The original article says nothing about a "mandatory recally by Sony" - rather that Sony is forced to recall the units. As usual Slashdot angles the story a bit...
The biggest problem is how to get money when working on a true opensource-project (multiple developers through CVS). What I thought was this:
1. Make the base work (first version). You have to do this anyway if you want people to join. 2. The license is GPL but can be released as closed-source for $$$ (like Quake). This requires all other developers to release there changes under the same "dual licence". Why would they? Because all money generated by the project will be split; 50% for you and 50% to share between all other developers. I actually think this would be pretty fair - if you get money early you will loose a bit but the more others do, the more favourable it will be. And if you start the next cool thing and retire, you will really hit it off:) 3. Any contributions not being released this way (ie pure GPL) is not part of the version that can be sold - on the other hand the contributors will of course not get any money. 3. The license can be a bit more restrictive; ie the product can not be used commercially without a fee being paid per user/installation etc which would generate more money. Not GPL anymore though - but you still get (almost) all the benefits of opensource.
Just remembered the Newton port was a fake:) I'm sort of old-school and generally think you can do anything if you're just really good at coding and tweaking the hardware (I mean look at recent C64-demos) so I often buy these kinds of spoofs... which is why I dont like them:)
I dont agree. IM(H)O storage space IS the most important factor. It's not that big a deal to load the batteries every night if need be, just plug it in before you go to sleep. It IS a big deal to start downloading music - not just because it takes time but because you have to figure out which music you want to listen to. As soon as you have space enough to store the majority of the music you listen to (presently) you're rid of one major hassle...
As for size; the headphones is still cumbersome enough for the size of the player not to matter that much, as long as it's smaller than a walkman.
You are right, to a degree. While it is true that if you don't get paid you tend to do what's more fun which (in the hackers case) often changes.
But this does not apply to sufficianlty large open-source project where there (almost) always are people to pick up when others tire. MAME is in fact a good example of an open-source project that's been goin going for a long time and has now been ported to a large amount of platforms and supports around a 1000 games - an enormous effort that even Mircosoft would have a hard time matching.
Also, Allthough Visual C++ has a very good IDE it's still heavily lacking in configuration possibilities. Maybe that's because *nix users expect more configurability, but it's still very annoying.
Slashdot Mirror
The original article says nothing about a "mandatory recally by Sony" - rather that Sony is
forced to recall the units. As usual Slashdot
angles the story a bit...
The biggest problem is how to get money when working on a true opensource-project (multiple developers through CVS). What I thought was this:
:)
1. Make the base work (first version). You have to do this anyway if you want people to join.
2. The license is GPL but can be released as closed-source for $$$ (like Quake). This requires all other developers to release there changes under the same "dual licence". Why would they? Because all money generated by the project will be split; 50% for you and 50% to share between all other developers. I actually think this would be pretty fair - if you get money early you will loose a bit but the more others do, the more favourable it will be. And if you start the next cool thing and retire, you will really hit it off
3. Any contributions not being released this way (ie pure GPL) is not part of the version that can be sold - on the other hand the contributors will of course not get any money.
3. The license can be a bit more restrictive; ie the product can not be used commercially without a fee being paid per user/installation etc which would generate more money. Not GPL anymore though - but you still get (almost) all the benefits of opensource.
I think this might work...
Just remembered the Newton port was a fake :) I'm sort of old-school and generally think you can do anything if you're just really good at coding and tweaking the hardware (I mean look at recent C64-demos) so I often buy these kinds of spoofs... which is why I dont like them :)
Actually, Quake has been ported to the Apple Newton which was reported here on slashdot half a year ago:
s html
/ index.htm
http://slashdot.org/articles/older/98422131657.
for the story and
http://www.emeraldnet.net/~ravenous/NewtonQuake
for the stuff.
I dont agree. IM(H)O storage space IS the most important factor. It's not that big a deal to load the batteries every night if need be, just plug it in before you go to sleep. It IS a big deal to start downloading music - not just because it takes time but because you have to figure out which music you want to listen to. As soon as you have space enough to store the majority of the music you listen to (presently) you're rid of one major hassle...
As for size; the headphones is still cumbersome enough for the size of the player not to matter that much, as long as it's smaller than a walkman.
You are right, to a degree. While it is true that if you don't get paid you tend to do what's more fun which (in the hackers case) often changes.
But this does not apply to sufficianlty large open-source project where there (almost) always are people to pick up when others tire. MAME is in fact a good example of an open-source project that's been goin going for a long time and has now been ported to a large amount of platforms and supports around a 1000 games - an enormous effort that even Mircosoft would have a hard time matching.
Also, Allthough Visual C++ has a very good IDE it's still heavily lacking in configuration possibilities. Maybe that's because *nix users expect more configurability, but it's still very annoying.