TIL that people fly around the world demoing DTrace...
An Unbelievable Demo
21–30 of 478 posts
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#22Good story; I do find the “Australians are just the little guys” narrative a bit frustrating and a self-fulfilling prophecy though.
Agree it's cringe. The whole "little guy punching above his weight" thing is even worse in NZ.
Why do you find it cringe? In NZ I think it's even more true than Australia. It's a tiny, isolated country with a small population that isn't the hub of anything really.
Aussie and NZ compared to the US are completely different worlds in my eyes.
(I'm a Kiwi btw)
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#23As much as I think RMS himself is an utter embarrassment of a human being, stories like this are why I also believe the GPL is one of the most important contributions to computing, ever. MIT/BSD-style licenses are practically begging large billion-dollar corporations to rip off your work wholesale and use it to generate profits while contributing only the occasional patch or two. I used to see this phenomenon on HN,…
I think the GPL and FSF etc lost momentum with their GPLv3 push. I know that was the case for me. I really liked GPL (v2). Then GPLv3 came out and I was like huh? After that I became much more open to the lighter versions of things MIT / BSD. GPLv3 is not really workable in terms of preserving developer freedom to do what they want with code (as long as they share their code back). Obviously the powers that be disagr…
I think the FSF appeared at a critical juncture and that the tools they built, that were totally free, helped to fix the direction that software was going. With the rise of Linux as the working GNU kernel an entire generation (or two) became aware and appreciative of open source which then went on to become the backbone of most of the internet and now those companies are some of (if not the) largest contributors to open source.
With that said you’re right, with GPLv3 they moved the fight into new domains that aren’t as obvious or really “as big of a deal” to a majority of people. Also with the rise of things like JavaScript GNU, under Stallman, became the old man crying at the children. Stallman hated the rise of “non-trivial” JavaScript and refuses to work with proprietary code so GNU could never have developed e.g. React or Tensorflow. We now have a new generation of open source tooling that was developed more in spite of the FSF than by it.
The current environment will in turn spark a new generation of tooling down the line that is even more removed from the likes of Stallman; who once responded to a request I sent to work on a JS library advertised on the GNU website with the fact that I should call it F/LOSS instead of open source (and nothing else.)
So while I respect the FSF for the work they did in creating what we have today, the time where they were leading the fight to save software is long passed. They won in some ways and the world is better for it, but they lost in others and I’m not sure the world is that worse because of it. Having trade secrets isn’t completely a bad thing as it allows competition and different implementations, though that part is simply my opinion I suppose.
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#24Good story; I do find the “Australians are just the little guys” narrative a bit frustrating and a self-fulfilling prophecy though.
It's frustrating at times; at other times, it's a breath of fresh air to deal with engineers who just tell you what they're doing, without the overblown sales pitch.
Swings and roundabouts.
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree it's cringe. The whole "little guy punching above his weight" thing is even worse in NZ.
Why do you find it cringe? In NZ I think it's even more true than Australia. It's a tiny, isolated country with a small population that isn't the hub of anything really. Aussie and NZ compared to the US are completely different worlds in my eyes. (I'm a Kiwi btw)
I think it's a myth that NZ "punches above it's weight" is all. Show me some empirical evidence if you disagree.
I'm a Kiwi too - but living in Aus.
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#26As much as I think RMS himself is an utter embarrassment of a human being, stories like this are why I also believe the GPL is one of the most important contributions to computing, ever. MIT/BSD-style licenses are practically begging large billion-dollar corporations to rip off your work wholesale and use it to generate profits while contributing only the occasional patch or two. I used to see this phenomenon on HN,…
The BSD license doesn’t allow you to delete the copyright statements from someone else’s code and claim it as your own.
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#27I read a large bit of the article before I finally realized it was not about some demo (understand demoscene) I did not know :)
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#28TIL that people fly around the world demoing DTrace...
At the time, Sun were pushing it heavily as one of the two salvations for Solaris, so I'm not surprised.
I have to say that my limited experience in dealing with Sun as a customer mirrors Brendan's comments around a remarkable arrogance, and it probably played no small part in their downfall.
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#29Great article. Disgusting behavior. Seems like the sort of experience that sticks with you for years.
Was there actually no follow-up? Change of header?
Re: An Unbelievable Demo
#30I did not see that coming, well worth the read if you just came here for the comments. I won't spoil it for you.
Thanks for this heads-up. Wow. What a plot twist...