I think I can say that I can relate to your situation but my situation is still quite different. I spent the last year unemployed and working on my open source project. I was committing code to sf.net from the start with a BSD like license. I chose BSD because I didn't want any eventual employers to have a problem with the GPL's tough terms and decide that I couldn't use the code.
In the end (about two months ago), I really lucked out and started working for a very small financial company. They have little to no technical expertise and have left me to my own devices.
I still have to draw the line, just as you will, between application and framework code. For me that has been pretty easy to do so far. I understand that I am the party that has an interest in contributing to open source, not my employer. And by working on my open source project on company time I am basicly forcing the company to donate my time to open source
I justify this in my mind by saying the company is reaping the benifits of the last year while I was working on the project while unemployed.
So there are some similarities between your situation and mine. Take from it what you will. And try to keep the agreements as informal as possible.
Hopefully this article isn't too old so you don't get a chance to read this. I only read/. on weekends now;).
I don't have any direct experience with JDO but it sounds similar. Project Colle (Colle-SQL) focuses on building, loading, indexing and accessing databases from an XML scheme.
Two problems I see are lack of rollbacks (unless you code it yourself) and joins.
Without rollbacks, you can't undo operations that haven't completed. Say for instance you are half way through an operation and suddenly a software error or data error prevents committing your operation. You have to rollback. With a database it is simple.
Without joins bringing disparate data sources together gets difficult. Say you want all the publishers with books that were published in the year 2000. In the prevalence system you first look through the books collection then you match up publishers. But make sure you only get each publisher once!
Then say you want to further narrow your search so you only have publishers with North American addresses. You have to code each query by hand. Having a query language might actually be a good thing.
================== Use the right kind of glue http://colle.sf.net
Keychain??!! How do I get Safari to use passwords in my keychain? This was a wonderful feature of Chimera and pretty much the only Chimera feature I miss.
Now if I could get two new features in keychain:
1. Links so two entries can have exactly the same password. 2. HTTP password updater so I can update all of my passwords with a click of a button.
Well we didn't do everything MDA claims but we did abstract out our middleware. Our goal was to keep middleware from occupying so much of day to day development. By defining our middleware relationships in XML we were able to generate tons of code. In practice we abstracted EJBs but in theory it wouldn't be too difficult to generate different wrappers for SOAP or some other middleware.
It wouldn't be hard to recreate but I am trying to open source the existing code. The company I worked for while writing it has been liquidated and the code was never listed as an asset. I think it is fair game for anyone with a copy.
Users bookmark things in unusual ways. Sometimes they will type in the URL, goto the page, then a couple of days later when they want to tell their coworker the only URL they have is two miles long.
Then what happens when your user bookmarks the result of the redirect and you want to change the server technology without your users noticing? ie say the original URL is:
which the user bookmarks. Then you want to change your content management system. Do you support all the old links and all the redirects?
Forget about bookmarks, how about when google indexes your site? I think something like this happened to apple's support site a couple of months back. Suddenly all the hits to knowledge base articles started coming up with 404s.
My daughter is 10 months old now but I think 4 months is when she started batting at things. At first it didn't seem like she was doing much but flailing her arm randomly but after a while she was definitely swinging at things.
Oral exploration takes a while though. It requires that the kid be able to get her hands to her mouth.
Sounds super cool!
I work in a company where several of us have mac laptops but the company is too cheap to put down the $300 for an airport base station. It would be nice if we could set up a software base station on each laptop and set it to automagicly turn on when any of our laptops are connected to ethernet. That way just one of us has to be hardwired at any given time.
Anyone know if it will work?
OTOH, doesn't this sound like a future security risk for companies? Now the IT department has to not only secure the copper but the air too!
I would really like to see Apple or anyone implement this. Until then here is what I do: use the up and down arrow keys. The arrow keys aren't very far from the trackpad so it will just require some re-education of your hands. Which just goes to show how hard it is to switch from one platform to another.
I'll take this moment to rant a bit on Apple's lack of attention to keyboard navigation. At first I thought the problem was my newness with the platform but after six months I still find myself relying too heavily on the mouse. Anyone know how to cycle amoung open windows from the keyboard?
I think QuantumG still has a valid point. Practically every installer I run under OS X asks for my password. This is only slightly better than an OS (w2k) whose default configuration has everything running as an administrator.
OS X installers that need system level access should simply tell me they don't have the right permissions then quit.
Am I the only one that thinks that these guys aren't following their own rules? All they ever do is defend themselves. How about these guys attack world hunger or polution or something like that?
Slashdot Mirror
I think I can say that I can relate to your situation but my situation is still quite different. I spent the last year unemployed and working on my open source project. I was committing code to sf.net from the start with a BSD like license. I chose BSD because I didn't want any eventual employers to have a problem with the GPL's tough terms and decide that I couldn't use the code.
In the end (about two months ago), I really lucked out and started working for a very small financial company. They have little to no technical expertise and have left me to my own devices.
I still have to draw the line, just as you will, between application and framework code. For me that has been pretty easy to do so far. I understand that I am the party that has an interest in contributing to open source, not my employer. And by working on my open source project on company time I am basicly forcing the company to donate my time to open source
I justify this in my mind by saying the company is reaping the benifits of the last year while I was working on the project while unemployed.
So there are some similarities between your situation and mine. Take from it what you will. And try to keep the agreements as informal as possible.
Hopefully this article isn't too old so you don't get a chance to read this. I only read /. on weekends now ;).
Take a look at Project Colle.
I don't have any direct experience with JDO but it sounds similar. Project Colle (Colle-SQL) focuses on building, loading, indexing and accessing databases from an XML scheme.
Two problems I see are lack of rollbacks (unless you code it yourself) and joins.
Without rollbacks, you can't undo operations that haven't completed. Say for instance you are half way through an operation and suddenly a software error or data error prevents committing your operation. You have to rollback. With a database it is simple.
Without joins bringing disparate data sources together gets difficult. Say you want all the publishers with books that were published in the year 2000. In the prevalence system you first look through the books collection then you match up publishers. But make sure you only get each publisher once!
Then say you want to further narrow your search so you only have publishers with North American addresses. You have to code each query by hand. Having a query language might actually be a good thing.
==================
Use the right kind of glue
http://colle.sf.net
Keychain??!! How do I get Safari to use passwords in my keychain? This was a wonderful feature of Chimera and pretty much the only Chimera feature I miss.
Now if I could get two new features in keychain:
1. Links so two entries can have exactly the same password.
2. HTTP password updater so I can update all of my passwords with a click of a button.
Well we didn't do everything MDA claims but we did abstract out our middleware. Our goal was to keep middleware from occupying so much of day to day development. By defining our middleware relationships in XML we were able to generate tons of code. In practice we abstracted EJBs but in theory it wouldn't be too difficult to generate different wrappers for SOAP or some other middleware.
It wouldn't be hard to recreate but I am trying to open source the existing code. The company I worked for while writing it has been liquidated and the code was never listed as an asset. I think it is fair game for anyone with a copy.
Users bookmark things in unusual ways. Sometimes they will type in the URL, goto the page, then a couple of days later when they want to tell their coworker the only URL they have is two miles long.
= myproduct
Then what happens when your user bookmarks the result of the redirect and you want to change the server technology without your users noticing? ie say the original URL is:
http://myserver.xyz/myproduct
which redirects the user to:
http://myserver.xyz/stuff?things=blahblah&product
which the user bookmarks. Then you want to change your content management system. Do you support all the old links and all the redirects?
Forget about bookmarks, how about when google indexes your site? I think something like this happened to apple's support site a couple of months back. Suddenly all the hits to knowledge base articles started coming up with 404s.
I remember reading one of the articles saying that the ozone hole was defined as an area where the density of ozone drops below a certain level.
So isn't it possible that two holes would spread the thinning area out? The total lack of ozone still exists and could still be growing.
My daughter is 10 months old now but I think 4 months is when she started batting at things. At first it didn't seem like she was doing much but flailing her arm randomly but after a while she was definitely swinging at things.
Oral exploration takes a while though. It requires that the kid be able to get her hands to her mouth.
Sounds super cool! I work in a company where several of us have mac laptops but the company is too cheap to put down the $300 for an airport base station. It would be nice if we could set up a software base station on each laptop and set it to automagicly turn on when any of our laptops are connected to ethernet. That way just one of us has to be hardwired at any given time. Anyone know if it will work? OTOH, doesn't this sound like a future security risk for companies? Now the IT department has to not only secure the copper but the air too!
I would really like to see Apple or anyone implement this. Until then here is what I do: use the up and down arrow keys. The arrow keys aren't very far from the trackpad so it will just require some re-education of your hands. Which just goes to show how hard it is to switch from one platform to another.
I'll take this moment to rant a bit on Apple's lack of attention to keyboard navigation. At first I thought the problem was my newness with the platform but after six months I still find myself relying too heavily on the mouse. Anyone know how to cycle amoung open windows from the keyboard?
I think QuantumG still has a valid point. Practically every installer I run under OS X asks for my password. This is only slightly better than an OS (w2k) whose default configuration has everything running as an administrator. OS X installers that need system level access should simply tell me they don't have the right permissions then quit.
Does anyone know how to bring this up with NASA's tracking program?
Am I the only one that thinks that these guys aren't following their own rules? All they ever do is defend themselves. How about these guys attack world hunger or polution or something like that?