Re:Hit the nail on the head
on
Linux Needs Critics
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· Score: 3, Informative
You're conflating a 'customer-support' interaction with the criticism role. I won't dispute that lots of linuxy and open-sourcey communities are not safe for tenderfeet: you're absolutely right.
But it's a different topic.
Maybe Linux needs more trolling journalists?
on
Linux Needs Critics
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· Score: 3, Interesting
From mailing lists and public bug trackers, my sense is that there are plenty of critics, and they are frequently able to find the right place to criticize.
I think that the extent of criticism within the system reduces the need for lobbying in the press to get your pet peeve addressed.
A non-compete in perpetuity is really really cheap for them; they pay you for... how long? and you're taken out of the game permanently? No deal. Offer exclusive rights to your project-Q time, for as long as they pay you $whatever weekly, plus a six-month grace period.
is a good candidate. It proposes to let you make electromagnetic waves in a manner not subject to prior restraint by the FCC, and without the back-doors intelligence agencies have on many current means of communications.
Many FOSS types are functioning, simply, as moral and self-interested folks. They appreciate the huge leverage that's been gifted them, and feel both an appreciation and a debt. Both of these encourage contribution.
Appreciation of the code handed down to us encourages respect for the givers, and a desire to garner some of that appreciation for ones' self. The debt demands payback, or in this case, pay forward.
That's all you need for the 'moral' part. The 'self-interested' folks have taken it a level further, and understand they have future wins, not just present, if they nurture the value-donating culture.
I was once on a small contracting gig, web "distribution of a software package and data updates". The customer was being vague about what data, exactly, was being updated. Once I saw the design he had put on top of my code (Lottery analysis software) I finished what we had in the queue, and told him I didn't want any more work from him, and I didn't want my name associated with his work.
If you've got a wife and kids, all bets are off; but if not, tell the bosses (politely) why you can't do whatever, and then go.
If finding security defects is a useful security activity,then it should have some measurable effect on the software security defect rate.
This assertion, and the vapor about 'depleting the store of vulnerabilities' pretends that there is no new code being written. Packages under development should display some unknown rate of new vulnerability introduction.
In the long term, one might hope that the vulnerability finding would feed back into software engineering, and eventually decrease the rate of introduction, but we're clearly not there today, and I'm not holding my breath for tomorrow.
So we've got 18 pages of math measuring an irrelevancy.
We've got more than 50000 users on our central mail server here at the University of Florida, running on cyrus and a high end IBM AIX box.
We've currently got our mail occupancy capped at 15M, and we've got several SSA RAID arrays to support the installation. About 140 gigs of mailboxes, mqueue, and cyrus housekeeping goop.
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You're conflating a 'customer-support' interaction with the criticism role. I won't dispute that lots of linuxy and open-sourcey communities are not safe for tenderfeet: you're absolutely right.
But it's a different topic.
From mailing lists and public bug trackers, my sense is that there are plenty of critics, and they are frequently able to find the right place to criticize.
I think that the extent of criticism within the system reduces the need for lobbying in the press to get your pet peeve addressed.
A non-compete in perpetuity is really really cheap for them; they pay you for ... how long? and you're taken out of the game permanently? No deal. Offer exclusive rights to your project-Q time, for as long as they pay you $whatever weekly, plus a six-month grace period.
The GNU software radio project
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/
is a good candidate. It proposes to let you make electromagnetic waves in a manner not subject to prior restraint by the FCC, and without the back-doors intelligence agencies have on many current means of communications.
This is naughty.
Many FOSS types are functioning, simply, as moral and self-interested folks. They appreciate the huge leverage that's been gifted them, and feel both an appreciation and a debt. Both of these encourage contribution.
Appreciation of the code handed down to us encourages respect for the givers, and a desire to garner some of that appreciation for ones' self. The debt demands payback, or in this case, pay forward.
That's all you need for the 'moral' part. The 'self-interested' folks have taken it a level further, and understand they have future wins, not just present, if they nurture the value-donating culture.
I was once on a small contracting gig, web "distribution of a software package and
data updates". The customer was being vague about what data, exactly, was being
updated. Once I saw the design he had put on top of my code (Lottery analysis
software) I finished what we had in the queue, and told him I didn't want any more
work from him, and I didn't want my name associated with his work.
If you've got a wife and kids, all bets are off; but if not, tell the bosses
(politely) why you can't do whatever, and then go.
Most people are quite capable of educating themselves; in many ways the school system is designed to prevent that skill from developing.
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/tma68/7lesson.htm
The Seven-lesson Schoolteacher.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Waldo,Florida&hl=en
is where we keep ours.
In the long term, one might hope that the vulnerability finding would feed back into software engineering, and eventually decrease the rate of introduction, but we're clearly not there today, and I'm not holding my breath for tomorrow.
So we've got 18 pages of math measuring an irrelevancy.
We've currently got our mail occupancy capped at 15M, and we've got several SSA RAID arrays to support the installation. About 140 gigs of mailboxes, mqueue, and cyrus housekeeping goop.