source access vs dynamism
Erik Naggum
of political grounds. then I thought that it could do a lot of good,
partially motivated by seeing a lot of problems that came with lack of
access to source code. these days, I largely think both Free Software
and Open Source are very serious mistakes, because they don't solve the
core problems, they make them much, much worse.
suppose one operating system (or language) lets you open an already open
file by calling OPEN or whatever on the open stream. since this is
clearly beneficial to anyone who can do it, let's assume people start to
do it and demand the same functionality elsewhere. one easy way to do
this is to use a function other than OPEN to do this, but this does not
scale well: every request for a feature would need a new OPEN, and you
would have to decide _which_ OPEN to call both in your code and in the
implementation of the new functionality. clearly, this is a very messy
situation and migration from one system that did support a feature to one
that did not would be a function of the number of features people might
have added. this problem would be solved if people had the source and
could fix things themselves and then channel the fixes back to a central
place that could "take over the world" with better versions. consider
the Unix way, which used to have the function call DUP, but recently has
/dev/fd/<N> -- you can fake /dev/fd/<N> with DUP, but to do that requires
getting under the skin in OPEN and parsing a file name and all sorts of
cruft that the file system code would normally do. ugly, but it would be
necessary, right?
the reason that source access is needed is the same as the cause of the
problem: the inability to modify system behavior non-intrusively. if one
could modify OPEN on any given system to acquire new behavior _without_
compiling a new OPEN or, even if you did, without re-linking the entire
system (thus the need for dynamic linking and similar solutions, too),
source code access would be entirely immaterial.
so suppose you wanted to wanted to add DUP functionality when OPEN was
called on /dev/fd/<N>. you could grab the old OPEN definition and call
it anonymously, while redefining OPEN to be your particular function,
which acted only on a match to such pathnames, or you could redefine OPEN
once and for all and add your stuff via a well-defined hook system, or
advice or whatever. whether you would try the new thing first or only
after trying the argument the old way had failed would be an orthogonal
design decision, subject to how easy error handling is and the expected
frequency of failures. this way of doing things would in any case cause
a few simple improvements over static source: (1) the core system could
upgrade its OPEN without the need to migrate the changes. (2) if you did
it right, you could also inspect, add, remove, and reorder your changes,
and you wouldn't need the source for either of these operations, either.
(3) bugs introduced by changes could be fixed the same way the changes
were put in place, as opposed to rebuilding the system with the previous
version of the dynamic library or whatever didn't fail. (4) you could
communicate your desire for a system-wide improvement to someone who
could put it in the official sources and you could add your changes
conditionally.
compare this to a world where no dynamism is available and people don't
think in dynamic terms, anyway. you need to make OPEN change behavior so
of course you need access to the source! you want this functionality
everywhere, not just in particular programs, so of course you need the
ability to modify it and rebuild from scratch! since this creates a
maintenance nightmare, of course you want your changes to be part of the
core system, too. to get that to happen, of course you need to be part
of a huge movement where people compete with eachother for features they
think they need and the best way to implement them. this is incredibly
exhilarating, so of course this is the solution to all the world's many
problems with missing features in software.
suppose you drive down the highway and you suddenly want to go some nice
place you saw just before you pass a forest. you veer off the road,
plunge into the wilderness and promptly decide that you need four-wheel
drive, a huge cutting device in front of your car, much better shock
absorbers, a bigger engine that could actually run on swamp water instead
of getting all drowned, and then need an amphibious vehicle to get across
the river on the far side of the forest. you can't get all that right
away after you made up your mind to veer off the road, and This Is Surely
Somebody's Fault, so now you start this big protest movement to have auto
manufacturers use Open Car Design by making your own cars and giving them
away so people can modify them. the obvious morale of this story is that
it would have been a little smarter to see if there were another way to
get there over existing roads or ferries or whatever, even if that would
cost a lot less and be faster if not Your Way Right Now, and which didn't
need all this add-on stuff to your car, and perhaps you would just get
there instead of getting all worked up about all the neat stuff that
other people had done to their cars while claiming that if it weren't for
Open Car Design, they would actually never have gotten where they are,
and they sure wouldn't have built this very versatile car, which they
talk about a lot more than where they have used it and for what. suppose
someone adorns a commercial vehicle with a proprietary navigation system
that let you discover any and all ways to get from point A to point B by
talking to it, including scheduling and cost estimates so you could
decide whether it was worth it, but refused to give it away to Open Car
Designers. why would anyone who weren't more interested in building cars
than Getting There insist on home-made Swiss Army Cars with Open Car
Design when the _real_ goal had become attainable? why would Open Car
Designers _not_ call the producer of the navigation system and find a way
to deploy it almost everywhere? and would they insist that a home-made
navigation system would be better than buying it from whoever invented
it? although a ridiculous example, I don't see why anyone would insist
on a way to do things that does not solves the real problem, but rather
solve an ancilliary problem that is a problem only because someone is
very stubborn.
I keep wondering when and under which conditions the models employed by
Free Software and Open Source make sense. I don't think it makes sense
when the design is _already_ flexible and open and so malleable that it's
used as an argument against it by the very same people who want to change
everything, but only Their Way. in other words, if all you have is Unix,
certain problems are so staggeringly tall that it takes an extra special
genius to see what the _real_ problem is because all the people who are
trying to climb it make it look as if doing something else is stupid. if
you have, say, Common Lisp and good access to the exposable parts of the
internals, with advice support, hooks, etc, why do you _need_ the source
code? not that it wouldn't be useful, but would the demand be as great
if the Smart Route to Yonder Place was at least available to intelligent
people instead of requiring everybody to scale every mountain just to
prove a point about inaccessibility?
the problem is that scaling such mountains is much more fun than actually
doing anything useful with computers. mostly, computers are used to do
Really Boring Stuff, especially if you don't have any dynamism, either,
and if you're young and getting into computers because it is supposedly
exciting, you discover that writing quality software for real people is
tremendously hard and the real rewards are pretty far apart in real life,
so it's a lot more fun to spend one's time cutting another cycle off an
interrupt handler or bolt another semi-dynamic feature onto a system as
flexible as a block of granite.
the solution is dynamic _software_, but Open Source (etc) is the best way
to ensure that this never happens on a large scale, because a pale shadow
of the dynamism people actually need is immediately achievable using the
static model that people accept without question through fixing a source
file and recompiling. ever better ways to overcome this inherent problem
are created, such as Java and interpreted languages, dynamic linking and
lots of nifty features. to help people _find_ the solution, however, we
need to show them that the problem is aggravated by the way they think
they are solving the problem today: by making the static software model
even more entrenched and unmaintainable.
I think Free Software and Open Source addicts will get down from their
current high and become tremendously frustrated when the obvious problem
of having millions of pieces of source code available and they actually
can't move in any direction because the ability to make modifications
that they have so lauded in the past turn into a very serious problem
when much bigger problems require modifications to much larger systems
than the ones people today think are usefully modified locally.
I predict that "migrability" will be the one factor that causes people to
choose dynamic software over static software, however modifiable, because
while the software has been the most valuable for a long while (because
of its cost of development), the data we stuff into the programs and ask
them to safekeep for us will be so much more valuable than the software.
static software is totally unable to deal with graceful migration and the
need for the cost of changes to be linear in the size of the changes.
however, writing "migrable" software is not a task for novices or people
who are not fully aware of the impact of their decisions, and I think
that too much access to source code will cause a lot of people to be
exceedingly good at stuff that is antithetical to long-term solutions.
it seems that programmers need to be made as aware of the problem of not
killing the patient while fixing some problem as the medical profession,
because as long as the static software world considers "crash and reboot"
to be an option, we won't get anywhere worth going.
Free Software and Open Source may well be the last gasp of the static
software world and its "success" may well cause companies who believe in
static software to fail while users betray their own long-term needs in
exchange for the smidgeon of dynamism that source code affords. in the
long run, software that adapts and can migrate from one half-expressed
need to another as real users discover what they actually want, _should_
win. resisting the sometimes attractive non-solution of unrestricted
source access and full modifiability may be the only way to get what we
really need.
#:Erik
--
save the children: just say NO to sex with pro-lifers
Howard R. Stearns
1. Free software and open source are a poor way to adapt and grow
software.
2. Dynamic mechanisms that don't even require access to source are
better.
3. Eventually the world will see this.
My measure of agreement diminishes in the same order.
Erik lists a couple of dynamic mechanisms that provide better
adaptability. My personal favorite, which was not explicitly
mentioned, is the the "Open Implementation" work done at Xerox PARC by
the CLOS-MOP people. (http://www.parc.xerox.com/spl/projects/oi/) It
is worth noting that OI is still an area of RESEARCH. There are
problems with it. We don't know much about how to design OI
protocols. We don't even know much about how to DOCUMENT the
protocols we've got.
Consider, for example, that even amongst Lispers, many of whom
subscribe to OI philosophies, that CLOS STREAMS is still not
standardized and not wholly adequate for all the uses people hope for
it, and that CLOS PATHNAMES hasn't yet been designed. Similarly for
OI environments, compilers and debuggers. (Indeed, most mention I've
made of such things on c.l.l has been answered by more silence than
enthusiasm.)
This stuff is hard, and the existing technology doesn't solve all the
worlds problems, though it does help some.
So does free software and open source.
We're familiar with Dick Gabriel's "Worse is Better" argument (from
http://www.ai.mit.edu/docs/articles/good-news/good-news.html). Gabriel
points out that under the right circumstances, something that gives us
some of what we want can be more successful, and by some measure,
even "better", than something else which addresses some specific issue
in
a fundamentally more direct, complete, or consistent way.
Open Source is a "worse is better" approach to Open Implementation
(and to dynamic systems in general).
Open Source works (though not well). It is successful (but it's not
clear how general or sustainable). Its hard to argue with success.
The fact is, that Open Source is CURRENTLY meeting the immediate needs
of more computer users than dynamic systems such as Lisp are.
I completely agree that more needs can ultimately be met by dynamic
systems such as Lisp. The issue is getting there. Open source and
free software does meet this need more directly than dynamic systems.
If you need something, you can start with an EXISTING, AVAILABLE,
WORKING thing and modify it to do something else. One problem with
Lisp is that there is so much that is not quite existing, not easily
(cheaply) available, or not quite working.
Barry Margolin
my job was customizing the system for our users' needs. As commercial
operating systems go, it was probably one of the most modular (just about
everything was implemented using Flavors, a predecessor to CLOS) and
dynamic. I managed to achieve quite a bit using all the hooks that the
system provided (I used ADVISE pretty heavily, and implemented Ethernet
trailer support by defining appropriate flavors).
However, even with all this modularity, I still relied on source code.
First of all, when using ADVISE you have to know what to advise -- often it
was internal, undocumented functions. The networking API that I hooked my
trailer code into was also not documented.
There were also many thing that I needed to do that I could only do by
modifying functions. If there's a place in a function where it does (+ x
y) and you need it to do (- x y), there's no practical way to do that
without replacing the function definition.
Object orientation and dynamism generally only work well if the designer of
the system can anticipate where people will need to customize. He then
documents an API appropriate for customizing those places. But if someone
comes up with a need that he didn't think of, often the only way for them
to implement their changes is by hacking the source code.
One other thing: this whole argument only applies to customization. Much
of the benefit of open source is the ability of anyone to implement bug
fixes and general evolution of the code. Emacs is a reasonable example os
a system that has balanced the two ways that programs change. If someone
wants to change the way the garbage collector or redisplay works, or add
support for floating point numbers, this is done by modifying the code in
place; however, Emacs's dynamism was used when they wanted to add web
browsing capability. Sometimes both need to be done: often while
developing an external package you discover that it would work better if
there were a hook in a new place, so you make that one little change to the
guts.
--
Barry Margolin, bar...@bbnplanet.com
GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN, Burlington, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
Christopher R. Barry
> There were also many thing that I needed to do that I could only do by
> modifying functions. If there's a place in a function where it does (+ x
> y) and you need it to do (- x y), there's no practical way to do that
> without replacing the function definition.
(let ((y (- y)))
...
(+ x y))
Or something.
Christopher
Barry Margolin
That's what I mean. There's a function that currently looks like:
(defun do-something (...)
...
(setq z (+ x y))
...)
How do you insert your "let" form without rewriting that function? And how
would you do that without the source code to that function?
Symbolics's ADVISE actually provided a way around this in some cases; you
could do something like:
(advise (func1 :within func2) ...)
and the advice would modify FUNC1 only when it was called by FUNC2.
However, this doesn't work for open-coded functions like + (in fact, you
can't generally ADVISE them at all).
Erik Naggum
| However, even with all this modularity, I still relied on source code.
I thought I had already covered the value of source access to people with
real needs. in your case, doing systems programming as your job is
certainly within the realm of licensing the source, and I can't see why
this is an argument for full source access with unrestricted rights to
modify and redistribute modified code to essentially random people, which
is what I'm arguing against. again, I'm all for source access, but only
to those who actually need it and commit to using it constructively.
| First of all, when using ADVISE you have to know what to advise -- often
| it was internal, undocumented functions.
well, I modified Allegro CL's pathname behavior long before Franz Inc
shipped the sources to these particular files to all supported customers,
and all I had was a good grasp of the SPARC assembler and the standard
functions that let me peek at the actual running code. Franz Inc has
since started shipping most of the "surface code" to supported customers,
and it's easier to change a function, except that when upgrading, retro-
fitting fixing becomes more risky than making the initial fix.
| There were also many thing that I needed to do that I could only do by
| modifying functions. If there's a place in a function where it does (+ x
| y) and you need it to do (- x y), there's no practical way to do that
| without replacing the function definition.
communicating with the people who own the source would solve this
problem, and there is still no need to require unrestricted rights to
modify the source. having that right, however, means you won't find the
need to communicate with the owners of the source until you're really
pissed at something you can't do yourself. if you think this is an
exaggeration, read GNU Emacs bug reports for a while -- a pattern emerges
where those who think they have rights tend to demand instead of ask.
| Object orientation and dynamism generally only work well if the designer
| of the system can anticipate where people will need to customize.
yes, and that's the point: if we never get any practice in anticipating
it or feel the consequences of our mistakes, neither will be ever become
good at it, and the less well-designed software is, the bigger the "need"
for unrestricted source access. the more people have access to source,
the less they will be interested in more modular designs or ways to fix
things. by giving random people unlimited source access, you may tell
them, if not in words, then in the consequence of what you accept and
implicitly encourage, that end-user customization is a subordinate need
in the software as delivered.
| But if someone comes up with a need that he didn't think of, often the
| only way for them to implement their changes is by hacking the source
| code.
of course, but why should the implementor of such changes _have_ to have
(1) the automatic _right_ to access the sources, (2) the automatic right
to distribute it further to others without the owner's approval, and (3)
the right to distribute his modifications? if you want to make something
new, I really don't see why building on the works of the past has to mean
that the works you create must be modifiable by anyone even before you
know where you're going with it.
| One other thing: this whole argument only applies to customization. Much
| of the benefit of open source is the ability of anyone to implement bug
| fixes and general evolution of the code.
when this happens in cooperation with the owner of the code, it is good.
when it causes a myriad of independent fixes to the same problem and
branches into a variety of incompatible "products", we have instead of
causing people's creativity to be employed usefully, failed to contain
the biggest problem inherent in the free market, that it costs too little
to fragment the market. look at Unix. it was essentially open source
before anyone invented the term, and that caused a large number of ways
to solve the same problem and left the market to sort them out, which
they didn't (the market never will sort out bad quality in anything but
the single most important property of the products), and Unix got itself
into a position where some horribly demented crapware from Microsoft
could compete with it and fool a whole bunch of people for a while.
Linux is a success because it is well _managed_, not because it is Open
Source. whether people would have to sign an agreement to get access to
the source and be allowed to fix things or not is immaterial: people who
want to commit serious work to GNU Emacs must already sign an agreement,
and that hasn't stopped GNU Emacs from succeeding, either.
it appears to me that the crux of my argument has been lost, however: by
giving people something they don't need, but which covers a need by sheer
accident, they don't discover the solution to their _real_ needs. people
don't need source code to modify if the system doesn't work, they need
working systems. people don't need source code to add functionality to
some static function design, they need flexibility in the design. the
more we give random people unrestricted access to source code, the more
we will design software that is expected to be modified just that way,
and the less we will design software that is not intended to be modified
by random users at the source level, and the less we will design systems
that are actually able to adapt to people without changing the code.
| Emacs is a reasonable example os a system that has balanced the two ways
| that programs change. If someone wants to change the way the garbage
| collector or redisplay works, or add support for floating point numbers,
| this is done by modifying the code in place; however, Emacs's dynamism
| was used when they wanted to add web browsing capability. Sometimes both
| need to be done: often while developing an external package you discover
| that it would work better if there were a hook in a new place, so you
| make that one little change to the guts.
none of this even hints at why it was a good idea to give source code to
random people and give them the right to modify the existing source code.
those who develop their own packages for Emacs already communicate with
the source holders and other developers. nothing in this requires that
the source code be given to _anybody_.
as I have said several times, I think source access is a good idea, but I
think it should be regarded as an investment by both parties, probably
more so by whoever gets the source access, and modifications to the
source should be channeled back to the owner before they are spread
further down the line or to other developers. my goal is to educate
those who want to be educated, not to let random people have "rights"
that only hurt them in the long run.
Marco Antoniotti
Just my .2 Euros (or Euro? or Euri? or Eures?) worth.
Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes:
> Linux is a success because it is well _managed_, not because it is Open
> Source. whether people would have to sign an agreement to get access to
> the source and be allowed to fix things or not is immaterial: people who
> want to commit serious work to GNU Emacs must already sign an agreement,
> and that hasn't stopped GNU Emacs from succeeding, either.
I believe the "well managed" or "well coordinated" concept is key
here, but I also believe that it is somewhat orthogonal to the
"freedom" or "openness" of the software (for the appropriate
definitions of SW). So, the use of this argument to sway opinion
toward or away from "libero" software, is not very appropriate.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
Philip Lijnzaad
> communicating with the people who own the source would solve this problem,
> and there is still no need to require unrestricted rights to modify the
> source. having that right, however, means you won't find the need to
> communicate with the owners of the source until you're really pissed at
> something you can't do yourself.
My impression is that in practice this doesn't matter that much, as it seems
to be considered bad nettiquette to fork a project, and it doesn't appear to
happen often. Also, most people realize it would be foolish, because most
projects/packages are too complex to comprehend and subsequently support as a
separate fork. There's also the problem of mind-share: most developers want
to see their stuff used, and there are only so many niches. E.g., I wonder
it there is now any likelihood of having a succesful YEmacs: emacs and xemacs
are already there, and there is probably simply no 'audience' for yemacs.
So, if people don't want to contribute: fine, let them fork and keep it to
themselves, no damage done (but to themselves). If they contribute: so much
the better, this kind of system appears to work.
> if you think this is an
> exaggeration, read GNU Emacs bug reports for a while -- a pattern emerges
> where those who think they have rights tend to demand instead of ask.
I haven't but I can imagine this, it's bad behaviour, but to me it doesn't
prove that open source is to blame for this behaviour.
> yes, and that's the point: if we never get any practice in anticipating
> it or feel the consequences of our mistakes, neither will be ever become
> good at it, and the less well-designed software is, the bigger the "need"
> for unrestricted source access. the more people have access to source,
> the less they will be interested in more modular designs or ways to fix
> things.
Now that is an interesting thing: one could argue that the ultimate modules
are the language elements (functions, libraries, whatever) themselves. Fully
customizable, as it were. The question, clearly, is where to draw the line.
> of course, but why should the implementor of such changes _have_ to have
> (1) the automatic _right_ to access the sources,
that's up to the authors; if they give it (by using GPL or BSD or whatever),
then that's fine. People whining about other people's licences (as some open
source advocates do) is a bit tiresome. Although I'm inclined to say that
software developed with public money (.edu, .gov) should preferably use an
open licence.
> (2) the automatic right
> to distribute it further to others without the owner's approval,
> and (3)
> the right to distribute his modifications?
same thing. And again, nettiquette and common sense dictates that it is
general much better for all parties involved to get to hat with the
authors(owners?)
> Unix got itself into a position where some horribly demented crapware from
> Microsoft could compete with it and fool a whole bunch of people for a
> while.
I don't think this is an accurate description of what happened: Unix simply
had, for a variety of non-technical reasons, no presence on the platform that
mattered; I don't think they ever really competed (but they do so now,
luckily).
> Linux is a success because it is well _managed_, not because it is Open
> Source.
yes, but at the same time I cannot conceive of a well managed Linux that does
not give source access.
> whether people would have to sign an agreement to get access to
> the source and be allowed to fix things or not is immaterial: people who
> want to commit serious work to GNU Emacs must already sign an agreement,
> and that hasn't stopped GNU Emacs from succeeding, either.
I'd be interested in this thing; it makes sense to oblige people to commit,
but then I imagine it is equally difficult to 'enforce' such commitments
(especially with e.g. students). Possibly the main thing is to exclude
nitwits that just make demands and not much else.
> don't need source code to modify if the system doesn't work, they need
> working systems.
Open source developers crave code: they are less interested in coding
applications, it is less sexy for some reason. If and when Linux breaks
through to the masses, the masses will just be relieved to have a cheap,
stable system on their laptop. They won't want the source, and don't need it.
> more we give random people unrestricted access to source code, the more
> we will design software that is expected to be modified just that way,
that might seem so superficially, but big part of the motivation for open
source developers is to do something well, and be known for it (somehwere I
read the strange term 'egoboo' for this). The packages/projects that really
last fall in this category.
> and the less we will design software that is not intended to be modified
> by random users at the source level, and the less we will design systems
> that are actually able to adapt to people without changing the code.
No: first of all, most packages need recompiling of modified source code
before the package can be said to have adapted. This is simply not
convenient, for neither power user nor layman, and there is clearly an
incentive to make software adaptable in an easier way. Secondly, adaptability
necessarily involves generality and therefore complexity. Using this to its
full extent will likely remain the domain of the power user, and this
category of users overlaps with those who'd be inclined to change source code
anyway.
> none of this even hints at why it was a good idea to give source code to
> random people and give them the right to modify the existing source code.
> those who develop their own packages for Emacs already communicate with
> the source holders and other developers. nothing in this requires that
> the source code be given to _anybody_.
I have several times submitted, to the authors, little patches to parts of
emacs; this was acknowledged as being useful, and I fail to see how I could
have made these contributions without access to the source. Many many others
have done exactly the same, and have thusly contributed to this package. It
helps yourself, others, and it is fun. This system appears to *just work*,
all theorizing aside. Good leadership and netiquette are essential, but big
packages simply need lots of 'eyeballs', as pointed out by Raymond.
> as I have said several times, I think source access is a good idea, but I
> think it should be regarded as an investment by both parties, probably
> more so by whoever gets the source access, and modifications to the
> source should be channeled back to the owner before they are spread
> further down the line or to other developers.
absolutely!
Philip
--
The cause of the millenium bug is Homo Sapiens having 10 fingers
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Lijnzaad, lijn...@ebi.ac.uk | European Bioinformatics Institute,rm A2-24
+44 (0)1223 49 4639 | Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton
+44 (0)1223 49 4468 (fax) | Cambridgeshire CB10 1SD, GREAT BRITAIN
PGP fingerprint: E1 03 BF 80 94 61 B6 FC 50 3D 1F 64 40 75 FB 53
Erik Naggum
| Linux is a success because it is well _managed_, not because it is Open
| Source.
* Philip Lijnzaad
| yes, but at the same time I cannot conceive of a well managed Linux that
| does not give source access.
sigh. neither can I. _please_ note that my argument is not against
source access, but against giving it to anyone, without restrictions or
need or any concept of investment in it. I have argued for source access
so much that I really did believe it would be very hard to for anyone to
confuse the issues, but let me phrase it differently in the hopes that I
can transcend the apparently strong desire to see this as an access vs no
access issue: I want source access to be granted by the author/owner to
those deemed worthy as part of building a community of people who agree
to co-invest and share knowledge. I don't want source access to be a
"right" to be demanded of authors/owners regardless of personal values or
intentions. on a higher level, I want to solve better the problem that
source access is solving badly: helping people get software that works
the way they, individually, want it to work.
| that might seem so superficially, but big part of the motivation for open
| source developers is to do something well, and be known for it (somehwere
| I read the strange term 'egoboo' for this). The packages/projects that
| really last fall in this category.
my argument is that you get more egoboost (I'm sure that's the word you
saw) out of being part of a community with privileges than you get out of
having access to source code. with source access to any stray comer, it
is actually _harder_ to build the community, and the time it takes to
deal with the eager incompetents is alarming.
| No: first of all, most packages need recompiling of modified source code
| before the package can be said to have adapted. This is simply not
| convenient, for neither power user nor layman, and there is clearly an
| incentive to make software adaptable in an easier way. Secondly,
| adaptability necessarily involves generality and therefore complexity.
| Using this to its full extent will likely remain the domain of the power
| user, and this category of users overlaps with those who'd be inclined to
| change source code anyway.
I think you miss my point, again: at issue is using _dynamic_ languages.
I'm arguing that source access is a necessity in the static language camp
and that by giving people access to source in static languages, you deny
them the opportunity to do what they really want, which is to add or use
dynamic properties of the system as delivered.
if you reply, _please_ keep in mind that I'm not opposed to source
access, nor do I think that source access is not necessary for a number
of useful things. I'm opposed to giving people access to the source as a
means of "solving" their real problem: insufficiently dynamic software to
deal with the complexity of real-world applications and people. most
people who code leisurely fail to appreciate the inherent complexity of
every problem that actually deals with real people, and I'm NOT talking
about the user interface, and I want to remove the source access from
people who are likely to be hurting themselves and the whole profession
by doing stuff that they should rather communicate in a human language to
a human developer.
William Deakin
> ...these days, I largely think both Free Software and Open Source are very
> serious mistakes, because they don't solve the core problems, they make them
> much, much worse.
and
> I think Free Software and Open Source addicts will get down from their
> current high and become tremendously frustrated when the obvious problem of
> having millions of pieces of source code...turn into a very serious problem
> when much bigger problems require modifications to much larger systems than
> the ones people today think are usefully modified locally.
I think that these is a fair point about what the outcome of the Free Software
and Open Source model. But where do you say anything about the educational
function of Free Software and Open Source? The things that I most cherish about
this model is that through exposure to Free Software and Open Source I have
learnt much. e.g. I would never have tried to learn cl. How many people have
been moved to learn cl having started with elisp?
> the reason that source access is needed is...the inability to modify system
> behavior non-intrusively. if one could modify OPEN on any given system to
> acquire new behavior _without_ compiling a new OPEN or ...re-linking the
> entire system...source code access would be entirely immaterial.
This is very true. Surely this is one of the things that Free Software now
gives us with gcc/glibc?
[..elided a car/software analogy...]
> I keep wondering when and under which conditions the models employed by Free
> Software and Open Source make sense. I don't think it makes sense when the
> design is _already_ flexible and open and so malleable...
I agree. But when the design is not flexible and open and so malleable. I
wouldn't describe MS OS development as flexible and open and malleable! (But
please don't read this as that I think that you do :))
> ...that it's used as an argument against it by the very same people who want
> to change everything, but only Their Way. in other words, if all you have is
> Unix, certain problems are so staggeringly tall that it takes an extra
> special genius to see what the _real_ problem is because all the people who
> are trying to climb it make it look as if doing something else is stupid.
You will always have the ill-informed and the zelots. But this is human nature.
"I'm in this gang, and me and my friends all thing because you don't act
exactly the same as us and think exactly the same as you you are wrong."
For my sins this make me think of the Monty Python Film 'The Life of Brian', a
deep and vitriolic attack on the stupidity of the far left in the UK. For
example "The one thing that we hate in this world more that the Romans,
is...splitters." Much of the white-noise that seems to be generated by the Free
Software community seems to be of this splitter ilk. There should be more
acceptance of diversity and tolerance of other peoples points of view.
> the data we stuff into the programs and ask them to safekeep for us will be
> so much more valuable than the software.
This is so true.
> however, writing "migrable" software is not a task for novices or people who
> are not fully aware of the impact of their decisions,
But how do you become a migration master?
> I think that too much access to source code will cause a lot of people to be
> exceedingly good at stuff that is antithetical to long-term solutions.
Why?
> ...if you have, say, Common Lisp and good access to the exposable parts of
> the internals, with advice support, hooks, etc, why do you _need_ the source
> code?
You don't need the source code!
> ...but would the demand be as great if the Smart Route ... was at least
> available to intelligen people instead of requiring everybody to scale every
> mountain just to prove a point about inaccessibility?
For me, if bits were written in assembly language or heavily optimised it would
be really neat to see, but would it help me in my day to day coding tasks? Of
course not.
A strange coincidence happened I was going for an eyetest yesterday. Bhe
traffic on the road between where I work and the place in town that I was going
to very slow moving. The ten minute that I had allowed 20 minutes for turned
into a 45 minute chug. Such are the problems with living in a seaside town on a
sunny afternoon. I missed the appointment and to quell my raging anger I went
to the local library. Quiet. Calm.
The Library in town has about 3'6" of books on computing. But next to the book
on 'BASIC for the Commodore Pet' and 'Work out your High School Timetable with
the BBC B Computer' was Richard Gabriel's "Patterns of Software".
(now back to the point). In this book Gabriel makes many good point that (IMHO)
have bearing on this:
Firstly, showing me (or infact anybody apart from the bloke who want to write
another cl compiler) the optimised code is pointless or infact worst than that,
it is confusing. To get the kind of optimisations based on I would want,
because I was writing a fast mail editor, or a large MIS or what ever, will not
be helped by looking at this optimised code. More generic patterns or examples
of code would what I needed.
Secondly, software engineering (or whatever you want to call it) is only 40 or
maybe 50 years old. If it were civil engineering and you want to build a
bridge, you have at least 2000 years of people building bridges, patterns,
experiences, writing books, trying out all the angles. Software engineering
doesn't have this. These are exciting times. But we need to give things time to
develop and settle down. And not be too critical of what other people are
doing. They may not have the answer. Or at least the whole answer. But neither
do I. Or you :-)
But I think we need to look at ways the ways in which code is developed. Be it
Free or Open, Closed or Garden ;) coding. People are making lots and lots of
mistakes behind closed doors and then not telling anybody else about them. At
least Free/Open coding has more visibility.
It took me some time to read Erik's essay but I found it was well worth the
effort :-) Thank you.
Best Regards,
:-) will
Tim Bradshaw
> I thought I had already covered the value of source access to people with
> real needs. in your case, doing systems programming as your job is
> certainly within the realm of licensing the source, and I can't see why
> this is an argument for full source access with unrestricted rights to
> modify and redistribute modified code to essentially random people, which
> is what I'm arguing against. again, I'm all for source access, but only
> to those who actually need it and commit to using it constructively.
I don't see that there is a need to restrict source access like this.
So long as you (as the vendor) are careful to restrict
*redistributability* of modified sources, then I think there's no real
problem licensing source to essentially random people. If they shoot
themselves in the foot they don't hurt anyone but themselves. You
also need to be careful that when they ask for support they're asking
for support on your code not something they've broken (which might
actually be a harder problem to solve).
I've found source access (for pretty dynamic systems, including
Genera), extremely useful, even though I could not redistribute
changes. Dynamic systems only let you alter behaviour down to a
certain level -- the `chunking level' or something -- below that and
you really need source.
I suspect that I'm agreeing with you here -- to me anyway the
important thing is *access*.
--tim
Erik Naggum
| But where do you say anything about the educational function of Free
| Software and Open Source?
actually, in numerous other articles prior to the one you comment on.
| The things that I most cherish about this model is that through exposure
| to Free Software and Open Source I have learnt much. e.g. I would never
| have tried to learn cl.
why do you give Free Software and Open Source credit for source access?
access to source code is not predicated on having the right to do
anything with it other than read it and play with it for personal use.
I really wonder why people have so much difficulty understanding that
source can be licensed in ways that give anyone who ask for it the
ability to see whole or parts of the source, but without thereby forcing
the author to lose control over the source. e.g., Franz Inc supports
their customers with source to much of the surface functions in Common
Lisp, but you have to agree not to give this away to others. why is this
not sufficient to learn from? why do you have to be able to give the
source to other people in order to learn anything from it?
| But how do you become a migration master?
by becoming an expert at what you do and acutely aware of the impact of
your decisions. this is hard work and requires dedication and investment
far above and beyond reading source code. you have to write a lot of new
code and also maintain systems _without_ source access to be able to see
what it takes to support software migration.
| > I think that too much access to source code will cause a lot of people
| > to be exceedingly good at stuff that is antithetical to long-term
| > solutions.
|
| Why?
because people take the road of least immediate resistance, not the road
of least resistance. it's far easier to hack a function to do something
new than to figure out how the old and the new functionality should
co-exist. if you can't hack the function to do something new, but have
to treat its current functionality as a black box and do the extra stuff
outside of it, you tend to think more carefully about not changing things
incompatibly.
| But I think we need to look at ways the ways in which code is developed.
| Be it Free or Open, Closed or Garden ;) coding. People are making lots
| and lots of mistakes behind closed doors and then not telling anybody
| else about them. At least Free/Open coding has more visibility.
it's been said that architects raise monuments to their mistakes, while
doctors bury theirs. programmers tend to erase the evidence of their
mistakes if they catch them before they need to document them and have to
support them backward-compatibly in the future. I would like to see ways
to _really_ fix mistakes and produce backward-compatible code as an extra
feature, effectively local changes to the code, instead of an integral
part of the evolution of the system.
William Deakin
> * William Deakin
> | But where do you say anything about the educational function of Free
> Software and Open Source?
>
> actually, in numerous other articles prior to the one you comment on.
Yes you have. Fair point. Ho Hum.
> | The things that I most cherish about this model is that through exposure
> | to Free Software and Open Source I have learnt much. e.g. I would never
> | have tried to learn cl.
>
> why do you give Free Software and Open Source credit for source access?
Because I am an idiot :-)
> access to source code is not predicated on having the right to do anything
> with it other than read it and play with it for personal use.
true.
> I really wonder why people have so much difficulty understanding that source
> can be licensed in ways that give anyone who ask for it the ability to see
> whole or parts of the source, but without thereby forcing the author to lose
> control over the source.
See the answer above.
I think this is then about trust. Or access to big men with sticks. Or lawyers
with big sticks. This is also about me understanding what you are talking
about. I agree with you. There is no reason why licenses cannot be drawn up so
that anyone who asks for it has the ability to see whole or parts of the
source.
> e.g., Franz Inc supports
> their customers with source to much of the surface functions in Common
> Lisp, but you have to agree not to give this away to others. why is this
> not sufficient to learn from?
It is sufficient. I agree. Franz seem like very nice people.
> ...people take the road of least immediate resistance, not the road of least
> resistance. it's far easier to hack a function to do something new than to
> figure out how the old and the new functionality should co-exist. if you
> can't hack the function to do something new, but have to treat its current
> functionality as a black box and do the extra stuff outside of it, you tend
> to think more carefully about not changing things incompatibly.
Yup. Also as I understanding this is the one of the differences between doing
The-Right-Thing and Worse-Is-Better.
I think that anything worthwhile doing is never easy. Its what gives the
satisfaction. Even if it is digging a large hole in the ground with a spade.
I'm good at digging myself into holes ;-)
Have you any thoughts about how this fits in with planned as opposed to organic
development?
> ...programmers tend to erase the evidence of their mistakes if they catch
> them before they need to document them and have to support them
> backward-compatibly in the future....it's been said that architects raise
> monuments to their mistakes, while doctors bury theirs.
One of the things though is that when a doctor makes a mistake there is then an
inquiry into what went wrong and how not to do it again. These results are then
published. To stay in the doctoring (I believe) every doctor, at least in this
country, has to then read the outcome of these (along with lots of other
stuff). But this goes back to the idea that programming, or software
development is a Profession and should be carried out in a professional manner.
> I would like to see ways to _really_ fix mistakes and produce
> backward-compatible code as an extra feature, effectively local changes to
> the code, instead of an integral part of the evolution of the system.
This is an excellent idea.
I would also like to also talk about things like design mistakes. I think there
are things to be learnt about setting about coding. But one thing that seems
like a big gaping hole in the scheme (sic) of things is the bits before and the
bits after the coding start.
Best Regards,
:-) will
Bruno Haible
>
> the cause of the
> problem: the inability to modify system behavior non-intrusively. if one
> could modify OPEN on any given system to acquire new behavior _without_
> compiling a new OPEN or, even if you did, without re-linking the entire
> system (thus the need for dynamic linking and similar solutions, too),
Have you ever used LD_PRELOAD ? You create your added functionality in form
of a shared library which then overrides functions in any system library.
Below is a small sample.
> source code access would be entirely immaterial.
Source code is still important 1. for understanding how something works,
2. if your patch needs to insert 1 line in the middle of the OPEN function.
Bruno http://clisp.cons.org/~haible/
Bruno Haible
$ gcc -O -fPIC hack.c -o hack.so
$ export LD_PRELOAD=`pwd`/hack.so
Bruno
================================== hack.c ====================================
/* Hack function time(). */
/* It might not be legal to use this code to circumvent evaluation licenses. */
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <dlfcn.h>
#define DAYS_BACK 2*30 /* two months */
#define TIME_BACK DAYS_BACK*24*60*60
time_t time (time_t * ptr)
{
static void* libc_handle = NULL;
static time_t (*original_time) (time_t*) = NULL;
time_t t;
if (libc_handle == NULL)
libc_handle = dlopen("/lib/libc.so.6",RTLD_LAZY);
if (libc_handle != NULL)
original_time = dlsym(libc_handle,"time");
t = original_time(NULL);
t -= TIME_BACK;
if (ptr)
*ptr = t;
return t;
}
Paul Wallich
>* Erik Naggum
>| Linux is a success because it is well _managed_, not because it is Open
>| Source.
>
>* Philip Lijnzaad
>| yes, but at the same time I cannot conceive of a well managed Linux that
>| does not give source access.
>
> sigh. neither can I. _please_ note that my argument is not against
> source access, but against giving it to anyone, without restrictions or
> need or any concept of investment in it. I have argued for source access
> so much that I really did believe it would be very hard to for anyone to
> confuse the issues, but let me phrase it differently in the hopes that I
> can transcend the apparently strong desire to see this as an access vs no
> access issue: I want source access to be granted by the author/owner to
> those deemed worthy as part of building a community of people who agree
> to co-invest and share knowledge. I don't want source access to be a
> "right" to be demanded of authors/owners regardless of personal values or
> intentions. on a higher level, I want to solve better the problem that
> source access is solving badly: helping people get software that works
> the way they, individually, want it to work.
This sounds good, but it has a serious implementation problem: if you
actually gave serious thought to who should have access to the source,
you would spend far more time on the distribution/decision problem than
on building working software. You would have to give all requestors the
equivalent of a job interview, and even then it's often difficult to tell
whether someone will ocntribute to a project/community until they've
been working for a while. Some people you think will be good will be
disastrour, and some people you think will be bad will turn out brilliant.
So most people or organizations make a default decision: either don't
release the code unless someone can onvince the hell out of you, or
else release the code to all comers. The first has been shown to suck
in many cases, not least because people who may want the code won't
want to bother with making a huge investment in convincing someone
if the outcome is uncertain. The second seems to be doing rather better,
but has scaling problems.
paul
Barry Margolin
> can transcend the apparently strong desire to see this as an access vs no
> access issue: I want source access to be granted by the author/owner to
> those deemed worthy as part of building a community of people who agree
> to co-invest and share knowledge.
How do you know beforehand whether someone should be granted this right?
In the open source environment, everyone gets the right. However, when
they contribute changes back to the overseers of the project, the code can
be rejected if it's no good. They prove they're "worthy" by submitting
worthwhile changes.
In the proprietary software environment, the "right" is transferred through
payment.
> I don't want source access to be a
> "right" to be demanded of authors/owners regardless of personal values or
Who is "demanding"? "Requesting" would probably be a better term.
> intentions. on a higher level, I want to solve better the problem that
> source access is solving badly: helping people get software that works
> the way they, individually, want it to work.
I agree that better modularity and design for customization is better than
simply depending on source availability. However, I also believe that it's
a very hard problem to solve well (many Macintosh applications are doing
pretty well with AppleScript, but its applicability is pretty limited).
Pragmatically, source access is the workaround.
BTW, I think I've also heard "ego boost" pronounced as "egoboo".
Kent M Pitman
> none of this even hints at why it was a good idea to give source code to
> random people and give them the right to modify the existing source code.
Well, a specific experience from my past:
I worked at MIT a couple decades ago on Macsyma. It was not free
software, but it was also not read protected. Those were simpler
times. It was written in Maclisp, and everyone had source access.
Later, it had to be translated to a modern dialect and I was the only
one willing to tackle it. (It was 100,000 lines of pretty intricate
code and took two or three months to convert, thanks to the Lisp
Machine's good tools for helping me.) The big problem in converting
it was not the mechanical part, but the conceptual part. Every thing
I changed was a potential incompatibility and I had no idea what
things people were using and what they weren't because they were never
previously forced to tell me, and in principle they could be depending
on even the most obscure little detail of implementation-specific
stuff. And I have no doubt someone's code broke as a result. The
code I was responsible for made it through ok, as far as I know. The
original implementors never came after me with knives or stones or
anything. But it was darned scary for the reason of knowing I had
this weird obligation not to break things and yet to know that the
definition of "porting" is "change" and an implication of "change" in
a system where sources are known is probably "breakage". So in a
sense my job was to break things and I felt bad about it. After it, I
advocated a revised policy which was never implemented but that I
liked: source on demand. That is, a system where you cannot have the
sources unless you tell me what you need and why then I'll either tell
you why you should use a different thing or I'll give you the source
you need. (The idea was maybe a bit to be like a database keeping
track of read dependencies in a transaction so that it didn't have to
lock the whole database in order to get a consistent transaction for
one user.) The problem with openness is that it provides no feedback
about what is being used and what is ignored, and it does not optimize
the case of update by the owner; it pessimizes that in favor of potential
(but not always realized) update by others.
ANSI had a similar problem when we said we wanted to put the draft
specifications out online. Their immediate concern was "in the past we
have always known who got the spec, so if there were fixes/changes we
would know who to contact". We had to compromise and say we'd tell people
that they could either continue to get directly from ANSI or else register
their desire for updates/fixes separately or else understand that getting
sources didn't mean a guarantee of any consistency or freedom from change.
People tend to depend heavily on open-source stuff not to change, but it's
absolutely critical in such systems to separate what things will and won't
change. And for people depending on non-change to register that need.
Too often, it's not done. I think because a lot of people think that
the whole point of open source is a selfish kind of "i can do whatever i want
and damn everyone else". But when you build real societies of real people
who really depend on one another, there become rules whether you want them
or not. The first thing you learn when you gain any REAL power in the
world is that REAL power requires responsible exercise, and that you were
a lot freer to do whatever you wanted when you didn't have any power than
when you do. Or such, at least, has been my experience.
> as I have said several times, I think source access is a good idea, but I
> think it should be regarded as an investment by both parties, probably
> more so by whoever gets the source access, and modifications to the
> source should be channeled back to the owner before they are spread
> further down the line or to other developers. my goal is to educate
> those who want to be educated, not to let random people have "rights"
> that only hurt them in the long run.
yes, this seems consistent with my experience.
far...@spam.tunes.org
just in case I'm not (yet) in your kill-file, here is
Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> writes on comp.lang.lisp:
> * Philip Lijnzaad
> | yes, but at the same time I cannot conceive of a well managed Linux that
> | does not give source access.
>
> sigh. neither can I. _please_ note that my argument is not against
> source access, but against giving it to anyone, without restrictions or
> need or any concept of investment in it.
I believe you mix up the issues of *fact* and *right*.
Free software is about anyone having the *right* to access the source;
it doesn't mean they will or should actually do it,
and it doesn't mean doing it will happen free _of charge_,
and even less free of personal time investment.
(How could they read the sources without time investment?
And if they just compiled it, what difference with giving binaries,
except that it will work on more platforms?)
Just like having the *right* for anyone to repair a car
(as opposed to having to return it to the maker) doesn't mean
that everyone will repair one's own car, but that proficient people can
and will do it in a free market.
> I want source access to be granted by the author/owner to
> those deemed worthy as part of building a community of people who agree
> to co-invest and share knowledge.
and the author is refused work on his own program (frequent case,
particularly in the proprietary LISP community)?
What if the owner is a marketing guy who doesn't care zilch
about sharing knowledge? That's precisely what happens
with proprietary software. The owner has absolute power to decide
who will touch the program, and this absolute power corrupts him
absolutely. Who will want to share knowledge with someone who can
reject him at his whim and prevent the use of further modifications?
> I don't want source access to be a
> "right" to be demanded of authors/owners regardless of personal values or
> intentions.
Do not confuse right and opportunity.
I demand the right to copy, understand, and modify, software.
But I'm ready to pay for the _opportunity_ to do it.
> on a higher level, I want to solve better the problem that
> source access is solving badly: helping people get software that works
> the way they, individually, want it to work.
Free software is not the end of software engineering problems,
only the beginning to their solutions.
Just like free market is not the end of economical problems,
only the beginning to their solutions.
> | that might seem so superficially, but big part of the motivation for open
> | source developers is to do something well, and be known for it (somehwere
> | I read the strange term 'egoboo' for this). The packages/projects that
> | really last fall in this category.
>
> my argument is that you get more egoboost (I'm sure that's the word you
> saw) out of being part of a community with privileges than you get out of
> having access to source code. with source access to any stray comer, it
> is actually _harder_ to build the community, and the time it takes to
> deal with the eager incompetents is alarming.
>
The idea is that when there are no rights that get in the way,
the mindshare structure will naturally emerge out of remaining criteria,
that is, actual proficiency.
Compare technical decisions taken by political motives
with technical decisions take by technical motives.
When political criteria take precedence over technical criteria
in technical questions, you don't obtain technically good technology
(conversely, if political questions were to be taken engineers,
the world wouldn't be good, either).
> at issue is using _dynamic_ languages.
> I'm arguing that source access is a necessity in the static language camp
> and that by giving people access to source in static languages, you deny
> them the opportunity to do what they really want, which is to add or use
> dynamic properties of the system as delivered.
Your statement would be true if computing was merely compositional.
However, it is also decompositional.
You can't add real-time properties to a software component,
modify its GC infrastructure, make it network-transparent,
security-aware, internationalized, "Y2K-compliant", etc,
only by composing it as a black box;
you need be able to see its source so as to weave new aspects into it.
Dynamism does solve the compositional problems.
But to solve the decompositional problems, you need Reflection,
whose ultimate form is the ability to reify source code.
Access to source is also essential to get rid of the "hardware compatibility"
and "binary API compatibility" problems that tie computer science to
obsolete hardware and system software design.
> I'm opposed to giving people access to the source as a
> means of "solving" their real problem: insufficiently dynamic software to
> deal with the complexity of real-world applications and people.
Free software is not the be-all end-all of software design;
it's not about design at all; it's about rights.
Dynamism is not the be-all end-all of software design, either,
although it's an essential and oft undervalued property.
> most
> people who code leisurely fail to appreciate the inherent complexity of
> every problem that actually deals with real people, and I'm NOT talking
> about the user interface, and I want to remove the source access from
> people who are likely to be hurting themselves and the whole profession
> by doing stuff that they should rather communicate in a human language to
> a human developer.
Free software doesn't remove that.
All the serious free software projects I know have active mailing-lists;
just like all serious proprietary software projects, I suppose.
Non-serious posters just get ignored (or possibly flamed or kicked out),
and eventually go away;
just like in all serious proprietary software projects, I suppose;
until the non-serious guys happen to be in some decisional committee
concerning the project.
Free software does not _replace_ project management;
but it _allows_ management to be proficiency-based,
rather than boss-hair-pointiness-based.
Stupid people will hurt themselves and other people stupid enough
to trust them not to be stupid. Let them do so, you just can't prevent that.
Just don't prevent good people from doing good things,
and don't force them to follow the whims of stupid people.
(hey, you had a .sig just like that, once!).
Best regards,
[ "Faré" | VN: Уng-Vû Bân | Join the TUNES project! http://www.tunes.org/ ]
[ FR: François-René Rideau | TUNES is a Useful, Nevertheless Expedient System ]
[ Reflection&Cybernethics | Project for a Free Reflective Computing System ]
Tolerance is not about respecting other people's ideas.
We have every right to fight ideas we think are stupid.
Tolerance is about respecting other people's persons.
We have every duty to respect even persons we think are stupid.
Kent M Pitman
> Do not confuse right and opportunity.
> I demand the right to copy, understand, and modify, software.
> But I'm ready to pay for the _opportunity_ to do it.
I don't understand this as expressed.
I have some software I've written for myself that is not free.
Suppose I say it is free and that anyone has the right to use and modify
it as they like, but that they have to pay `` 1 billion dollars ''
to exercise that right. Is that within your definition of free software?
Francois-Rene Rideau <I+fare+WANT@tunes.NO.org.SPAM>
>> Do not confuse right and opportunity.
>> I demand the right to copy, understand, and modify, software.
>> But I'm ready to pay for the _opportunity_ to do it.
>
> I don't understand this as expressed.
It's all about rejecting intellectual property. See pointers to articles
collected down <http://www.tunes.org/~fare/libre-logiciel.html>;
particularly <http://www.freenation.org/fnf/a/f31l1.html>.
I deny anyone any claim to a "right" to control what I do with ideas
that are in my mind. If I come in possession of a poem, a book, a piece
of software, I may use it as I like. But I deny any "entitlement"
to access other people's private information, either.
If you have a program that no one else has, or are able to write it,
then it is fair that you ask me some money before to disclose or complete
the program; but once you disclosed it to me, I'm free to do whatever
I want with it. You may even convince me not to get the sources;
but if I have binaries, I should be free to copy or hack them.
> I have some software I've written for myself that is not free.
> Suppose I say it is free and that anyone has the right to use and modify
> it as they like, but that they have to pay `` 1 billion dollars ''
> to exercise that right. Is that within your definition of free software?
No. To me, anyone has the _right_ to modify software.
However, you also need the _opportunity_ to do it,
i.e. have access to a copy (preferrably source code) of the software.
So, even without violating anyone's rights,
you can keep your software _secret_, which is quite, quite different.
If your secret software is worth one billion dollar to me,
I'm ready to pay for the _opportunity_ to use it.
Most usually, however, I don't expect people to pay such sums for software
that happens to be here and sits waiting for someone to purchase;
rather, they will pay for incremental and/or tailored development,
customization, bug-fix, support, maintenance, etc;
programmers will likely get continuously paid for small services,
rather than getting paid once (with a big risk)
for an essentially one-shot service.
Now, the recent release of Xanadu shows to me how big software
developed in secret doesn't work:
people reinvent well-known concepts in particular cases,
and cut themselves from widely available culture,
and end up with programs that may have a few interesting ideas,
and a whole lot of stupid cruft.
Actually, this is all an incentive for people to sell their secrets
while they are still worth it, at a fair price,
which is a much better system than intellectual property
so as to promote creation and publication of original works.
Hence, I don't expect _much_ software to stay secret for any great length
in the future world when intellectual property will have been abolished.
Regards,
[ "Faré" | VN: Уng-Vû Bân | Join the TUNES project! http://www.tunes.org/ ]
[ FR: François-René Rideau | TUNES is a Useful, Nevertheless Expedient System ]
[ Reflection&Cybernethics | Project for a Free Reflective Computing System ]
Because people confuse information and information-related services
(which include searching, creating, processing, transforming, selecting,
teaching, making available, guaranteeing, supporting, etc), they are afraid
that Free (libre) Information mean free (gratis) information-related services,
which would indeed kill the industry of said services. On the contrary,
Free Information would create a Free Market in these services, instead of
current monopolies, which means they will be available at a fair price,
so the result would be a flourishment of that industry! -- Faré
William Tanksley
>far...@SPAM.tunes.org (I+far...@tunes.NO.org.SPAM) writes:
>> Do not confuse right and opportunity.
>> I demand the right to copy, understand, and modify, software.
>> But I'm ready to pay for the _opportunity_ to do it.
>I don't understand this as expressed.
>I have some software I've written for myself that is not free.
>Suppose I say it is free and that anyone has the right to use and modify
>it as they like, but that they have to pay `` 1 billion dollars ''
>to exercise that right. Is that within your definition of free software?
Yes, it is. So long as your definition of "use and modify" also included
redistribution, publishing, charging for, and so on.
In other words, if you give your user something, you have to allow them to
use it any way they want to.
Many Free Software advocates don't stop there -- they say some weasel
words intended to make the GPL look like a free license rather than a
pragmatic license. The GPL fails to be Free because it places a
restriction on the redistribution of the software, so that you cannot
redistribute it unless you're willing to meet certain conditions.
I don't want to make the GPL sounds bad, because it's not. It's merely
not completely free, as the X11, BSD, or Python licence is. Claims to the
contrary should be met by a polite correction, and haughty scowls at the
"pragmatism" of the open source advocates should be met with violent
logical slapdown.
So to speak :-).
BTW, oddly enough, this means that I consider "freeware" (typically
MSDOS-only software which costs nothing but includes no source) to be free
software. You're not given everything, but what you're given you're
allowed to do anything you want to.
--
-William "Billy" Tanksley
Philip Lijnzaad
> | that might seem so superficially, but big part of the motivation for open
> | source developers is to do something well, and be known for it (somehwere
> | I read the strange term 'egoboo' for this). The packages/projects that
> | really last fall in this category.
> my argument is that you get more egoboost (I'm sure that's the word you
> saw) out of being part of a community with privileges than you get out of
> having access to source code.
yes, agreed. At the same time, I imagine not a few people have started
contributing competently to a project after having been 'lured' by the
wholesale availability of the source code in the first place.
> with source access to any stray comer, it
> is actually _harder_ to build the community, and the time it takes to
> deal with the eager incompetents is alarming.
yes, granted; but, as somebody else noted too, in practice, careful selection
of those deemed worthy it may not worth the trouble. Good leadership (to
reject eager incompetents) is paramount.
> I think you miss my point, again: at issue is using _dynamic_ languages.
> I'm arguing that source access is a necessity in the static language camp
> and that by giving people access to source in static languages, you deny
> them the opportunity to do what they really want, which is to add or use
> dynamic properties of the system as delivered.
Yes and no: in static languages, open source is much more of a necessity than
in dynamic ones (if only to bolt on a bit of dynamicity poorly). In dynamic
languages, you can use things like the emacs hooks mechanism (which probably
originated elsewhere and is possibly available in others tools under a
different name. And they are probably other, better? mechanisms, I'd be
interested to hear). All very useful, but at some point, the proliferation of
hooks become unmanageable (and/or too complex for non-experts to use), and
the commonly applied functionality is better implemented in the core of the
software, by componentizing, or using some meta-language. Pretty much of this
complexity may simply be unavoidable in whatever form.
I guess the whole point about limiting source code access to non-nitwits
simply isn't very important. The open source model has only gained visibility
fairly recently, and it may take the audience at large some time to realize
that open source doesn't buy you much unless you are willing to really get
involved and develop and contribute to a community. And in practice, ignoring
'demands' and useless contributions from nitwits may be sufficient.
Philip
--
The cause of the millenium bug is Homo Sapiens having #b1010 fingers
Vassil Nikolov
> In article <31445696...@naggum.no>, Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no> wrote:
|...|
> > my argument is not against
> > source access, but against giving it to anyone, without restrictions or
> > need or any concept of investment in it.
|...|
>
> This sounds good, but it has a serious implementation problem: if you
> actually gave serious thought to who should have access to the source,
> you would spend far more time on the distribution/decision problem than
> on building working software.
|...|
> So most people or organizations make a default decision: either don't
> release the code unless someone can onvince the hell out of you, or
> else release the code to all comers.
|...|
There are two `traditional' (old-fashioned?) mechanisms that might help:
* decide to whom to give the source based upon their reputation (a good
name vs. great riches);
* and/or based upon other people's recommendations (references).
I would like to note that good reputation is hard to fake.
Vassil Nikolov. (See header for additional contact information.)
Abaci lignei --- programmatici ferrei.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Howard R. Stearns
I might agree to let my older daughter have an art supply kit IFF she
shares it with her sister.
The state might agree to let me drive a car on public roadways IFF I
follow the rules. In my case, I'm additionally required to wear glasses
while I drive.
I might agree to let people use some software of mine for non-commercial
purposes.
I get the impression that there are those here who have a problem with
such conditional use restrictions. (One problem is in defining
limitations such as "sharing", "non-commerical use", "dangerous use".)
Can someone summarize their complaint about such restrictions, or
alternatively, the "conditions" under which such conditions can be
fairly/efficiently/logically/legally (take your pick) applied?
Erik Naggum
| I want source access to be granted by the author/owner to those deemed
| worthy as part of building a community of people who agree to co-invest
| and share knowledge.
* Paul Wallich
| This sounds good, but it has a serious implementation problem: if you
| actually gave serious thought to who should have access to the source,
| you would spend far more time on the distribution/decision problem than
| on building working software.
both economics and engineering are about using the available resources
wisely and without undue waste. both have long standing in our society
as serious problem-solvers and even serious problem-inhibitors, meaning:
by being aware of economics and core principles of engineering, we don't
get into a large category of problems. I don't see why it makes sense to
dispense with economics and core principles of engineering just because I
propose to give source access to people based on merit. it has, however,
always seemed a rather brilliant way to kill any form of proposal to say
that it would _necessarily_ be reduced to a complete and utter waste of
all available resources. (pardon my cynicism, but Norway is holding its
quadrennial local elections 1999-09-13 and the mass media user is now a
hapless victim to an unprecedented level of braindamage that emanates
from politicians and reporters. it is physically painful to me. I guess
I'll vote for whoever can show a non-flat EEG at the end of the day.)
people who have source code to offer today find ways to work with others.
those who want to work with those who have source code, also find ways.
one very simple way to measure interest and dedication is to ask them to
sign various forms of agreements. e.g., GNU Emacs contributors of any
consequence have to sign over the copyright to their works to the FSF. I
didn't have a problem with that at the time and I don't regret signing
it. I have signed so many agreements and contracts over the years which
in the minds of people who don't appreciate what any contract necessarily
has to provide for if you enter into a limitation of your present freedom
would mean in otherwise inaccessible and invaluable opportunities that a
source license or a non-disclosure agreement as a prerequisite to taking
part in something is not the hurdle it is for people who hate lawyers and
legal complications when they just want to have fun. but frankly, I'm
strongly opposed to the view that others have to behave in certain ways
because that's the only ways I think I can have fun, and this is probably
because I believe the most fun comes about after very serious investments.
the serious thought I want to give to who shall take part in a project
should be doable once, in setting up the license and the contract that
individual contributors have to sign. in order to sign a contract, you
have to establish a pretty clear image of what you will invest and what
you expect in return, and that process is usually sufficient to sort out
people who don't take it seriously enough. on this topic, I might add
that I have never quite figured out why employees don't interview their
employers at least as rigorously as they interview them, but I have
always been an independent consultant because I don't want to work for
people who don't realize that they have to give me a very solid reason to
work for them for at least 8 hours a day in a location of their choice,
nor do I understand why people individually accept so horrible working
conditions that they have to form labor unions so they don't have to
accept them, anymore, but I digress.
if giving source code to random people is such a panacea, the people who
want the source code should have very convincing arguments why they
should be given it, arguments that should make good business sense here
and now. the reason I don't believe in the panacea is that people aren't
making solid cases for releasing source code that business people will
listen to, and it is not _only_ because human beings are prone to act in
contradiction with their personal or long-term interests. put bluntly,
if I have some source, what's in it for me if I give it to everybody?
those who want other people's source code have failed to consider the
transverse situation. one person's want is not automatically the