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Leaving Mozilla

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Leaving Mozilla

#71

Post by chris_wot »

haberman wrote: post #53

Regarding RR he says: > we probably need to capture some of the value of this technology via a for-profit company I hope this doesn't mean making it proprietary. I mean obviously a person gets to decide how to best compensate themselves for the fruits of their labor. But I've seen too many compelling technologies fail to achieve the impact they could have because they were proprietary. I mean, DTrace languishes despi…

Collabora does for-profit work on LibreOffice, but integrates their work into LibreOffice's master. Mostly they even do this fairly openly and don't batch up commits then push them but make their changes small(ish) then push them.

You can definitely be a for-profit company AND work in the open.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#72

Post by chris_wot »

haberman wrote: post #59
cyphar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DTrace doesn't languish. It just doesn't have a Linux port, because of people's contrived rewriting of the history of the GPL.

Let me put it this way. In the last say five years, I can't think of a single article I've come across where someone describes DTrace making their life better (except one I wrote in 2011: http://blog.reverberate.org/2011/05/using-dtrace-on-os-x-to-... ), or a single time anyone I know or work with has even mentioned DTrace. This is a technology that received an innovation award from the Wall Street Journal in 2006. W…

You really aught to look at Bryan Cantrill's twitter feed then. It happens frequently enough that he notices blog posts and tweets them.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#74

Post by jlebar »

kibwen wrote: post #35
autotune wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! Now how about the next question: "Why?" I suppose it's nice to know that he is a big deal but as someone who doesn't follow mozilla religiously a little more background is always appreciated.

Why is he leaving? That's covered in the OP: he wants to devote his full-time attention to working on rr, a reversible debugger for native code that imposes impressively low overhead, and possibly spin it into a startup.

I think roc would give me a sly smile for pointing out that this doesn't really answer the "why". It's what he's going to do after he leaves. Doesn't quite answer why he's leaving.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#75

Post by davidbanham »

mathattack wrote: post #60
haberman wrote: post #53

Regarding RR he says: > we probably need to capture some of the value of this technology via a for-profit company I hope this doesn't mean making it proprietary. I mean obviously a person gets to decide how to best compensate themselves for the fruits of their labor. But I've seen too many compelling technologies fail to achieve the impact they could have because they were proprietary. I mean, DTrace languishes despi…

There's a decent market for selling consulting consulting services on top of open source technology. Being the expert on applying an open source technology to solve specific problems comes with a decent rate card.

You're still selling your labour rather than a product, though. It's possible to be well off doing that, but basically impossible to become ludicrously rich.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#76

Post by kibwen »

jlebar wrote: post #74
kibwen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is he leaving? That's covered in the OP: he wants to devote his full-time attention to working on rr, a reversible debugger for native code that imposes impressively low overhead, and possibly spin it into a startup.

I think roc would give me a sly smile for pointing out that this doesn't really answer the "why". It's what he's going to do after he leaves. Doesn't quite answer why he's leaving.

Because... he wants to do those things? I'm really unsure what you're trying to say.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#77

Post by tolmasky »

neves wrote: post #4

I've never heard about rr http://rr-project.org/ ), his tool to record program execution and debug it afterwards. The alleged 1.2x slowdown in execution is negligible. The ability to reverse in time is almost a nirvana. I'm sad I didn't have it when I used to program C++. Hope he succeeds in his new endeavor. We'd all win big. Does anyone knows of similar tools for Python and in-browser Javascript?

No exactly the same thing but Tonic has similar capabilities using CRIU (checkpoint and restore in user space) for Javascript time traveling: http://blog.tonicdev.com/2015/09/10/time-traveling-in-node.j...

It's an interesting different approach because it allows you to rewind the entire machine, so you can interact with interactions between different processes, etc (happy to answer questions, I am a dev on it)

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#78

Post by SkyMarshal »

jlebar wrote: post #74
kibwen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is he leaving? That's covered in the OP: he wants to devote his full-time attention to working on rr, a reversible debugger for native code that imposes impressively low overhead, and possibly spin it into a startup.

I think roc would give me a sly smile for pointing out that this doesn't really answer the "why". It's what he's going to do after he leaves. Doesn't quite answer why he's leaving.

He just wants to build a startup out of some cool tech and get rich. There's no conspiracy or dirty laundry here.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#79

Post by simplexion »

mwenge wrote: post #21
idibidiart wrote: post #19

"Christian" ... Since when has it become fashionable to define oneself by religion? I mean especially in professional circles like software development. I don't expect to see "Jew" or "Moozlim" (sic) or "Amoral Atheist" used to define people. Lots of respect for his work but I it does turn me off because of what it might imply As far as personal biases.

Christians of all denominations actively proselytise - it's a core part of being a Christian, spreading the 'good news'. This distinguishes the Christian ethos from most other mainstream religions which have a weak or non-existent missionary instinct. So no, it's not unusual at all for a Christian to highlight the fact. From the point of view of a Christian in an increasingly secular world it probably feels more nece…

Christian by birth? You can't be a religion by birth. Your parents were Christian when you were born but that does not make you a Christian by birth.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#80

Post by simplexion »

chris_wot wrote: post #38
disordinary wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always found it odd, especially because he lives in NZ which is a very secular country. For instance no serious politicians will ever admit to their religiosity or lack thereof. Therefore it's a very unfashionable thing to announce in the context of where he lives. Although an Atheist I kind of have to admire the fact that he believes so much as to put it out there and have it define him, especially when it is so u…

I'm not entirely sure what you think isn't offensive about your comment. 1. You are responding to the comment "Since when has it become fashionable to define oneself by religion?" (aside: the answer is since forever) in the affirmative 2. You find it "interesting" that "clearly rational and intelligent people have faith", by which you say that most people who have faith (and by association, Christians) are irrational…

Being offended.

I am offended by you saying that people who have faith aren't irrational. That goes against my worldview and is therefore offensive to me.

Irrationality is cognition, thinking, talking or acting without inclusion of rationality. It is more specifically described as an action or opinion given through inadequate use of reason, emotional distress, or cognitive deficiency.

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