WoW
but for the next week I'm predicting very little productive code work on lamp5. hopefully I can get Tony to put together some good CMS features for the site, as he does not suffer from my gaming achilles. then I can start to easily create some meaningful content, giving the illusion of productivity, when in fact little or no new code will be produced.
ESR's 'redeeming' quotes
but, I was pleasantly surprised to read some of ESR's writings that at least show his recognition of traditional business practices operating in synchronization with open-source development practices...
"The real conceptual breakthrough, though, was admitting to ourselves that what we needed to mount was in effect a marketing campaign--and that it would require marketing techniques (spin, image-building, and re-branding) to make it work."
"Support operations for commercial customers of open-source operating systems will become big business, both feeding off of and fueling the boom in business use."
I've attributed too much anti-business mentality to ESR, and owe him an internal apology in my mind. while I would still say the venom with which he attacks Microsoft and other proprietary software companies is 'unnecessary roughness,' I can tell he really does appreciate the importance of commercial software.
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posting XML with PHP
for a pilot project involving php web services, I had the task of making an HTTPS post to the UPS Rate Service Selection online tool. their online tool requires that you post to them 2 XML documents in the payload of your HTTPS post. I had some problems doing this, but did resolve them...
first, I had a problem using fsockopen function in PHP because, alas, I am developing on a Windows machine now, and didn't want to set up another Linux server just for this...so, I decided to use cURL extension for PHP instead of fsockopen. but again, cURL is a little tricky to get working on Windows, but it did what I needed.
the resulting code will probably be up at the lamp5 website in a tutorial sometime soon. and the full pilot project will be posted sometime in December.
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pleasant voice from open source
when you need to make money (it's that thing that puts food on your table, Halo 2 in your Xbox, coffee in your mug, politicians into office, and everything else into everything else), ethics are only as important as either a) the whole of the market regards them to be, or b) your customer regards them to be. if you're any kind of observer of human history, you know that particular importance now amounts to approximately jack sh*t, and jack is on the way out.
after suffering thru communist-style drivel on almost every open-source site I've been to thus far, reading Tiemann's analysis of the open source business model is like getting a clean shower after being repeatedly bathed in pigs' vomit by tribal village people from an island society still struggling with primitive tool-making and advanced motor skills.
the best quotes:
"...the freedom to use, distribute, and modify software will prevail against any model that attempts to limit that freedom. It will prevail not for ethical reasons, but for competitive, market-driven reasons."
"Ironically enough, we also disqualified managers who could not accept creating a closed-source component to our business. Open Source was a business strategy, not a philosophy, and we did not want to hire managers who were not flexible enough to manage either open or closed source products to meet overall company objectives."
"The concept of free market economics is so vast that I often like to joke that each year when it comes time to award the Nobel prize in economics, it goes to the economist who most eloquently paraphrases Adam Smith. But behind that joke lies a kernel of truth: there is untapped and unlimited economic potential waiting to be harnessed by using a more true free market system for software."
"Open-source software taps the intrinsic efficiency of the technical free market, but does so in an organic and unpredictable way. Open Source businesses take on the role of Adam Smith's 'invisible hand,' guiding it to both help the overall market and to achieve their own microeconomic goals."</div>
open source licenses
"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
The fuzziness of the words 'distribute' and 'publish' are the main problems. when is software distributed? when it is moved from development servers to production? any time it is copied? what about publishing? does that occur when you host the executable code on your website?
GPL-aholics will readily admit that this clause turns the GPL into a viral license, one which will extend itself to every work ever remotely related to the original GPL'd work. they will also attempt to justify the viral nature of the license with long-winded raves about freedom (not as in beer, of course!) and the supposedly eternal truth that freedom of modification and distribution of software will continue on forever to create the best software programs.
and they're right, but only so far. if someone can see the source code, they can see all the operations of the program, and can modify the program to fit their own needs, giving them complete control over the software...something very enticing to businesses.
but these businesses also have their own methods of operation, their own trade secrets, and their own vulnerabilities that become woven into the software that they create, and they don't want to be forced to expose these rightly owned things to everyone.
this is why the other licenses like the the Apache Software License, the BSD License, and LGPL are gaining acceptance in the corporate world, and the GPL is not. it carries with it the full benefits of the open-source license, but leaves behind the viral requirement on the part of the open-source user.
I have to agree with this approach. Requiring that the users of your software expose source code is just as restrictive and anti-'freedom' as requiring the users not to expose source code. It's the opposite end of the spectrum, but the same principle as going proprietary. Call it 'publietary'.
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