Seriously, you don't know what you guys are missing with Nokia/Symbian phones.
-Media players play DRM free files. -Easy 802.11 access/use -Decent 'office' application. Opens my text files, that's all I care about. -SMTP support. I know they HAD crackberry support on my old communicator. I assume it's still available. -Apps for a sysadmin. -Solid mobile java support -GPS, directions, and all that. However, you need windows as an intermediary between the phone and nokia's maps. -Symbian is years ahead of Apple or Google's OS. Multiple apps open at the same time, global cut + paste.
I assume later model phones will do all of this too. It's just that Nokia appears to have a very hard time in the U.S.
"So you see this especially in the appliance market where Microsoft will go to a company — off the record as this is never ever done in public — and say 'this product you have there, shame if someone brought a patent suit. So you have two options you can re-architect — here is Windows — or the other thing is why don't you give us a cut on all the free software you are using?'.
This is very common business practice in the U.S. not exclusive to Microsoft. Bigger companies want two things from the smaller companies they intimidate, revenue and market penetration information. If they don't get it privately, they certainly get it with patent/trademark litigation.
I'm not calling Microsoft out exclusively on this, but it should give the average/. an idea of how fundamentally frozen the American economy is by patent and trademark law.
History shows that some form of an oligopoly/monopoly is the form of a mature market. There are some exceptions, but that's pretty much it. It definitely applies to technology markets though.
The U.S.'s legal system aggressively supports tech oligopolies like HP/Dell, Att/Verizon comcast/time warner. Adobe/?? ohh wait, that might be a monopoly. The U.S. supports monopolies too.
You probably disregarded Economics a long time ago as one of those useless psuedo sciences and like most Americans get your Economic policy from politicians who use it to further corporate interests over your own and your nation's.
At this point in Apache history there are *lots* of modules for Apache that really cross the line from 'server' duty to application framework. I would categorize this as one of them. (I could be wrong)
What's the reasonable break point between using Apache mods and using code to 'glue' your web application versus doing it all in PHP/Python/Whatever? As a more concrete example, it seems to me a CMS using Apache mods would be less code to maintain with about the same security exposure versus a Drupal installation.
which plans to build and sell LPD screens under its own brand,
I'm going to ignore the manufacturing problems they will probably have for now and assume that mass production will happen without an issue.
They are going to enter a pool with *the* biggest sharks in display technology swimming alongside them and expect to come out ahead on this?
The sharks first strike will be offering a vaguely similar product heavily discounted. The sharks second strike will be a 'generous' offer to license the technology just to have it copied/never reach market. They are still actively discounting something similar, so their competitors have both the carrot and stick working 24/7. The sharks third strike is to litigate, litigate, litigate.
At one of those strike points, the VC will throw in the towel.
Welcome to American entrepreneurship version 2010.
Oh, I tried to come up with a car analogy, but it just didn't materialize. Go mixed metaphors!
This has been common business practice for a really long time at most trade shows I went to in Vegas in the 90's.
The trade show producer doesn't offer a way for smaller companies to get into most shows. Even if they did, a good idea would be knocked off in months in most cases.
Smaller vendors don't have the budget for a booth and meet their customers anyway they can. It's hard to blame them.
It's really surprising to see someone supposedly on "the working man's side" citing it in a positive light.
Ford's workers were paid more, were more productive, and had more leisure time to spend the more money they had. Ford's business was better off too. Everyone in that arrangement is richer at the end of the day.
It may be frustrating for some Americans because it is neither a 'Red State' nor 'Blue State' ideology. Too bad it has come to that in the U.S.
Unions were invented to protect unsuspecting workers from manipulative business owners
No. It was really much simpler than that. People were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of people were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of those people were plenty smart. How else do you think they got organized?
Before unions, the institution of the 5-day work week was another long, hard-fought, pitched political battle that business was *sure* would absolutely end the U.S. economy. When Ford doubled pay and shrank working hours, the rest of American industry would not follow because from a capitalist's perspective, you are blowing your labor costs out of site! History suggests it seemed to have worked for Ford.
You don't get to blame organized labor for all of the auto industry's ills. Maybe you recall the Pontiac Aztek as possibly the apex of bad auto product? The labor that allocated resources for that project and a long history of uninspiring ones before that, weren't part of a Union. What's the managerial ratio at those companies 'burdened' by Union labor? What are the managerial labor costs at those firms 'burdened' by Union labor? I think you will find them both expensive and inefficient non-union workforces.
It's time to bury that notion that Unions cripple an economy. It's used primarily to reinforce the ridiculous American ideal of 'rugged individualism triumphs over all" and concentrates power and resources to the least efficient few.
This project is well on its way to becoming a kleptocracy. While there are many moribund software projects, this one is destined to become an organization filled with status/power seeking individuals vying for trinkets and icons with the persons responsible for distributing the trinkets surrounded by yes-geeks while the amount of giving back to the broader community continues to decline.
Chances are excellent the project will take on much of the Miguel De Icaza weirdness. An example would be seeking approval from an organization that has nothing but contempt for the Mono project at C-level.
Most of you are missing the entire point of DRM. In corporate entertainment world, the thinking is this is the *only* thing that will save their industry.
1. Media conglomerates extract their exorbitant rent by controlling distribution. Anything that exerts more control over distribution is a project worth investing in.
2. Consumers are already used to the idea of paying for crippled content. Subscriber-based TV? Blu-Ray? Kindle?
3. This is the only way to induce scarcity. Which is a fancy way of saying increase prices and increase viewing restrictions. The industry sees a missed opportunity to monetize each viewing in a DVD sale.
This project is a 'go' and ordinary consumers will buy it. Most of you are already on Blu-ray right? Those DRM handcuffs fit comfortably. This project, or another like it, is next.
1. MySQL would need to be a sufficiently revenue-producing entity in order for it to sustain internal development at Oracle. What those revenue producing metrics are is impossible to know from the outside. I'm a pessimist though and would estimate whatever MySQL dev is done in-house will probably get chopped by 2/3 in order to make the revenue fit into their financing targets. That's assuming Oracle doesn't abandon it right away.
2. This $1 Billion number being thrown around is a PR number. I'd guess Monty's gotten 10's of thousands of dollars for closing the deal. Other than that his payout won't come. He won't get paid because the value of the deal is typically based on payouts based on future earnings. We know Sun couldn't turn it into a bigger revenue producer. With the change in ownership, I'm sure Oracle will renege on whatever deal he had with Sun and tell Monty to "Go pound sand. Your issue is with the Sun Officers who signed the deal, not Oracle."
3. I bet he's got a non-compete that prevents him from directly starting something. Which, Oracle would enforce while pretending about other parts of the agreement. That's why he's got this petition thing.
Monty pretended those future payouts would work, got screwed by Sun, and now he's trying to get back in the game.
Today's entrepreneurial lesson: get paid today, not tomorrow.
I set it up the first thing that pisses me off is typing in the admin password every time i install something. And you prefer the way Microsoft does it because you.... like.... applications installed and running without your knowing? Or you are employed by an antivirus provider or something?
the way the Mac fanboys made it seem is that apple magically protected its OS without me having to do anything
UAC is not Unix-like. UAC is a wrapper around the same horrible implementation of Microsoft's security scheme. So, there is still silent escalation among other things not yet understood. Let this moment stand as the first time UAC is compared to a condom that leaks.
So, yes, there is protection. Just like a condom. You have to type in your password to take the condom off. Otherwise, you are free to use the Internets with no fears commonly associated with Microsoft's STD's.
The summary was written in the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
Remember people, Apple is a follower just like every big corporation. In the MP3 player's case, they waited for the industry to grow 'big enough' then sold a unique-enough player with total subservience to the media conglomerates and backed it up with extreme amounts of advertising.
Could any other company do the same? Probably not. One main reason being Jobs' participation in device design. The other being an advertising budget that no rival would ever commit. That doesn't justify the overblown reference to the ipod.
Opening up the processor market: I ran Debian's ARM distro on an NSLU2 a couple of years ago and running on ARM was identical to running on X86. I would argue, ARM viability has been there for quite a while. Nokia's N800 is an ARM device. Now that Google's name is attached to it (for now) it benefits from the Google Reality Distortion Field.
we could start seeing really lots of non-Intel compatible computers around, first of all of course ARM based, and maybe a revival of the PPC in the consumer market. There are way more non-intel computers out there than people like you realize. Your mp3 player, firewall appliance, phone, TV are examples of non-Intel devices.
Remember that the processor platform is a business decision. If Intel feels they are missing a growing market, they will come in with pricing that will simply drive competitors out of business. Microsoft too. Which is why I am guessing if there is a Google device, then by the time it reaches market, Intel will probably be powering it.
Finally, ARM's cost appears cheaper, but I believe that there are additional RAM material costs that end up with a device that is more expensive to make than an X86.
Being 5, 15, whatever watts more efficient than an Atom is a high price to pay for breaking x86 compatibility
What is this price that end-users would supposedly pay? Debian has an ARM distro I've used and it's equal to the X86 distro in every way. My HP all in one printer/scanner device works perfectly on ARM. SANE is a nice way to get *fully* networked scanner. Cameras mount as mass storage devices. media players do the same thing.
The necessity to be on an x86 platform is gone in the consumer's use case. Nevermind they don't know or care about X86/ARM/MIPS.
Maybe 'the price' is the effort that some peripheral manufacturers slavishly sticking to proprietary software would have to pay? Canon/Epson, I'm looking at you.
Cpan works people. And it works well. It works on Windows(strawberry perl) it works on Debian, it works on Mac. When it fails, it's not that hard to figure out where and quickly get the scope/scale of the problem worked out.
Besides, it seems to me the whole packaging scheme is designed to be kind of loose on purpose. Criticizing it for a design feature is pointless.
If you really insist on blasting away at Perl, then you'll be blasting away at Python soon enough. Shocking but true, there are packaging issues with Python too.
As we all know "history is written by the victors." From a previously dedicated music industry consumer, (aka fan) there was nothing special about any of those acts.
You used name-dropping to add legitimacy to your story, but your post just supports the media conglomerates telling of music industry history.
You had to have a label for your record to be heard, which at that time was Epic. Nonsense. There were and still are *lots* of ways to be 'heard.' If you mean 'heard' like distribution through the media conglomerate controlled Mass Market distribution channel with music-industry-friendly content, then you would be right. Otherwise there was a vibrant DIY music performing industry that the media conglomerates didn't care about because they were *still* making a killing with the 70's Dinosaurs of Rock.
Very few bands even of strongest principles against mass commercialisation were able to avoid a major label at that time. This could not be further from the truth. There were *many* attempts at the media conglomerates to get any number of groups to cross-over. RATM was one that made it.
Jane's Addiction was one of many bands at the time that could have crossed over just fine. Other media conglomerates were trying to get 'alternative' bands to sell because sales from Dinosaurs of Rock acts were *finally* declining.
You mean 'support' by having device-specific runtimes, right? The mythic write once run everywhere is just that, a myth. How about a stop watch application as an example? A stop watch, while not simple is neither overly complex either and has no special GUI, yet phone specific.
“enterprise” server development The complexity of Java Server apps creates as many issues as they appear to solve and hasn't been shown to provide an overwhelming advantage. "Broken Windows" parable all over again.
Java is no 'silver bullet.' Which is why there are at least a few viable alternatives. You would be wise to step off the Java bandwagon before Oracle screws it up even more.
This is Alvarez's first project, probably no agent, definitely no actors attached to it, so they will probably give him an 'advance' and then lots of interdependent if-then conditionals. He won't get any on-screen credits. (That sets off a bunch of payouts the producer normally keeps) Then one of two things happen to a first-time writer/creator.
1. The conditionals are never met. Alvarez keeps his pittance of an advance and makes a little beer money. This is normally how it works for a project off the street. 2. The producer reinterprets the contract or has some sort of magical contractual difficulty with Alvarez if the project is successful. Alvarez then might see his five figures after a few rounds in court and 6-figure legal bills.
Check out the legal wrangling on 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' as an example. According to the producer, that was an 'unprofitable' film. Welcome to business deals in Hollywood.
Slashdot Mirror
I have an unlocked e71 on AT&T's network. Nokia provides everything. You do need Windows as an intermediary between nokia's map website and the phone.
Seriously, you don't know what you guys are missing with Nokia/Symbian phones.
-Media players play DRM free files.
-Easy 802.11 access/use
-Decent 'office' application. Opens my text files, that's all I care about.
-SMTP support. I know they HAD crackberry support on my old communicator. I assume it's still available.
-Apps for a sysadmin.
-Solid mobile java support
-GPS, directions, and all that. However, you need windows as an intermediary between the phone and nokia's maps.
-Symbian is years ahead of Apple or Google's OS. Multiple apps open at the same time, global cut + paste.
I assume later model phones will do all of this too. It's just that Nokia appears to have a very hard time in the U.S.
"So you see this especially in the appliance market where Microsoft will go to a company — off the record as this is never ever done in public — and say 'this product you have there, shame if someone brought a patent suit. So you have two options you can re-architect — here is Windows — or the other thing is why don't you give us a cut on all the free software you are using?'.
This is very common business practice in the U.S. not exclusive to Microsoft. Bigger companies want two things from the smaller companies they intimidate, revenue and market penetration information. If they don't get it privately, they certainly get it with patent/trademark litigation.
I'm not calling Microsoft out exclusively on this, but it should give the average /. an idea of how fundamentally frozen the American economy is by patent and trademark law.
Another regulatory agency being gutted right before our eyes. At what point do Americans call 'enough!' on corporate hegemony?
Enjoy your corporate deathburger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3pIDSQ1rdA
1. Most of you conveniently forget that this project is *very* low volume. The price has to be higher.
2. Most of you also conveniently forget the importance of totally GPL-friendly hardware when it comes time to open your wallet.
A friendly reminder that the Trusted Computing Group can lock the user out of their hardware. Now. This is not vaporware. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing_Group
Freedom has a price, and it's costs more than a similarly spec'd Dell/Walmart special.
History shows that some form of an oligopoly/monopoly is the form of a mature market. There are some exceptions, but that's pretty much it. It definitely applies to technology markets though.
The U.S.'s legal system aggressively supports tech oligopolies like HP/Dell, Att/Verizon comcast/time warner. Adobe/?? ohh wait, that might be a monopoly. The U.S. supports monopolies too.
You probably disregarded Economics a long time ago as one of those useless psuedo sciences and like most Americans get your Economic policy from politicians who use it to further corporate interests over your own and your nation's.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly
At this point in Apache history there are *lots* of modules for Apache that really cross the line from 'server' duty to application framework. I would categorize this as one of them. (I could be wrong)
What's the reasonable break point between using Apache mods and using code to 'glue' your web application versus doing it all in PHP/Python/Whatever? As a more concrete example, it seems to me a CMS using Apache mods would be less code to maintain with about the same security exposure versus a Drupal installation.
which plans to build and sell LPD screens under its own brand,
I'm going to ignore the manufacturing problems they will probably have for now and assume that mass production will happen without an issue.
They are going to enter a pool with *the* biggest sharks in display technology swimming alongside them and expect to come out ahead on this?
The sharks first strike will be offering a vaguely similar product heavily discounted.
The sharks second strike will be a 'generous' offer to license the technology just to have it copied/never reach market. They are still actively discounting something similar, so their competitors have both the carrot and stick working 24/7.
The sharks third strike is to litigate, litigate, litigate.
At one of those strike points, the VC will throw in the towel.
Welcome to American entrepreneurship version 2010.
Oh, I tried to come up with a car analogy, but it just didn't materialize. Go mixed metaphors!
This has been common business practice for a really long time at most trade shows I went to in Vegas in the 90's.
The trade show producer doesn't offer a way for smaller companies to get into most shows. Even if they did, a good idea would be knocked off in months in most cases.
Smaller vendors don't have the budget for a booth and meet their customers anyway they can. It's hard to blame them.
It's really surprising to see someone supposedly on "the working man's side" citing it in a positive light.
Ford's workers were paid more, were more productive, and had more leisure time to spend the more money they had. Ford's business was better off too. Everyone in that arrangement is richer at the end of the day.
It may be frustrating for some Americans because it is neither a 'Red State' nor 'Blue State' ideology. Too bad it has come to that in the U.S.
Unions were invented to protect unsuspecting workers from manipulative business owners
No. It was really much simpler than that. People were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of people were tired of working for peanuts. Lots of those people were plenty smart. How else do you think they got organized?
Before unions, the institution of the 5-day work week was another long, hard-fought, pitched political battle that business was *sure* would absolutely end the U.S. economy. When Ford doubled pay and shrank working hours, the rest of American industry would not follow because from a capitalist's perspective, you are blowing your labor costs out of site! History suggests it seemed to have worked for Ford.
You don't get to blame organized labor for all of the auto industry's ills. Maybe you recall the Pontiac Aztek as possibly the apex of bad auto product? The labor that allocated resources for that project and a long history of uninspiring ones before that, weren't part of a Union. What's the managerial ratio at those companies 'burdened' by Union labor? What are the managerial labor costs at those firms 'burdened' by Union labor? I think you will find them both expensive and inefficient non-union workforces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
It's time to bury that notion that Unions cripple an economy. It's used primarily to reinforce the ridiculous American ideal of 'rugged individualism triumphs over all" and concentrates power and resources to the least efficient few.
This project is well on its way to becoming a kleptocracy. While there are many moribund software projects, this one is destined to become an organization filled with status/power seeking individuals vying for trinkets and icons with the persons responsible for distributing the trinkets surrounded by yes-geeks while the amount of giving back to the broader community continues to decline.
Chances are excellent the project will take on much of the Miguel De Icaza weirdness. An example would be seeking approval from an organization that has nothing but contempt for the Mono project at C-level.
Most of you are missing the entire point of DRM. In corporate entertainment world, the thinking is this is the *only* thing that will save their industry.
1. Media conglomerates extract their exorbitant rent by controlling distribution. Anything that exerts more control over distribution is a project worth investing in.
2. Consumers are already used to the idea of paying for crippled content. Subscriber-based TV? Blu-Ray? Kindle?
3. This is the only way to induce scarcity. Which is a fancy way of saying increase prices and increase viewing restrictions. The industry sees a missed opportunity to monetize each viewing in a DVD sale.
This project is a 'go' and ordinary consumers will buy it. Most of you are already on Blu-ray right? Those DRM handcuffs fit comfortably. This project, or another like it, is next.
1. MySQL would need to be a sufficiently revenue-producing entity in order for it to sustain internal development at Oracle. What those revenue producing metrics are is impossible to know from the outside. I'm a pessimist though and would estimate whatever MySQL dev is done in-house will probably get chopped by 2/3 in order to make the revenue fit into their financing targets. That's assuming Oracle doesn't abandon it right away.
2. This $1 Billion number being thrown around is a PR number. I'd guess Monty's gotten 10's of thousands of dollars for closing the deal. Other than that his payout won't come. He won't get paid because the value of the deal is typically based on payouts based on future earnings. We know Sun couldn't turn it into a bigger revenue producer. With the change in ownership, I'm sure Oracle will renege on whatever deal he had with Sun and tell Monty to "Go pound sand. Your issue is with the Sun Officers who signed the deal, not Oracle."
3. I bet he's got a non-compete that prevents him from directly starting something. Which, Oracle would enforce while pretending about other parts of the agreement. That's why he's got this petition thing.
Monty pretended those future payouts would work, got screwed by Sun, and now he's trying to get back in the game.
Today's entrepreneurial lesson: get paid today, not tomorrow.
I set it up the first thing that pisses me off is typing in the admin password every time i install something.
And you prefer the way Microsoft does it because you.... like.... applications installed and running without your knowing? Or you are employed by an antivirus provider or something?
the way the Mac fanboys made it seem is that apple magically protected its OS without me having to do anything
UAC is not Unix-like. UAC is a wrapper around the same horrible implementation of Microsoft's security scheme. So, there is still silent escalation among other things not yet understood. Let this moment stand as the first time UAC is compared to a condom that leaks.
So, yes, there is protection. Just like a condom. You have to type in your password to take the condom off. Otherwise, you are free to use the Internets with no fears commonly associated with Microsoft's STD's.
Shakes the Clown
For many of you, this comment would be a whoosh moment.
The summary was written in the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
Remember people, Apple is a follower just like every big corporation. In the MP3 player's case, they waited for the industry to grow 'big enough' then sold a unique-enough player with total subservience to the media conglomerates and backed it up with extreme amounts of advertising.
Could any other company do the same? Probably not. One main reason being Jobs' participation in device design. The other being an advertising budget that no rival would ever commit. That doesn't justify the overblown reference to the ipod.
Opening up the processor market:
I ran Debian's ARM distro on an NSLU2 a couple of years ago and running on ARM was identical to running on X86. I would argue, ARM viability has been there for quite a while. Nokia's N800 is an ARM device. Now that Google's name is attached to it (for now) it benefits from the Google Reality Distortion Field.
we could start seeing really lots of non-Intel compatible computers around, first of all of course ARM based, and maybe a revival of the PPC in the consumer market.
There are way more non-intel computers out there than people like you realize. Your mp3 player, firewall appliance, phone, TV are examples of non-Intel devices.
Remember that the processor platform is a business decision. If Intel feels they are missing a growing market, they will come in with pricing that will simply drive competitors out of business. Microsoft too. Which is why I am guessing if there is a Google device, then by the time it reaches market, Intel will probably be powering it.
Finally, ARM's cost appears cheaper, but I believe that there are additional RAM material costs that end up with a device that is more expensive to make than an X86.
Being 5, 15, whatever watts more efficient than an Atom is a high price to pay for breaking x86 compatibility
What is this price that end-users would supposedly pay? Debian has an ARM distro I've used and it's equal to the X86 distro in every way. My HP all in one printer/scanner device works perfectly on ARM. SANE is a nice way to get *fully* networked scanner. Cameras mount as mass storage devices. media players do the same thing.
The necessity to be on an x86 platform is gone in the consumer's use case. Nevermind they don't know or care about X86/ARM/MIPS.
Maybe 'the price' is the effort that some peripheral manufacturers slavishly sticking to proprietary software would have to pay? Canon/Epson, I'm looking at you.
Cpan works people. And it works well. It works on Windows(strawberry perl) it works on Debian, it works on Mac. When it fails, it's not that hard to figure out where and quickly get the scope/scale of the problem worked out.
Besides, it seems to me the whole packaging scheme is designed to be kind of loose on purpose. Criticizing it for a design feature is pointless.
If you really insist on blasting away at Perl, then you'll be blasting away at Python soon enough. Shocking but true, there are packaging issues with Python too.
As we all know "history is written by the victors." From a previously dedicated music industry consumer, (aka fan) there was nothing special about any of those acts.
You used name-dropping to add legitimacy to your story, but your post just supports the media conglomerates telling of music industry history.
There were many more.
You had to have a label for your record to be heard, which at that time was Epic.
Nonsense. There were and still are *lots* of ways to be 'heard.' If you mean 'heard' like distribution through the media conglomerate controlled Mass Market distribution channel with music-industry-friendly content, then you would be right. Otherwise there was a vibrant DIY music performing industry that the media conglomerates didn't care about because they were *still* making a killing with the 70's Dinosaurs of Rock.
Very few bands even of strongest principles against mass commercialisation were able to avoid a major label at that time.
This could not be further from the truth. There were *many* attempts at the media conglomerates to get any number of groups to cross-over. RATM was one that made it.
Jane's Addiction was one of many bands at the time that could have crossed over just fine. Other media conglomerates were trying to get 'alternative' bands to sell because sales from Dinosaurs of Rock acts were *finally* declining.
Same industry, different day. This is what the music industry was trying to homogenize for mass consumption at the time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZjQ1IaT89U
96% of all phones support it,
You mean 'support' by having device-specific runtimes, right? The mythic write once run everywhere is just that, a myth. How about a stop watch application as an example? A stop watch, while not simple is neither overly complex either and has no special GUI, yet phone specific.
“enterprise” server development
The complexity of Java Server apps creates as many issues as they appear to solve and hasn't been shown to provide an overwhelming advantage. "Broken Windows" parable all over again.
Java is no 'silver bullet.' Which is why there are at least a few viable alternatives. You would be wise to step off the Java bandwagon before Oracle screws it up even more.
The project is budgeted at 30M.
This is Alvarez's first project, probably no agent, definitely no actors attached to it, so they will probably give him an 'advance' and then lots of interdependent if-then conditionals. He won't get any on-screen credits. (That sets off a bunch of payouts the producer normally keeps) Then one of two things happen to a first-time writer/creator.
1. The conditionals are never met. Alvarez keeps his pittance of an advance and makes a little beer money. This is normally how it works for a project off the street.
2. The producer reinterprets the contract or has some sort of magical contractual difficulty with Alvarez if the project is successful. Alvarez then might see his five figures after a few rounds in court and 6-figure legal bills.
Check out the legal wrangling on 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' as an example. According to the producer, that was an 'unprofitable' film. Welcome to business deals in Hollywood.