Most manufacturers don't even take the first step to help developers, which is document their hardware. That way, the developers can achieve their primary goal, which is to get hardware working with their system.
Secondary to that, I and other developers would feel rewarded if the company's policies were in general supportive of free software - for example, their patent policy - do they use patents abusively? Are they willing to blanket-license their patents for use in GPL code? That's more important than my personal credit.
Regarding personal credit, most developers are satisfied to have their name attached to code where the other developers can see it. A "credits" file is nice, and it makes sense for large projects like the Linux kernel where there would otherwise be a different name every two lines of code. For smaller projects, it's nice to have a credits file on your web site and distributed with your software in its documentation directory, but it's optional.
If your developer liason is able to seed effective developers with new hardware versions, they'll appreciate that and you will get more help for your efforts.
And if you want an Open Source XML-based GUI environment, we already have one! It's part of Mozilla. I have no idea how the two products compare, though.
Yes, I built stuff from sources on 4BSD in 1981. It's 20 years later and frankly I really do appreciate apt and the hundreds of Debian folks who consistently get things right, even in unstable so that I can run an automatic upgrade from there every few days and very rarely see anything go wrong.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:What all Linux Package Managers Lack...
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RPM Package Manager
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· Score: 1
I've seen demonstrations of apt's "downgrade" logic, probably close to two years ago. Perhaps Jason abandoned it, I'm not sure.
Supporting back releases of Debian is probably within the purview of a commercial Debian derivative, not the Debian organization itself. However, Debian supported LIBC 4 long after they needed to. LIBC 5 is still supported. Debian releases aren't like Red Hat 7.0 (or Red Hat 6.0), they are a good deal more tested and when they are finally released, users should upgrade.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Licensing - This is not free software!
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RPM Package Manager
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· Score: 2
If they are currently linking to any GPL component, their beta license would not be legit because it would be in conflict with the GPL. But I've not examined their software.
Given that they say they are going to GPL it, if they are not currently linking to a GPL component, they aren't doing anything wrong.
Not that I am sure the business model makes much sense. There are too many people willing to give away what they are seeking to sell.
Although I have passed the 20 WPM exam from an ARRL volunteer examiner team, I've never used Morse on the air and am the founder of No-Code International.
The 2M beacon will be down for an extended period. It is "off limits" until they determine what caused the computers to crash. They appear to have lost some current sensors and some temperature sensors, and this sounds like a short circuit to me.
The common man is not necessarily stupid. Hams will use this bird while they flip hamburgers on their way through college. Although he's a pretty unusual guy, I do know about at least one sysadmin who is a moonlighting rocket scientist on this project.
I don't know why the bootloader is so rudimentary. But note that the main flight computer has a silicon-on-sapphire CPU and the boot ROMs would probably have to be just as exotic to stand the radiation. That means you could easily pay $20,000 for a 16K ROM, no kidding. Rad-hard 74xx logic costs at least $200/chip. The RAM is not rad-hard, an active "scrubbing" routine repairs single-bit errors before they grow too large to correct.
It is a relay satellite. It receives ham signals and re-transmits them. You should be able to work the world with a walkie-talkie and a handheld beam antenna. It also carries an orbit-to-ground laser communications experiment, a GPS experiment developed by Bdale Garbee of Debian fame, and a few TV cameras.
Believe it or not, there are some cool volunteer projects out in the world other than Linux:-) .
This story is about the ham radio space program. Look through the articles at www.amsat.org.
InstantTrak is a ground application distributed by AMSAT as a fund-raiser, for people who want to track the satellite (using windows, I think) so that they can communicate with it. But there are a lot of free applications to do this, too. Debian distributes at least one, and has a good collection of free ham radio apps.
Ham radio operators around the world. It was built and financed by ham clubs and launched by an Ariane 5 as a hitch-hiker with another (paying) satellite. Ariane (and most other boosters) are built to loft a fixed weight, so if the main payload isn't heavy enough (almost always the case) you either load hitch-hikers or you load ballast. Some of the development was hosted on Debian and the parallels to our volunteer projects are obvious.
A bunch of radio hams built a satellite, with some very cool stuff on it, and got it launched into orbit. Corporations and governments aren't the only ones who can get access to space and do useful things with it. Parallels with our "Open Source" projects are obvious, some Free Software was used to develop the satellite software, and some Free Software developers are participating in the project. A good place to start reading about the Amateur space program and its many successes since 1962 is at www.amsat.org.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:great program, but it isn't keeping up
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Gimp 1.2.0 Released
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· Score: 2
GNUmed is an interesting example. It's a vertical-market application. I'm not sure that's near the bottom of the list of things we do best so far, but it's not at the top. For better or worse, we seem to do systems programming best so far.
In their place, I would be writing grant applications right now. Having written those before, I can tell you it's a distinct possibility to get grant funding for this sort of application.
Whether or not it succeeds depends on their finding programmers to do it while being paid, or (and this would be worse) volunteers willing to do it for the cause. Grad students on a grant will be willing to do it to an external specification. Volunteers? They will want to have a lot to do with the design, and will leave doors open for implementing those features they aren't interested in, but will they do them? That's a very chancy thing.
Re:great program, but it isn't keeping up
on
Gimp 1.2.0 Released
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· Score: 2
No. First, doing image processing the way he suggests has been tried by a number of others (me included). It's so much simpler to operate directly on a raster that the users themselves have abandoned this sort of program as they've gained access to machines that can handle the full resolution image.
Second, listening to the customer on design decisions this is unfortunately a way to be a follower, not a leader, because the customer doesn't know what they want until it's too late. In the case of this idea, much too late.
Third, that's just not the way Free Software works. Coders do what they want to do, and the user's needs are a distant second to those of the developer. A very large and healthy commercial market exists if you want things the ohter way around.
And PANSAT from the Naval Postgraduate Institute in Monterey, California is similar. I think it was all built by Navy folks, but was promised to be an Amateur satellite using spread spectrum and the software to use it would be made available to Amateurs. That never happened.
Their web site is amsat.org . If you want to learn about what they are doing, go to arrl.org and buy the "Satellite Anthology". I think ARRL or AMSAT have some conference proceedings available, as well.
If you want to talk with an AMSAT developer directly, try Bdale Garbee bdale@debian.org . He did the GPS experiment and possibly some other stuff, and was part of the pre-launch prep team in Ghana.
I read at -1 and see everyone's posts. If not many non-bruce posts are displayed, it's because you've set your threshold too high. If you are seeing them without parent posts (except for the update post) it's because the answers were moderated higher than the questions.
Until we got a few other hams posting there were few people here who had any information on the topic, and I answered all sensible questions, as I'll usually do on my own articles. I hardly think this is improper.
Someone please moderate this up. Here are the updates to this story.
The RAM corruption on the experimental backup flight computer is a normal feature until the EDAC software "scrubbing" routine is enabled. This constantly scans RAM for errors and corrects them before they grow too large to be correctible. That software has not been loaded yet.
The 145.898 beacon was not damaged, a 440 MHz one was. The 145.898 beacon runs from the backup flight computer while the 440 MHz one runs from the primary one. That's why the backup flight computer could cause a loss of telemetry.
There have been a good deal more than 40 Amateur satellites, only the ones that actually reached orbit and transmitted get numbers, and there are Amateur satellites outside of this numbering series.
Insiders tell me to relax, have patience, and that it is really jumping the gun to think the bird is lost.
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Secondary to that, I and other developers would feel rewarded if the company's policies were in general supportive of free software - for example, their patent policy - do they use patents abusively? Are they willing to blanket-license their patents for use in GPL code? That's more important than my personal credit.
Regarding personal credit, most developers are satisfied to have their name attached to code where the other developers can see it. A "credits" file is nice, and it makes sense for large projects like the Linux kernel where there would otherwise be a different name every two lines of code. For smaller projects, it's nice to have a credits file on your web site and distributed with your software in its documentation directory, but it's optional.
If your developer liason is able to seed effective developers with new hardware versions, they'll appreciate that and you will get more help for your efforts.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Given that they say they are going to GPL it, if they are not currently linking to a GPL component, they aren't doing anything wrong.
Not that I am sure the business model makes much sense. There are too many people willing to give away what they are seeking to sell.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
In their place, I would be writing grant applications right now. Having written those before, I can tell you it's a distinct possibility to get grant funding for this sort of application.
Whether or not it succeeds depends on their finding programmers to do it while being paid, or (and this would be worse) volunteers willing to do it for the cause. Grad students on a grant will be willing to do it to an external specification. Volunteers? They will want to have a lot to do with the design, and will leave doors open for implementing those features they aren't interested in, but will they do them? That's a very chancy thing.
Thanks
Bruce
That should read "design decisions this big".
Second, listening to the customer on design decisions this is unfortunately a way to be a follower, not a leader, because the customer doesn't know what they want until it's too late. In the case of this idea, much too late.
Third, that's just not the way Free Software works. Coders do what they want to do, and the user's needs are a distant second to those of the developer. A very large and healthy commercial market exists if you want things the ohter way around.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce?
If you want to talk with an AMSAT developer directly, try Bdale Garbee bdale@debian.org . He did the GPS experiment and possibly some other stuff, and was part of the pre-launch prep team in Ghana.
Thanks
Bruce
Oh, I suppose you can classify that 1962 Tuna Tin radio as a handheld, too :-) No doubt there is military stuff from the Korean war era, as well.
Thanks
Bruce
Until we got a few other hams posting there were few people here who had any information on the topic, and I answered all sensible questions, as I'll usually do on my own articles. I hardly think this is improper.
Thanks
Bruce
The RAM corruption on the experimental backup flight computer is a normal feature until the EDAC software "scrubbing" routine is enabled. This constantly scans RAM for errors and corrects them before they grow too large to be correctible. That software has not been loaded yet.
The 145.898 beacon was not damaged, a 440 MHz one was. The 145.898 beacon runs from the backup flight computer while the 440 MHz one runs from the primary one. That's why the backup flight computer could cause a loss of telemetry.
There have been a good deal more than 40 Amateur satellites, only the ones that actually reached orbit and transmitted get numbers, and there are Amateur satellites outside of this numbering series.
Insiders tell me to relax, have patience, and that it is really jumping the gun to think the bird is lost.
Thanks
Bruce