How a WWII Jet Fighter Was Designed in 150 days & shipped in six months - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2578-a-look-at-the-design-process-of-aviation-innovator-clarence-kelly-johnson

<comment><USER2> The biggest difference between now and then…what makes this impossible today is not that our engineers are less capable, is not that we are more bureaucratic and is not that we're less motivated.

The difference is that back then, we were indifferent to failure that cost lives.

And not just in development/testing. Once planes were deployed, if a plane didn't come back from a mission it was "lost in action" independent if the wing just broke off in flight over some stretch of water. Read this excerpt from Wikipedia):

The P-80 testing program proved very dangerous. Burcham was killed on 20 October 1944 while flying the third YP-80A produced, 44-83025. The "Gray Ghost" was lost on a test flight on 20 March 1945, although pilot Tony LeVier escaped. Newly promoted to chief engineering test pilot to replace Burcham, LeVier bailed out when one of the engine's turbine blades broke, causing structural failure in the airplane's tail. LeVier landed hard and broke his back, but returned to the test program after six months of recovery. Noted ace Major Richard Bong was also killed on an acceptance flight of a production P-80 in the United States on 6 August 1945. Both Burcham and Bong crashed as a result of main fuel pump failure. Burcham's death was the result of a failure to brief him on a newly installed emergency fuel pump backup system, but the investigation of Bong's crash found he had apparently forgotten to switch on the emergency fuel pump that could have prevented the accident. He bailed out when the aircraft rolled inverted but was too close to the ground for his parachute to deploy.

So this "no bureaucracy" craze makes no sense for modern aviation design but makes a lot of sense where lives are not at risk (as is the case with a lot of software development, but not all).

That's my $0.02.

<comment><USER3> The introductory chapter to the Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe) describes this well. The sheer cost of lives among test pilots in the 40s and 50s is shocking by today's standards, but this was a generation that went through Normandy and Bataan.

That said, that doesn't explain why the aircraft of WW2 and the early Cold War took just a few years to go from drawing board to combat, in the days before advanced computer modelling, yet it took 20 years to build the Eurofighter. I suspect the lack of accountability of military contractors coupled with government collusion (jobs programs over national security) has more than a bit to do with it.

<comment><USER4> One word: Priority.

I am a fighter jet fanatic, but let's be honest: What the hell is a Eurofighter, Raptor, or Lightening going to do that can't also be done by an Eagle, Falcon or Hornet to more or less the same degree?

Let's be clear: The US and NATO established air dominance over the skies in Gulf War I in days, the Balkans in hours, and Afghanistan and Iraq in minutes with aircraft designed in the 70's. There is really no credible threat to western air forces that makes a new generation of fighter jet a priority.

Or at least, there wasn't. Now that Russia and possibly China are building realistic opponents that will challenge the dominance of F-15s/F-16s and F-18s, there is pressure to upgrade.

<comment><USER5> wow, Russia and China have started building realistic opponents for F-15s/F-16s and F-18s just now? I'm not sure whether I should laugh, cry, or tear my eyes out...

<comment><USER4> To be fair, the Russians did have that massive collapse of society to deal with a few years back. It slowed them down a little.

The Chinese still aren't big players in this space, and they mostly take their lead from the Russians.

The Russian's haven't exactly been twiddling their thumbs, but while they make great aircraft, their radar and weapon systems are just now starting to eclipse western fourth generation standards, and the Raptor is still posting 20-1 kill ratios in simulated combat.

That will probably change as the PAK-FA and J-XX come online (the Sukkoi being the greater threat, realistically, since nobody really knows what the J-XX actually is).

<comment><USER5> I was being sarcastic.

Russia had equal opponents to mentioned 4th gen fighters since late 70s.

<comment><USER4> No, they did not, actually.

<comment><USER5> I will not get into arguing about that here.

Let's just say HN isn't the place to get factual information about weapons systems - when I need that I go to Key Publishing forum and such.

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that many of the opinions around Soviet technology were overly optimistic. Until the Mig-29 and Su-27 entered service in the 80's, they had nothing that could match the F-14/F-15/F16 and F-18.

The kill ratios of the F-15 and F-16 speak for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Johnson deplores the trend toward specialization with the lament of a > designer who also knows how to handle machine tools. "Some of the fellows in > the Skunk Works never had any cutting oil splashed on them."

There are plenty of programmers that have never held a soldering iron either.

I'm not even sure if that's 'good' or 'bad', it seems there are advantages to knowing what goes on under the hood but at the same time that knowledge comes in to play less and less every day.

<comment><USER7> It is always good to learn the abstraction layer below when creating something. For designing physical objects that will one day be physical products, it makes a lot of sense to understand the manufacturing process and materials involved.

To use your example of software... I've encountered one too many people who are billed as an Enterprise software "architects" who have never coded a single line production software in their life <cringe>. Needless to say, these projects almost always end up a disaster.

<comment><USER8> I think you misunderstand the purpose of that kind of architect - their job is to wear a suit, give good PowerPoint and disappear in a puff of UML when it comes to actually building software.

<comment><USER7> I am aware that it is common practice for a guy with a title architect be the "smoke and mirrors" guy during the sales phase. I am referring to so called architects who have the role of leading a group of programmer during the building of software. Unfortunately many times their understanding of software does not go beyond the Visio and Powerpoints but it is falsely assumed they can still lead due to pointy-hair-boss soft skills. What ends up happening is crapware due to a lack of understanding of fundamental software design and process.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately he's also the guy that tells the customer "yes we'll do it in Blub!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Modern MechE's seemingly can't build anything either - at least where I went to school. The SAE formula guys are the only ones it seemed.

I'm not sure what I think about engineers who can only CAD up a part but couldn't make it.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand this logic. Yes, in a start-up, having multiple skillsets and job overlap comes in handy.

In the corporate world, however, that MechE will likely never do anything but CAD up parts. They will have a machinist on staff to make his creations. Just like how corporate programmers don't need to build their own computers or run the company's IT.

A better analogy might be a story of a friend of mine from graduate school, Chuck. He, and another grad student we'll call Mike, got their first year of graduate funding through a professor with very little grant money. It was very important that Mike had machine shop skills and could build some of their research equipment for the lab. Mike made a name for himself -- he wasn't a very good machinist compared to the guys on staff -- but he was building the needed equipment, even if it was very time consuming.

Using this humble lab, Chuck and Mike worked hard for their professor and eventually got lots of funding. It got to the point where the funding was so much, that time was more a concern. Chuck could then overnight parts from electronics catalogs and conduct research faster/better than Mike, who despite having this funding, continued the frugal habit of machining all his own parts. Mike eventually got disciplined (for not moving fast enough in his research) and frustrated (he fixated on the fact that his skills helped them get the funding in the first place).

TL;DR: When Time becomes greater than money, I'd rather have the CAD guy CAD it up, and the machinist make it.

<comment><USER9> Because without the ability to machine it, you have far less of an insight into how hard it will be to do so, or how long it will take, or how much wastage there will be. That can have an orders-of-magnitude effect on the cost. In your story, Chuck is ordering parts sure, but the guy who designed those parts was a specialist in designing parts...

In my first year of Mech Eng they sent us all off to a machine shop to learn to weld, use a lathe, etc, I couldn't give an example to you now, but it really does make a difference, you start to think as well as "how will this work" but also "how will this be made", "how can this be repaired", "how will someone get at this part to replace it", etc etc.

<comment><USER11> >In your story, Chuck is ordering parts sure, but the guy who designed those parts was a specialist in designing parts...

Exactly. In the long run, re-inventing the wheel is costly. Costly enough that Chuck graduates with his PhD, while the other ends up failing out and working at a machine shop.

Also, a constant criticism of Chuck's counterpart, Mike, was that everything he built was constantly over-engineered, and took to damn long. If anything, his machine shop experience hampered his ability to design or refine his design skills past an undergraduate level.

A semester of welding, lathing, and whatnot will likely not help a professional MechE, as easily half their CAD designs will be fabricated completely by machine. Understanding a precision machinist's complaints will not come into the field.

<comment><USER10> Nothing is "fabricated completely by machine" like an ink jet prints on paper. I work in 3D printing, the closest to this fire-and-forget model, and there are still a lot of design contraints and optimizations that any engineer needs to know to be truly good at making parts.

If you're designing shaping, molding, machining, etc. parts having an idea of manufacturing processes is essential to elegant solutions at low cost.

The other way would be like an artist who instructed someone to paint his masterpiece from his initial sketch. A lot is lost in translation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I highly recommend Ben Rich's autobiography to anyone interested in the engineering and business practices behind Skunk Works:

[http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir- Lockheed/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir- Lockheed/dp/0316743003/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285073583&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER13> Second that, one of my favorites. The guys who built the SR71 were the ultimate hackers.

<comment><USER14> I'll third that, its downright inspirational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A good book on how airplanes are designed and produced is The Jet Makers <http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/index.html>

Yes, my father is the author.

</comment><comment><USER16> He apparently also created crappy planes that killed many people, for example the F-104. Perhaps more bureaucracy is good sometimes.

<comment><USER6> Makes you wonder what the Spanish pilots did right that went wrong elsewhere.

of course they didn't fly nearly as many F104s as the other airforces but still, a '0' where elsewhere the percentages of losses are some of the largest of all fighter jets ever recorded should at least make for an interesting investigation. Not that it matters anymore with the F104 being retired from service but there might be something to be learned from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I haven't had a chance to do more than skim the article yet, but if you get a chance, read Skunk Works by Ben Rich. The book is about the shop Kelly Johnson (the subject of the article) ran that gave us all kinds of great flying toys. It's a neat story about a legendary engineer/leader.

<comment><USER18> article summary:

> _Use a small number of good people_

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Johnson crammed a small number of capable people into close proximity, so that "engineering shall always be within a stone's throw of the airplane.""

This is agile and extreme-programming at it's best.

</comment><comment><USER20> 180 days to design the P-80. They built 28 planes a day. Compare that to: <http://www.f22fighter.com/timeline.htm>

I can't even tell how many years the design of the F-22 has taken, but that timeline lists 13 planes delivered in 2003. 13 per year versus 28 a day.

Now, obviously modern planes are much more complex than they were in 1943, and they should take longer to design and build. But how much longer? How much is the bureacracy actually hurting?

<comment><USER21> From what I've read, there was a huge amount of politics involved in the F-22. Plus, we're not in WWII, so there's less demand on pumping out high volumes of good-enough planes and more focus on building something that really pushes the limits of technology, which the F-22 does.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. I remember reading that the F-22 or the JSF has contracts in 48 states. They really spread around the contracts to ensure smooth sailing in Congress. Everyone got a piece of the action (jobs to bring home) so to speak.

The problem is, it's also insanely easy to disrupt manufacturing that distributed. If it ever came to a war where bombs/rockets/cruise missiles were hitting our soil, it would be nearly impossible to ramp up production of this jet, much less protect the facilities involved in designing/making it.

<comment><USER22> If it came to war then speed of production of fighter aircraft would have a pretty minimal impact on the US ability to achieve air superiority. The days when Britain survived WWII by manufacturing >14000 Hurricanes are long gone

<comment><USER11> You're right, but it depends on the length of the conflict. Each Apache Helicopter is built by hand. They have individual names. We only produce 60 of them a year.

I don't know the loss rate we've encountered in Iraq and Afganistan (I know its much lower than the Blackhawks) but even if you're losing 61/year for a long enough timeline....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As I recall the P-80 never saw combat, at least in WW II. I remember it chiefly for killing Richard Bong, the USAAF leading ace.

<comment><USER24> As the F-80 it saw action in Korea. But the only jet that saw action in WWII was the Me 262.

Edit: Also apparently the Gloster Meteor (thanks arethuza!)

<comment><USER8> The Gloster Meteor saw action with the RAF, shooting down a decent number of V1s:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Limited meetings to 15 people or less? How is that agile? In comparison with bloated corporations I guess.

<comment><USER26> They're designing and building fighter jets, not deciding what color to make a website.

<comment><USER25> Doesn't matter what they're designing. Meetings of 15 people waste at least 10 peoples' time. People don't change just because the problem gets harder; they can't collaborate in large groups as well as small ones. And 15 is not small.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good comment and I agree with you, except maybe in this case they would have 2 pilots, 2 mechanics, 2 people from the war department, 2 people from the treasury, the core engineering team, and a secretary - when you need approvals, it might be easier to have a meeting also be a presentation where people put their stamp on the document immediately afterwards instead of running the meeting two or three different times.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Degraded performance after forced reboot due to AWS instance maintenance - <AUTHOR> https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=269858 <comment><USER2> "I guess you are essentially confirming that the instance maintenance was likely to be the reason for the major change to cpu usage, and that the only solution now is to change instance type."

"Of course I am not entirely happy about this. I bought a 3-year reserved instance 2 years ago, and now have to hope I can sell the remaining year for a reasonable amount (which may be a stretch given that I am apparently using legacy instance type), and then purchase new reserved instance after upgrading."

<comment><USER3> Or migrate to google since they don't have a broken discounting billing system

<comment><USER4> I'll stick with the vastly superior offering and swallow the occasional hiccup, but thanks.

<comment><USER5> I have used Amazon for many years happily, but I'm struggling to understand what you consider to be vastly superior? Google has some very solid product offerings.

Google Container Engine for instance is amazing. Granted Amazon has recently launched a couple of products that offer similar features, but as of mid last year running containers on Google felt like it was ahead of Amazon.

<comment><USER6> One thing is s3/gcs latency. On my last job we had a Go server running on ec2/gce and do some occasional read from s3/gcs (same, single region). We used to be running on ec2+s3 but later switched to gce+gcs for cost reasons (gcp only costs ~60% of aws' cost for our setup). But the thing we noticed was that when we were on aws reading ~10KB single file from s3 usually takes <100ms, occasionally hit 100ms+ but rarely hit >200ms. On gcp that's usually >100ms, sometimes hikes to >1s and rarely goes <100ms.

<comment><USER7> Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.

Yeah, the underlying system is optimized for throughput (though we're working on small file latency). AWS clearly has a small file optimization and caching that we don't (yet).

I often point people at Zach Bjornson's blogpost [1] since he compared all three providers and is a neutral third party.

[1] [http://blog.zachbjornson.com/2015/12/29/cloud-storage- perfor...](http://blog.zachbjornson.com/2015/12/29/cloud-storage- performance.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unsure if this is related, but a few weeks back AWS paravirtualized instances were experiencing extreme clock skew and suffering frequent restarts. Our clocks were skewing about 8 seconds per hour, and the instances were getting swapped out at least once per day, sometimes more.

Switching to a HVM instance type resolved the problems.

<comment><USER9> It's related. This was during the early versions of the security patch, which was causing performance and clock skew issues for PV instances ([https://twitter.com/kainosnoema/status/941816042103324672](https://twitter.com/kainosnoema/status/941816042103324672)). Since then AWS has mostly resolved these, but we've moved all our instances to HVM AMIs as well since they're apparently not affected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Two possibilities:

1\. Your distro has PTI/KAISER enabled and the reboot caused you to upgrade your guest kernel. Sucks to be running on an Intel CPU right now...

2\. AWS implemented some kind of hypervisor-side mitigation for the VM attack that made VM entries and exits slower. Sucks to be running on an affected CPU (which seems to include AMD, too, but I could be wrong).

<comment><USER11> I am pretty sure the patch needs to be applied on the host kernel and not the guest.

<comment><USER12> This is not true. [https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/security- bulletins](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/security-bulletins) says:

> However, all guest operating systems and versions must be patched to protect > against this new class of attack regardless of where those systems run.

<comment><USER11> It depends on what you try to fix. VM - to - VM is host only. But now it seems it also needs to be applied to guests because of applications inside the guests which could abuse this as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> phoe-krk If I understand this correctly, paravirtualization in this scenario means that the host kernel is impacted by the KAISER patch's overhead AND the guest kernel is impacted by the KAISER patch overhead, and that these overheads are multiplicative. Could someone more knowledgeable than me explain and/or verify my assumption?

<comment><USER13> No, I don't think that's correct. KAISER/KPTI isn't enabled on the guest side on xen PV instances:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16065647](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16065647)

<comment><USER14> but since the _host_ still has to perform some paging (and possibly for the guest) in paravirt, it should affect guest performance. In this snippet I think that is paravirt _guest_ code so page tables don't need to be isolated twice.

So I think the host kernels' perf degredation will still affect it.

<comment><USER13> > So I think the host kernels' perf degredation will still affect it.

Oh, yes, definitely. I was just responding to "that these overheads are multiplicative." (I suspect additive rather than multiplicative was meant)

<comment> phoe-krk No, I actually meant multiplicative. I was worried that the worst case is 30% syscall overhead on virtualization host multiplied by 30% syscall overhead on virtualization guest.

Still, even if this mitigation is only enabled on Xen host and not on the guest, can this attack be then used inside the guest's userspace to read memory of the guest's kernel, as opposed to reading memory of the host's kernel?

<comment><USER15> The form of the overhead is doing a set amount of extra work per syscall. It's hard for me to picture any way that could multiply. The extra work doesn't change based on how long the syscall takes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah this is due to the recent security bug related to speculative execution on CPUs. It causes a performance hit, and they have to force people who haven't restarted in a long time to restart now because it's around the official disclosure deadline.

</comment><comment><USER17> First indications of early KAISER fix testing in the wild..?

(which might have also been a test to see how will customers react)

<comment><USER13> I think this is possibly the xen PV side of the fix. Linux' PTI mitigation isn't enabled for paravirt xen:

            if (hypervisor_is_type(X86_HYPER_XEN_PV)) {
    		pti_print_if_insecure("disabled on XEN PV.");
    		return;
    	}

<comment><USER18> Interesting. I took a look and this is the only hypervisor specific piece of code I can find in the patches.

I have wondered what the impact would be on hypervisors. Xen seems like they patched it in a way that removes the need for guests to mitigate, but would guests of other hypervisors get hit with the penalty twice in some cases?

<comment><USER2> > removes the need for guests to mitigate

Google says guests need to upgrade.

 _" Compute Engine customers must update their virtual machine operating systems and applications so that their virtual machines are protected from intra-guest attacks and inter-guest attacks that exploit application-level vulnerabilities."

"Compute Engine customers should work with their operating system provider(s) to download and install the necessary patches."_

[https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7622138#gce](https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7622138#gce)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given that Google has been experimenting with POWER, does anyone know if POWER is affected too?

<comment><USER20> Apparently potentially: Red Hat Security statement [https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/speculati...](https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/speculativeexecution)

<comment><USER19> IBM has confirmed that POWER is vulnerable.

See [https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/potential-impact- processors-...](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/potential-impact-processors- power-family/)

Linux patches to drop 1/9, AIX and i to drop 2/12.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "I have reviewed support case 4743634091 regarding what you're experiencing on your instance. You're correct that what you are seeing is not the same issue as what others are reporting. In the first correspondence from support they correctly pointed out that the kernel in your instance is encountering an out of memory (OOM) condition and made suggestions about how to adjust the configuration within your instance to avoid the OOM processor killer from kicking in.

The update that is being applied to instances that have scheduled reboot maintenance can cause slight changes to system resources available to paravirtualized instances, including a small reduction in usable memory. This can cause smaller instances, like m1.medium, that run workloads that were previously just fitting within the usable memory available to the instance to trigger out of memory conditions. Adding a swap file (as no swap is configured in your instance) or reducing the number of processes may resolve the issue on your existing PV instance."

ie there is less memory on PV after the fix, and this machine was nearly out and is OOMing. This is not a reflection of any significant performance hit with normal cases.

<comment><USER22> You've mis-read this section - it was answering another commenter who claimed to be having the same issue but was in fact having a different issue as you described in your quote.

The underlying problem the update caused was acknowledged by an AWS rep in the thread who suggested moving to an instance with more CPU resources.

> If moving to a HVM based AMI is not easy, changing your instance size to > m3.medium, which provides more compute than m1.medium at a lower price, may > be a workaround.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are we presuming this is the Intel patch being applied?

</comment><comment><USER24> So this sounds like this Intel bug will not impact performance on HVM instances.

<comment><USER2> That's not what it says.

Amazon suggests moving to higher-performance instances to offset offset the performance hit from the fix.

HVM and m3 instances have higher performance for the same price, but they may also have been degraded by the fix.

<comment><USER25> I don't think that's right, Ctrl-F for "HVM" here: [https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-254.html](https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-254.html)

In the HVM case an attacker can't generate hypervisor addresses because the hypervisor runs in a separate address space, so HVM isn't vulnerable to the most easily exploitable of the disclosed issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We ran into this and finally made the switch this morning to an HVM ami. The performance has been much better.

We started seeing issues on Dec 23rd, with HDD reads and it magically went away the night of Jan 1st. The cpu loads remained high though.

</comment><comment><USER27> "As the notice points out, the update that is being applied is important to maintain the high security and operational aspects for your instances."

Yeah, definitely Intel Inside.

<comment><USER28> AWS has always told customers they use both stock and custom Intel processors.

</comment></comment><comment> k-ian for those who don't want to log in,

[https://i.imgur.com/f76tOvY.png](https://i.imgur.com/f76tOvY.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/MhXyT3g.png](https://i.imgur.com/MhXyT3g.png)

<comment><USER29> Even simple .png pictures are not displayed on imgur.com without JavaScript.

<comment><USER30> imgur checks your referral header and if it can figure out you've navigated to the image directly (or there's no referral header), it will redirect you to the image viewer + ads page, instead of just displaying the image file.

It's a pity, given the reasons imgur started, but it's the cycle of all image hosts I guess.

<comment><USER31> The site doesn't even perform its basic functions on mobile anymore.

Agreed, it's a shame, but such is image hosting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> PV vs HVM woes</comment>


The Lessons and Questions of the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2017/the-lessons-and-questions-of-the-iphone-x-and-the-iphone-8/ <comment><USER2> Releasing three tiers of iPhone at once is a bold move. (8, Plus, X)

I figured the reason why they made the 8 and X was because of supply issues. Release the 8s first because our supply chain is good for them. Some people just want the 8. Once the X is built then release that. Everyone is happy including shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER3> I still don't get that screen with a notch for a camera. Hardly convenient. Sacrifices too much for the sake of design.

<comment><USER4> The notch and deeply rounded screen corners don't seem like fun to program around. It's yet another screen variation you need to handle in code. All the sizes, aspect ratios, and pixel densities seem like enough of a pain, and now we have to deal with non-rectangular screens?

I only dabble iOS development. How do serious iOS devs feel about this?

<comment><USER5> iOS 11 introduces a "safe area" to lay things out in where they won't be occluded. It's meant an extra couple lines of code — not a big deal at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Heroku taps industry vet Tod Nielsen as new CEO - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/06/26/heroku-taps-industry-vet-tod-nielsen-as-new-ceo/ <comment><USER2> The article did a pretty bad job chronicling his history at Microsoft.

Tod presided over developer tools at Microsoft during the 90s, and played a key role in making Windows the most popular developer platform during the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER3> Time to really kickstart the monetization?</comment>


What is the future of Qt? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/12/nokia-new-strategic-direction-what-is-the-future-for-qt/ <comment><USER2> This is a sad story... Qt was gaining huge momentum under Nokia's acquisition. QML, their new technology for mobile interfaces was just pure joy to use. The platform was moving fast, and it seemed that nothing was impossible, including ports of Qt to Android or iOS.

Now, it just seems that it's slowly going to die.

As an enthusiastic Qt / QML developer, I'm sad...

<comment><USER3> I really hope Qt doesn't die. As I'm sure you know, Trolltech nourished Qt for more than a decade until they were bought by Nokia a couple of years back, and Qt is an awesome toolkit that has wide support on Linux et al. I can't fathom Qt just dying out -- even if what used to be Trolltech fades, people will at least continue to hack on the codebase, and hopefully professional support is absorbed by the remaining Linux companies.

Qt is the widget toolkit for _many_ first-class Linux applications, including VLC and all of KDE. KDE and Qt specifically are very closely linked, so KDE- based distros should be especially anxious to absorb any Qt refugees from Nokia.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure the KDE project would absorb as many people from Qt as possible. But who is going to pay them? Which distros a) still use KDE exclusively and b) have the resources to pay for a number of Qt refugees?

<comment><USER5> 1\. Trolltech was profitable when Nokia bought it. 2\. Nokia could sell Trolltech/Qt. They justify their actions on the basis of needing some money. Selling Troll/Qt could bring in some money (let's exclude the small detail that MS wants QT dead, not sold...) 3\. If KDE demanded the Qt source out of escrow, it would be one more black eye on the already nasty look Nokia, so Nokia might just let the Trolls go...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The way I read it is, they will maintain Qt to maintain the past ... but not to build their future

which I think is bad for anyone who wanted to invest in Qt, we all want to develop for platform of the future not the past

</comment><comment><USER7> This seems to support my hunch that far from planning to bet irrevocably on WinPho, Nokia is actually trying to keep its options open: pick up a sweet deal to be Microsoft's premium partner in smartphones for a couple of years, use that time to shuck off Symbian, keep MeeGo alive as a tablet OS. Then after that couple of years, when the MS smartphone exclusive expires, take a fresh look around and decide whether to go with one or more of WinPho, Android, MeeGo or whatever may be around at that point. Doesn't seem like a self-evidently terrible strategy, though there's an obvious risk that WinPho will continue to founder and that Nokia won't have the time or money or brand loyalty to tough it out through another couple of years of failure in smartphones.

<comment><USER7> Another risk for Nokia is that this deal doesn't so much change MeeGo's status as keep it the same. I get the impression that MeeGo can remain a "promising", half-finished project indefinitely, for as long as Nokia keeps it in development. The technically accurate name for this state is not 'vaporware' but 'GNOME stew'. :) Perhaps only the raw terror of betting Nokia on MeeGo smartphones could get it to coalesce into a really competitive platform. (Competitive in technical/UI terms, leaving aside other problems like market share.) Or fail to coalesce and be cancelled.

MeeGo's apparently going to see commercial use as a tablet OS, but unless Nokia shakes its apparent attitude that a tablet is a little thing you do with your Linux-based platform when you don't dare to put it on your smartphones then the tablets won't be the crucible that MeeGo apparently needs. (And they aren't likely to do well in the market either.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's sad, but not unexpected, to see Qt in trouble. Qt is an amazing development environment, and I was getting rather psyched for the prospect of being able to use it to develop for phones, tablets, netbooks, and the desktop. I only hope that if Nokia is done with it, they spin it off or drop it completely (thus activating the FreeQt agreement) rather than defunding it so they maintain control but starve it to death.

However, spinning it off (as some are suggesting in the comment thread) has major difficulties. In particular, since buying Trolltech, Nokia has LGPLed Qt. That seems to me to drastically change the situation for prospective commercial licensing, as companies can ship commercial, proprietary products with Qt without paying licensing fees. How would Trolltech 2.0 make money? Sure, there would be a number of companies that still pay the commercial licensing fee, particularly for embedded systems or for support, but would there be enough to continue funding Qt development?

<comment><USER9> > However, spinning it off (as some are suggesting in the comment thread) has > major difficulties. In particular, since buying Trolltech, Nokia has LGPLed > Qt. That seems to me to drastically change the situation for prospective > commercial licensing, as companies can ship commercial, proprietary products > with Qt without paying licensing fees. How would Trolltech 2.0 make money?

The business model would have to be different, that much is true. But where does the funding come from now for GTK+ for instance? Or the Linux kernel?

There are enough Qt-using companies out there that maintaining and improving Qt should not be an issue if it is divested from Nokia. The concern would be making sure there is a neutral platform for the companies that contribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keith Rusler, from comments section of the article: "I have to say, Nokia made a bad decision jumping to WP7 knowing that Qt wouldn't be on it. Now that Nokia did this, they basically went from Qt "Code once, run everywhere" to "Code once, run nowhere"."

Nokia needs to sell Trolltech _NOW_. The _apparent_ conflict of interest is too great _regardless_ of what the _real_ conflict of interest might be.

And I, like most Qt programmers, don't know what the real level of conflict- of-interest level is. But if I've learned one thing in the corporate world, it's that appearances matter. The appearance that Nokia wants to kill Qt is enough to screw-up a _lot_ of decisions.

 _Otherwise_ , KDE should _take steps_ to force an Apache release of QT source. Better now than later. See: [http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p...](http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php)

</comment><comment><USER10> The big change for Nokia is not the adoption of WP7 as an OS,it is the adoption of .NET as the development platform of choice - not to mention that Nokia's Symbian emulators already used Windows as the development platform. In .NET Nokia is adopting a development platform which provides tools and standards for integrating handsets, slates, and desktops into the back office and cloud while reducing issues of fragmentation. While Qt held that promise, it was a long way from the maturity (10+ years) that .NET provides.

Adoption of .NET will still allow C++ development for people with those skills and inclinations while not adding any more complexity than exists. More importantly .NET will allow more flexibility going forward - even reusing existing VB code or writing new code in F# or IronPython. Qt was not the future for mobile app development because of the relatively high barrier to entry imposed by C++ for casual app developers and enterprise IT departments.

<comment><USER11> "While Qt held that promise, it was a long way from the maturity (10+ years) that .NET provides."

What? Qt 3.0 is even older than .NET.

<comment><USER12> Funny.

I'm frequently saying that .NET 1.1 (and java) is just VCL(Delphi) with virtual machine.

My friend corrects me: In his opinion delegates came from QT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nokia will drop QT like a rock if they'll run out of money. Say what you want but Nokia is NOT a software company.

<comment><USER5> Say "have dropped" and I agree...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of Nokia's problems has been lack of focus. I am a huge fan of Qt so I hate to say it, but keeping Qt, MeeGo, and especially Symbian alive (even with reduced investment) makes it sound like this problem has only gotten worse now that WP7 is thrown in the mix.

</comment><comment><USER15> Actually great new - but the should support the Android-Port of Qt. This is very important - make it easy for Qt developers to stick their head into other revenue sources.

<comment><USER16> > but the should support the Android-Port of Qt

That makes absolutely no sense for Nokia, at any level of resolution.</comment></comment>


Review my idea: Daily credit card balance email - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailycreditcardbalance.com/?hn

<comment><USER3> The idea is good but instead of an email push I would consider a pull system, an aggregator site where you can see all your financial info in dashboard fashion (credit card balance, bank accounts, etc). The problem is that many banks already provide this, or services like Mint. The opportunity I see is in providing a better dashboard that you can customize with only what you want how you want it (in which the offering services fail miserably)

</comment><comment><USER4> Site down, application error. But if it's essentially your daily balance , i would not want 30 emails a month about my balance. I don't use it enough - <USER2> know roughly the balance - and If i need to, i open up Chase's app.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use mint, it's free. So I can't personally see myself paying $5/mo to get an email about how much my CC balances are.

</comment><comment><USER6> have you seen [http://levelmoney.com](http://levelmoney.com)? This took mint to the level I always wanted - having real time updates from your accounts all in one place / daashboard.

I don't know how useful an email would be with no correlation to my budget...

<comment><USER5> I curious, how does mint not have "real time updates from your accounts all in one place?" Their SaaS and app interfaces both seem to update fairly quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> how do you get data? do I have to give you access or you are using yodlee?</comment>


Andrew Warner's Mixergy Celebrates 1,000th interview - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/1000interview <comment><USER2> One of the reasons Mixergy took off is the Hacker News community helped me.

I used to call up people who complained about my work on HN. I wasn't mad at them. I really wanted to get feedback, and I knew there were smart people on this site.

I got my guests from here too. Somewhere in the comment archive, you'll see Derek Sivers agreeing to do an interview because I responded to his HN comment about offering to help people in this community.

When I moved to Argentina and didn't know anyone, I organized a Hacker News meetup. I made more than startup/work friends. I met people like Chad DePue, whose family became close with me and my wife.

I know we talk about improving the comments on HN, and I'm always for improvement, but there's a huge amount of value here right now. And there has been for years.

I know this could sound sappy, but thank you Hacker News.

<comment><USER3> Andrew, I just want to say that I was a hater. You reached out and got feedback from me. It didn't change my opinion a lot, but I appreciated the effort.

That was years ago, now everything has changed. I am a huge fan and continue to follow your new interviews. I've reached out to you with questions and you respond quickly. I think what you're doing is great.

Whatever it is you're doing man, keep it going.

<comment><USER4> What was your opinion back then and what made it change?

Thanks for being "open" about being a previous hater by the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Congratulations to Andrew for all your wonderful interviews since 2008! Glad to be a part of the celebration. I meant to ask you during my interview: what have you found is a secret to getting people to open up and share their most interesting stories/insights?

<comment><USER2> Thanks Jessica! Founders at Work helped inspire Mixergy, so your comment means more to me than you can imagine.

My best question is, "for example?" That helps guests move away from generalities and they start telling a specific story.

The other thing that helps is being open about my own insecurities and failures. It took me a long time to get comfortable telling anyone about them, but whether I do it in an interview or a private conversation, it helps the person I'm talking with get open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Andrew's interviews are awesome and he's a super nice guy to boot, always willing to help founders out where he can. I remember listening to them on my commute to work with my cofounder years ago. Those hours in the car were a major source of early startup lessons. Mixergy is one of the best startup resources out there in my opinion and is worth checking out if you haven't yet.

PG's interview is still open even though it's over the premium membership threshold - [http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul- graham](http://mixergy.com/y-combinator-paul-graham)

</comment><comment><USER6> Congratulations to Andrew!

I've learned a lot from watching Mixergy, but more importantly from doing a little role-reversal and interviewing Andrew myself. I took a 'Principles of Interviewing' course in college and one of our assignments was to record three interviews with people in the industry I wanted to get into. Being interested in tech/entrepreneurship, Andrew was my top interview candidate.

The plan was to interview him first and get feedback because learning from someone who does interviews for a living would prepare me for the other two interviews. He was gracious enough to agree, and we recorded before one of his regularly scheduled interviews. I was nervous as hell! I mean, you never really see an interviewer being interviewed themselves. What questions do you ask?

I asked a lot of basic questions (history, inspiration, setbacks, etc.) and a few that made Andrew sit back and go, "hmmm, that's a good question..." but the real knowledge I gained came with Andrew's feedback immediately after. The magnitude of which has slowly been realized since: feeling uncomfortable is good.

Doing something new almost always feels uncomfortable to some degree... and an entrepreneur is almost always doing something new. Rather than try to mitigate that uneasy feeling, you can take it and embrace it. That dissonance between your gut and your brain is the origin of curiosity; where knowledge is needed to fill the holes. If something feels uncomfortable, it's because you haven't done it enough. You don't fully understand it. While it helps to have a mentor who can say whether an uneasy feeling is normal and how to get over it, the important thing is to just get your hands dirty. Just do that new task, or ask that difficult question.

It's been rewarding to watch Mixergy develop over the years—to see Andrew dirty his hands and dive into that space which makes every interviewee feel uncomfortable and vulnerable (as well as himself).

Thanks for everything, Andrew!

</comment><comment><USER7> Andrew's one of the most accessible, down-to-earth chaps in the tech worlds; an empathetic, thoughtful, engaging and energetic collection of decency! I'm an old friend from another place, so I'm biased, but if you get the chance go and hear him speak, and even more so listen to those around him: because Andrew's great skill is to gather creative, intelligent and constructive creatures, and encourage them to be even better.

</comment><comment><USER8> Epic props to Andrew. Growing up in Missouri I didn't have access to a lot of tech startup expertise. Andrew's interviews were one of the best ways I learned the basics of building a tech business.

</comment><comment><USER9> As a young kid, Founders at Work was a great source of inspiration. After reading it, the dream of doing a startup was born.

When I actually started doing it – in Brazil, a place with not many startup role models – Mixergy became a guide on actual tactics to use. I would listen when commuting to/from work and this made the goal much more actionable. Hearing about other founder's stories – and, thanks to AndrewWarner's squeezing, every _single_ detail of their stories – pushed me to go much much farther than I would've been able to go otherwise.

Thanks Andrew and congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to listen to his interviews a year or two ago, during my commute. He is a fantastic interviewer, really digs and asks specifics of how an entrepreneur decided something. Congrats to him!

</comment><comment><USER11> Congrats! I only discovered Mixergy after hearing Andrew moderate a discussion panel. His interviews are only a piece of the value he provides to the community. His signature is empowering the interviewee to be most impactful by his understanding of what the audience wants to hear about. He really gets to the heart of the issue and lets the interviewee surface what actually matters. Thanks, Andrew!

</comment><comment><USER12> Big congrats Andrew! I've been listening from the beginning and find it to be an immensely valuable way to learn about different businesses.

Question, what's next? Don't kill me if this is your 1,000th episode, I just started listening to it : )

</comment><comment><USER13> Andrew congrats and thanks so much for making so many awesome interviews available for free. You are in a way responsible for my own evolution into startupland. I watched Dane Maxwell's two interviews on your site (among many others), which lead me to taking his awesome entrepreneurship course, which lead me to starting my own startup, and here I'm on the verge of going full- time with it. Will be relying on your interviews to continue to build & grow my startup and hopefully be interviewed by you some day :)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's really hard to quantify how valuable Andrew and his interviews have been to me on a personal, professional and spiritual level. Congrats Andrew, you've earned this in spades.

</comment><comment><USER15> Congrats Andrew! You have shown admirable persistence while building Mixergy, kudos.

Question: If you picked 3 of your interviews, that had the most unconventional advice, what would they be?

</comment><comment><USER16> Andrew, I've told you this a lot already but it's worth adding my voice publicly: the work you've done on mixergy saved my life. Thanks doesn't even come close.

EDIT: I also made this list of interviews that had the biggest impact on me: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NCgw0_j9gAp9IjlaCwb15gzR...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NCgw0_j9gAp9IjlaCwb15gzRThwouX0Osw1DR9uXbbU/edit?usp=sharing)

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been listening for years and I can say you have some really great interviews. What I really like is how actionable some of your interviews are. That to me is the biggest differentiator for your interviews.

You might be surprised to hear this but I've used some of your interviews as training material for people working for me in the past.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thanks Andrew for all the time and effort. My big regret is that I didn't start listening before 2011!

</comment><comment><USER19> I've listened to about 400 out of the 1000. Congrats. Thank you for doing this for all of us!

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow! Congrats and keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER21> I tried listening to his podcast a few times. Way too much arrogance all around, and the constant use of marketing and weasel words during the interviews made my blood pressure go up. It's a common personality type in SV/SF tech area that I really don't like, which is why I live and work outside of it.

I consider it a personal fault of mine that I have a low pretentiousness tolerance, because in between all the pretentiousness and clumsy embedded commercials (free version only?) there really is some great business knowledge in these interviews.

I could have said something similar of Russ Roberts' Econ Talk a few years ago. He started off as a faulty interviewer; constantly interrupting his guests to get his own very important opinion in. But, he has improved dramatically since then. I can remember one particular interview he had with Bill Black, where he just wouldn't shut up and let Bill finish his statements, and ultimately half the episode was just a jumble of incoherent back-and-forth over minutia.

I'll download a few recent episodes and give them a try to see if things have changed in the last few years.

<comment><USER22> Really?

I've found him to be honest and sometimes cutting with his interviews.

Anytime someone is bullshitting or using weasel words he tends to call them out, if not directly then at least making them squirm.

Maybe you started listening before I did but I feel like I've listened to almost all of them.

Also +1 on Russ Roberts being a great host, I just wish there were more episodes with Mike Munger.

<comment><USER23> One example: the Rand Fishkin interview. Definitely not accusing Rand of weaseling, but that moment where Andrew asks "What are you feeling right now?" cut through to the honesty of running a business. And huge kudos to Rand for being so honest about burnout on camera.

Another example might be where Steve Blank called out Andrew during the interview, and they kept that in the podcast. There's something really honest & genuine about leaving that moment in.

Mixergy has improved so much over the years. Really shows the value of practice & persistence. Congratulations on the 1000, Andrew.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News too slow? Is it time for HN to switch to a different platform? - <AUTHOR>

It seems as if the HN infrastructure hasn't been updated in a long time and is really slow for submitting or commenting on stories.  Is is time to switch HN to a different platform? <comment><USER2> Rtm made one that we're now testing.

If you look at the numbers though, there were several times in the past when HN was slower than it is now.

<comment><USER3> Does this comprise updates to the Arc codebase, a rewrite in Arc, or something else entirely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah... It is somewhat slow. And for some question, I was trying to comment, but it just wouldn't let me for some reason. It just kept me redirecting to some "/r" page. I logged-out, logged back in, but still had the same problem. But it worked after someone else had made a comment.

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems to be faster than reddit if that means anything.

</comment><comment><USER6> HN needs a pub sub mechanism so I don't need to rely on RSS any more.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure if it is already, but I think it would be pretty great if HN was open source.

The front-end could do with a bit of a facelift, too.

And hey, I've said it before, but we could just switch to Reddit's codebase. Or even operate like <http://www.thecutelist.com/>, which just points to a modified <http://www.reddit.com/r/aww>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/> could point to <http://www.reddit.com/r/hacker_news>, for example.

<comment><USER8> HN is (roughly) open source: <https://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/news.arc> although it doesn't necessarily correspond to the currently running version. You can do the facelift yourself via any number of Stylish userscripts.

Reddit's source code is going to be relatively specialized for their architecture (Cassandra and EC2 and whatever else), and piggybacking on a subreddit is going to encourage bleed, lower control (e.g. pg restricting signups at times), and change the value of karma to represent a cross-culture value instead of what's valued locally.

What advantages are there for merging? You save one password?</comment></comment>


Airport ABCs: An Explanation of Airport Identifier Codes (1994) - <AUTHOR> http://www.skygod.com/asstd/abc.html

<comment><USER4> ICAO airport codes in Switzerland:

L = Southern Europe

S = Switzerland

Z = Flight Information Region (FIR) Zürich with telex (back then) G = Flight Information Region (FIR) Geneva with telex (back then) P = Flight Information Region (FIR) Zürich without telex (back then) T = Flight Information Region (FIR) Geneva without telex (back then) M = Military X = Heliport

Some examples:

LSZH = Zürich International Airport LSZX = Schänis Private Airfield (but with telex back then!)

LSGG = Geneva International Airport LSGK = Saanen Private Airport

LSME = Emmen Military Airfield LSMM = Meiringen Military Airfield

LSPV = Wangen-Lachen Private Airfield LSPN = Triengen Private Airfield

LSTR = Montricher Private Airfield

LSXS = Schindellegi Private Heliport

An interesting case is Bâle-Mulhouse, a binational French-Swiss airport located in France:

It's primary ICAO code is LFSB (F = France), however, for AFTN, there's also LSZM.

AFTN = Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network.

</comment><comment><USER5> > airports around the world are universally known by a unique three-letter > code

The 'universality' of the IATA codes seems to be a common misunderstanding as most passengers only fly to airports with scheduled services, therefore they assume all air facilities have such codes.

Only 30% or so of airports and airfields have three -letter IATA codes; all flight planning and ATC is conducted using the four-letter ICAO codes which are _almost_ universal, though ZZZZ is eserved for exceptional cases.

Outside North America the ICAO scheme has some interesting local patterns which permit a reasonable guess to be made as to the location and category of airfield, something the IATA scheme cannot offer; it relies on rote memorisation.

e.g. ICAO code EGAA. E is Western Europe, G is UK, A is the westernmost region of the UK and A is the primary airport in thst region. Belfast International / Aldergrove.

<comment><USER6> IATA codes are also often used by ISPs in the domain names of some routers (as can be seen in routers).

I found it actually quite surprising that this is common practice, yet I couldn't find this documented anywhere.

<comment><USER7> The Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) used to give advice on naming conventions, and server host names incorporating location information was one of their examples. The pattern was LOC-OR-FUNC-##, or at least that's what we ended up implementing. (I'm unable to find this in current versions of the MOF documentation.) At the time I used IATA codes because I didn't want to come up with my own comprehensive location encoding standard---and because I was operating data centers in cities with international airports. Nowadays we operate data centers or branch offices in some pretty remote spots, so we've had to come up with our own three-letter codes anyway. I hate the arbitrariness of it. Recently, I came across [http://www.mnxsolutions.com/devops/a-proper-server-naming- sc...](http://www.mnxsolutions.com/devops/a-proper-server-naming-scheme.html), which suggests using the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations (UN/LOCODE, [http://www.unece.org/cefact/locode/service/location.html](http://www.unece.org/cefact/locode/service/location.html)). It still isn't comprehensive enough for our purposes (we operate in some _really_ remote spots), but I like it a lot better than the IATA codes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Canadian codes, after the universal Y, are an interesting mess with a lot of non-intuitive codes. Here's a selection:

* YUL is Montreal airport in Dorval, with a mystery U. The somewhat more sensible YMX went to the flop Mirabel airport development

* YYZ is Toronto airport in Downsview. The city airport is YTZ. YTO is the metro code.

* YYG is Charlottetown

* YYJ is Victoria airport at the other end of the country

* YXE is Saskatoon

* YQR is Regina, it would be neat if the Q was for "Queen"

* YZF is Yellowknife

* YXY is Whitehorse

I do prefer the ICAO scheme.

<comment><USER9> YEG - <USER2>

YMM - Fort Mac

YYC - <USER3>

Just seems random naming to me.

<comment><USER8> Well one of the characters matching (E, M, C), arguably two for Fort _M_ c _M_ urray, is still better than YYZ matching none of the characters in any of the names (Toronto, Lester B Pearson, Malton, Mississauga) of the country's largest airport!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Most of the "hard to decipher" identifiers become obvious if one knows the > name of the airport rather than the city served...Grand Rapids, Michigan, > has the _G_ e _r_ ald _R_. Ford airport (GRR).

I would have just assumed it was _Gr_ and _R_ apids.

<comment><USER11> I'm quite confused on the accuracy of this article because of GRR. The article was written in 1994, but according to the GRR history page ([http://www.grr.org/History.php#5](http://www.grr.org/History.php#5)), the airport did not change its name until 1999. I believe the GRR is for GRand Rapids, and question if this was actually written as is in 1994.

Edit: I see that the article is updated online. Still think that GRR is for Grand Rapids though.

Edit2: Source Found! A NTSB report froma crash in December of 1998 cites a weather reading from " Kent County International Airport (GRR)" (Source: [http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001211...](http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001211X11530&ntsbno=CHI99LA055&akey=1)). I move that this shows that the airport code was GRR prior to being re-named Gerald R. Ford, and that GRR stands for Grand Rapids.

Edit3: Further a US DoT doc from April 1998, lists Kent County International as GRR in Appendix D: [http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/sr/sr255/apndx.pdf](http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/sr/sr255/apndx.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What fun! Any traveler will enjoy this.

A few of them are mentioned in passing without explanation, like one of our local airports:

> FAT is Fresno, California.

For anyone who is wondering, FAT stands for Fresno Air Terminal.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is the article from 1994? It contains the line "In 2007 the airport made the best of their sucky cipher and started promoting the airport with the slogan "FLY SUX.""

<comment><USER14> From the very first paragraph:

> This article was published in the journal of the Air Line Pilots > Association, Air Line Pilot, in December of 1994. [...] I do keep this > online version updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The airport codes are now second level domains under ".aero". Most of them are redirects set up by the .aero promoters, though.

<comment><USER16> Maybe just in the States. E.g. pdx.aero => portofportland.com while yyz.aero => Blank page with "under construction" in the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's always amused me that San Carlos airport (which is very, very close to Oracle's HQ) has the FAA airport code SQL.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Carlos_Airport_(California)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Carlos_Airport_\(California\))

</comment><comment><USER18> Another "need to know the name" one is Knoxville, Tennessee. The airport code is TYS. Which is a head-scratcher unless you know the airport's name is McGhee Tyson Airport.

Nashville is another one. BNA. The original name of the airport was Berry field. Berry Nashville Airport.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love the hidden substructure of trivia like this.

<comment><USER14> Then you will also enjoy the naming scheme for runways, e.g. 22L means 220-229 degrees magnetic heading, Left (runways with no parallel will have no trailing letter).

<comment><USER20> In airport LFPG, runways 27R and 26R are strictly parallel.

<comment><USER21> You'll often get consecutively numbered runways that are parallel if there's already a C/L/R on that heading.

For example, DFW has 17L, 17C, 17R, 18L and 18R all with the same magnetic heading (176/356). Everything really is bigger in Texas. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Curious to know how Dubai international airport got the code DXB. It doesn't seem to make sense.

<comment><USER14> DUB is Dublin. I guess they could have used DBI....

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it me or is this page really scrambled on Chrome 38/Mac OS X Yosemite? It loads fine, but as soon as I scroll down, the background is black and the letters get scrambled in blue</comment>


Chernoff's Faces - <AUTHOR> http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/11/29/chernoffs-faces/ <comment><USER2> Utterly surprised not yet to see a reference here to Peter Watt's Blindsight [1], which integrated Chernoff's faces as a data visualization. If you haven't read it yet, go read it. You'll thank me.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_\(Watts_novel\))

<comment><USER3> Thank you! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This finally confirms I'm not a human. I sort of always suspected I have problems recognizing and remembering faces, but looking at Chernoff's ones makes it obvious. My intuition is completely unable to compare those faces; I feel uncomfortable even looking at them. I guess I'll stick to small multiples of colored scatterplots or something.

<comment><USER5> Prosopagnosia[1] is a real condition that affects ≈2.5% of people. You might check out "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" if you're interested.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link, I didn't know about this thing. Sacks's book is actually (I think) somewhere on my desk gathering dust, I'll need to get around to reading it.

Anyway, in my case it's nowhere near that bad. I can recognize faces with _enough exposure_ , but I have problems remembering them when first seeing, as well as enumerating features, imagining the faces and comparing them between each other. I can do all of that, but it takes a lot of effort and time.</comment></comment></comment>


JavaScript variable scoping and its pitfalls - <AUTHOR> http://www.2ality.com/2011/02/javascript-variable-scoping-and-its.html <comment><USER2> Good list of common JS scoping problems.</comment>


GNU founder Stallman: 'Open source is not free software' - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/04/28/gnu-founder-stallman-open-source-is-not-free-software/ <comment><USER4> Although Stallman's opinions and philosophy may be seen as extreme or unrealistic, I think he expresses himself very well here, and makes logical, rational points. It's fine to disagree, but it's not presented in an antagonistic way.

For example, compare a typical flamewar comment to this:

> In practice, open source and free software are nearly equivalent, but the > open source people reject our philosophy. They think it's just fine if > someone wants to write proprietary extensions to their software. So we have > to differ with them.

Also, it's good to see surface issues (e.g. practicality, compatibility, etc.) reframed in terms of the Free Software philosophy. For example:

> Your question implies that software is good, even if it takes our freedom > away. I don't accept that.

Making distinctions like this can probably save an awful lot of arguing, by rephrasing things from " _clearly_ XYZ" into "even if you don't agree with ABC, can you see that it is a valid position to take, and that XYZ makes sense in that case?" (where, for example, "XYZ" might be "Flash should be disabled").

For example, I'm often asked how I can possibly live without Facebook/Photoshop/whatever. A useful answer is that humans have survived for thousands of years without them, and I'm no different. By controlling the context of the question, something strange can seem normal or sensible.

Thankfully there is a spectrum of software available, so other people's choices and preferences (whether proprietary or not) aren't forced on everyone.

<comment><USER5> But careful not to push too much your facebook argument:

> Would you like to live without fire? More humans lived without it than with > it after all.

I reframed the context too much, it became bad.

There's a fundamental problem with communications we've all experienced, or at least for those of us who tried to teach someone something:

The thing coming out of my brain isn't the same as the one entering the brains of others. Hence why teachers repeat themselves a lot.

<comment><USER6> _Would you like to live without fire? More humans lived without it than with it after all._

That's not actually true, though. There's evidence that domestication of fire predates humanity as we know it.

Maybe use "vaccines" instead of "fire," but it still seems sort of missing the point to co-mingle life and death matters with Photoshop and Facebook.

<comment><USER7> Or may be use "writing" instead of both.

It's a new technology that enhances oral storytelling and then later replaces it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The quote in the headline (" _Open source is not free software_ ") in this context means that the open source movement or ideals are not the same as the idea or aims of the free software movement. On the other hand, actual _software_ which can be classified as "open source" is, except in pathological cases, also "free" by the definition laid down by the free software movement.

I write this because many people seem to have a misconception: that the "free software" somehow does not apply to non-copyleft (some even say non-GPL) software, but this is not the case. Software under the MIT, BSD or CC0 licenses (and even software in the public domain) are all also "free software" according to the FSF. The headline could easily be interpreted to mean the opposite, and thereby create further confusion and discord.

<comment><USER9> '"open source" is, except in pathological cases, also "free"'

There is a substantial category that this leaves out, that I wouldn't call "pathological": commercial or otherwise proprietary software where the source is provided as part of the deal. The license may allow you to recompile for different machines, modify the code for your own purposes, but not redistribute.

EDIT: I may be wrong in the sense that the "access to source" I'm talking about may not be in the "open source" category, depending on how that is defined.

<comment><USER10> I never quite got why GNU decided to consider the freedom to access the source code and the freedom to modify it as a single bullet point. To me, they're fundamentally distinct concepts, and furthermore the former is VASTLY more important than the latter.

Without the ability to check a program's source code, and personally compile it from that source, I am putting my hardware totally in the hands of the developer. I must trust that his program will do what it claims to do, and if it doesn't I can do absolutely nothing about it - other than threatening to take my business elsewhere or sue, which are merely the generic last resorts available for every kind of abuse or fraud. And even those will not shield me as long the program's misbehaviour goes undiscovered or unproven. It's pretty straightforward why this is a very dangerous situation when handling data of any importance.

However, if I can view and compile the source code, but _not_ modify it, then I wouldn't say the loss of freedom is remotely comparable. If I see that the program contains objectionable code, then it is unfortunate and perhaps frustrating that my only option is to reject the program _in toto_ , but I cannot see how I can legimately consider myself _wronged_. I was offered a product with all the information required to make an informed decision, the product simply wasn't good enough.

A food analogy: closed source is like having to buy food without the ability to examine its ingredients. Open-but-non-free source is like having access to the original recipe but not being allowed to take out the parts you are allergic to. It's a shame, but your health isn't in any danger.

<comment><USER11> True, but it's less relevant now with web and phone apps that are sandboxed.

<comment><USER10> That's true, but I would argue it's counterbalanced by modern apps being (for the most part) always online. While we have more control over what data they can access, there are far worse things they can do with the data we do choose to share.

In the pre-internet days, I could write my sensitive documents in a closed- source word processor and pretty much the worst thing it could do was silently corrupt or alter my file. Now, a sufficiently malicious word processor could very easily upload a copy to its developer's servers, and make such activity nearly impossible to detect as long as it had a legitimate purpose to phone home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The interview seems a bit odd. The quote in the title isn't present in the interview text. I hope the interviewers didn't decide to paraphrase him for that quote. They also quote him as saying "digital rights management", which is a phrase he absolutely abhors and instead says "digital restrictions management". I find it surprising that he really said a phrase that he only mentions when he wants to mock it.

Other than that, the interview is standard rms. It's somehow reassuring that you due to his unerring constancy over the decades, you can predict the nature of his response before you read them. I like that rms is our faithful beacon in this age of widespread user surveillance and digital control.

<comment><USER13> When you're correct at the start, you don't have to change your mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It makes me happy every time I see a Stallman article on HN. The man has been right his whole life and his attention to detail on issues that will effect society in the future are right on. I am happy to pay my $10/month FSF membership dues.

I practice, I am not so pure in my actions: I use Google and Facebook (inside a privacy enhanced web browser) and I find an iPad to be useful in my work. Everything else is GNU Linux and libre + open source development tools.

</comment><comment><USER15> ___" Making it easier for people to use technology that controls them and spies on them is not a step forward for society."_ __

That was the best quote. He 's right, but I don't see the big corporations and governments changing. They know everything about us now and they are hooked and only want more.

<comment><USER16> Why should we wait for them to change? We should take action.

* Use firefox/icecat * Install uBlock origin * Sign petitions on change.org * Participate in online discussions * Use GNU/Linux (trisquel is good)

etc...

If there's something that brexit taught me is that masses have a lot of power.

<comment><USER17> Hah! I'll give you that only if we get a "hard" Brexit - if we get a "soft" Brexit (or no Brexit!) - that is, keeping free movement in exchange for free market access, and thus having to live by all the rules but getting no voice in deciding them - then I'd couldn't really call that the masses having "a lot of power".

Remember, nothing is decided yet, so it's a bit early to crow about the power of the masses to do anything apart from cause the Pound to sink like a stone.

<comment><USER16> > that is, keeping free movement in exchange for free market access, and thus > having to live by all the rules but getting no voice in deciding them

I didn't say that they got a good deal, only that they got what they wanted. To be out of Europe.

<comment><USER17> A "soft" Brexit would _not_ result in us leaving the EU, not in any practical sense. We'd still be a member, all that would change is the type of member to more of an "associate" member than "full" member.

That could be spun as "leaving" the EU, but if we still have free movement, free market access, still have to abide by a large number of their rules, and still pay into various EU funds, have we really left?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The biggest issue I see when Stallman views get discussed is the ignorance that without the GNU project, many of the projects people take for granted would never have existed.

A good example is the ongoing replacement of gcc for clang, while forgetting that for several years gcc was the only really usable free C and C++ compiler.

<comment><USER19> Sorry to burst your bubble, but those of us antediluvians who remember loading sources on nine-track tapes for our Vaxen know of a lot of free software that pre-dated GNU and upon which a lot of the early GNU software was based. For quite a while PCC was _the_ C compiler, and knowledge of the BSD userspace was our shibboleth to distinguish ourselves from the System V heretics.

Open source would have existed without GNU. I would have been different, but it still would have been available and existing in the particular software ecosystem niche that is currently dominated by things with a GNU lineage.

<comment><USER18> Of course it existed, but then do you remember the ongoing trial between Berkeley and AT&T?

What would have Linus and other have used if GNU wouldn't have been an option during those trials?

Going to buy 386BSD, Coherent and similar?

Do you also remember that most developers only started to care about gcc when Sun decided the SDK was going to be available separately and no longer for free?

<comment><USER19> USL sued in 91 and it was settled in 93 (was running BSD/386 at home and 4.3 Tahoe at work at the time so I remember the entire affair quite clearly.) Linux at that time wasn't even an option if you wanted a system that actually worked but the period of uncertainty was what allowed it to grow into its current niche. If GNU did not exist there were other options. The fact the GNU tools were the easier path at the time is why were are where we are at now, but let's not pretend that there were not alternatives that would have been equally sufficient if GNU never existed.

<comment><USER18> If GNU/Linux never happened, are you sure *BSD would have taken over HP-UX, Solaris, DG/UX, Tru64, Aix like GNU/Linux did?

<comment><USER19> Nothing is ever certain when discussing conter-factuals, but if Linux had not had a few years of little competition in the x86 space then yes I think the BSD variants would have become the dominant strain. They were better studied and known in the academic space vs the SysV-influenced core of Linux and the BSD strains have always had better support for the various bits of random hardware out there. Remember that at this time there was no particular assurance that Intel would reach the position of dominance that it currently holds, it was Intel 386 vs Moto 68k vs MIPS with a few Alphas for high-end shops. Linux as an alternative sysv-like kernel with a bsd userland would have worked as well as a world of all *BSD.

<comment><USER18> I can tell you that the *BSD weren't used at all on my university.

All our labs were running a mix of Aix and DG/UX, which got slowly replaced by GNU/Linux around Slackware 2.0 timeframe.

<comment><USER19> I guess it was situational then, but </big_generalization> all top universities in the US had loads of boxes running BSD variants at this time, ranging from big-iron Vaxen down to NeXT cubes and Sun workstations. I am trying to think of a major NSFNet participant that was not producing some open-source BSD-ready software at the time and not many come to mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Quote: For software to be truly free, "users have to have control to run the program as they wish and to study the program's source code and change it," Stallman said. "This is based on two essential freedoms: to make exact copies and to copy and distribute your modified versions as you wish."

The distribution part describes the BSD Licence, not the GPL. With the GPL, you are not free to "distribute your modified version as you wish." With the GPL, if you distribute a modified version to others, you must provide the modifications. That's not freedom to choose.

Stallman's idea of freedom in terms of the GPL is that, if you don't like the many pages of terms, then you are free to choose to not use the software, which is a freedom you already have.

If you have to have as many pages of stipulations as the GPL has, I can't see it as freedom. The BSD license is, in my opinion, a free license, as you release it, and the consumer of it is truly free to do what they want with it.

<comment><USER21> Your view is developer centric. For someone that does not develop software, the restriction on distribution is irrelevant. The GPL is more free for the users. BSD is more free for the developers.

There are far, far more users in the world than there are developers.

<comment><USER22> What use is the GPL to someone who is not a developer?

Serious, non-snarky question. If you don't have the ability to modify or interpret the source code due to lack of time or knowledge, what exactly is the benefit?

<comment><USER23> By receiving GPLed software (with sources), compared to closed-down software that contains non-copyleft code?

\- No lock-in, no artificial obsolescence. This is huge.

\- Better security: Much lesser risk of backdoors, homecalling "telemetries", weakened crypto, adware

\- Ability to pay 3rd parties to perform auditing, bugfixes, improve compatibility, even resurrect dead projects if needed

<comment><USER22> If I don't know how to interpret and write code, the first thing is meaningless to me.

If I don't check every single compiler and binary I ever run, the second thing is meaningless (open source malware is still malware), and I think Heartbleed is a great counterpoint to Linus' law. Availability of code does not change people's specializations or give them more hours in a day.

The last one is probably the only fair point, but then again, incompatible data formats happen among open source projects too.

<comment><USER10> You only need _one_ power user to disable the lock-in mechanism or to discover the security holes. After that, every user benefits even if they themselves cannot do such things.

Of course open source projects also suffer from bugs and incompatibilities, that's obvious and uninteresting. The point is that when you run into one of those, you have options available other than calling Larry Ellison and begging him to please fix your problems.

<comment><USER22> I only need __one__ power user (or employee) to do the same thing with the proprietary software. It happens all the time.

<comment><USER10> Yeeeeeah, that's kinda like saying you can get your drugs from a police evidence locker. You only need __one__ burglar or rotten cop! It happens all the time! Why do we need dealers or legal distribution anyway?

Plus you're contradicting your own argument. First you state that open source doesn't matter unless you can _personally_ read and modify the code. Now you state that you're fine with proprietary software, because you only need one of the company's employees to remove lock-ins and fix security holes for you. Which one is it? Do you require being able to solve problems yourself, or can you rely on others?

<comment><USER22> I think you've misunderstood my argument (and not to mention mischaracterized with this loaded comparison of software to drugs!)

One way or another, you're always relying on others. The contrived person who audits all their own source for all their apps down to the compiler level does not exist. Systems are too complicated for that.

At that point, the question becomes "who do you rely on?" \- and especially given recent history, I'm not convinced that "everyone who knows how to make a pull request" is a better answer than "only the people that made it". Certainly not convinced enough to begin moralizing about software development schemes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Although I don't necessarily agree with Stallman on a lot of things (I'm typing this on Windows 10) I have mad respect for the guy. The world needs advocates like him to counter the bad actors in the corporate world.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's only two points I disagree with RMS on. First, that ALL software must be free. The true freedom IMO is to allow any form of software and let the fittest survive.

And second, ignoring the fact that non-free software (mostly) got us where we are today in terms of progress.

<comment><USER26> >non-free software (mostly) got us where we are today in terms of progress

You can say the same thing about slavery, but that doesn't make it good, or worth supporting.

<comment><USER27>
        > You can say the same thing about slavery, but that
        > doesn't make it good, or worth supporting.

How, exactly, do you see slavery as having helped us progress as a society? Slavery held us back. Both literally and figuratively (we held ourselves back).

<comment><USER28> It certainly held us back _morally_.

But from an economic standpoint? It was a very effective way to accomplish a lot. As disgusting as it was.

<comment><USER27>
        > But from an economic standpoint? It was a very
        > effective way to accomplish a lot. As disgusting as it was.

As far as I can see, the only economic contribution was free labor. The presence of free labor makes the wealthy live very well while they are able to suppress resistance, but saying it somehow made us advance as a society - <USER2> in moral and physical terms - is the opposite of the truth, as far as I can see.

In ancient cultures they used slaves to build pyramids. I'm sure the ruling class told themselves that this was a symbol of how advanced they were - <USER3> they could build these huge things. I just see a colossal waste of time, with the only purpose being the ruling class having something to feel important about. Stacking rocks on top of each other is no more advantageous to a society than cheap cotton, at least not when the cheap cotton can't be purchased by those who need it the most: the people who produced it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That is absolutely fine. Many people in the Open Source community go out of their way to make sure they are not thrown into the free software bucket. I think the feelings here are mutual.

<comment><USER23> > Many people in the Open Source community go out of their way to make sure > they are not thrown into the free software bucket.

Citation needed.

<comment><USER12> I don't know about "many people", but I have some examples. The popular book, _The Architecture of Open Source Applications_ absolutely refused to change its title to "The Architecture of Free and Open Source Applications" when I requested it.

There are people who think that "free software" is the loony bin and absolutely refuse to be associated to it. There are examples of that in this HN thread. There are also people who call themselves "free software" and disagree with the FSF, although they don't disagree on what "free software" means. OpenBSD is a clear example (look at their release song lyrics).

<comment><USER30> I understand "Open Source", I understand "Free Software", but to be honest, I always thought the "Free and Open Source Software" (FOSS) term is just stupid. We have a local saying: it's like trying to reconcile both the goat and the cabbage.

<comment><USER12> It's more like trying to reconcile "climate change" and "global warming". Two terms for the same thing with different political slant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The interview has some interesting points, this headline is just what he has been saying for years though.

</comment><comment><USER32> The difference is rather simple on first sight.

Open source software allowes everything, even to add proprietary parts to the OSS part and keep the endproducts source from the rest of the world.

Free software prevents this adding of proprietery parts, but allowes the rest of the world access the full source of the end product.

But in the end it boils down to the (philosophical) question of "What is freedom?"

Is it to do anything you want, even if it prevents others from doing anything they want? (You wanna hit everybody and many people don't want to be hit)

Does freedom stop when it prevents others from doing what they want?

If the last thing is true, who decides which actions prevent others from doing what they want? (You buy a new car, while others could use this money to feed their family for years. etc.)

<comment><USER33> Philosophers has been discussing that for a very long time. I prefer the definition given by Locke, as in "Freedom of people under government is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society".

> who decides which actions prevent others from doing what they want.

Ie, my reply would be that whoever decide, the rules should be the same for everyone and effecting everyone equally. If someone can modify, change and distribute a program then everyone should be allowed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Open source solutions can sometimes have the same level of 'lock in' as closed-source enterprise solutions.

Most OSS software has a certain degree of 'evil' behind it (particularly as they get older and the community becomes increasingly financially-motivated).

I still think that OSS is better than enterprise software most of the time. At least with open source, you open the door (just a little bit) for others to profit from your work (as you do yourself) - There is some sharing an cross- pollination happening.

For example, I spent 5 years working on my own open source project, now I want to use my OSS project to build an application platform; I'm also going to be using Docker, Kubernetes and Rancher to build it; all of these are open source projects and my platform could not exist without them.

So there is definitely a lot of give-and-take happening in OSS. The real tragedy in open source is that some people are takers only; they keep taking but they never give back. I find this somewhat unethical - Especially coming from big, highly profitable companies.

I think the FSF's GPL strategy is actually a decent solution to prevent people from exploiting OSS for personal financial gain, but unfortunately, it also prevents sharing and cross-polination between projects (with the FSF/GPL approach, the only people who benefit from the software are the users; the makers of the software get NOTHING; this is not very motivating in the long term).

<comment><AUTHOR> > I agree, open source solutions can sometimes have the same level of 'lock > in' as closed-source enterprise solutions.

Not at all. You can always hire someone to update an abandoned software you rely on or help you migrate to another alternative. Lock in would mean you have no such option.

> Most OSS software has a certain degree of 'evil' behind it (particularly as > they get older and the community becomes increasingly financially- > motivated).

There is nothing wrong in demanding payment. My time certainly isn't free and I will not write code for free unless it solves a problem I also have.

> I still think that OSS is better than enterprise software most of the time.

This distinction doesn't make sense. Until recently I worked for Canonical on MAAS, a physical hardware provisioning tool for data center operations. It's free (AGPL) and you don't get much more enterprise than managing hundreds of servers.

We have to be very precise with the terms we use. There is enough material here to fuel a flame war that'd outlast most stars.

<comment><USER35> Security issues are now creating a new kind of obsolescence, and therefore sane fears of lock-in (unless you want to spend immense sums keeping software fully up to date.) For example there's advice out there now to strictly avoid the original Open Office because it isn't being kept up, vulnerabilities aren't being discovered and patched. Luckily in that case you can probably jump easily to Libre Office, but that won't always be the case.

I cite this as a problem, I don't have a solution, other than getting a lot more investment into FOSS somehow. [https://fordfoundcontent.blob.core.windows.net/media/2976/ro...](https://fordfoundcontent.blob.core.windows.net/media/2976/roads- and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What else is new? He's been ringing this bell for 20 years. Technically he's right if by Free you mean his definition of Free and not $0.

<comment><USER37> Unfortunately he can ring this bell for the next 100 years and people will not get it.

<comment><USER38> > Unfortunately he can ring this bell for the next 100 years and people will > not get it.

This is true and this quote from the article is why:

"users have to have control to run the program as they wish and to study the program's source code and change it," Stallman said. "This is based on two essential freedoms: to make exact copies and to copy and distribute your modified versions as you wish."

The vast majority of users don't care about the ability to study and modify the programs they use. They are concerned with one thing, whether or not the damn thing works. For most people a computer and the software on it is simply a tool, not some lifestyle or ideological statement. If the FSF wanted to be effective, they'd focus on providing working, usable software first, and then the message second.

<comment><USER26> >they'd focus on providing working, usable software first, and then the message second

This compromise is the exact reason why the 'open source' movement broke off from the Free Software movement. For proponents of free software, all software is political, and upholds one ideology or another. Refusing to acknowledge this, or downplaying it in favor of making software "usable" fails to address the fundamental problems of non-free software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The 'free as in beer' vs 'free as in freedom' naming has always been a problem. Recently I started thinking about the word 'public' in place of 'free', as in 'public good'. Thoughts?

<comment><USER40> "GNU-licensed" SW isn't "free as in absolute freedom" software.

Only public domain is "free as in absolute freedom". Or as rms says:

"This is based on two essential freedoms: to make exact copies and to copy and distribute your modified versions as you wish." Anything less "subjugates the user".

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I only recently came to the realization that premium (i.e. paid) WordPress plugins are licensed GPL v3. This is a pretty large market for people buying what's actually OSS even though they don't realize it.

<comment><USER42> And that's perfectly fine, even good. Stallman doesn't oppose selling free software, he's view is that: free (libre) is not the same as gratis (free of charge).

You can and should sell free software (how would you make a living otherwise), software is basically a service, it's not physical commodity, by working on free software you are essentially sell your own services and do it in the best way possible - i.e. completely transparently. There's is this misconception that Stallman is some sort of Che Guevara of software world, he is not, it has nothing to do with opposition to capitalism or communism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The thing for me I've always found in irony with RMS: he essentially suggests that if software isn't "free", you've picked a side (OSS, proprietary, etc.)

But by the very nature of dictating what qualifies as "free", that too is also a side for people to pick. I think the benevolent dictator thought process applies here.

I just find the my-way-or-the-highway philosophy, even with the best of intentions, eventually draws metaphoric parallels to babies and bath-water.

</comment><comment> cm-t But Free Software is open source ;)

<comment><USER30> Not necessarily: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open- so...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open- source_software_licenses#Approvals)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Perhaps Richard Stallman's greatest achievement has been to redefine the word "free" and then get a million geeks to argue about whether this or that conforms to his definition. This is social engineering at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER45> We owe RMS, or Saint Ignucius, a lot. Most of Free Software was made possible by or through him. And although I see his point, I wished he would be more relaxed on some issues. Not all of them, mind you.

</comment><comment><USER46> Finally! The term "open source" has become a buzzword. Especially recently by the GitLab guys and their rhetoric. Thanks Stallman. I stand with you.

GitHub is another fine example of a company who preaches open source, but doesn't have an open source product.

<comment><USER47> You're kidding, right?

> The term "open source" has become a buzzword.

Nope, I'm pretty sure that its meaning remained the same since the term "open source" was founded. Feel free to prove my otherwise.

> Especially recently by the GitLab guys and their rhetoric.

Mind elaborating what rhetoric you're thinking of?

> GitHub is another fine example of a company who preaches open source, but > doesn't have an open source product.

GitHub has a shit ton of open source products ([https://github.com/github](https://github.com/github)), out of which most popular example is probably Atom. The fact that their core product is not open source doesn't mean that they don't have an open source product _at all_. Bad phrasing perhaps?

<comment><USER48> The issue I have with many open source projects is that they use open source as a marketing and free labour tool. The contributors to the open components get essentially nothing, they get to make a slightly wonky product less buggy and more useful, and then the company benefits on this by selling the closed component that the open one depends on ( depends on perhaps not technically but at least from a practical sense).</comment></comment></comment>