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Summertime

Summertime brings back fond memories of school-less days and the lack of ever-pressing responsibility that overwhelms us as we venture through life and work. Considering I hate the heat - I dislike the sun (and bright lights) - and I’ve never really been into sports, even as a kid, Summers usually meant two things: late nights programming and late nights playing computer games. I’ve mentioned this intrinsic correlation with my daily life on prior occasions. I may be an adult now, but as much as programming is part of my life, I believe gaming is as well. Heck, I worked at EA for goodness sake! I mean, It’s In The Game!

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Posted by Rich on Jun 30th 2008 | Filed in Gaming, Life | Comments (0)

Author

ProfileJust another husband, father, employee, software developer, writer, liver of life. More available here.

Netflix Profile Reprieve!

This may be a first for me, a company that actually listens to customer feedback… I received the following from Netflix today:

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Rich,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

>We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Kudos to Netflix on this decision…

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Posted by Rich on Jun 30th 2008 | Filed in Corporations | Comments (2)

Netflix, why have thou forsaken me?

Ok, forsaken is probably a strong word… Still, in such a competitive market, why would Netflix decide to remove such a critical feature of its wonderful movies-by-mail service with nary a reason?

For what am I speaking? I received this yesterday (emphasis mine):

Dear Rich,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

My wife and I maintain two distinct profiles and movie queues. Netflix even smartly distributes our movies to us fairly and without duplicates. Worse than removing the service is their resolution of our two queues - print them out? Are you kidding?

This feature has been one of the selling points when we’ve spoken positively about Netflix to others - and pretty much everyone I know uses this feature. All in all, this move seems pretty boneheaded. Considering the reaction on the Internets, Julie and I aren’t the only ones upset about this move. Maybe Netflix will come to their senses and abort this plan…

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Posted by Rich on Jun 19th 2008 | Filed in Life, Rants | Comments (2)

15 Seconds of Fame

Andy Warhol once commented about the fleeting moment of fame that each of us may experience once in life. I feel like I just had one of those experiences. While I feel like I can form a fairly eloquent response in written form through the allowance of time and thought, I’m no where near quick-witted enough to pull off a tuned verbal exchange. Maybe it was the cucumber juice (yuck) that I drank at dinner in the Metreon…

As I have mentioned previously, this week has found me at the excellent Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) - my 3rd year attending said event. Wednesday nights are traditionally filled with the Apple Design Awards where the years most extraordinary development efforts are rewarded. Following the awards is a 16 year tradition known as Stump the Experts. For an hour or so, a large audience of nearly a thousand folks trade questions and such with a panel of Apple employees - the experts. Prizes are awarded (usually t-shirts) for correct answers. Anything goes to divine the answers - Internet, Wikipedia, Google, books, source code, etc.

A traditional aspect of this event is six or so songs picked by the hosts, Fred Huxham and Mark Harlan, are played while the session is getting setup between the awards and the Stump the Experts. These songs are often fairly obscure. The audience can try to guess these songs for t-shirts as well.

While eating dinner with a number of WWDC attendees prior to these two events, I attempted to show off a little creation I have been toying with for my iPhone that exercises the services of my day job (Landmark Digital) - an ad hoc audio recognition application. It was suggested that I use my little app to determine the songs being played. Amazingly, the app got 6 of the 7 songs. I queued up in line for the microphone to give my answers.

At this point, realize that I’m in a room with a bunch of excellent developers and a stage filled with thirty or so long-time Apple employees. When I was called upon, I stated that I had six of the seven songs but I wasn’t sure if it was fair, since “my iPhone told me what they were”. The response from the hosts was something like this: “That’s fine - it’s not like you recorded it on your iPhone and it told you what they were”. My response was, “well, actually, I did”. In short, at this point, the crowd went wild, the hosts walked to the back of the stage to pick up the grand prize (Adobe CS3 - about $1500 in software), and I was floating on cloud 9. Mark Harlan shook my hand and complimented me from the stage in a way which was very inspiring. It was an almost out of body experience - especially since I was participating in witty banter in front of a thousand people (not part of my standard biological makeup) and using some of the technology that I helped implement and receiving kudos from my peers.

What a blast. I’m not sure if that was my 15 seconds of fame, but if it was, it was really cool.

UPDATE: Found the audio of my moment in the spotlight!!!

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Posted by Rich on Jun 12th 2008 | Filed in Apple, Life, Mac, Software Development | Comments (7)

Mercurial, Git and Bazaar, OH MY!

I’ve pretty much always used a source code management system in my daily development since the day I learned they existed some dozen or so years ago. I used to use CVS for my personal projects (and CVS, PVCS, Dimensions, MKS, and ClearCase at work). Then Subversion (SVN) became the new hawtness and I switched to it - a fairly easy thing to do since it was very similar in many ways conceptually and continued the philosophical tenet of a centralized repository. Now, in the indie Mac blogosphere - and certainly in the open-source world, SVN is old and busted and a new generation of revision control systems seem to be making their way onto the field - the distributed revision control system.

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Posted by Rich on Jun 5th 2008 | Filed in Software, Software Development | Comments (1)

All Work and No Computer Games…

Someone asked me what my hobbies were the other day. I said I had none. I wake up, go to work, come home, work some more, spend a little time with my family, work a little bit more, then sleep, then start it all over again. Weekends are generally the same, except remove the going to work part… In the past, replace some of that work at home, time with family, and sleep, with WoW. So I guess WoW was my hobby and now I’ve replaced it with work. Not fun work like coding personal projects - day job work. All work and no play makes Rich a dull boy.

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Posted by Rich on Jun 5th 2008 | Filed in Apple, Gaming, Mac | Comments (3)

How Did I Miss This?

I’ve been “aware” of Penny Arcade for some time, but have never really looked at it. I don’t know how in the world I didn’t become a rabid fan years ago. It combines gaming, computers, gadgetry and general nerddom, along with a cynical, dark and intellectually stylish humor in a brilliantly well-done comic strip. I mean, who couldn’t love this?

Some of my current favorites… (Please note, some of these are of a more “mature” nature i.e. language / violence, for the squeamish…)

Still slowly perusing a bits of the archive every day - thousands of these exist - almost all are quite humorous… My wife has already rolled her eyes and dismissed my enjoyment of these as some odd psychosis. You know, that might be a good theme for one of these strips?

Oh, I forgot to mention - they’ve built a game loosely around the two main characters of the comic strip - On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. The demo is pretty humorous and it’s getting great reviews. I think I’m going to ante-up the $19.95 for the full game.

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Posted by Rich on May 30th 2008 | Filed in Gaming | Comments (0)

3 weeks…

Well, I’ve been off WoW for three weeks. What have I accomplished? I’ve read a number of software development articles / guides and half a development book. I caught up with the pile of stuff on my desk in my office. I’ve done a little coding. I’ve made very little progress on most of the projects I wanted to work on. I’ve spent a little more time with my family - probably a lot in comparison to before, but not really that much. In the end, I’m not sure if things have really changed that much. This may be mostly related to excessive day job demands - a massive data-center migration of 4 million dollars in equipment and a substantial verification effort. I worked 31 hours over Saturday and Sunday last weekend. I’ve pulled nearly two all-nighters in the last week. Much of my free time not spent working has been spent sleeping.

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Posted by Rich on May 23rd 2008 | Filed in Gaming, Life | Comments (1)

SSH and Me

Now that I quit playing WoW, I was finally able to finish my promised SSH notes… In my backup article, I mentioned two things in regards to ssh:

  1. If you expose your computers ssh port to the wild west of the Internet, you should harden (i.e. protect) it from attack
  2. if you wanted to use rsync in an automated backup script between machines, you would need to setup public / private key authentication instead of pure password authentication

These two things are actually somewhat related, so I’ll tackle them both in one place. This article definitely requires some command-line fu (In other words, Dad, you don’t have to click the Continue Reading link if you don’t feel like it… no offense intended, really…)

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Posted by Rich on May 1st 2008 | Filed in Apple, Mac, Software, Software Development, Tutorial | Comments (1)

Escape from the World of Escape

There comes a time when one has to honestly face who they have become or the consequences of one’s actions - even one’s that may not seem that serious to most.

I have an addictive personality by nature - possibly hereditary, but I state that only as information - as our society has become accustomed to searching for excuses rather than take responsibility for their actions. It’s probably related to my obsessive-compulsiveness as well. Knowing this makes it easy for even I to see how certain activities that may be healthy and normal to others can become destructive to someone like myself. I’ve always been careful to avoid most opportunities at gambling due to an understanding of my weaknesses. But today, what I am speaking of is an obsession and addiction with massively-multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). No, I’m not joking. I wish it was even remotely funny.

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Posted by Rich on May 1st 2008 | Filed in Gaming, Life | Comments (7)

In ur data, powning ur stuff…

I’ve never been terribly quiet about my distrust for the large corporation - especially those who wish to replace the services and data available on my computer with a server-side variant with both the application and data residing on said server.

Here is another example of why you don’t want to freely turn your data over to a “benevolent” corporation. In summary, Adobe offered this great new online variant of its Photoshop product, extensibly for “free”. The only problem was that it was fairly unclear whether by using this online application, any photos or work you modified or created with said application may now belong to Adobe (or at least certain rights of use). Wow. Evil.

They’ve fortunately thought better of it (after a huge public outcry) and modified their EULA/TOS. Intentional or not, this is cause for alarm. Honestly, crazy license agreements can and do exist for applications that you run on your own computer. Unfortunately, online applications and data storage just have a much easier and more likely opportunity to make off with your data and privacy.

In other words, you will have to pry my Personal Computer from my cold dead hands.

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Posted by Rich on Apr 19th 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Oh open source, you’re so fickle…

I’ve commented pretty extensively about the problems facing the oft-proclaimed panacea of open-source (parts 1, 2, 3), and in particular, the GPL.

The GPL crew is crawling out of the woodwork to denounce Sun’s announcement that some parts of the MySQL source code base will be closed and no longer open-sourced (in reality, actually a very small amount - some backup software particularly). The ignorance of licensing and why a company hides its greed behind the noble face of GPL is lost on many unfortunately.

A Slashdot user named martenmickos claiming to be the actual Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL and now SVP at Sun has a very interesting explanation of the reasons. They have to make money. This actually makes some sense and is very likely authentic. My problem with GPL is the deceptiveness of a corporations primary goal - “give away” software with an archaic restrictive license (GPL) then charge for the ability to actually use it under a more reasonable license - all the while taking ownership of the charitable work of others. Why can’t they just be honest? Why couch it in “we’re better than those people who believe the efforts of developers have intrinsic value”, then take those efforts and sell them back in a dark alley? Why foster a community that lashes out at anyone who wishes to make a fair wage from software development then actually profit from the charity of others? Because apparently it works.

Ah well. I don’t particularly like Sun, but maybe they are at least being a little bit more honest about their purchase. Maybe those supporters of Open Source “companies” will think a little better about it. Stop kidding yourselves. It’s not open or free, and it’s certainly not noble.

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Posted by Rich on Apr 18th 2008 | Filed in Computer Industry, Rants, Software, Software Development | Comments (0)

Backups for the Obsessed….

This will be a bit more technical than most of my posts, but still a topic worthy of being addressed even for the most technically averse - the life-saving backup. Computer backup of course. I’ve taken a three prong approach to the problem. Fortunately, they come in different varieties of technical complexity. In other words, Dad - you can handle the first method. For the more technical savvy, you can probably handle methods one and two. And for the masochists and command-line junkies, section three covers my favorite tool of yore. The first two are short and sweet - the fun times are in the third.

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Posted by Rich on Apr 1st 2008 | Filed in Apple, Mac, Software, Software Development, Tutorial | Comments (0)

New Hotness…

Ok… I’ll admit it. It’s been like Christmas in March here. I haven’t posted in weeks. I’ve been living and breathing iPhone SDK. At least when I’m not doing my wife’s bidding in our kitchen remodel (which thank God is nearly complete). Let me tell you, I can’t work sheetrock for crap. But the iPhone SDK - now that’s clay in the potter’s hands (the hands being mine of course). Not by any stretch claiming to be a master. Just a lover of the art.

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Posted by Rich on Mar 19th 2008 | Filed in Apple, Computer Industry, Mac, Software, Software Development | Comments (0)

iPhone Love

Shortly after the iPhone arrived on the scene, I posted a rather lengthy essay on my thoughts about the hyped device. After the price drop and the efforts of many hackers to allow 3rd party development (two of my biggest issues), I decided to take the plunge and make one my very own.

For some background - I’ve owned a handful of PDA’s and phones of various makes over the years - including a few Palm devices, a couple iPaqs, and a whole slew of other Windows based PDA’s and phones (my latest being a T-Mobile MDA). These devices had varying pedigrees and varying connectivity options. Only one thing remained static across all of these devices - I stopped using them actively after a couple weeks or so. One or two may have made it a month or two. The other thing that was pretty consistent was the Microsoft OS crashing when trying to answer the phone or at some other truly inopportune time. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is be holding a ringing phone and not be able to answer it.

Fast forward to today. The iPhone has been generally considered a success despite it’s few flaws. To say that my expectations were low would be an exaggeration. Not that I don’t have great faith in Apple’s ability to produce an amazingly designed product. More that my past experiences with phones and PDAs reduced my expectation of how a device like the iPhone could revolutionize my use of technology.

So, after spending a few months with the iPhone, what can I say? First, the fact that I’m using it actively after three months says quite a bit. But the fact of the matter is this - the iPhone has changed the way I use technology on a day to day basis. For quite some time, I couldn’t be away from my computer for any period of time. Not because I’m some internet-addicted computer-obsessed nerd, but… o.k., it’s because I’m some internet-addicted computer-obsessed nerd who can’t pry himself from the constant stream of information and communication accessible from my broadband attached laptop. Well, guess what - the iPod can satiate that need for substantially long periods of time. Email? Check. Browser? Check. Useable phone? Check. Access to my photos and music? Check. It really is an amazing little device. Combine it with synchronized (with my laptop) access to all of my RSS feeds through Newsgator and I’m golden. The device just does so many things well that no other device of similar form factor has been able to accomplish. The collection of all these abilities has created a device that is revolutionary.

While you’ll have to pry my iPhone from my cold, dead, fingers, there are a few things which have kept this device from taking the world by storm. The projections are showing good, but not extraordinary sales. The lack of some truly rudimentary functionality is just unconscionable - task / to-do lists, synchronized notes, and synchronized documents to name the most glaring. The lack of a development SDK would help fill these gaps if one were available. The fortunate announcement of such a beast has helped calm my nerves a bit, but I’m still concerned about its implementation and restrictions that may be placed on the 3rd party developer. The lack of Flash in the browser has been incredibly annoying. I believe that this is likely a political issue more than a technical one, and therefore don’t expect to see it anytime soon if ever… although one can still hope.

In the end, this device still falls on the side of revolutionary for me - as evolutionary would have never survived more than a months worth of usage. Also, I’ve never missed a call due to a locked up operating system… and that’s saying a lot.

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Posted by Rich on Feb 22nd 2008 | Filed in Apple, Computer Industry, Software Development | Comments (2)

NetNewsWire goes FREE… sortof…

Following my trilogy on free software, it’s with a curious eye that I’ve been watching Newsgator’s move to offer all of their client software for free. This isn’t free in the open-source / libre sense but in the gratis - free as in beer sense. I was already a bit wary after Newsgator’s purchase of the NetNewsWwire product some time ago.

Let me just state uncategorically, NetNewsWire just rocks. This may be my most used software on my Mac. It’s well-designed and stable as a four-legged stool in a schoolhouse during summer vacation (?). The developer of the app is responsive to requests and seems like a great guy - and no one can blame someone for providing for themselves and their family. Newsgator’s purchase seemed to bring no immediate negatives - the same developer that was always working on this beautiful creation continued to do so. In addition, Newsgator syncing (which allows me to catch up on my RSS feeds from the iPhone) has been a real boon. My only concern rested in the fact that some indie developer with a close ear to the customers had been replaced by a corporation (even though a small one) that had many more interests and concerns than mine (a customer for a satellite product in its portfolio).

The announcement a couple weeks back that Newsgator was offering all its clients for free shocked me. It wasn’t that I was peeved that I paid for something that was now free. It was that I paid for a specific product and the expected value from said payment. Had the value been changed by it going free? Would the product continue to receive the attention from its customers if it no longer had paying customers? Also, as I’ve stated in other ways before - there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Newsgator is a corporation - and its motivations are certainly not to give away free software just to be nice. Where was the monetization of this gratis software?

Apparently, the motivation was two pronged. First, they apparently are seeking market share to drive sales of their enterprise solutions. This seems reasonable and doesn’t have serious negative impacts to the customer (although it does bely where their interests lie and for which customer they will be more reactive too). The second is a little more disconcerting. Newsgator will be using your reading and selection habits for their own purposes. The FAQ and queries to the execs never came clear on how possible it was to opt-out of this data collection - it appeared to be dependent on specific apps and could possibly involve deactivating your syncing.

I’m a bit peeved that I paid for a product that had been devalued - and now conceivably that product could be changed to pillage my privacy as part of the price of it being free (which I obviously didn’t agree to when forking over my money). Fortunately, it appears that NetNewswire is one of the apps that allows you to continue to sync while deactivating the personal information. But the whole thing almost feels like a bait and switch. In the end, the data is fairly anonymous and unlikely a serious risk to my privacy - but something about this whole experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. It feels “Microsoftish”.

As an aspiring independent Mac software developer, giving away the hard work of a developer does devalue all software. Rogue Amoeba discusses this as well. I also feel sorry for those trying to break into the RSS feed market. It’s hard to compete with free, but as I stated, NetNewsWire truly isn’t free. You pay a very small cost in privacy. If that cost becomes more onerous or more expensive with time, their might be another opening for a competitor some day. Until then, I’ll keep using NetNewsWire and welcome our new Newsgator overlords…

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Posted by Rich on Feb 11th 2008 | Filed in Computer Industry, Privacy, Software, Software Development | Comments (1)

Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing (Free Software - part III)

In parts I & II, I talked a bit about my distrust of free software and open source’s legacy. Where do the evil corporations fit into this and where is all the money coming from? I already stated that developers have to eat and most of those working on open-source are being paid by someone. Corporations are purely based in self-interest and therefore would never subsidize or support an industry that does not have fiscal reward. The little moneymaking secret is the GPL.

GPL does not assign the ownership right. If you GPL your work, you still own it (unless you assign it over to the FSF and Richard). Of course, anyone can pretty much use your software for free (as in beer) - or at least the current version of it, as long as they don’t want to use it in proprietary software. So there’s the rub. If I want to do anything but create other open-source software, I can’t do it with your GPL code.

So what is an enterprising company going to do? Since they still own the code, they are going to release the code under a non-free (in either sense) proprietary license and charge you for it. No harm done right?

The harm is that these organizations sell themselves as philanthropic shepherds of the code. As people modify and improve the code, the ownership rights are generally relegated back to the original owner of the base project. The only problem is, these shepherds then turn around and sell the hard work of the community to others. They restrict how all of the contributors use the code and only allow true “freedom” when you put up the hard cash.

No one forces these developers to give their free time so someone else can profit off the work of their labor. I just think it’s ethically and morally wrong. The “owners” of MySQL are “revered” for their use of GPL, but are truly just seeking a buck. As a matter of fact, the GPL crowd berates the proprietary crowd for their money-seeking ways but are completely blind to the fact that they themselves are facilitating profiteering.

Woe be to the indie developer who wishes to sell a proprietary application to feed his family. He’s a capitalist pig. Companies profiting off their GPL software, idealist saviors of all, are fine and good. It’s just bogus. At least it’s very clear the indie developer’s motivations. They don’t hide behind a thin veil of philanthropy.

What is mildly amusing is the recent announcements of the sell of MySQL AB to Sun and Trolltech to Nokia. Both of these companies (MySQL and Trolltech) make money by selling software under proprietary licenses while marketing themselves as virtuous purveyors of GPL code. A single license of Qt from Trolltech can easily cost upwards of $3000 or more. Those who truly understand the licensing can see the possible fun. Either of these companies could stop licensing their code under GPL tomorrow. Sure, you could still use the version of source code available today in your GPL projects, but you would ALWAYS be required to buy the proprietary version for use in your own proprietary code. Of if you wanted the latest and greatest. Of if you wanted the support that only the parent company could likely provide. How is this free?

There is such a sense of security in the GPL. It is purely a fallacy. I will note, some GPL (primarily owned by the FSF) is not dual-licensed and can only be used in other non-proprietary uses - and therefore can’t be monetized really at all. I still don’t consider it free - but it at least isn’t being leveraged hypocritically to make money.

Without the poison pill of the GPL, the other free licenses encourage healthy participation by corporation and individual alike. At least its a straight up proposition. Interestingly enough, I think some of the best of the free software is licensed under the BSD / Apache licenses. At least it truly is free and not tainted by veiled commercial interests (the commercial interests are out in the open for all to see). If a company wants to contribute and make their source available - great. At least it isn’t encumbering my potential use down the line. As much as I dislike IBM, I think they may offer the best example of honest and positive use of open-source (with mostly BSD-style licensing). They employ developers to work on open-source code - returning most of the benefits to the community, then monetize proprietary additions and services based on these open-source projects. This would be nearly impossible with GPL (NOTE: I’m avoiding some pretty complicated licensing / legal nuances regarding GPL’ed operating systems such as Linux and referring primarily to everything else - libraries, applications, etc).

The fact of the matter is that software is something worth paying for - whether it’s IBM paying for it or some indie writing proprietary software for sale. It has value through the labor and innovation required to build it. The GPL dual-licensing tries to hide the fact that it is worth the effort to do in the first place, pretends that software should be “free” from some morally superior high ground, then turns around and forces you to pay for true freedom.

Before I conclude, I want to make one thing very clear. Many amazing developers from many different motivations, both philanthropic and to feed their families (both perfectly reasonable mind you) have created some incredible free software (GPL and otherwise). Nothing in these articles is intended to detract from the work and effort of these developers.

My intentions were twofold. First, I just want to make sure that software development is not seen as a worthless or valueless task. In my mind, software development is nearer art than engineering, or at least I hope it be so. To be honest, whether art or purely manufacturing, it still deserves remuneration.

Secondly, I want the corporations who deceptively hide behind the veil of the philanthropic motivations of the GPL and “Free Software” while monetizing the free labor of others to be exposed for the ilk they are. At least no longer idolized as generous and benevolent with little monetary interest while indies are demonized as capitalist blood-suckers. That’s probably more my own failing than anything else - being bothered that so many venerate what I see as hypocrisy then torch those who are honestly just trying to feed their families.

As a developer and heavy consumer of software, I find myself using both free and proprietary software all the time. I generally seek the best value for my buck. Sometimes it’s proprietary, sometimes it’s free. Sometimes I value free because of the freedom it gives me to extend and control my data. I certainly intend to continue using both. Will I steer clear of those who try to envision the ideal of free software while luring you into the trap of use restrictions? Absolutely. Especially when two good products exist for which to choose (i.e. PostgreSQL vs. MySQL). While open-source can be very positive, the GPL for me will always incite distrust, and those who use it for monetary gain at the expense of developers and the rest of the software development community, with disdain..

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Posted by Rich on Feb 8th 2008 | Filed in Computer Industry, Intellectual Property, Software, Software Development | Comments (0)

Where’s my Macbook Pro!?

Enough! This is ridiculous! My entitlement-self wants some McLovin’ from Apple in the way of updated Macbook Pros and new LCD screens! While they’re at it, all this must-have hardware should be free (gratis) since, you know, that’s the way software should be, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t apply to hardware as well…

Seriously though, Apple’s stable of LCDs are getting mighty stale. Apple apologists state that we don’t need new ones because the old ones are still so good. Hmmmm… not so much. They are certainly still the most aesthetically pleasing of anything I’ve seen, but the specs are woefully behind the competition when it comes to color gamut and accuracy, refresh rates, etc. Dell has had two product updates on their 30″ LCD during the lifetime of Apple’s current 30″ LCD. The same can pretty much be claimed for the entire line. Also, where’s the built-in iSight?

As far as the Macbook Pro - these buggers are still pretty slick, but we have the lovely new Intel Penryn processors that need homes. While unlikely - especially considering Apple’s trend to make everything completely user unserviceable - please, please, please make the hard drive modular and easily replaceable by the end-user like every other professional laptop (and even the Macbook in some respects).

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, can anyone loan me some cash for the new Macbook Pros and LCDs that are surely coming soon? The bankers don’t seem so willing to give out their money anymore - something about non-prime numbers (6? 10?)…

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Posted by Rich on Feb 8th 2008 | Filed in Apple, Mac | Comments (0)

Microsoft & Yahoo Sittin’ in a Tree

K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

Ok, not quite. Google isn’t too happy either… This is pretty much old news now, but it’s been so hectic at my day job I haven’t had much time to digest it.

I don’t even know what to think about all this. Is this a desperate move by Microsoft? Is this a desperate situation for Yahoo? Is this a desperate response by Google?

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Posted by Rich on Feb 5th 2008 | Filed in Computer Industry, Corporations, Microsoft | Comments (0)

GPL Gone Wild! (Free Software - part II)

In my last post, I talked a bit about “free software” and those who work on it. So, where did free software come from and what exactly is free software?

Richard Stallman could be considered the granddaddy of the open source movement. I mean, he even looks like a socialist hippie - not that I’m judging! He pretty much invented the GNU Project and set up the Free Software Foundation. The GNU Project spawned the GNU General Public License (GPL) that is pretty much THE defining legal license for free software. More about that in a moment. This guy pretty much believes that all code should be free. As a matter of fact, he bristles at the term “open-source software” and requires those who interview him to use the term “free software”. Like him or hate him (and a lot of people do both), Richard really believes that software should be free. I truly believe has has no ulterior motive to profit in his stance. He truly is the antithesis of capitalism and free-market in regards to software.

Obviously, even the term free or open-source software is often debated, even though they are generally used interchangeably. And what does free even mean? The actual purists believe free software should be called, “free, libre and open-source software” or FLOSS. What does it really boil down too? Software can be primarily grouped into one of two classes on the “free” scale:

  1. The Libre Doctrine or Free as in Speech: Freedom to run, study, modify, copy and improve the software - which obviously requires source (hence open-source).
  2. Gratis or Free as in Beer: No cost.

Obviously, if software meets the free as in speech test, it’s unlikely that it won’t also be free as in beer - i.e. Firefox or Linux. Although it is entirely possible to have gratis software that is proprietary (closed-source), such as Internet Explorer.

Free software is generally defined by its license. Probably the most common free license is Richard’s GPL. GPL is basically a license for software that states that the software may not be redistributed without its source, and any modifications or additions to said software must also be redistributed as source. This meets all the criteria of both free as in speech and free as in beer. What’s interesting is the “poison pill”. If you included any GPL code in software that you are intending to distribute, that software in essence becomes GPL as well. Therefore, a commercial entity cannot include any GPL in their proprietary software or it would no longer be proprietary. In my mind, the GPL is inherently not free as it places serious (but intentional) encumbrances on its use.

A number of other popular open-source licenses exist that meet the libre freedom test I define above but do not include the “poison pill” - such as the Apache License, BSD License, LGPL (Lesser GPL), etc. Funnily, most in the Stallman camp do not consider these truly free, as derivative software may become proprietary. In other words, a commercial entity could use the software in their own applications or modify it and not be required to release the source publicly (or give it away gratis). As a matter of fact, the Stallman camp considers the poison pill part of the Libre Doctrine outright - software is NOT free without the requirement to redistribute all modifications and additions.

These two camps and the philosophies for which they follow could have likely instigated a thousand year war to the death if it weren’t fortunately impossible to kill someone via flame-messages on the Internet.

The GPL is a funny thing. As stated, I really believe it was created with some utopian image of nirvana, where developers coded for free and were fed grapes by harems of adoring hot women. Or at least something idealistically similar. Actually, Richard Stallman does not believe developers are creators:

“please let’s not call them creators, they are not gods but authors”

…although he denies them the same rights of authors of other “types” of works. The irony is what the GPL has become - the tool of corporations to pillage developers and reap the monetary rewards. This can conceivably be done with the other free licenses as well, but no where near as mischievously. How? You’ll have to wait for the next entry in As the Free Software Turns

Ok, I sorta lied in Part I. At the end, I stated I would answer the question to who would pay developers to give away the hard work of their labor and what they get from such expense. I haven’t quite done that yet, but I’m almost there, and now I’ve stated that GPL is the evil tool of the corporate empire and is taking advantage of the poor, helpless developers. Part III (the last I promise) will answer all of that - coming soon…

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Posted by Rich on Feb 5th 2008 | Filed in Computer Industry, Intellectual Property, Software, Software Development | Comments (1)

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