I never disagreed with Richard. Eric Raymond did that. Nobody cares about Eric any longer.
Open Source was a marketing program to bring Free Software to business. It's been very successful. But unfortunately we didn't plan for some things that need fixing, and I will have to disagree with Richard to fix them.
We need to engineer a system where we don't have rich gate-keepers of the work of non-rich Free Software developers, and the inevitable conflict of interest. We still need commercial users - it's the gate-keepers who are the problem. We need to have a user community on the developer's side rather than on the gate-keeper's side. We're never going to get any movement on the issues important to us, like software patenting, until that happens.
What you haven't explained is why I would have the slightest desire to write software for you to use, and not charge for it. You don't share my goals, and neither does the vendor who gives you my software. That's why I, and many like me, feel that we've been used as unpaid employees of Ubuntu.
It's easy for a hardware vendor to be friendly to Linux: just release a proprietary driver, and you're done. Unfortunately, this isn't of much value, closed drivers have lots of problems: they aren't available for all architectures and kernel versions, eventually the vendor stops compiling new versions, and you can't fix their bugs.
It's a lot harder for a hardware vendor to be friendly to Open Source / Free Software and to either document their hardware fully or make an open driver. That's what we really want.
I doubt that very many Debian developers are actually working at Ubuntu. It's not that big a company. They're working in lots of places. It wasn't throwing money at developers, mostly at users through marketing, PR and publicity.
Don't ask what I'd change if I were in Mark's shoes, ask how to avoid having more people in his position. I would rather see non-profits in charge of building Free Software distributions and getting them to the people. The Mozilla Foundation is doing this reasonably well, although they have their problems and challenges. Debian as a first pass was pretty good, its main foundering point was that they often carried libertarianism to the point of absurdity and well beyond goals of Free Software. There were arguments about slippery slopes every time something offensive was pulled from the distribution.
By essentially making all past and present Debian developers his unpaid employees. Everything we did was for Ubuntu, not Debian, we just didn't know it. I really wish now that I'd let the project die when Ian Murdock quit. I was a freetard - just like Dan Lyons called them when he did that "Fake Steve Jobs" blog. What an idiot I was.
Sure, but unfortunately Free Software doesn't work unless people have a motivation to make it. And over time the only people left with that motivation, when there are gate-keepers, are going to be the folks working for the gate-keepers and people who have some financial reason to get stuff into distributions, like hardware manufacturers.
I know a number of PR firms that moderate online communities for money. Each person involved in that has hundreds of accounts. Once customers understood the importance of this, the character of many online communities changed.
No. Actually RMS did that with the Gnu Free Documentation License.
What I would like to do is foster a large developer community and a large user community without the gate-keepers. I think that might require less rights than you get with Open Source, specifically some terms around paid distribution and distribution as part of a support-for-pay engagement. I don't want to make either impossible, but I'd like to have a system where the goals of the developers are paramount over those of gate-keepers.
I think that there is inevitably a conflict between the goal of software freedom and the existence of a financially powerful gate-keeper who stands between the financially un-powerful free software developers and the vast majority of users. The goals of the gate-keeper will never align with those of the folks making the software.
Maybe it is time for something beyond the Four Freedoms and the Open Source Definition that deals with this problem while building a viable developer and user community.
Yes, and the way that Ubuntu brings free software to the masses is unfortunate. Ubuntu brings Free Software to the masses without those masses knowing who really wrote it, why they wrote it, and why they had the strange idea to give it away for free in a way that you could use, redistribute, and modify. Unfortunately when we wrote it, we weren't thinking that we would have gate-keepers who would essentially negate why we wrote it.
It just takes one Ubuntu sympathizer or PR flack to minus-moderate any comment. Unfortunately, once PR agencies and so on started paying people to moderate online communities, and to have hundreds of accounts each, things changed.
Unfortunately, he's essentially killed the Debian project, and the rest of Free Software is not far behind as we realize the futility of making ourselves his unpaid employees. I have a large product I'm working on, originally intended to be Open Source licensed. I am now thinking about a commercial-distribution-hostile license, just to make sure that community comes first.
Mark doesn't like it that we don't just all cooperate in making him even more wealthy. We're not his unpaid employees, even if that's the way he treats us.
How about using computed holography driving embedded LCDs to make a light sail act as a sort of synthetic-aperture device? You could have multiple steerable beams, receive with multiple steerable reflections, etc.
The sail and spacecraft will receive an electrostatic charge transfer from the solar wind, I think. It might get really large over time. I guess this would tend to drive away dust.
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Who said that changes weren't wanted upstream?
I never disagreed with Richard. Eric Raymond did that. Nobody cares about Eric any longer.
Open Source was a marketing program to bring Free Software to business. It's been very successful. But unfortunately we didn't plan for some things that need fixing, and I will have to disagree with Richard to fix them.
We need to engineer a system where we don't have rich gate-keepers of the work of non-rich Free Software developers, and the inevitable conflict of interest. We still need commercial users - it's the gate-keepers who are the problem. We need to have a user community on the developer's side rather than on the gate-keeper's side. We're never going to get any movement on the issues important to us, like software patenting, until that happens.
Well, enjoy it while it lasts. I'm never giving Ubuntu another line of code, and I doubt I'm alone.
What you haven't explained is why I would have the slightest desire to write software for you to use, and not charge for it. You don't share my goals, and neither does the vendor who gives you my software. That's why I, and many like me, feel that we've been used as unpaid employees of Ubuntu.
It's easy for a hardware vendor to be friendly to Linux: just release a proprietary driver, and you're done. Unfortunately, this isn't of much value, closed drivers have lots of problems: they aren't available for all architectures and kernel versions, eventually the vendor stops compiling new versions, and you can't fix their bugs.
It's a lot harder for a hardware vendor to be friendly to Open Source / Free Software and to either document their hardware fully or make an open driver. That's what we really want.
I doubt that very many Debian developers are actually working at Ubuntu. It's not that big a company. They're working in lots of places. It wasn't throwing money at developers, mostly at users through marketing, PR and publicity.
Don't ask what I'd change if I were in Mark's shoes, ask how to avoid having more people in his position. I would rather see non-profits in charge of building Free Software distributions and getting them to the people. The Mozilla Foundation is doing this reasonably well, although they have their problems and challenges. Debian as a first pass was pretty good, its main foundering point was that they often carried libertarianism to the point of absurdity and well beyond goals of Free Software. There were arguments about slippery slopes every time something offensive was pulled from the distribution.
It's a viable hobby project now. It used to be much more. If I want to work on a hobby, I'll do ham radio stuff for TAPR or AMSAT.
By essentially making all past and present Debian developers his unpaid employees. Everything we did was for Ubuntu, not Debian, we just didn't know it. I really wish now that I'd let the project die when Ian Murdock quit. I was a freetard - just like Dan Lyons called them when he did that "Fake Steve Jobs" blog. What an idiot I was.
Sure, but unfortunately Free Software doesn't work unless people have a motivation to make it. And over time the only people left with that motivation, when there are gate-keepers, are going to be the folks working for the gate-keepers and people who have some financial reason to get stuff into distributions, like hardware manufacturers.
I know a number of PR firms that moderate online communities for money. Each person involved in that has hundreds of accounts. Once customers understood the importance of this, the character of many online communities changed.
He pointed tons of money at them. Hey, I even gave away Ubuntu CDs once or twice. I won't again.
No. Actually RMS did that with the Gnu Free Documentation License.
What I would like to do is foster a large developer community and a large user community without the gate-keepers. I think that might require less rights than you get with Open Source, specifically some terms around paid distribution and distribution as part of a support-for-pay engagement. I don't want to make either impossible, but I'd like to have a system where the goals of the developers are paramount over those of gate-keepers.
I think that there is inevitably a conflict between the goal of software freedom and the existence of a financially powerful gate-keeper who stands between the financially un-powerful free software developers and the vast majority of users. The goals of the gate-keeper will never align with those of the folks making the software.
Maybe it is time for something beyond the Four Freedoms and the Open Source Definition that deals with this problem while building a viable developer and user community.
Yes, and the way that Ubuntu brings free software to the masses is unfortunate. Ubuntu brings Free Software to the masses without those masses knowing who really wrote it, why they wrote it, and why they had the strange idea to give it away for free in a way that you could use, redistribute, and modify. Unfortunately when we wrote it, we weren't thinking that we would have gate-keepers who would essentially negate why we wrote it.
Well, completely destroyed any significance of Debian other than as unpaid employees of Ubuntu.
It just takes one Ubuntu sympathizer or PR flack to minus-moderate any comment. Unfortunately, once PR agencies and so on started paying people to moderate online communities, and to have hundreds of accounts each, things changed.
Unfortunately, he's essentially killed the Debian project, and the rest of Free Software is not far behind as we realize the futility of making ourselves his unpaid employees. I have a large product I'm working on, originally intended to be Open Source licensed. I am now thinking about a commercial-distribution-hostile license, just to make sure that community comes first.
Mark doesn't like it that we don't just all cooperate in making him even more wealthy. We're not his unpaid employees, even if that's the way he treats us.
Oh, the reason you didn't know about reflection was that you were confusing solar wind and light pressure. Easy to do. I did it too.
But I just confused solar wind and light pressure. Different phenomena.
You can tack using reflection. What you say would be true if it only worked by absorption.
How about using computed holography driving embedded LCDs to make a light sail act as a sort of synthetic-aperture device? You could have multiple steerable beams, receive with multiple steerable reflections, etc.
It seems you don't get solar wind in a magnetosphere, so the two systems each work best where the other won't.
The sail and spacecraft will receive an electrostatic charge transfer from the solar wind, I think. It might get really large over time. I guess this would tend to drive away dust.