Are blind people required to have their eyes removed? As for "drive through atms", don't you think that it's just a lot cheaper for ATM manufacturers to have one model of ATM vs having specific ones for drive through vs walkup vs embedded (I'm talking mechanisms, not the "body" of the atm). Why would they want the hassle of keeping track of two seperate button styles for every atm they manufacture?
I know that some search sites "spider" ftp sites, but couldn't ftp site owners change the license agreements for their sites to disallow the spidering of their site for the explicit purpose of trying to find specific files. In this way the search spiders can still work, but a spider "looking" for anything specifically would not be allowed? I don't know if this type of thing is common in other contexts that may negatively be impacted by such a change though?
Their is no profit incentive to give apple their best processor for a discount.
Since when is the 970 their "best" processor? The PowerPC chips have always been on the low end of the totem pole as far as IBM is concerned. The 970 is more like a watered down Power4 anyway. Plus, other than their embedded chips, Apple pushes more PowerPC chips than any other customer they have, so I assume that they'd be happy to have a high volume though lower margin processor to even further establish the PowerPC in the market (since Motorola is too busy making phones).
No actually I was stuck back in the old days when there actually was a difference between the POWER and PowerPC (this changed around POWER2/3 time frame?). I know the Power4 supports the 64bit PowerPC ISA, but does it implement all of the 32bit PowerPC ISA in silicon, or does it still use traps for some of the instructions?
Let's not forget BeOS, which began life on multi-PPC systems.
Well I was referring to "current" or near current OS's (too bad about Be, I actually have my BeBox still, nice machine). You can also throw in Windows NT (3.1 - 4.0), OS/2, NeXTStep if we want to include "older" OSs.
IBM could have cranked up the clock rate and achieved 0% performance increase and it wouldn't matter to most people.
This was a statement about the importance given to clock rate vs acutal performance. I wasen't saying that they would do such a thing, just illustrating a point. Plus, the rated maximum clock for a cpu doesn't mean the cpu ALWAYS runs at that rate (ala mobile proccies), plus they could always internal shut down pipelines or aritifically narrow the bus, or any number things to slow the chip down despite a clock rate increase, IF they wanted to.
I don't think that there was ever a serious rumour about Apple using Power4, the chip is just too expensive and power hungry to use. That and it does not fully implement the PPC instruction set (though getting your OS to deal with it would not be a HUGE deal). The rumour all along has been about this 970 chip. It is 64bit btw.
How much does IBM use PowerPC in its own servers, whether they by AIX or Linux, or do they mostly install them on Intel servers?
"Install them on Intel servers?" I think you're a bit confused here. The PowerPC chips are used instead of Intel chips, not WITH them. At any rate, IBM only uses the PowerPC on their low end. They use PowerIII, RS64, Power4 on their mid-high end stuff. The announcment was about their blade server, blade servers typically use lower end processors that don't run as hot because of the dense packaging.
Is PowerPC going to implement Palladium and DRM
Typically the only thing that a processor lends to the DRM equation is a unique serial number. I don't know if they support it or not. Wouldn't surprise me however if they did as this scheme is very popular on higher end systems to do software licensing.
If so, then this is good. If all computers become hard-wired with DRM as well as Windows, then I could conceivably still assemble my own system with commodity hardware, a PowerPC chip, and run a Linux PowerPC distro on it.
You will not likely be able to assemble a "commodity" box using a PPC. You'd have to either dig up an Apple mobo or an IBM mobo. Possible to do, but far from bopping down to Fry's and grabing the latest VIA PPC mobo and chip.
Funny that you ask. The fact is that it doesn't matter. Remember the so called "mhz myth" well it definitely exists from a marketing standpoint. IBM could have cranked up the clock rate and achieved 0% performance increase and it wouldn't matter to most people. They just say "oh, Apple has a 2.5ghz processor, that's better than 1.8ghz, oooh, aaaah". This is the same battle that AMD fights. They are spending big bucks trying to remind people that just because that P4 is running at 3ghz, it doesn't mean that it is THAT much faster than a 2.2ghz Athlon.
First of all, what is the processor that Apple using now? Isn't it some sort of PowerPC already? I see this one supports Altivec and I know that G3 and G4 Apple computers have the same instruction sets. Is this just another implementation, or is G3 and G4 relatives of this new processor?
Apple currently uses the G4 and G3 family. The G4 has AltiVec, G3 does not. G4/G3 are product names, whereas 970 are more like model numbers. There all related in that they implement the PowerPC ISA (Instruction Set Archetecture).
Second: what operating system does the IBM PowerPC run?
Depends on who is selling the machine the chip is in. Apple sells OS9 and OSX. IBM has AIX. And of course there's Linux and BSD. These are the most common.
I suspect that the article is just confusing and processor itself is not made by IBM. Right??
Nope, IBM does manufacture the 970. IBM also makes G3's. AFAIK Motorola is the only one making G4's right now (could be wrong here, could be that IBM is cranking some G4's as well). Also note that both Motorola and IBM sell other variations of the PowerPC (most well known is the PPC that powers the Nintendo GameCube).
I can't seem to get to the site (/.'ed?) but one use that springs to mind is being able to update the data for some application. Right now you purchase some app that might come on a cd, lets say a mapping app. When you want to install updated data, you either get a new cd, or you download, but you can't have the updated stuff with the cd, since it's still on the machine you downloaded. With this, you could download and burn the update and still have everything together.
Another app could be a way to distribute homework to students. The homework/text is on the stamped portion. As the students do their homework, it can be burnt on the cd. At the end of the year you have a permanent record of the class. You could extend this to storing markup information (bookmarks, notes, etc) and adding supplemantal info as well.
I think that you're forgetting the context of the time period that the Newton was introduced.
Unleashing a new product category before the product itself was ready.
No different than AT&T, Sony, and a slew of other manufacturers that came out with PDA's around the same time frame. At the time the PDA was the "hot" technology and everyone put there's out before any of them were ready.
Ignoring customer feedback on design issues and pricing.
Well as far as pricing, you price the thing as low as possible but high enough to meet your financial goals. Don't you think that if it were feasable for Apple to sell the thing for $200, they would have loved to? It wasen't. It's was very expensive, very leading edge technology. However, it was not significantly more expensive than the other PDA's available at the time.
Vague and inexplicit value proposition.
Again, the entire PDA market at the time faced this issue. The arrival of the PALM made the value propsition come into focus, unfortunately, almost EVERY other manufacturer of a PDA at the time had missed.
Getting nailed by a competitor who listened to customers, built a more portable platform, hit the market target price, and understood the core value proposition of a PDA.
No they were a competitor that came to the show late enough to learn from everyone elses mistakes. They benefitted greatly from being behind the curve. Everyone was crowding the high end so they wisely decided to go for the low end, and it worked.
Unfortunately, after years of fumbling, overpromising and under-delivering, the market had moved on, and simply would not believe anything that Apple had to say -- something I'll dub the Newton Effect.
Again, this is true for almost every PDA manufacturer of the time. That's why you don't see the names EO, General Magic, MS Windows for Pen Computing, et al any more. At the time, the PDA was a technology in search of a market (still is in many ways), hardly anything specific to Apple (though they did have a lot more hype than most).
It's hard to buy in bulk less powerful computers nowadays. Dell pretty much only sells midrange to top of the line computers. Good luck finding an older P3-500 or whatever.
I wasen't referring to anything that old. Over at Dell you can get a 2Ghz Celeron, 256MB, 40GB, 15" LCD, XP Pro, HK Speakers, 4year Parts and Labor with next day replacement, 3 years XP support, UPS, and PC Installation! So all that PLUS all the support for the same price he has for just the pc and a printer. His comparison is just lame.
Yet Another Bogus Total Cost of Ownership Comparison.
This one has sooooo many problems it's hard to know where to start. Heck even from a "basics" point of view, he has the "Microsoft" clients have printers but the "Unix" systems not. Whatever happened to comparing apples to apples? This is just plain bad and rotten reporting. Every student "needs" a 2.8ghz Dell, err, not.
But the most egregious thing is the setup for the whole comparison. xterms vs full fledged clients. How is this somehow Microsoft vs Unix? You can adopt either topology for either OS. The very premise is absolutely flawed. That the article poster somehow considers this "refreshing" is laughable.
Thanks, I already have K&R (first edition). I was just using the "formating a for statement' thing as an example, I've been a C/C++ guy for over 12 years now, I think I have the 'for' loop down now;)
Thanks. FYI, the book I mentioned has a new second edition (I would be happy with either) that just came out last year, so it's not an age thing. I guess not that many people are wild about RE's (and so many other books sorta cover it). I wonder if they simply go by book sales to determine what titles to bring out next?
What they are laudable for is precisely that they used a simple, user friendly, straightforward HTML instead of a bizarre plugin.
I guess I'm not convinced that their decision on using HTML is based on economic reasons vs any good will on their part. Given their audience, they can't just simply assume Windoze and IE, so any proprietary solution they come up with would have to support multiple OS's and browsers, which we all know is a monumental PITA. Again given their audience and it's predilection towards being against such technologies, they would have a tough row to hoe to get their intended targets to actually even buy in.
Not to say I'm not glad they made that choice, I am, I'm just not convinced that their intentions were necessarily, "pure".
I just went over there to play around a little. Of course the book that I was looking for ("Mastering Regular Expressions") is NOT available, even though it is an O'Reilly title. Not a good sign. Anyway, I would have thought that there would be a simple and easy to find "submit a book request" button/link, but I couldn't find one. Is such a feature available to subscribers? Have current subscribers found any other "holes" in the library?
One of my pleasant surprises and very commendable on the Safari guys is that they didn't fall into the drm/encrypted crap
Not to take anything away from your good vibes towards O'Reilly, but since html is their delivery format, there really isn't much they CAN do about DRM. Once it's in your browser, you can do whatever you want and they can't stop it even if they wanted to. Forgive (and ignore) me if they are using something else to display the content (e.g. java applet, etc). In which case I agree, kudos.
When I walk into my professors office, they have two walls of metal bookshelves stacked to the wall with books. It's like walking into their mind.
Right, but what the article poster alluded to and what others are mentioning is that often times the majority of books that one owns are not ones that they have read. In many ways ones bookshelf is like ones online persona, you are free to appear to be whoever you want. So if I wanted to look like a c/c++ god, I'd have things like K&R and Stroustroup, and NOT some "dummies guide", even if I don't know how to properly format a 'for' statement. I always take one's bookshelf with a grain of salt, esp if it's full of books that look like my old college text books did (i.e. more pristine than the ones on the bookstore shelf).
OK, so is Googles ranking system novel and innovative? Or could most any decent developer have come up with it if it was on their todo lists (1. get more coffee 2. stare at Natalie Portman pix 3. post First Post/In soviet russia on/. 4. develop novel and innovative ranking algo 5. stare at Natalie Portman pix.....)
Did you read a word I wrote? I said, one is motivated to find and fix problems in one's own code becuase if one doesn't and someone else finds it first one is embarrassed in front of the whole developer (and user) community. That seems to me a much more powerful incentive than any amount of money.
Yes I did read what you wrote. Are you assuming I didn't because I dared to not agree with you? I still don't. The original post refered to ACCOUNTABILITY, NOT motivation. You seem to be implying that since the OSS is afraid of looking stupid, that they'll produce better code, THEREFORE there is no need to place any additional standards for accountability, UNLIKE the corp developer, since their just greedy and are in it for the paycheck. Which if it is what your saying, then it's plain wrong. We're talking about taking responsibility for your mistakes. If the OSS developer makes fewer of them because of the environment and their "typical" mind set, then fine. BUT, the OSS developer WILL make mistakes. And when they do, should they not be held just as accountable for their mistakes as the corp developer? Which leads right back to the question I first posed, with the corp developer you have financial incentives/penalties, what leverage does one have when the OSS developer screws up? You have not addressed my question, other than to somehow imply that OSS developers never screw up.
Let's see if I've got this straight. You seem to be saying that if a person doesn't have financial incentive they won't exercise a work ethic? Do you work for the government or one of its contractors?
Uh no, I said that I didn't agree that just having egg on your face in front of your peers was better or more incentive than a similar corporate situation combined with a financial incentive. I'm sure you've met many OSS developers with great work ethic. I've met many corp. developers that had great work ethic, and I've met many that had crap work ethic who didn't care WHO saw their code.
I think what the original poster probably MEANT to say was that the person who is likely to take their time to contribute to an OSS project is MORE LIKELY to be more concienceous about their code, and thereby wouldn't NEED additional motivation. I would whole heartedly agree with that. HOWEVER the original poster's implication was that corp. developers had to be held accountable for their code or else, but yet not OSS developers. My response was a question on how to hold OSS developers accountable for theirs. They then replied that effectively "there was no need", I did not, and do not, agree. Having good work ethic and not writing bugs are two separate things. As is obvious by the bugs that actually do show up in OSS that is writin by developers with "good work ethic" and having been reviewed by their peers (not trying to bad mouth OSS development, I'm just saying it's not perfect either).
You don't need to provide an incentive for open source programmers to create fewer vulnerabilities
I'm sorry I don't share your belief that having others find your blunders is somehow "better" (or just as good as) having financial incentive. Plus in the corp world, there is BOTH the risk of having someone find your broken code and the financial slap on the wrists. There are more than enough vulns. in OSS code that if your statement is correct, would imply that the people doing the coding on OSS are producing marginal code due to lack of skill vs attention to detail (I'm referring specifically to busted code, not ALL their code). Is this what you are saying?
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Are blind people required to have their eyes removed? As for "drive through atms", don't you think that it's just a lot cheaper for ATM manufacturers to have one model of ATM vs having specific ones for drive through vs walkup vs embedded (I'm talking mechanisms, not the "body" of the atm). Why would they want the hassle of keeping track of two seperate button styles for every atm they manufacture?
I know that some search sites "spider" ftp sites, but couldn't ftp site owners change the license agreements for their sites to disallow the spidering of their site for the explicit purpose of trying to find specific files. In this way the search spiders can still work, but a spider "looking" for anything specifically would not be allowed? I don't know if this type of thing is common in other contexts that may negatively be impacted by such a change though?
Their is no profit incentive to give apple their best processor for a discount.
Since when is the 970 their "best" processor? The PowerPC chips have always been on the low end of the totem pole as far as IBM is concerned. The 970 is more like a watered down Power4 anyway. Plus, other than their embedded chips, Apple pushes more PowerPC chips than any other customer they have, so I assume that they'd be happy to have a high volume though lower margin processor to even further establish the PowerPC in the market (since Motorola is too busy making phones).
No actually I was stuck back in the old days when there actually was a difference between the POWER and PowerPC (this changed around POWER2/3 time frame?). I know the Power4 supports the 64bit PowerPC ISA, but does it implement all of the 32bit PowerPC ISA in silicon, or does it still use traps for some of the instructions?
Let's not forget BeOS, which began life on multi-PPC systems.
Well I was referring to "current" or near current OS's (too bad about Be, I actually have my BeBox still, nice machine). You can also throw in Windows NT (3.1 - 4.0), OS/2, NeXTStep if we want to include "older" OSs.
Read the entire sentence:
IBM could have cranked up the clock rate and achieved 0% performance increase and it wouldn't matter to most people.
This was a statement about the importance given to clock rate vs acutal performance. I wasen't saying that they would do such a thing, just illustrating a point. Plus, the rated maximum clock for a cpu doesn't mean the cpu ALWAYS runs at that rate (ala mobile proccies), plus they could always internal shut down pipelines or aritifically narrow the bus, or any number things to slow the chip down despite a clock rate increase, IF they wanted to.
I don't think that there was ever a serious rumour about Apple using Power4, the chip is just too expensive and power hungry to use. That and it does not fully implement the PPC instruction set (though getting your OS to deal with it would not be a HUGE deal). The rumour all along has been about this 970 chip. It is 64bit btw.
How much does IBM use PowerPC in its own servers, whether they by AIX or Linux, or do they mostly install them on Intel servers?
"Install them on Intel servers?" I think you're a bit confused here. The PowerPC chips are used instead of Intel chips, not WITH them. At any rate, IBM only uses the PowerPC on their low end. They use PowerIII, RS64, Power4 on their mid-high end stuff. The announcment was about their blade server, blade servers typically use lower end processors that don't run as hot because of the dense packaging.
Is PowerPC going to implement Palladium and DRM
Typically the only thing that a processor lends to the DRM equation is a unique serial number. I don't know if they support it or not. Wouldn't surprise me however if they did as this scheme is very popular on higher end systems to do software licensing.
If so, then this is good. If all computers become hard-wired with DRM as well as Windows, then I could conceivably still assemble my own system with commodity hardware, a PowerPC chip, and run a Linux PowerPC distro on it.
You will not likely be able to assemble a "commodity" box using a PPC. You'd have to either dig up an Apple mobo or an IBM mobo. Possible to do, but far from bopping down to Fry's and grabing the latest VIA PPC mobo and chip.
Funny that you ask. The fact is that it doesn't matter. Remember the so called "mhz myth" well it definitely exists from a marketing standpoint. IBM could have cranked up the clock rate and achieved 0% performance increase and it wouldn't matter to most people. They just say "oh, Apple has a 2.5ghz processor, that's better than 1.8ghz, oooh, aaaah". This is the same battle that AMD fights. They are spending big bucks trying to remind people that just because that P4 is running at 3ghz, it doesn't mean that it is THAT much faster than a 2.2ghz Athlon.
First of all, what is the processor that Apple using now? Isn't it some sort of PowerPC already? I see this one supports Altivec and I know that G3 and G4 Apple computers have the same instruction sets. Is this just another implementation, or is G3 and G4 relatives of this new processor?
Apple currently uses the G4 and G3 family. The G4 has AltiVec, G3 does not. G4/G3 are product names, whereas 970 are more like model numbers. There all related in that they implement the PowerPC ISA (Instruction Set Archetecture).
Second: what operating system does the IBM PowerPC run?
Depends on who is selling the machine the chip is in. Apple sells OS9 and OSX. IBM has AIX. And of course there's Linux and BSD. These are the most common.
I suspect that the article is just confusing and processor itself is not made by IBM. Right??
Nope, IBM does manufacture the 970. IBM also makes G3's. AFAIK Motorola is the only one making G4's right now (could be wrong here, could be that IBM is cranking some G4's as well). Also note that both Motorola and IBM sell other variations of the PowerPC (most well known is the PPC that powers the Nintendo GameCube).
I can't seem to get to the site (/.'ed?) but one use that springs to mind is being able to update the data for some application. Right now you purchase some app that might come on a cd, lets say a mapping app. When you want to install updated data, you either get a new cd, or you download, but you can't have the updated stuff with the cd, since it's still on the machine you downloaded. With this, you could download and burn the update and still have everything together.
Another app could be a way to distribute homework to students. The homework/text is on the stamped portion. As the students do their homework, it can be burnt on the cd. At the end of the year you have a permanent record of the class. You could extend this to storing markup information (bookmarks, notes, etc) and adding supplemantal info as well.
I think that you're forgetting the context of the time period that the Newton was introduced.
Unleashing a new product category before the product itself was ready.
No different than AT&T, Sony, and a slew of other manufacturers that came out with PDA's around the same time frame. At the time the PDA was the "hot" technology and everyone put there's out before any of them were ready.
Ignoring customer feedback on design issues and pricing.
Well as far as pricing, you price the thing as low as possible but high enough to meet your financial goals. Don't you think that if it were feasable for Apple to sell the thing for $200, they would have loved to? It wasen't. It's was very expensive, very leading edge technology. However, it was not significantly more expensive than the other PDA's available at the time.
Vague and inexplicit value proposition.
Again, the entire PDA market at the time faced this issue. The arrival of the PALM made the value propsition come into focus, unfortunately, almost EVERY other manufacturer of a PDA at the time had missed.
Getting nailed by a competitor who listened to customers, built a more portable platform, hit the market target price, and understood the core value proposition of a PDA.
No they were a competitor that came to the show late enough to learn from everyone elses mistakes. They benefitted greatly from being behind the curve. Everyone was crowding the high end so they wisely decided to go for the low end, and it worked.
Unfortunately, after years of fumbling, overpromising and under-delivering, the market had moved on, and simply would not believe anything that Apple had to say -- something I'll dub the Newton Effect.
Again, this is true for almost every PDA manufacturer of the time. That's why you don't see the names EO, General Magic, MS Windows for Pen Computing, et al any more. At the time, the PDA was a technology in search of a market (still is in many ways), hardly anything specific to Apple (though they did have a lot more hype than most).
It's hard to buy in bulk less powerful computers nowadays. Dell pretty much only sells midrange to top of the line computers. Good luck finding an older P3-500 or whatever.
I wasen't referring to anything that old. Over at Dell you can get a 2Ghz Celeron, 256MB, 40GB, 15" LCD, XP Pro, HK Speakers, 4year Parts and Labor with next day replacement, 3 years XP support, UPS, and PC Installation! So all that PLUS all the support for the same price he has for just the pc and a printer. His comparison is just lame.
Yet Another Bogus Total Cost of Ownership Comparison.
This one has sooooo many problems it's hard to know where to start. Heck even from a "basics" point of view, he has the "Microsoft" clients have printers but the "Unix" systems not. Whatever happened to comparing apples to apples? This is just plain bad and rotten reporting. Every student "needs" a 2.8ghz Dell, err, not.
But the most egregious thing is the setup for the whole comparison. xterms vs full fledged clients. How is this somehow Microsoft vs Unix? You can adopt either topology for either OS. The very premise is absolutely flawed. That the article poster somehow considers this "refreshing" is laughable.
Thanks, I already have K&R (first edition). I was just using the "formating a for statement' thing as an example, I've been a C/C++ guy for over 12 years now, I think I have the 'for' loop down now ;)
Thanks. FYI, the book I mentioned has a new second edition (I would be happy with either) that just came out last year, so it's not an age thing. I guess not that many people are wild about RE's (and so many other books sorta cover it). I wonder if they simply go by book sales to determine what titles to bring out next?
What they are laudable for is precisely that they used a simple, user friendly, straightforward HTML instead of a bizarre plugin.
I guess I'm not convinced that their decision on using HTML is based on economic reasons vs any good will on their part. Given their audience, they can't just simply assume Windoze and IE, so any proprietary solution they come up with would have to support multiple OS's and browsers, which we all know is a monumental PITA. Again given their audience and it's predilection towards being against such technologies, they would have a tough row to hoe to get their intended targets to actually even buy in.
Not to say I'm not glad they made that choice, I am, I'm just not convinced that their intentions were necessarily, "pure".
I just went over there to play around a little. Of course the book that I was looking for ("Mastering Regular Expressions") is NOT available, even though it is an O'Reilly title. Not a good sign. Anyway, I would have thought that there would be a simple and easy to find "submit a book request" button/link, but I couldn't find one. Is such a feature available to subscribers? Have current subscribers found any other "holes" in the library?
One of my pleasant surprises and very commendable on the Safari guys is that they didn't fall into the drm/encrypted crap
Not to take anything away from your good vibes towards O'Reilly, but since html is their delivery format, there really isn't much they CAN do about DRM. Once it's in your browser, you can do whatever you want and they can't stop it even if they wanted to. Forgive (and ignore) me if they are using something else to display the content (e.g. java applet, etc). In which case I agree, kudos.
When I walk into my professors office, they have two walls of metal bookshelves stacked to the wall with books. It's like walking into their mind.
Right, but what the article poster alluded to and what others are mentioning is that often times the majority of books that one owns are not ones that they have read. In many ways ones bookshelf is like ones online persona, you are free to appear to be whoever you want. So if I wanted to look like a c/c++ god, I'd have things like K&R and Stroustroup, and NOT some "dummies guide", even if I don't know how to properly format a 'for' statement. I always take one's bookshelf with a grain of salt, esp if it's full of books that look like my old college text books did (i.e. more pristine than the ones on the bookstore shelf).
OK, so is Googles ranking system novel and innovative? Or could most any decent developer have come up with it if it was on their todo lists (1. get more coffee 2. stare at Natalie Portman pix 3. post First Post/In soviet russia on /. 4. develop novel and innovative ranking algo 5. stare at Natalie Portman pix .....)
Is this an example of a "good" software patent?
Did you read a word I wrote? I said, one is motivated to find and fix problems in one's own code becuase if one doesn't and someone else finds it first one is embarrassed in front of the whole developer (and user) community. That seems to me a much more powerful incentive than any amount of money.
Yes I did read what you wrote. Are you assuming I didn't because I dared to not agree with you? I still don't. The original post refered to ACCOUNTABILITY, NOT motivation. You seem to be implying that since the OSS is afraid of looking stupid, that they'll produce better code, THEREFORE there is no need to place any additional standards for accountability, UNLIKE the corp developer, since their just greedy and are in it for the paycheck. Which if it is what your saying, then it's plain wrong. We're talking about taking responsibility for your mistakes. If the OSS developer makes fewer of them because of the environment and their "typical" mind set, then fine. BUT, the OSS developer WILL make mistakes. And when they do, should they not be held just as accountable for their mistakes as the corp developer? Which leads right back to the question I first posed, with the corp developer you have financial incentives/penalties, what leverage does one have when the OSS developer screws up? You have not addressed my question, other than to somehow imply that OSS developers never screw up.
Let's see if I've got this straight. You seem to be saying that if a person doesn't have financial incentive they won't exercise a work ethic? Do you work for the government or one of its contractors?
Uh no, I said that I didn't agree that just having egg on your face in front of your peers was better or more incentive than a similar corporate situation combined with a financial incentive. I'm sure you've met many OSS developers with great work ethic. I've met many corp. developers that had great work ethic, and I've met many that had crap work ethic who didn't care WHO saw their code.
I think what the original poster probably MEANT to say was that the person who is likely to take their time to contribute to an OSS project is MORE LIKELY to be more concienceous about their code, and thereby wouldn't NEED additional motivation. I would whole heartedly agree with that. HOWEVER the original poster's implication was that corp. developers had to be held accountable for their code or else, but yet not OSS developers. My response was a question on how to hold OSS developers accountable for theirs. They then replied that effectively "there was no need", I did not, and do not, agree. Having good work ethic and not writing bugs are two separate things. As is obvious by the bugs that actually do show up in OSS that is writin by developers with "good work ethic" and having been reviewed by their peers (not trying to bad mouth OSS development, I'm just saying it's not perfect either).
You don't need to provide an incentive for open source programmers to create fewer vulnerabilities
I'm sorry I don't share your belief that having others find your blunders is somehow "better" (or just as good as) having financial incentive. Plus in the corp world, there is BOTH the risk of having someone find your broken code and the financial slap on the wrists. There are more than enough vulns. in OSS code that if your statement is correct, would imply that the people doing the coding on OSS are producing marginal code due to lack of skill vs attention to detail (I'm referring specifically to busted code, not ALL their code). Is this what you are saying?
those responsible for the recent Slammer vulnerabilities should get smaller bonuses and performance incentives this year.
How would you recommend providing incentive for the OSS developer to create fewer vulnerabilities?
If development and business owners are not being held personally accountable within Microsoft, their products are not going to improve. Period.
And how does this translate into improving OSS where you typically don't have a paycheck to lord over the heads of the developers?