61–70 of 316 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you just release the source and don't accept patches then that's not real open source this is commonly referred to as "source available".
Source available is specifically if the code is not under an open source license. Whereas software that is under an OS license is open source, whatever the maintainers policy on contributions.
Quoting from the blog post. But Wolfram’s vision for computation is much more profound—to unify and automate computation across computational fields, application areas, user types, interfaces and deployments. The problem with Wolfram Tech is the above objective can be done by doing one thing and is improving developer ergonomics. I would say that the Wolfram Language would need a complete overhaul. When I was using i…
I'd love to see basic computing taught alongside algebra but apparently "thats too difficult"...
Most of these are about wanting control over the design of the software - but releasing their code doesn't have any impact on that - I don't get it? Java is open source - Oracle still tightly controls and manages the design of Java. For example 'Bad design is expensive' - how releasing your source lead to bad design? That's a complete non-sequitur.
They are arguing it does have impact on that. The company that created Java went out of business and was sold to Oracle for a fraction of its original worth. So Java was a business failure -- or at least I'd be interested to see someone defend Java as a business success. So I think it's realistic to at least engage with their argument seriously rather than dismiss it. The argument is that open source licenses are inc…
The other arguments are more acceptable: we want to make money and we think opening the source goes in the way. I don't like it but I understand.
Most of these are about wanting control over the design of the software - but releasing their code doesn't have any impact on that - I don't get it? Java is open source - Oracle still tightly controls and manages the design of Java. For example 'Bad design is expensive' - how releasing your source lead to bad design? That's a complete non-sequitur.
They are arguing it does have impact on that. The company that created Java went out of business and was sold to Oracle for a fraction of its original worth. So Java was a business failure -- or at least I'd be interested to see someone defend Java as a business success. So I think it's realistic to at least engage with their argument seriously rather than dismiss it. The argument is that open source licenses are inc…
I don’t see them making that argument in all these points.
For example they say
> Crowd-sourced decisions can be bad for you
Well ok that’s a valid point so… don’t do that. Crowd sourcing design decisions or code is not a fundamental part of open source. You can have open source but do all the development internally if you want to.
I think they’re confusing source licensing with a development methodology.
TLDR: some types of software needs more than programming. omitted TLDR: some of the above can only be done by paying people money to do them. Company needs income for that. omitted exibit: why haven't Gimp thrown Photoshop, Pixelmater and others from the throne. If programmers were the only people needed, then all those commercial image editors would be gone from the market. (but a unix shell only needs programming b…
Blender is a counter example. They prioritized UX and are now eating into commercial use cases.
This is just the usual "proprietary software is higher quality, we swear". Accurately voicing my thoughts on this would probably go against the HN guidelines, so I'll just let this sentence from the article speak for itself: >But our vision is a grand one—unify all of computation into a single coherent language, and for that, the FOSS development model is not well suited. Well, good luck with that.
> Paid software offers an open quid pro quo This section points out a valid problem with business models based on open source, but closing the source and requiring payment doesn't inherently solve the problem. In fact, closing the source, which is the usual means of enforcing the paid license, introduces another problem: the developer could be doing something nefarious in addition to requiring payment, and it would b…
TLDR: some types of software needs more than programming. omitted TLDR: some of the above can only be done by paying people money to do them. Company needs income for that. omitted exibit: why haven't Gimp thrown Photoshop, Pixelmater and others from the throne. If programmers were the only people needed, then all those commercial image editors would be gone from the market. (but a unix shell only needs programming b…
Blender is a counter example. They prioritized UX and are now eating into commercial use cases.
The quality of it might be because some real company was using the project to do daily work (even before the ui overhaul).