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Simon Phipps › Likes
Lifestreaming in Obamaland - http://news.cnet.com/8301-13...
Dennis E. Hamilton, Simon Phipps, Igor Poltavskiy and 4 other people liked this
LIfestreaming and Obama. Pretty amazing how far the term has come in less than 2 years from being used by a small circle of tech geeks to now being used to describe the actions of the President(elect).
- Mark Krynsky
"According to various reports, Obama and troop arrived at Manny's Cafeteria and Deli at 12:29 PM and he walked out at 12:45 PM with two cherry pies and three corned beef sandwiches, paying $48.34 in cash." Wow, analog. Who would have thought?
- Kevin Gamble
Political management should be based on modern tech,especially Web.Much like it.
- Igor Poltavskiy
OpenOffice 3.0 on OS X does damn well with opening all those PowerPonts I get in a speedy (enough) fashion. Much better than past OpenOffice
Simon Phipps liked this
Muxtape - http://muxtape.com/
Hassan Ibraheem and Simon Phipps liked this
"Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations." - well done, RIAA. good job killing another excellent music discovery service. i mean, why would you want to eliminate a barrier to purchase, after all? it might undermine your the internet-is-killing-us act that in turn underpins your lobbyists arguments.
- stephen o'grady
Google OS progress http://news.cnet.com/8301-17...
Dan Sleezer, Dave Martin, Simon Phipps and 4 other people liked this
while I agree this looks genuine, I really don't get why google would do this. It seems Microsoft and Mozilla are doing a fine job of innovating on their own (thanks to mozilla). Why build a whole new browser rather than just build addons to an existing one ?
- Mark Stanley
@mark stanley ... OS & potentially format independence ... they make money in search not apps - if they match search better to transactions well another potential game changer in the transaction provider space (net-net why does MSFT have passport-like credentials?) - trust is fungible & transactional ID-theft- like identity is the sweet spot for commerce
- Scott Moskowitz
Best analysis I have seen is that it's a vehicle to force browser designers to make things the Google way. "Make it at least as good as Chrome at handling our apps or your users will migrate to us".
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
maybe so. It's not for the sake of it that's for sure - it's to help sell apps or advertising in some way, long term
- Mark Stanley
from twhirl
My take: Google wants the standards-based web to be the platform and not Flash or Silverlight or XUL or iPhone/SDK or JavaFX and so they have to make the web really rock. Despite their support, Mozilla just isn't doing it for them (well enough, quickly enough, under the right license, etc.). And, by the way, stop calling it an OS. It's a browser!
- Dave Johnson
ABC News: Palin member of "fringe" Alaska Independence Party - http://blogs.abcnews.com/politic...
Simon Phipps liked this
"Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States."
- Dave Johnson
America first!!! Right after Alaska!
- Patrick Mueller
I know! Is that not crazy. What I can't put together is here she is with Ted "Founding Father of Statehood" Stephens running his PAC and a member of a cecessionist party.
- Robert Cooper
from twhirl
The Washington Monthly - http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archive...
Dion Almaer, Brett Cannon, Simon Phipps and 2 other people liked this
"I'd love to hear some enterprising political reporter who travels with the McCain campaign to ask the senator, "In the event of a tragedy or national calamity, and a President McCain were unable to carry out his duties, who does John McCain believe is the single best, most trustworthy, most capable, most reliable person in the entire United States to lead the free world?" Joe Lieberman? Tom Ridge? Lindsey Graham? Dick Lugar? John Warner? No, it's Sarah Palin. I just want to see McCain or one of his top aides say this with a straight face. Just once."
- DeWitt Clinton
from Bookmarklet
So, so true. Via Dave Winer.
- DeWitt Clinton
Google Open Source Blog: Mozilla and Eclipse Licenses Now Available for Hosting Users - http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008...
Simon Phipps liked this
"our removal of the MPL from the site seemed a little absurd"
- Dave Johnson
While I am pleased they have reversed the silly decision they made I would still like to see them support OSI's anti-prolifertaion work and offer all the licenses on the "OK" list.
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
Meta-comment: interesting that news didn't break until Shankland reported it...
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
lame that Google Code added MPL back but didn't add CDDL, which is simply MPL + bug fixes
Simon Phipps liked this
Guess that was just too much crow to eat at one sitting.
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
links for 2008-08-20 - http://blogs.sun.com/webmink...
Elias Torres, Dave Johnson and Simon Phipps liked this
I suspect one reason IBM has chosen to use Roller in various places, including in shipping products, is the Apache license. Which would make the situation even more interesting if we're one of the "forkers". :-)
- Patrick Mueller
The forks are IBM Lotus Connections, which is based on Roller 3.1 and blogs.sun.com which is based on Roller 4.0. The Sun fork is pretty minimal and Sun committers are still active and contributing to the code base and and mailing list. On the other hand, IBM hasn't contributed anything in almost two years now -- and they're sitting on some nice goodies including distributed search and a nice Abdera based AtomPub implementation.
- Dave Johnson
Any idea why IBM isn't contributing, Dave?
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
I suspect that they just don't see contributing back as a priority and they have setup too many legal/management hoops to jump through before they can make contributions.
- Dave Johnson
Nothing to do with a desire to avoid helping a competitor then?
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
That may be the reason behind the legal/management hoops, but I don't know for sure. Everybody I've talked to at IBM (Torres, Snell, Carol Jones, etc.) says they want to contribute back.
- Dave Johnson
can't file my expense report. WTF. I don't remember SunTEA ever being down
Simon Phipps liked this
Took me hours to just enter a simple expense report last week.
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
it's lame that code.google.com dropped MPL and didn't replace it with CDDL
abacab, Hassan Ibraheem, Simon Phipps and Adewale Oshineye liked this
There are good reasons for that, Dave. See http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008.... Things like the CDDL and MPL and the Eclipse Public License, create islands of code. Better to get those communities to dual-license, and then ultimately migrate to a single major license, rather than fragmenting the ecosystem further. Rather than have Google Code act as an enabler for license proliferation, we're pushing back the other way.
- DeWitt Clinton
So why is LGPL still in there?
- Dave Johnson
Traction.
- DeWitt Clinton
Ah, I see. LGPL has 8%
- Dave Johnson
Still, not sure I like a project hosting site to dictate licensing philosophy on me
- Dave Johnson
and CDDL has traction in my world ;-)
- Dave Johnson
Hehe. But in a way that's a given, as many of the sites already dictate that it needs to be an OSI approved license. Google is just taking it one step further and trying to cull the unreasonable branching of licenses. Fortunately, there are plenty, like collab.net and sf.net that are more accommodating. I'm strongly supportive of Google's policy on this, btw. The more licenses there are the harder it becomes to legally create derivative works, which pretty much defeats the purpose of open source.
- DeWitt Clinton
It's worth asking why CDDL, MPL, EPL, etc., seemed like a good idea at the time. And then asking again whether they still are.
- DeWitt Clinton
Random tangent: I launched a software company years ago and licensed the code under a customized open source license (a rebranded clone of the MPL). No good reason for it, other than that seemed to be best practice at the time. (Thanks a lot, Mozilla.) But today, years later and well past the demise of that startup, I'm not sure if I could legally use that code in conjunction with Apache or GPL code. Seems like a lose/lose.
- DeWitt Clinton
I think there are scenarios where soft copyleft makes sense and CDDL is a better option than LGPL
- Dave Johnson
Hmm, I don't personally agree, but I could see why some people would prefer an alternative to the LGPL as the only "soft copyleft" license. But my objection is to needing a middle license in the first place, hence my position that one should either Apache or GPL, with no middle ground.
- DeWitt Clinton
If Google is going to start dictating license choices to communities, it would be better to force a license like MPL or CDDL that addresses patents. But more than that, if licenses are the constitution for communities like Moglen says, this act of telling some communities they don't count as open source is patronizing and colonialist.
- Simon Phipps
Oh come now, Simon, isn't that overstating the case just a bit? By far and away the two most popular licenses on Google Code address patents (Apache and GPL). And no one is saying other licenses aren't open source (the OSI is a good body to make that determination), Google is just taking a stand against *proliferation* of open source licenses.
- DeWitt Clinton
I'd suggest Google is making a commercial decision reflecting its business model, DeWitt - the way to fight proliferation is at OSI. If Google would come out and say that I'd have no issue.
- Simon Phipps
*Another* way to fight proliferation is at the OSI. I'm disappointed that to date the OSI hasn't taken up that fight.
- DeWitt Clinton
BTW, this policy has been around since the launch of project hosting on Google Code, which predates the modern AGPL or adoption of the CDDL. While I personally am no fan of the AGPL, you are mistaken in asserting the non-proliferation policy is intended to target either of those licenses specifically. But sure, it is a commercial interest -- fewer licenses is better for open source in general, and Google benefits greatly both as a developer/contributor of and a user of open source software.
- DeWitt Clinton
Google also benefits when other people benefit from open source. Open source leads to more and better applications being written, many of which will be built on the web or enable the web, which in turn attracts more users to the web, which in turn tends to benefit Google (rising tide lifts all ships, and all). It's a place where altruism and commercial interest are strongly aligned. Win/win, I'd say.
- DeWitt Clinton
Hi Dave, I can understand not liking it when we don't support your license, but it doesn't mean you can't just use your favorite license anyway, somewhere else. In this one place, project hosting, we try to provide a site consistent with what we consider to be best practices in open source development. This includes selection around licenses. Mind you, we have had cddl, agpl and mpl projects in the summer of code and we're happy to help out those projects in that way.
- Chris DiBona
DeWitt: Actually, CDDL predated Google's hosting service.
- Simon Phipps
from twhirl
tecosystems » Google Code vs License Proliferation - http://redmonk.com/sogrady...
Simon Phipps liked this
"There is room in my philosophy for file based reciprocal licenses such as the CDDL, EPL, and MPL. While they may create “islands of code,” some of those islands are very large indeed."
- Dave Johnson
Google Code vs License Proliferation - http://redmonk.com/sogrady...
Micah Wittman, Ian Skerrett, Simon Phipps and 2 other people liked this
Assuming that all open source licenses are equally good (they're not, but for sake of argument, let's say they are), and that you wanted to use source code from 100's of projects, all licensed differently. To do the right thing before using that code one would need to vet, and I mean legally vet, the license before adopting the code. That process is time consuming and expensive. And...
more...
- DeWitt Clinton
The net effect of that explosion of combinational complexity is that consumers of open source code may ignore the responsibility of compliance in the first place. Which is a bad thing. It puts the pain and burden on the user of open source code. How many open source licenses have you personally read and understood, and had your lawyers read and understand? The answer 2 or 3 is reasonable. 20 or 30 is not.
- DeWitt Clinton
A momentous occasion indeed: this marks my first actual comment on FriendFeed, I think. Still undecided on the tool That trivia aside, it's not the macro intent or direction I question, but rather the timing and the logistics. The why now question still stands, I think, if we assume that staving off license proliferation is the end goal. The MPL is no more or less viable as a license...
more...
- stephen o'grady
...which the FSF discourages use of). Which is, again, Google's right. I just don't happen to share that philosophy.
- stephen o'grady
Just an idea, but if existing code released under the MPL and the EPL (and other MPL derivatives) were relicensed under say, the CDDL, then there would be a single weak copyleft license that has something like 6-7% market share. That would facilitate interoperability between those projects (making one bigger island), and be a step in the right direction.
- DeWitt Clinton
Also, one private commenter argued that the MPL is dead, to which I'd respond by pointing here (http://labs.mozilla.com/2008...). Relevant bit: "We only ask that all concepts and related source materials be freely redistributable and remixable under either a Creative Commons license (for Ideas and Mockups) or the Mozilla Public License (for Prototypes) so that we can all effectively collaborate on the exploration."
- stephen o'grady
Stephen, how many of your clients primary concern is as a *consumer* of open source licensed code? Most of them are vendors trying to find the business advantage in releasing it, right? To properly stay in compliance one needs to compute the transitive closure of all applicable licenses before code is even compiled. The cost of this goes all the way down to how the internal code repositories and the internal build systems are architected. Increase that cost, and fewer consumers will be in compliance..
- DeWitt Clinton
Heh. That statement precisely makes my point. IMHO, it is not a good thing that a community would say "in order to contribute we need you to use our proprietary open source license." Isn't the goal getting the code out there and reusable without arbitrary restrictions?
- DeWitt Clinton
I'd be all all for a centralization of the MPL/EPL/CDDL/etc assets, but it's not likely to happen. The odds of the Eclipse EPL assets, for example, being rereleased under the CDDL are probably near zero. Realistically, I think we're stuck in a world that will have three rough styles of licenses and at least two options within each style (if only due to versioning). Illogical as this might seem, I think this is the reality for the foreseeable future.
- stephen o'grady
I agree with your assessment about the likelihood of relicensing. However, Google Code can put a tiny little bit of pressure on the community when it comes to new code by saying, if you want to host it here, please pick one of the major non-product-specific license choices. Is that sufficient to change major established projects, like Mozilla's codebase or Eclipse? Probably not. But those are a small fraction of all open source projects, and the goal is to change the future, not the past.
- DeWitt Clinton
I don't think we disagree at all on the advantages to a world with fewer licenses, whether it's from the vendor combinatorial or consumer comprehension perspectives. Where we break, I think, is in the achieveability of that goal. Specifically, I think the world that Google would like to see is a very much a perfect world scenario. Achievable within the confines of Google Code, certainly, but unrealistic on a wider scale. Unless massive changes of incentive occur.
- stephen o'grady
I don't know... We're all so new at this. A dozen years ago there were only a handful of open source licenses. Then it became trendy to write your own -- the Mozilla license even encouraged it by saying "copy this license for your project, just change the name and fork." A decade later, with the benefit of hindsight, we're seeing that this approach was probably a mistake.
- DeWitt Clinton
And 10 years from now we may have moved past that, and companies that are interested releasing open source software will use a standard license, rather than fragmenting the open source ecosystem with more one-off licenses. At the very least, Google Code can take the position of not being an enabler of that fragmentation. [Edited, because I think I accidentally came across as blaming you for what's going on -- I didn't mean that!]
- DeWitt Clinton
One last thought: the desired end state of easy recombination of assets is already sacrificed, even in the world of Google Code. The simplest way to guarantee free combination would be to reduce everything to one license: Apache. The allowance is made, however, for the GPL's philosophy and vision of freedom. Why? Because there's a lot of GPL code, presumably. In that context, the MPL deletion is more about volume than philosophy. Which is fine. Just important to note, I think.
- stephen o'grady
DeWitt, come on, give us _some_ credit. We would never, under any circumstances, recommend that a client use a one off license. Today, not in future. That's off the table. You and I agree on the implications of license proliferation, I'm pretty sure: we just differ in how aggressively it must be combated, and how strictly the licenses must be pared back.
- stephen o'grady
Sorry, Stephen. I had already went back and edited my comment on that. No offense meant!
- DeWitt Clinton
Google Code's license options are up to them. It's nice that they offer the service at all. I soured on it a bit when I discovered that they mingle the project hosting with closed source SDKs and network interfaces to closed source serverside stuff. I don't oppose closed source software on moral grounds, but I don't like that Android and AppEngine etc live on Google Code, because I feel like hosting a project there is a tacit endorsement of that stuff.
- Rob Sayre
Hey, Rob! Welcome to FriendFeed. Do you mean that code.google.com now has more than just open source project hosting on it? (The developer product apis, the Google Code University stuff, etc?) [Ahh, you updated your comment...]
- DeWitt Clinton
None taken: I just didn't want passers by to think we were out there recommending vanity licenses ;)
- stephen o'grady
Interesting point, Rob. I guess I like it because I think it is great that there can be an interplay and exchange between developer apis and open source code. And frankly, the more that open source philosophies can inform developer products, the better. But that's interesting about "endorsement". I never thought of it that way. Do you think mixed communities like sf.net or collabnet have the same problem?
- DeWitt Clinton
Rob: agreed. I've maintained pretty consistently that it's Google's right to choose whatever licenses they like for their service, since they are the ones hosting and maintaining it. My point in the piece and here was rather to debate their reasoning, since I don't happen to agree. Not to question their right to it.
- stephen o'grady
DeWitt: network APIs don't really bother me. I'm not sure network APIs conflict with open source much, though it does feel like sharecropping. I put a crash processing server on Google Code for work because I figured it would get more contributors. Later on, I found Google Code hosting Google products that are not open source, but it all looks very similar. When combined with videos of execs claiming Android is "open top to bottom" (not true for now), it started to smell for me.
- Rob Sayre
DTrace on Linux? - http://www.sauria.com/blog...
imabonehead, Edd Dumbill and Simon Phipps liked this
New ID Requirements Begin Tomorrow - http://www.tsa.gov/blog...
Simon Phipps, Sean Oliver, Cote' and Michael Zitek liked this
The TSA blog is weirdly human. It's almost as if actual people are writing it.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I'm trying to think of a reason why someone would not _want_ to present their ID.
- Bwana ☠
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