Funding Clojure - an open source project story
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Same old story, been living that way for the last 7 years. I have not even had time for IronScheme in the last month due to work deadlines and other unforeseen shit. In the end, never expect anything more than a thanks. At least Clojure has a nice user base, for IronScheme, I have about 5-10 (feeling optimistic this early). That is not even something I ever considered, nevermind would ask. I do dream of that white knight to arrive someday... dont need much, just enough to pay rent and internet and food.
xacc.ide
IronScheme - 1.0 RC 1 - out now!
((λ (x) `(,x ',x)) '(λ (x) `(,x ',x))) The Scheme Programming Language – Fourth EditionHi Leppie, I always enjoy your contributions and comments here, and on StackOverFlow ! Lisp was my first real programming language (after 6809 assembly language) back in the late paleolithic; and that served me very well when by luck, and serendipity, and hard work, I got to a "guru" level in the PostScript language (PostScript is really LISP wearing a "face" of RPN and explicit stacks, imho). If only my admiration for you could turn into $ in your bank account :) If this were a "better world," we would have a had some "ownership" of the major os's by public national or international trusts, not monopolies controlled by giant cartels; if this were a "better world," we'd have a public tax on computer hardware that helped subsidize open-source. But, it's still a beautiful world (I'm looking at it through sixty-six year old eyes). I have total admiration for people who follow their dream no matter what the cost, at the same time I recognize, and feel for, people who have the demands on them to support children, and pay their mortgages, pay for health care, and take care of their aging parents, who have to compromise "following their dream" with the current harsh economic realities of today's marketplace. I know I'm so fortunate in that most of my life I've loved my work and the financial rewards were secondary. best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
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I thought that the whole point of open source was that loosen the reins of ownership of an idea and let others become involved. If you have been solo developing a project and it is becoming too much to handle, let it go. The "community" will pick it up and run with it if there are enough people who like it. I also have a hobby that I could let occupy me far more than full time. I don't think anyone will pay me for doing it!
The reality being that virtually all open source projects are either driven by commercial interest (where people are paid to write code), or by one or a very few very motivated, selfless individuals without whom the project would die.
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server -
Hi Leppie, I always enjoy your contributions and comments here, and on StackOverFlow ! Lisp was my first real programming language (after 6809 assembly language) back in the late paleolithic; and that served me very well when by luck, and serendipity, and hard work, I got to a "guru" level in the PostScript language (PostScript is really LISP wearing a "face" of RPN and explicit stacks, imho). If only my admiration for you could turn into $ in your bank account :) If this were a "better world," we would have a had some "ownership" of the major os's by public national or international trusts, not monopolies controlled by giant cartels; if this were a "better world," we'd have a public tax on computer hardware that helped subsidize open-source. But, it's still a beautiful world (I'm looking at it through sixty-six year old eyes). I have total admiration for people who follow their dream no matter what the cost, at the same time I recognize, and feel for, people who have the demands on them to support children, and pay their mortgages, pay for health care, and take care of their aging parents, who have to compromise "following their dream" with the current harsh economic realities of today's marketplace. I know I'm so fortunate in that most of my life I've loved my work and the financial rewards were secondary. best, Bill
"Many : not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because it [the Analytical Engine] is to give results in numerical notation, its processes must consequently be arithmetical, numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine numerical quantities as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and it fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly." Ada, Countess Lovelace, 1844
BillWoodruff wrote:
If only my admiration for you could turn into $ in your bank account
Thanks. I have the same level of respect and admiration for you. Now if only we can figure out step 2. You know: 1. Admiration 2. ??????? 3. PROFIT!
xacc.ide
IronScheme - 1.0 RC 1 - out now!
((λ (x) `(,x ',x)) '(λ (x) `(,x ',x))) The Scheme Programming Language – Fourth Edition -
Well, I've been absurd for most of my life so I see no reason to stop now. :) If you don't think that many in the Linux community are motivated by the fact that a free, high quality operating system works against Microsoft's domination of the OS business, you should really spend more time on Slashdot. I've been known to wear a great many hats at parties (at least as best I remember), but they're rarely tinfoil. CP, Stack Overflow and other such forums and code sharing sites are not open source projects. Sourceforge, however, is a great collection of open source projects. As for the projects themselves, you won't have much trouble finding religion if you look for it. The open source movement is without question driven to a large degree by ideology, much of it benevolent. That said, anti establishment sentiment, as well as anti commercialism, are also common. Is this ideology a bad thing? To a degree I find it little more than tilting at windmills, the time honored birthright of youth. And believe me, I've done plenty of it myself. As for the whole "all software should be free" thing, I absolutely disagree. If you want to give it away for free, rock on. But those of us who like to do it for a living shouldn't be excluded from the party. We provide value, and there's no dishonor in being compensated for that. This doesn't mean that free software should go away. It just means I don't believe commercial software should go away, either. There are plenty in the open source community who would disagree strongly with that last statement. Of course, none of this was my primary point. I was just saying that some guy spending his spare time writing free software because it was a labor of love looks very foolish when he suddenly turns around and whines because he's not being compensated. He's getting exactly the experience he signed up for. As for the glass, I'm a geek. I say it's neither half empty nor half full, merely twice as big as it needs to be. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Well, Christopher, That was a very cool reponse, and reflected exactly the wit, intelligence, and dignity I would expect to see bouncing back from a mind like yours in reponse to my off-the-wall back-hand serve of "just desserts flambe." If you have been "absurd" most of your life, then we have a lot in common; it came naturally to me :) But I admit I have also consciously cultivated it. I am not familiar with Slashdot : please remember you are speaking to someone here (an American) who has not set foot in the US for over seven years, and in many ways has, by conscious choice, dis-connected himself from television and US popular culture (with the exception of written literature). But, it looks like an interesting site, and I'd like to have a sense of who its clientele are, and what its "uber-agendas" are : if any. It is the "center of gravity" for those who perceive Microsoft as the Sauron of Redmond ? I was once a "dues-paid-in-full" member of the "Cult of Mac" although the PostScript expertise that earned my "daily bread" (and got me to Adobe finally) certainly had nothing to do with Mac software other than functioning as a massive (and awkward) translation system between the really pathetic graphic model of QuickDraw and the much more powerful graphic model embodied in PostScript in a full-blown LISP like Turing-equivalent language. In hindsight I can now see that the "Mac thing" was a lifestyle choice as much as technology (I was brainwashed, you might say), and today, I believe there's no more "closed" system in terms of hardware and software than the Mac. And Apple's recent cartel like domination of IPhone software brings the words "anti-trust" to my mind. Clearly our operating definitions of "open source" are quite different, so I think I should apologize for not having taking the time to have queried you on how you are defining open-source before firing off my broadside. Clearly what you express about "open source" has to do with very specific technologies, companies, and people. I once spent several years of my (much younger) life directly serving people with severe mental and physical problems, some dying slowly, some dying quickly, some insane, some just isolated and cooped up in flea-bag hotels, some whose lives were just completely disrupted because they had to go broke and lose their homes first before they qualified for the expensive medical care they needed : so perhaps I have more of a feeling, through observation, that at the end of a life, the extent to which you "followed your