that a pragmatic appreciation leads to a philosophical one.
This doesn't really apply to the interaction of Ubuntu and Free Software. Mark understands Free Software and thus this isn't an issue of Open Source not bringing the idea to him. It's a matter of the goal of profit first and beating the competition and their incompatibility with the goals of Free Software.
Free Software would be happy to lose some customers on philosophical grounds, and would be willing to take a financial hit to further software freedom. Substitute "Ubuntu" for "Free Software" and say that with a straight face.
Slashdot Mirror
I am having trouble understanding how JavaScript RPC is a business-differentiating technology for Google.
Code dying on the vine is part of the Darwinistic process that maintains the quality of Open Source. If nobody cares about it, nobody will develop it. What I suspect in this case is that there might be a community willing to carry on this project. It's an interesting product.
Although Google has said they plan to Open Source the Wave software, there has only been a partial release so far. Can we have the whole thing, please? Of course Open Source is a good way to make sure that some good comes of a discontinued product.
Sure, we all gave away code when it helped everyone. The problem comes when there's a social imbalance, and two companies collect the majority of benefit (not just payment, but the community and so on) from the work that we all do. IMO it's a real problem.
I contend that these discussions aren't "tribal" and that they are painful but necessary. There are real problems with Ubuntu that we really should discuss with their community. But they've been warned not to engage.
I think you could have a non-profit branded aggregator without a conflict of interest.
I don't think you have to prevent it. It's not the aggregation but the motives behind it.
I'm sorry that the thread was that hard to follow.
The point I was trying to make was that Mark's company will of course influence Mark's opinion such that he says what's good for Ubuntu. IMO the tribes were "Ubuntu" vs. Everything Else, which would make it doubly his own interest.
From there, it diverged into whether Ubuntu is good for Free Software (I don't believe it is), and whether we are really doing the right thing to enable firms like Ubuntu with our code.
I can see how Richard would have a problem understanding that.
I am not dismissing different opinions. I am considering, very seriously, whether it is better for users to be running Microsoft or Apple than for Linux distributions to continue to win market share. This is something I've never done before.
Why do we have to enable them at all? What good is market share for Linux on these terms?
I think you should seriously consider that your home users would be better off running Microsoft or Apple systems. Microsoft and Apple do not pretend to be Open Source, they are very clear about being a for-profit company. They don't have a community of free contributors that they abuse. They pay the people who write their code.
Well, I think it's an overall negative for Free Software to create rich and powerful corporations who stand between the users and the developers. It's a matter of their profits coming before principle. It's going to be the same, IMO, for any for-profit distribution - you have to consider that they are in this to operate a profitable company, not to do good for the world. We really should have done something about it before Red Hat became a Billion dollar company, and Ubuntu is no different given Mark's capitalization of Canonical.
I think it would be best for you to use, and assist when possible, a non-profit distribution. That doesn't mean Fedora, they are too thoroughly controlled by Red Hat. Hopefully Debian still has sufficient independence from Ubuntu. I don't know about the others.
Well, for a lot of people it's a stretch to get them to believe that software freedom has a place among the freedoms they already know are important.
I talk with Michael Dell once in a while. It's easy enough to do. I've only emailed with Larry Ellison.
I think a Debian-like project would work better with different ground-rules at the start. The way it worked out, it was taken for granted that a developer could put a package in the system on his/her own, and the only folks who could pull it were a group of FTP site managers who were not really part of the developer structure.
There are other things I'd change. Sure, your communications shouldn't offend people, but if you are too easy to offend you shouldn't be on the project either. I know of a well-meaning geek feminist who essentially keeps a list of speakers who have offended her. At some point that becomes negative.
Well, obviously not command. But I think in general things will work better if they get Free Software from Free Software developers, even if these are non-profit agregators like Debian. It's about lobbying our own users.
Mark's hypocracy doesn't have so much to do with his character as it has to do with the fact that his company's goals and those of the free software community are simply not compatible. If you consider how different they are, I shouldn't have to argue this one. What made his statement hypocritical is that he was asking the Free Software community to all line up and pull in one direction, with the effect that Ubuntu would be able to harvest more of our software for its own purposes. It's not really anything for the community's own good - we need our differences.
The problem with the user being paramount is that there is often no quid-pro-quo whatsoever with the user. Of course they don't pay us. They don't contribute to the project. They don't help us when we ask for political lobbying against things that hurt us.
This was tolerable when we had a direct relationship with the users, because we could at least sometimes get them to help. When Ubuntu or Red Hat stand between us and the users, we generally can't even communicate with those users.
Consider the difference between a troll and an unpopular opinion. What I made was a posting of unpopular (at least with some folks) opinion. A troll would be intended to inflame rather than to sincerely argue a point.
Exactly. The problem is that Canonical / Ubuntu are just the kind of corporation I was trying to fight. If Open Source / Free Software won't fight them, I need something else that will.
Well, if it hopes to reassure you I'm entirely sincere in posting it. I am seriously thinking that I will license future work with a Linux-distribution-hostile license. It won't be Open Source, and so it's going against some of what I've stood for for 20 years to save the rest. But this is too important to me.
It's not Eric's Open Source model. It was happening quite well before Eric came along, and the Open Source Definition existed for most of a year before he got involved. What you're really saying is that you liked The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
They deliver their own politics.
I have run Debian "unstable" for 12 years and only had one downtime day because of it. Its quality is pretty close to that of a released distribution. And it is updated daily. Perhaps the failure was that Debian didn't market it.
RMS expects folks to understand the merits of Free Software a priori. I am very fond of Richard but it's necessary to accept that his mental wiring does not give him any empathy for folks who don't think the way he does. So, Open Source is a way to introduce the benefits of Free Software to people who don't think like Richard. This makes it necessary, of course, for those people to take the second step on their own: we hope that a pragmatic appreciation leads to a philosophical one.
This doesn't really apply to the interaction of Ubuntu and Free Software. Mark understands Free Software and thus this isn't an issue of Open Source not bringing the idea to him. It's a matter of the goal of profit first and beating the competition and their incompatibility with the goals of Free Software.
Free Software would be happy to lose some customers on philosophical grounds, and would be willing to take a financial hit to further software freedom. Substitute "Ubuntu" for "Free Software" and say that with a straight face.