GPL Time Bomb – an interesting approach to FOSS licensing - <AUTHOR> http://www.boyter.org/2016/08/gpl-time-bomb-interesting-approach-foss-licensing/ <comment><USER2> This is obviously much better than proprietary as people can potentially benefit in the future from your work and I thank you for being so kind as to share it and yet I would probably use something significantly crappier to have real open source and several other things seem problematic.

\-- Others are unlikely to contribute to the proprietary fork.

\-- What do you do about contributions to the gpl3 version they would be copyright their creators and couldn't be part of a closed source version even the authors without copyright assignment.

\-- Do you backport fixes to the gpl version. It would be far simpler to say use the new version wherein issue foo is fixed. If you do its a lot more work if you don't the gpl version isn't just a older version its a known broken pos that will never be fixed.

\-- What if people offer fixes to the gpl version will they be expected to assign copyright so you can use them in the proprietary version?

\-- 3 years is an eternity. In 1 year someone could make their own version of whatever it is you are doing that is actually open source if it was really worth having it would also have none of the above complications.

<comment><USER3> These concerns are why I tend to dislike the GPL.

<comment><USER4> I don't see anything GPL-specific about these concerns. The same concerns apply when you replace the GPL by any other non-proprietary license.

<comment><USER5> If I understand correctly, I think it is somewhat GPL-specific. You basically can't port fixes and new features from a GPL codebase to another codebase that is not under a GPL-compatible license.

I think you don't have this issue with more permissive licenses like MIT/BSD. At least then you have a chance of having the commercial-licensed one having all the fixes from the open-source version, in addition to its own fixes and new features.

(My understanding of open source/free software licenses can be quite fuzzy, so correct me if I'm wrong.)

<comment><USER6> You can't port fixes and new features unless you have a license to do so. That's true in all cases. If you only license you have is GPL, it doesn't allow you to use those in a non-Free way, which I think is the point you are making, and I agree that's how it works.

But that's a feature of GPL, not a bug.

If you are a company producing code and trying to make a living from it, it's risky to release code as BSD/MIT unless you can afford to have someone clone it, close it and sell an improved version, passing it off as their own without giving you anything (like Microsoft did with the BSD TCP stack, and with NCSA mosaic for example). If you release as GPL however, that can't happen. It's much safer in that regard, and more socially considerate too, which is why it's the license of choice for most Linux distro vendors and other major open source vendors such as MySQL.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I do understand that people can take the BSD/MIT codebase and make a proprietary/closed source version. In that case you don't even see how the bug fixes are implemented in the new closed source version. So you are free to independently come up with the most obvious, efficient fix.

My point is that with GPL, the implementation of the fixes/new features is right in front of you, you see it, yet you can't merge it into your GPL- incompatible codebase. Let's say we are talking about a security fix that turns out to be really easy. Somebody patched it in the GPL version, the fix turns out to be dead-easy and obvious, but now you can't use the same dead- easy and obvious fix in your own non-GPL version because it would be a violation of GPL. So now you have to come up with a suboptimal, ugly fix. In this case, GPL makes it painful for the original author of the proprietary version.

<comment><USER7> Independent creation is a valid defense against copyright (as contrasted with patent law where it's not).

If the fix is dead-easy and obvious ("change that = in a if statement to an ==", "add a check for foo", or "make this assignment a 1 instead of a 0"), the GPL license of patch A doesn't prevent anyone from creating (from scratch) patch B that does the same thing. For legal proof purposes, you probably want to ensure that the author of patch B hasn't seen the contents of patch A, though for something as obvious as the cases I present, I'm not even sure I'd worry about that.

<comment><USER8> Additionally, you can always require copyright reassignment for the main repository.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> RapidMiner was doing something like this a few years ago. [https://rapidminer.com/news- posts/rapidminerembracesitscommu...](https://rapidminer.com/news- posts/rapidminerembracesitscommunity/) I haven't followed closely but I think they gave up on the complexity and started offering the same product as either AGPLv3 (a hostile license for the kind of customers who pay for software) or commercial license. A straight dual-license model reduces confusion about what is in which edition. If you are going to have an open and a closed product you really have two products, which should ideally have two separate reasons for existing. Just being the old version is not the right kind of difference.

<comment><USER10> > Just being the old version is not the right kind of difference.

In a purely commercial context this worked for some time for products like PagePlus: you would get an older version from on magazine cover disks. For many the older version was good enough to do what they needed, for others the upgrade path to get the extra features was obvious and they would often buy the newer version of what they'd already played with without even looking for alternatives.

Depending on the product I'm not sure I would trust an older version these days though. A desktop only DTP app like PP maybe, but anything online, at all security related, or just that I might put credentials into; I would have security concerns unless there was some sort of guarantee that security updates were getting back-ported. That and in a lot of cases there may well be a Free+free option as good as the 18+ month old version of [whatever].

As you and others have already stated, the straight dual-licensing model makes more sense from the user PoV (and _maybe_ form the developer PoV too, though I expect opinion to differ more widely there).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Language matters.

The idea is neat, but "time-bomb" gives it a negative connotation. Instead maybe call it anti-abandonware licence, or public-benefit timer, or something else. (I'm sure HN can come up with a better phrase).

<comment><USER12> I had a similar idea years ago and the name I came up with was "Eventually Open".

It wasn't a case of abandoning code more gracefully per se, but simply that after a set period of time, code would be relicensed as open, regardless of the state of the business. So you might have a timeline like:

* Today: release version 1.0.

* 6 months into the future: release version 2.0.

* 12 months into the future: version 1.0 becomes GPL.

* 18 months into the future: version 2.0 becomes GPL.

* 24 months into the future: version 1.0 becomes MIT.

* 30 months into the future: version 2.0 becomes MIT.

And so on. The latest version would be proprietary but source-included, and previous versions get relicensed as soon as they age out.

The other alternative is to have the same mechanism, but with a donations system to speed up the relicensing. If your codebase is worth 30k to you, then if people chip in 30k, it gets relicensed immediately. If people chip in 15k it gets relicensed earlier than it would normally.

It's not a good alternative to open-source, but it's preferable to completely proprietary as it makes it possible for abandonware to be picked up and maintained by third parties, and it offers an alternative mechanism for funding development of code that will eventually be open.

<comment><USER13> I would love see a full post discussing just this type of scheme and implications.

I really like the donation to speed up access system. It feels like a libertarian wet dream for funding projects. It also opens a very interesting feedback channel between the community and the developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I applaud the spirit of this, i.e. in trying to lay out a covenant with the community while still being entrepreneurial about building a commercial business to fund continued innovation and maintenance of the software.

The problem is that it falls into an outdated framing of the value of software. Namely, as more people around the world have gained significant expertise in coding, the skillsets needed to produce software is commoditizing. That skilled labor used to be scarce, and that meant that the fruit of that labor was scarce, and therefore the artifact itself was the thing to monetize.

Creative and clever licensing around software can "protect" software from certain kinds of things, but they cannot protect the software from being commoditized. And commoditization pressure is very high right now. Over the last 10 years, OSS has permeated into real enterprise adoption, and many of the deep reasons for enterprises to adopt open source software are tied precisely to those commoditizing factors.

So to build a sustainable business around software, you have to tie your price to the actual business value. In our modern times, when the skills to produce software are _abundant_ , the thing that's valuable, then, is creating alignment on your API or framework or service, by earning the greatest mindshare among the collective labor pool that can maintain and innovate on software. And there's a huge virality to that, too - the game of developer mindshare is a winner-take-all game.

All this is to say: don't worry so much about defending the software, because that's not the valuable thing. The community around your software is what determines whether it is _relevant_ 3 years from now. And having weird/new/different licensing terms can stifle the growth of that community.

<comment><USER15> > Namely, as more people around the world have gained significant expertise in > coding, the skillsets needed to produce software is commoditizing

I wish you were right, because finding good engineers is REALLY hard.

<comment><USER16> Being hard to find does not mean they are scarce. Also, sadly, it does not take good engineers to produce software. There are tons of average and bad engineers. They produce a lot of software.

It only takes good engineers produce maintainable, efficient, less buggy software.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. What a lot of people here in HN don't seem to realize is that the reason why Software Is Eating the World is because software can be _really_ really bad, and still be better than not-software. When presented with "a pile of enterprise Java garbage code produced by crap devs that just barely works", your software customer's BATNA is "pencil and paper". That's a low bar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You have another option, keeping the GNU GPL as a license and avoiding this time-shift complexity: sell the binary, and offer the source only to those who buy the binary -- don't make the source code public on github. It's not only possible but it's what sustained many GNU projects, until they were acquired by others.

Nobody in the comments mentioned the most successful case: Cygnus Solutions had been developing the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for good money, all under the GNU GPL. Notably, they made a lot of cash from a deal with Sony to support the original Playstation in gcc.

A good read about how they marketed Free Software on John Gilmore's pages: [http://www.toad.com/gnu/cygnus/](http://www.toad.com/gnu/cygnus/)

<comment><USER18> > sell the binary, and offer the source only to those who buy the binary -- > don't make the source code public on github.

The problem with that model in many software markets is that the proven value of the bazaar development model means that when you do that, _eventually_ one of the purchasers of the binary is going to make the code public (because the GPL means they can), and once they do that, the cat's out of the bag, and people (both users and alternate service vendors) can roll their own binaries), commoditizing the software and reducing (likely, eliminating) your ability to charge for binaries rather than ancillary services like support and custom development.

<comment><USER19> Selling the binary is difficult, which is why it's best to provide a "service" of a mix of things which also happens to include access to the binary. Then, you can refuse to provide future service if the end-user makes the code public.

It's a bit sticky, because the GPL doesn't allow any constraint on distribution. However, the argument intellectually is that you're not stopping distribution you are merely refusing to deliver the "service" due to a breach of the service agreement - "I'm not stopping you distribute, I'm saying if you distribute then I won't be providing this separate service X".

Here's a 2014 example from a RedHat APAC service agreement:

"Distributing the Software or any portion of the Subscription Services to a third party or using any of the Subscription Services for the benefit of a third party is a material breach of the Agreement even though the open source licenses applicable to individual software packages may give you the right to distribute those packages (and this Appendix is not intended to interfere with your rights under those individual licenses)"

Where:

"Software" means Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and other software programs branded by Red Hat, its Affiliates and/or third parties including all modifications, additions or further enhancements delivered by Red Hat.

URL: [http://jp.redhat.com/licenses/apac_enterprise_agreement_appe...](http://jp.redhat.com/licenses/apac_enterprise_agreement_appendices_one_and_two_webversion_japan_20141111.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is something similar for Qt. Back when Qt was licensed more proprietarily (with a GPL option for pure FLOSS), the KDE folks were worried that Trolltech could just release new versions as proprietary-only. Therefore, an agreement was reached and codified that, should Trolltech fail to do an open-source release of Qt for more than 12 months, the last release shall fall under the BSD License to facilitate a community fork.

</comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately, this doesn't support regular expressions, which is a _very_ useful feature for a code search engine. See [https://github.com/google/codesearch](https://github.com/google/codesearch) for one implementation of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe it or not thats actually one of the least requested features.

The most requested is the one I am implementing for the next release 1.3.0 which is historical searches across every commit for auditing purposes. That said I am working on experimental regex search support as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I remember Stallman once advocated a license similar to this (for things like games, so people can make money on them, then release shortly after. His timeframe was more like months though iirc).

<comment><USER23> A model that works well for games can be summarized as "free code, proprietary assets".

<comment><USER24> But even freeing the assets eventually would be really nice.

There's plenty of creative effort involved around extending and improving existing content from old games, or making something new loosely or not-so- loosely based on the originals, but this often involves creating derivative works of the original proprietary assets which means these mods are illegal.

In some cases you can work around these limitations with code. E.g. in the doom community you find that making custom palettes is very popular nowadays, as the original makes some bad tradeoffs and many nice color schemes are out of question without a custom palette. But to completely overhaul the palette, you must re-do the original assets or create some sort of a mapping that source ports would understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This was done twenty years ago with Ghostscript, google for AFPL to see the details. The author made enough to retire, so it can work for some people some of the time.

<comment><USER26> Ghostscript was dual-licensed, and not exactly the same as this scenario; though the end result is pretty similar. The Ghostscript folks never set a specific date on when the proprietary version would be GPL, as far as I know; they would do new releases of the proprietary version, and then the older and slightly less capable version would be open sourced.

That's not to say calling it a time-bomb makes it an entirely novel idea. My company has been doing it for 10+ years now with Virtualmin (which has a GPL and commercial version, and we roll the commercial features down into GPL as new features come along in the commercial version, and as we can afford to do so). But, honestly, it's kind of an awful business model. We've been making a living at it all this time, but I wouldn't call it a success; we'd make higher salaries working for others. I'd like to find other ways to make a living from Open Source, that pay better (and aren't doing service contracting), but I haven't had much luck at it in 20 years of trying.

<comment><USER25> ISTR there being a promise mentioning some period... 18 months? I don't care though. I think L. Peter Deutsch made his money by means that have ~nothing to do with the license. His licensing didn't break his business model, that's all.

My own little palace is also largely paid for, and open source has something to do with that pleasant fact, but I hindsight I don't think licensing mattered much. FOSS licensing, and all the arguments about varieties of licensing, is a digression. Success comes from luck+work+xfactor, and whatever xfactor may be, license discussions isn't it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Proposed by MySQL's Monty some time ago under moniker "Business Source".

</comment><comment><USER28> My gut-reaction to the title was to assume (based on the negative connotation to "time bomb") that you had some code that was permissively-licensed (something user-friendly like MIT or BSD), and then when the bomb "goes off", it switched to GPL, rendering it unusable in most commercial software.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm planning to do something similar with some of the source-available proprietary software that I'm writing nowadays. If I die or otherwise fail to maintain the software for some time (much shorter than 3 years), the license will revert to GPL.

This kind of arrangement might be more difficult to pull off when there are multiple copyright holders or if some of them are corporations. But for projects maintained by individuals or a small group of like-minded people, I think it hits a nice balance between making a profit and giving back to the community.

<comment><USER30> I also had a similar kind of license in mind. My idea was: the software becomes lincensed under an open source license once any one of these happens:

1\. I earn x amount of money out of my work

2\. It's n seconds since EPOCH

3\. I am pronounced dead by a qualified proffesional or nobody has heard from me for m years.

<comment><USER29> #1 is difficult for other people to verify.

#3 needs a better definition of "nobody has heard from me". Has anyone heard from you if it becomes widely known that you made a billions dollar from an unrelated business and retired from programming? It will probably work better if you say something like n seconds since the last commit, or since your last public activity on your Github, HN, or Twitter account.

Anyhow, it would be useful to have a standard, legally proven way to make these kinds of promises. Non-lawyers like me trying to be too clever are likely to leave serious loopholes.

<comment><USER30> Regarding #1, I'm assuming my own good faith in this :)

#3 in the second clause is indeed tricky, but I suppose it could be worded in legally unambigous way. And anyway I always assumed the dealine in #2 would be no more than three years in the future since the software is first published under these terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you really want to make money, it's probably not the best idea to put a fixed time into your time bomb, unless you are targeting a fast moving platform like mobile OSes. At some point your previous version will be sufficient to 99% of people and any new features will be just nice-to-haves. Maybe you can consider per-feature time bombs? You'll still have time to build a sustainable business on top of it, still allow people to study/modify your code, but with greater control over your cashflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered that but assuming things get to that point I feel I will have either done well enough for it to be a moot issue or I have run out of ideas. At this point I feel it should be available for all to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think that having a license that is both open source and that protects the creator's ability to earn money from his creation (thus paying for it's maintenance really) is a very good and important idea.

Personally though I wouldn't go with the TimeBomb idea, I think that if I ever get the chance I'll decide on a single expected revenue stream (such as sass hosting) and provide an open source license for use except for that purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had considered that but since this is a product that indexes source code a lot of companies want to host on premise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Got me to think about BSL that is something similarly.

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/19/mysql-founder-tries-a- new-...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/19/mysql-founder-tries-a-new-software- licensing-model/)

[https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting](https://mariadb.com/bsl-faq-adopting)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm not sure if this will work as it is currently, and here's why:

[https://github.com/boyter/searchcode- server/blob/master/LICE...](https://github.com/boyter/searchcode- server/blob/master/LICENSE.txt)

Clearly shows that it is released under the Fair Source License, version 0.9 with no mention of license termination and restricted rights. It is NOT free.

[https://github.com/boyter/searchcode- server/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/boyter/searchcode- server/blob/master/README.txt)

then states:

'After the following date 27-August-2019 you may choose to use this software, version "1.2.3" or "1.2.4" under the GNU General Public License Version 3 with terms specified at [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt'](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt')

This is so wrong. Not that it is GPL, but this both contradicts the license and states that you "may choose to use this software..." under the GNU GPLv3. Also, the missing comma after "1.2.4" is a mistake in grammar.

I'd say, as-is, you should consider this licensing unreliable. Yes, he posted in his blog stating his intention, but as it is now, it would appear that if a ruling had to be made on the actual license, it could very well be that the only valid license is the one in LICENSE.txt.

Since that is unclear, though, if I were a user and cared about the license, I'd get a good lawyer to figure this out before making any assumptions.

And, I would suggest that he get a lawyer to help craft the required changes to his license.

<comment><USER35> Dual licensing happens all the time, often with GPL and some other, more restrictive license. He clearly states that until X date, you may only use the code under the Fair Source License. After X date, you may choose which of the two licenses you would like to use.

There's no conflict in adding another license, it's his code, and the license and his directives dictate how people can copy and distribute it. Nor does the fact that there's only one license in LICENSE.txt really mean anything. README.txt is clear about the dual license in its "Licence" section.

<comment><USER34> What about the following text in README:

'If you are building from source then you get no support and must work within the restrictions specified of the fair source licence (see LICENSE.txt for details). To purchase support see [https://searchcode.com/product/#downloadlinks'](https://searchcode.com/product/#downloadlinks')

And what about:

'Use of this software is governed by the Fair Source License included in the LICENSE.TXT file'

No period there at the end, but that seems to indicate to use the LICENSE.TXT.

And then, even worse:

'In order to deal with the case of my death or this software becoming abandoned it has a time-bomb where the licence will change exactly 3 years after the publish date of a version release. This means that if version 1.0.0 was released on 1 July 2010 then it can be taken using the listed alternate licence on 2 July 2013. This licence, version and time is all specified below.'

There is no definition of what 'software becoming abandoned' (Which 'software'? What does 'abandoned' mean?). There is no definition of what 'it can be taken' means. The example date is one day more than three years and the dates given as examples could confuse the date intended for expiry. There is no definition of what should be used as the 'publish date of a version release'.

While these things may seem common sense to a developer, they should have a clear legal interpretation.

<comment><USER16> > clear legal interpretation

In US, those only exist from precedent. Which means after going to court and getting a ruling, often several times as different courts will rule differently. Eventually being normalized by supreme court.

The US legal system is not well-speced or deterministic for new concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like the intention, but a few thoughts: \- If you're dead, to whom have you legally clarified copyright should go? No one but that person can enforce the GPL, because the foundation of enforcement is that it's otherwise copyright violation. \- IIUC, new releases don't reset the date of old releases, so old releases become fair game after a few years. The reason that doesn't help people is that most of the value is in what you're doing right this very minute and your ability to support that today. That is why companies can make money from existing licenses. They're paying your for support, paying you to develop new features that matter to them, etc. But at the same time they can accept collaboration and contributions from even competitors right now. I think you're losing most of the benefits of open-source for making money despite the time window.

</comment><comment><USER37> I have been toying with a similar idea, but for born-FOSS source projects.

I like copyleft licenses but I find the legalese in them too complex and I fear that they will cause problem down the road because of changes in the legal landscape. I am also worried about leaving code around that is useful but unusable by other for legal reasons. For all these reasons I would like to license my projects like this:

      * They are born AGPLv3/OHL.
      * All the published revisions older than 5 years are
        released into the public domain (CC0).

Simple and easy to state, incredibly complex to write down. Especially if you want to make it enforceable without me (or the other contributors) being alive. From what I understand, the concept of a "legally binding promise" is even more fuzzy across the jurisditions than that of a "simple" copyleft license.

<comment><USER38> > From what I understand, the concept of a "legally binding promise" is even > more fuzzy across the jurisditions than that of a "simple" copyleft license.

Couldn't you work around this by granting usage rights now that you're only allowed to exercise in three years?

Contracts with specified durations are quite common, including those whose start date is in the future (like, renting a booth or a flat for a specific duration).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> IIRC, Ghostscript used a scheme like this prior to 2006.

<comment><USER19> Yes, I believe that's true. I was reminded of it a few months ago when someone was asking for advice on how to monetise some software that they felt would require ongoing effort. If I remember correctly it was widely disliked, but perhaps the world has changed in the last 10 years!

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is an interesting take on licences that turn 'abandon-ware' in to public domain or close to public domain code when the maintainers are unresponsive.

I like how it mandates that there are 3 years for innovation to occur within. However I feel like the license before that needs provisions for things like the ability to make local changes as needed, and also to publish /security patches/ freely.

Edit (Beneath):

The impression I got was that he has ONE version, and a built in escape clause for anyone using it. I took the view of this licensing scheme ensuring he'd have to 'compete' against a 3 year old version of the product with compelling features; not that there'd be an intended 'free' version of the product.

<comment><USER19> He's definitely assuming that this commercial version remains primary:

"I will be forced to continually improve it and upgrade if I want to keep a for sale version without there being an equivalent FOSS version around (which in theory could be maintained by the community)"

But, is mostly discounting a community fork, or divergence between his commercial version and the older GPL version. If he receives patches he'll have to have a copyright assignment policy so that he can apply the features to both trees - which will risk a fork as many people strongly dislike them.

<comment><USER41> I dont think hes expecting other people to contribute code to his project whilst hes working on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is correct. I do not anticipate much feedback from others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I made a very similar proposal back in 2003, which I called the Temporary Proprietary License, or TPL:

[https://thunk.org/tytso/TPL.html](https://thunk.org/tytso/TPL.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I interpret this as "I don't want to collaborate with you people yet - I want this all for myself because I think I can make more money that way. But in case I fail, I'll change my mind and hey let's work together!"

No thanks.

GNU GPL is an excellent choice for a license for a commercial product if you do it right. It fosters collaboration and community from the start. Look around at the most successful companies whose major products are open source, especially the GPL ones. Note that none of them started off refusing reciprocal collaboration with potential contributors.

<comment><USER43> You might be right in part: it's his product and his business and I'm not sure he means for the community to contribute to his wealth (like you say "I don't want to collaborate [yet]" is probably more or less accurate). However the "I'll change my mind and hey let's work together" part I think is wrong.

He provides the source for people to see in the first place. Assuming there are no patents involved, that makes anyone free to re-implement ideas there, which is a risk for him, but nice for everyone who wants to see source code of stuff they use (I do). Then, when it turns out he no longer needs the product, it's free for everyone. If people don't find it worth the money but do want to use it and hack on it, they're free to do so, with or without him. So he's not asking to work together or for help in later years, he's giving the opportunity to use it after he stopped doing so himself.

<comment><USER6> Re-implementing "independently" once you have seen the source code can be legally problematic. (see [https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/faq/faq.html#faq3_2](https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/faq/faq.html#faq3_2) ) for an example.

No longer needing the product kind of means that it's failed. In which case, why would it suddenly be valuable to others with a simple change of license?

It's more likely to succeed in the first place by fostering collaboration from the start. This is how successful open source projects operate. It's all about community, mutual respect, and bi-directional sharing.

Having the source available but not open (yet) strikes me as a cynical attempt to appear open while retaining control of other peoples freedoms, and I for one would never work with such a project. I'd probably rather use a completely closed product with no source available; at least you're getting something that's not pretending to be more open than it really is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the reason I posted source was not because I wanted collaboration but due to fears that it was somehow phoning home with your valuable source code. I wanted resolve this issue by allowing anyone to vet the source code before rolling it out.

It's not about wanting to appear open and deceive anyone as its not an open source project. I'm open to change this in the future though if circumstances change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> It seems to me that a lot of strategies to fund the development of open source software are over complicated reactions to our failure to voluntarily fund the infrastructure that technology relies on.

I also have to wonder if instead of coming up with more and different ways to do so we ought to just start taking out our collective wallets and paying for things that are useful without expecting a t-shirt.

</comment><comment><USER44> a) Site is down, google cache is here [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NBcmXVo...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NBcmXVo- izcJ:www.boyter.org/2016/08/gpl-time-bomb-interesting-approach-foss- licensing/)

b) The license file on GitHub does not mention GPL, a time frame or something even remotely related to the post - looks like some sort of shareware license.

c) If it's a good product today, will it still be a good product in 3 years? In today's version? I doubt it.

Still better than just selling binaries, but not by much.

<comment><USER45> > b) The license file on GitHub does not mention GPL, a time frame or > something even remotely related to the post - looks like some sort of > shareware license.

The README.txt does: [https://github.com/boyter/searchcode- server/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/boyter/searchcode- server/blob/master/README.txt)

<comment><USER43> Yeah that tripped me up too. The article had no links so I clicked the tweet on top, checked out the license file, saw nothing of the sort, and as a last hope scrolled through the readme. There at last.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something for me to fix. I will sort this issue out over the next few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I for one welcome this experiment.

Making money from Open Source is hard, and while this isn't quite about making money from Open Source, it's still an interesting experiment in this direction.

</comment><comment><USER46> as long as you are going to experiment, why not use a smart contract to implement your license? If someone meets your reserve price, it goes open source earlier. You can have a salvage value close 3 years in the future if the terms of the Code Tontine are not met.

</comment><comment> m-ueberall For the record--this is basically the same as [http://bit.ly/toxicBSL](http://bit.ly/toxicBSL), [http://bit.ly/bslMScl](http://bit.ly/bslMScl), therefore the same arguments apply.

<comment><USER47> Next time can you not use a URL shortener but instead use cliff notes[0]? Mysterious links (especially from new users) definitely arouse suspicion of phishing/malware.

[0]: like this

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This almost but not quite sounds like the concept of public domain.

<comment><USER49> Public domain is a specific legal term denoting that something is entirely without copyright protection. His project is still covered by copyright using terms set forth in his license agreement.

Be aware that the phrase "public domain" is often misused to describe content "publicly available on the internet" or "in a public space". Usually that content is indeed covered by copyright since that is the default in law. Copyright applies _automatically_ from the moment something is created.

<comment><USER50> Not "entirely without copyright". Once you create something the moral copyright is yours forever.

What this means is that nobody else can claim they did it, even if its in the public domain.

I cannot claim i wrote the Shakespeare works even though they are in the public domain. He still has the moral copyright over them.

<comment><USER51> This is only true for countries like Germany and France, where a more accurate translation would be "authors' rights law" or "creators' rights law", instead of "copyright law".

In countries with an actual "copyright law" like GB and US, things are different. There may still be "moral rights", but not nearly as good we know it from Germany and France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I hate when people don't even try to make money off FOSS</comment>


Upstream supply chain sees Surface RT orders cut by half - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20121128PD215.html

<comment><USER2> Microsoft is between a rock and a hard place. Sell competitively priced to boost the Win8 RT platform and Win8 tablet ecosystem generally and it kills the OEM market. Keep the price high and profitable and have a walking wounded platform being propped up by the desktop Win8 ecosystem but with touch/tablet functionality as an afterthought in many apps unless a vibrant competitively priced OEM environment arrives quickly.

I won't pretend that I know what they should do but I'm not sure there is a safe path down the middle.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whilst it may be accurate in this case, Digitimes is generally not a reliable source:

<http://techland.time.com/2012/05/14/digitimes-apple-rumors/>

That said, reports like this lend credence to it:

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/26/microsoft-surface- tab...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/26/microsoft-surface-tablet-apple- ipad/)

<comment><USER4> There are very few reliable sources now. Everything is clickbait or aggregated news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are they selling anyway? I haven't seen one out in the wild apart from our test machine (which incidentally is broken already).</comment>


Ask HN: Indie hackers with low budgets, how do you get users to your apps? - <AUTHOR> I like the idea of creating apps. But I have no idea how to start getting users to an app when I have no extra savings to market to my app. <comment><USER2> Don't make an app for the sake of making an app. Make an app to solve a problem. Chances are, other people will also have this problem, and word of mouth will do the rest. You can start with a post on Product Hunt or a Show HN.</comment>


Ask HN: Kindle v/s ipod touch - <AUTHOR>

For someone who likes to read books from Gutenberg the free books site and one who spends 24 hrs a week in a train journey (long distance) which one is preferable to buy?<p>Touch is good option given that I can occasionally play games and watch a movie on the go. <comment><USER2> After getting one for Christmas, I've started doing almost all of my reading on an iPod Touch.

I think the form factor is perfect--you can read in any position (I've always struggled to read books while lying in bed on my side), and the short lines of text make for easy reading (notice that the screen is almost exactly as wide as a newspaper column). I'm sure e-ink is nice, but reading from an LCD all day has never bothered me and still doesn't (probably because I still have young eyes).

Along with Kindle books, I read online materials using the ReaditLater app after saving links to ReaditLater when I find them (often on a desktop). The app will both format pages nicely for the Touch as well as download them for offline reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Kindle is almost the size of a small netbook, pretty big to carry around when all you can do with it is read books. I tried a Kindle, and am going to stick with using a smartphone as it's easy to carry everywhere without additional hassle. A dedicated reader would be useful for pdf documents which you can't read easily on mobile devices, but the screen of the standard Kindle is too small for reading many types of pdf comfortably.

Pluses for the Kindle are massive battery life and good readability in bright sunshine.

</comment><comment><USER4> If reading is what you want do the most of, I'd go with the Kindle because its display is going to be much easier on your eyes because of the e-ink and size.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does Kindle show colors?

<comment><USER5> No, the Kindle is just black and white. I owned a Kindle for about 4 months before I bought an iPhone, and I rarely pick up my Kindle anymore.

I like my Kindle when I'm at home on the couch, but my iPhone is my main reading device, winning out because the form factor makes it so convenient to carry around. Web access is a bonus too.

<comment><USER4> The Kindle displays 16 shades of gray.

When you read on your iPhone, are you able to read novels for extended, contiguous periods of time (more than an hour)? Just wondering how comfortable that would be on such a small screen for a long period of time.

<comment><USER5> I read just fine for long periods on my iPhone, especially in apps like Instapaper, Stanza, or the Kindle app. It's hit or miss with web content, however, but is overall a good experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I finally got Lenovo Idea Pad a netbook that has 7 hours battery backup. i am happy.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't speak for the Kindle, but I've been doing okay reading on the Touch with Goodreader.

I might try an ereader soon, but the pocket-portability of the touch has been nice.</comment>


Transsiberian Railway Trip as a Single Slitscan - <AUTHOR> http://archive.section9.co.uk/transsiberian/

<comment><USER2> Stanley Kubrick used a slitscan technique for the famous star sequence at the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey"

Here's the 2001 sequence reversed into normal pictures/patterns: [http://seriss.com/people/erco/2001/](http://seriss.com/people/erco/2001/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool!

I love image processing/compression stuff, but I think I might be missing the point of this 'slitscan' approach - doesn't really seem to produce any kind of visually interesting effect.

I zoomed in full of anticipation but was disappointed to find it just looks like kind of.. noisy garbage. Am I missing something important here?

<comment><USER4> Maybe you didn't zoom long enough? In the zoom level that you're expected to go, it looks like a series of thousands of photos, each of a point in the trip, taken with a cheap camera (with some noise, but not particularly distorted and far from "garbage").

You should be able to see the railway going on, places, stops, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always wanted to do this, neat.

I bet you could regularize the horizontal dimension by scaling each pixel's width proportional to velocity (say via an interpolated GPS tracklog). As-is everything is either oddly compressed or stretched, depending on how fast the train was moving at the time.

<comment><USER6> That's exactly what I was thinking. If you leave a GPS logger running and make sure the time inside the camera is accurate, you could fix the scaling to match the train's speed and make it look a lot better.

Or, even cooler, change the framerate of the camera during the trip in real- time with the GPS speed as input. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kind of weird just taking the middle row of pixels. He mentions using a pano library at the bottom, so he could have just fed every frame into it instead of one row per frame and gotten a clear panorama instead of so much blurring and messes. The whole point of the pano library is to remove the dupe pixels, after all, something that didn't happen effectively with what he did.

<comment><USER5> Good pano software takes, like, a minute to stitch say 10 photos together, sometimes requiring manual intervention. At 30 fps, it would take 180 times as long as the journey to complete the stitch. He'd expect the results sometime in 2018.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Beautiful. Can you go into more detail about your recording setup?

</comment><comment><USER9> Very cool! Have y'all considered uploading the entirety of the original footage to Youtube?

<comment><USER10> Google worked with RZhD to put a virtual ride on Youtube a few years ago: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/16/google-tran- sib...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/16/google-tran-siberian- express-tour)

<comment><USER11> The link to Google.ru 404s [1]. Does anyone know if this is a real 404 and this site is gone, or if this is Google's dumb idea at localizing content (they send 404s depending on how they think your IP represents your geo location ... for some reason).

1: [http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/en.html](http://www.google.ru/intl/ru/landing/transsib/en.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's a previous discussion from when Google posted a seven day long video of the entire trip.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1504271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1504271)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a good collection of slitscan videos:

[https://vimeo.com/tag:slit-scan](https://vimeo.com/tag:slit-scan)

</comment><comment><USER14> How safe is this train really ?</comment>


A new study urges trials of MDMA to treat anxiety in autistic adults - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/30/can-ecstasy-replace-xanax.html <comment><USER2> I can say, hands down, MDMA cured me from all and any social anxiety, it showed me that no-one gives a fuck, everybody is just the same and wants to be heard.

Its so funny, every time links like this gets posted I just nod and think "Poor bastards, they haven't figured it out yet?"

It's been 8 years since I did MDMA, so far no negatives as far as I can tell. Obviously, as with any strong drug/psychedelic, you will be a different person after the trip, what you take from that, is up to you. It is not for everybody, and especially if you feel you are prone to something like schizophrenia do NOT do psychedelics.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I am overly sensitive to these things but I recall really embarrassing things people have done and have a hard time not associating those actions with the person.

I think the reason people are socially anxious is not because they think people 'give a fuck' but rather because they're confused by social signals / body language / verbal cues and that sort of thing. They don't know how to mesh and mingle properly with a crowd.

From what I read is that MDMA will help the autistic increase their emotional IQ and "fit in" better. Not because it will help them ignore what other people think of them.

<comment><USER4> There is no 'proper' way to mesh and mingle with a crowd.

<comment><USER5> There's a lot of improper ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If a medical researcher says that a chemical has potential benefit to alleviate suffering, then it's NOT up to politicians to decide if they can. Obviously, that's my opinion and it's not shared by American politicians.

<comment><USER7> Ironically, Al Franken probably does share your opinion. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I enrolled in the MDMA studies of veterans with PTSD. I have very high hopes for this substance as a medicine for a broad swath of afflictions.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was under the impression that it is quite neurotoxic. Wikipedia seems to be backing me up here. Is this not the case?

<comment><USER9> I took a fair amount of the stuff back in the 1980s -- at one point I estimated my cumulative total consumption as around 15 grams. (I'm sure there are people far beyond that now.)

It is definitely neurotoxic -- I could tell that the first time I took it -- but in my experience, the noticeable effects are temporary, being mostly gone in a couple of weeks and quite undetectable after a couple of months. As a software developer who works in a fairly technical field, I'm quite sensitive to how well my brain is working on any given day. I did not notice any long- term falloff in my abilities as a result of MDMA use.

All that said -- it does invite abuse, and I was abusing it. In 1990, my then- SO left me, and I realized I had to quit.

I wouldn't worry about occasional, supervised, therapeutic MDMA use by healthy individuals.

<comment><USER10> Same experience here. I took 0.1g to close to 1g on several occasions over a couple years.

Doses in the 0.1-0.2g range would leave me fairly slow the next day, but that's it. With heavier doses I'd see after-effects for about a week (like reaching for my phone and pulling a lighter from my pocket, disconnecting in the middle of a conversation, losing track of time)

The only time it took a long time to fully recover (5-6 weeks, progressively) was after taking some twice in 2 consecutive days. Quantities weren't big, maybe 0.5g total, but the effects lasted really long.

<comment><USER11> 1 gram is an oversose.

I did that twice and was getting vertigo for a week after. Same with my friends.

I'd say fair amount per night is 2x0.1 grams per night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looking at the anecdotes being shared here, I see widely varying accounts of effects/efficacy. I wonder how many actually used 100% MDMA as opposed to one of its more 'designer' variants (blends, analogues, etc) generally available via illicit channels.

<comment><USER13> There are many analogs being passed off as MDMA. However, it's normal that a given drug won't affect everyone in the same way.

I've had pure MDMA several times (tested). I've supplemented with 5-HTP and antioxidants, made sure to eat, and even then I've often had issues where it left me depressed and anxious for days afterwards. My friends, who never supplement, do not experience such a crash. At this point, I generally avoid MDMA because the crash is too painful to be worth it.

I've recently had my genes sequenced and found out that I have a slow variant of the TPH2 gene. This gene encodes for the enzyme (tryptophan hydroxylase) which makes serotonin. It's normal that I have more aftereffects after MDMA use, because my brain is probably 2-5x slower at replenishing serotonin. No amount of supplementation will fix this, because tryptophan hydroxylase is the bottleneck.

Brains are more unique than faces. Pretty much every protein involved with monoamines has multiple common genetic polymorphisms. You really shouldn't expect MDMA or any drug to have the exact same effect on everybody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's exciting because it's such an intuitive hypothesis.

People on the spectrum often have trouble reading emotions, people that use empathogens often feel enhanced abilities for similar tasks.

Who knows if it will pan out, but it would change many directions in research.

</comment><comment><USER15> Isn't treating autism same as treating homosexuality?

<comment><USER16> the goal isn't too treat autism, but instead to treat anxiety in individuals with autism.</comment></comment>


Dear GNU Autohell...     - <AUTHOR> http://lucidfox.org/posts/view/556 <comment><USER2> Several years ago I wrote a little utility called "clump" to compile C code and I still use it to this day:

<http://fexl.com/clump/>

You just run "clump" with no args and it builds your C code minimally based on time stamps. A lot have people have downloaded it over the years and seem to be happy with it. Works on Linux, Mac, Windows.

I use it to build Fexl, a functional programming language language based on combinatorics. Fexl aims to be a minimal layer over C code for those who want functional programming but want to stay close to the iron.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've published the "clump" program here:

<http://github.com/chkoreff/Clump></comment>


Bitsavers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitsavers.org/ <comment><USER2> Would be nice if there was a description of what it is when you load the page. I spent several minutes looking at and reading various unrelated things about how they scan documents and where the mirrors are, with absolutely no description of what it actually contained. WTF?!

<comment><USER3> _Would be nice if there was a description of what it is when you load the page._

The first 5 links on the page, all of which contain the word "Archive", aren't descriptive enough?

<comment><USER4> Personally, having no clue on the background of what/who "Bitsavers" is/was, just the words "Software Archive" or "Communications archive" help little. Software of _what_? Communications for _whom_? Took a bit of browsing to orient myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Bitsavers is an arm of the Computer History Museum which has the goal of making scanned documentation and engineering drawings, and machine-readable source code and object code of old computers available on the Internet.

It has a number of mirrors around the Internet; requests to the main Bitsavers site are automatically re-directed to one of the mirrors."_

(from [http://gunkies.org/wiki/Bitsavers](http://gunkies.org/wiki/Bitsavers))

<comment><USER6> Why do people not always begin by telling the visitor what the site is about?

<comment><USER5> Maybe because the context was different in the old days of the internet. Most sites were linked from index pages or link rings.

Now we have search engines and people might stumble upon your page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the life-long volunteer work of Al Kossow, who is now Software Curator at the Computer History Museum. [http://www.computerhistory.org/softwarehistory/team/Al,Kosso...](http://www.computerhistory.org/softwarehistory/team/Al,Kossow/) Also a 'thank you!' to the various mirrors that help share their bandwidth. Yes, a truly incredible and inspirational contribution to all geeks interested in preserving those bits! Al does this because he thinks it's important. True Hacker Spirit !

</comment><comment><USER8> I love when webpages load instantly. When I was a teen I thought the future was just really fast web 1.0 style pages. I feel instant nostalgia when I load up a very simple page.

<comment><USER9> The "Tour of Go" web pages are nice, this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Haven't looked around much but this must be my favorite folder so far: [http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/brochures/Lisa/](http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/apple/brochures/Lisa/)

The Apple Lisa is a pretty neglected piece of Apple history, having been overshadowed by the Macintosh. So I'm glad that there's a wealth of information about it here.

Also Apple's marketing materials in the 1980s also had a very different feel compared with what we have today, with the copy being generally much longer. I'm also curious how these marketing brochures are produced; it doesn't seem like the Lisa is powerful enough to typeset these brochures, does it?

</comment><comment><USER11> Bitsavers PDF archive was a lifesaver when I was working with IBM 360/370 emulation. This is one of the only places on the net that has the sense to preserve not just the software, but even the manuals of computing history.

<comment><USER12> Yes, despite how good the Multicians website is, Bitsavers is the only way to use most of the software in the Multics distribution.

[http://www.multicians.org/multics.html](http://www.multicians.org/multics.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a goldmine! The components section is filled with not so easy to find data books on old parts. Thanks!

<comment><USER14> There's an archive of programs on paper tape for Cromemco[0] machines! That's crazy. And awesome. And crazy awesome.

[0]: Think 1970's Z-80 processors and S-100 buses: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Other similar resources:

* [http://vaxhaven.com/](http://vaxhaven.com/)

Note in particular the extensive doco collection.

* [http://www.os2museum.com/](http://www.os2museum.com/)

M. Necasek deals in more than just OS/2.

</comment><comment><USER16> OK, that was fun - dug up an old quote from the Ithaca Intersystems linker manual I always loved (quote, not manual) -- "This program is dedicated to and named after a good friend, Link Hogthrob. "

</comment><comment> crooked-v This is all kinds of impressive. I wonder if they take donations.

</comment><comment><USER17> See also [https://softwareheritage.org](https://softwareheritage.org)

</comment><comment><USER18> What is this?</comment>


Analysis of the OnLive "cloud console" system - <AUTHOR> http://palgn.com.au/article.php?id=13939

<comment><AUTHOR> Wrote this article last night. It's really got me thinking about the implications for web apps. If they really have got sub 100ms response times it could revolutionise web app delivery. It solves massive issues surrounding virtual worlds too. All graphics processing is done at the server. Amazing stuff if it really does work.

<comment><USER2> It is doubtful that this will perform well on the load that one would need to service the video gamers who would want to use it, read ... everyone. Let's see 140 million PS2's, 20 million PS3's, 45 million Wii's, and right around 27 million xbox 360's. I'll be generous and not count the kids still gaming on the original xbox. That makes about 233 million possible customers. Let's be nice again and suppose that only 1% of those people are interested in worry free, console free, multiplayer high end gaming via the net. I know, the real number is at least an order of magnitude higher, but I'm being kind. That brings us to 2.3 million people hitting these servers a night, all of them pulling down a 720p stream. Nightly bandwidth cost? Now consider the computing horse power needed to generate and then compress all of those streams. Amazon EC2 is not going to get you there.

But let's suppose all of this works as advertised!

There is no way Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo would NOT compete against you in that market, the only question is when will they make their entry.

Or maybe the sleeping tigers. NVidia, Intel, and to a lesser extent AMD. They come along and put extensions in their drivers that work only on their clouds. Programmers have to use NVidia's drivers anyway, they do not need to use this company's SDK however.

But by far the greatest concern of this company should be Apple. By making their product hardware and server software based, they are putting themselves on terrain that Apple knows FAR better than they. In fact, Apple knows it far better than anyone in the gaming industry. This is exactly the mistake the music industry made. I remember video of a guy from Sony and Universal laughing at the first iPod. What could Apple do? Well they could come along and revolutionize your revolutionary technology. Like, say, building an Apple gaming cloud that only talks to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the new iTVGameConsole. And vice versa. They could even make an online store to buy games for their cloud. They might call it like . . . I don't know . . . iTunes Media Store, or something like that.

I am not sanguine about this company's future. But the future for technology like this is pretty bright. I'll put my money on an Apple partnership with NVidia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hardware seems to get cheaper/better faster than networks do. Also the trend in networking is bigger bands not lower latency. Someday cloud based low latency apps will work, but I doubt this will happen anytime soon.

The real news here is that compression card they have created. The article doesn't go into detail but large scale 1ms compression?!

What it would take to make this work: A unified, or at least more unified internet topology. Latency occurs at the gateways/modems/MUXes where you are translating from one type of packet to another. Perhaps you could get around enough of that with peering... hmmm Ultimately I just don't see a lot of applications requiring this kind of latency so OnLive will be swimming upstream.</comment>


The Verdict on MongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://www.rackspace.com/blog/the-verdict-on-mongodb-from-devs-and-ops/ <comment><USER2> Here's my verdict in MongoDB after using it for a few years in a very high traffic application:

I personally love most concepts behind Mongo. Schemaless, simple replication and sharing, JavaScript console, just to name a few. MongoDB is pretty much my dream database.

However, the ugly truth is that it doesn't work as advertised (this was 2-3 years ago). Replication would often crash or stall leaving us with only one option: DELETE OUR ENTIRE DATA SET and start fresh. Acknowledged by 10gen at the time. This happened 3 times.

Mongo was fast until we hit a wall. That was was at around 200GB for us, which is not that much when you put things in perspective. It was ridiculous. Running a given query took 1 ms and running it again right after could take up to 15 seconds. You'd think the second time would be faster.

The global write lock is just insane. This simply cannot work in a high traffic application. Our app was write heavy and this bit us in the ass quite a bit. We didn't feel this until much later, after we were fully invested in mongo.

Lastly, 10gen was literally the worst tech company I ever dealt with. They we're plain disrespectful to me, calling me cheap for not wanting to shell out 100k/year on a support contract. I was willing to pay them their hourly support rate (which is very high, but that's fine) to have them fix their replication bugs with our dataset.

For us, MongoDB was a terrible mistake that I'll never make again. I'm glad the truth has been coming out over the last couple of years.

<comment><USER3> > Running a given query took 1 ms and running it again right after could take > up to 15 seconds. You'd think the second time would be faster.

Were you able to determine why this was? It does seem backwards, given the data should be cached at some layer.

<comment><USER2> We never figured it out...

<comment><USER3> Was this issue raised with 10gen?

Either way, was your experience the per-incident support was lacking because you did not have a support contract?

It becomes interesting, because for $100K per year, I could budget for a lot of choices.

<comment><USER2> They refused to give us per incident support because they figured we could afford the yearly support plan (this was post acquisition at a public company)

We eventually just gave up on the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be fair this is an article that takes the opinions of employees of Rackspace, specifically, to deliver it's "verdict" which isn't a verdict so much as a collection of pluses and minuses. More importantly, Rackspace offers a Mongodb service (which they plug at the end of the article) so take their opinion with a grain of salt.

Kind of like a Chevrolet dealer writing an article offering a "verdict" on the Chevy Volt that consists of opinions of Chevy engineers and mechanics and ending the article with a link to their showroom selection. Not invalid but not objective and not really a verdict.

<comment><USER5> that's the same reason i discount any of these type of things from mongodb.com, which are pretty well resulted in the search results.

especially because the only reason I can see for everybody using mongodb is because it's popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Schemaless databases are such an awful concept for any data you actually care about. After 12 years in the industry, I've realized any natural controls (e.g. schema) you can place on maintaining the integrity of your data, the better off you'll be long-term.

Data matters the most. Your UI will be a tired POS in 3 years. Your backend data store won't scale for your new business problems. It'll be time to migrate, and then you'll start by asking yourself how clean and well-managed your data is.

<comment><USER7> you can still do schemafull databases with NOSQL databases but its in your hands to do it or not do it.

All the problems you list you can have on SQL databases too It has to do with discipline to keep your data clean not with SQL or NoSQL

<comment><USER8> Oops! He didn't say NoSQL or SQL anywhere in his comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe it makes sense to use MongoDB when you're just getting started, before you fully understand the data, so it's easy to add new attributes/columns etc.

But why even bother with MongoDB? You could just use a text editor to make bunch of JSON text files, with one record per file.

Then, once you better-understand the data, and you haven't made many "schema" changes for a while, you can set up a SQL database and import everything.

<comment><USER10> One better: use a SQL database with a PK, and a text field containing your JSON data. If your DB is Postgres, it'll even let you parse & query the JSON on the DB side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this article is just google bait, there is nothing of any real consequence in it.

</comment><comment><USER12> What about reliability? Current stable official node mongodb native driver throws away exceptions in callbacks, as acknowledged by MongoDB Inc.

There have been other 'surprises' in the past.

</comment><comment><USER13> >Modern web applications that have to scale for millions of transactions

except MongoDB doesn't support transactions.

>Initially, the lock scope of MongoDB was database wide, but later versions have a scope per database.

that's just an editing error, it should say that initially the scope was instance wide, but now it's database wide.

</comment><comment><USER14> what was the point of this article other than to just plug their hosted mongodb service

</comment><comment><USER15> This reads like an advertisement for MongoDB. Is it the real verdict?

<comment><USER16> That's a resounding Lana-like _yuuuuup_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was trying to get feedback on this in an ask hn earlier:

Ask HN: When is MongoDB the Right Tool for the Job? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446919)

 _edit_ added title of post.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well, as a dev I'm obviously not a fan or Eventual Consistency at all.</comment>


First, Do No Harm - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2020/first-do-no-harm/ <comment><USER2> _The first group that benefits from large tech company acquisitions is end users. The fastest possible way for a new technology or feature to be diffused to users broadly is for it to be incorporated by one of the large platforms or Aggregators. Suddenly, instead of reaching a few thousand or even a few million people, a new technology can reach billions of people. It's difficult to overstate how compelling this point is from a consumer welfare perspective: banning acquisitions means denying billions of people access to a particular technology for years, if not forever._

This really seems like a stretch. First, its assumed that the actual features make it into a product again or the company is not simply shutdown and the current less-than-great feature is left in place (NIH). This is the web and great things spread, the whole last line is just really sounds like fear- mongering.

<comment><USER3> My interpretation of this is that this group is mostly the acquihires. He's looking at this specifically from the Instagram view, where the product continues.

Obviously many projects are shuttered ("Our Wonderful Journey") but I don't think that's what he's addressing in this point.

<comment><USER2> I believe Instagram is the perfect counter-example to his whole thesis of helping the users. Instagram would have been just as popular, and one could even make the argument that they would have done better without Facebook because of the negative feeling of association.

<comment><USER4> I would hazard that before the "FROM FACEBOOK" branding last year the majority of users didn't even know it was a facebook property. And even now I bet a large plurality don't know and the majority of the rest don't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My first thoughts were similar to Thompson's- investigating small acquisitions will chill the market (a market each of us dreams of being in :-)

But then, I started thinking like an entrepreneur- "Hey, Zuckerberg, I know you are only offering 7M for my awesome iphone app, but if you buy at this price it might look to the FTC you are hiding something.

Now if you upped your price to 94.1M and reported the deal, everyone will be happy!

I remain hopeful.

More seriously, pretty much everything certain "systemically important"'companies do (Utilities, banks etc) in the M&A space is reviewed and regulated - Big Tech is just going to face more and more of that in more and more countries.

I should think they could get ahead of the curve - start embracing things like GDPR and lobby _for_ it. Get (bribe? lobby?) regulators in different jurisdictions to choose similar compatible rules - forget about trying to keep regulators off your backs while making money, if Thompson is right and these companies are in place for the next century their strategic goals should be sane, coherent and transparent regulation globally - that global regulation is coming is inevitable - that it is sane and coherent and transparent is far from not.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, I think the more strategic approach is to lobby for insane, incoherent, opaque regulation that varies wildly across jurisdictions. Then FAANG will be the only organizations large enough to handle compliance, and competitors will be shut out by the barrier to entry.

This is pretty much how most well-established industries are regulated today.

<comment><USER5> Maybe.

Well, probably based on thousands of years experience.

But ... imagine _coding_ that shit.

It's ok to have country heads who manipulate and hide the illegal moves and regulatory shifts, but what if you want your web scale architecture to just work with simple configuration - not rewrite that shot in ten or twenty countries.

who has enough good web scale engineers who can fuck up a great design to meet country specific needs but still keep it running?

Imagine wifi being regulated in different ways in different countries? or GSM signals.

I think we are about to see a clash between the power of simple engineering and the wants of local regulations

Maybe

<comment><USER6> Here's hoping!

<comment><USER5> Absolutely :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, totally unrelated to the article, but what on earth is up with the same creepy dead comment that is visible on what seems like every article lately (posted by beeschlenker this time). This has been appearing for months now and the user still doesn't seem to be blocked from HN. I'm a bit perturbed that the text in his comment is even being loaded into my web browser, and while I generally like to show the dead comments, I think I'm going to have to turn them off.

</comment><comment><USER8> Taking the article title and the author's own recommendation, it's best to gather information first and then develop an informed opinion - then once you're ready you take action if required.

That's what the FTC will do; their responsibility is to determine whether consumers are being protected against unfair or misleading practices, as stated in their about page[0].

Once no harm has been done and information has been collected for a sufficient period of time, then they might need to enforce laws against the tech companies involved - or they might not - depending on the investigation's outcome.

[0] - [https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/what-we-do](https://www.ftc.gov/about- ftc/what-we-do)</comment>


Apple Diversity Chief to Leave Months After Taking the Role - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-16/apple-diversity-chief-to-leave-months-after-taking-the-role <comment><USER2> "Young Smith, who is black, apologized to her team in October after she was reported by TechCrunch and other news organizations to have told a conference that a group of "white blue-eyed blond men" could also be considered diverse based on their different life experience and perspective."

"Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

</comment><comment><USER3> It's as if race and gender are the only important forms of diversity...

There are many other more important ways to be diverse that we are unable to acknowledge because we're so focused on a narrow definition of diversity.</comment>


Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.redhat.com/en/enterprise-linux-8?701f20000012hnlAAA# <comment><USER2> Wrote this comment a while ago for anyone wondering about this:

Just installed it in a VM, changes that jumped out at me:

• No Python (that you should develop against) installed out of the box. There's a /usr/libexec/platform-python (3.6) that yum (dnf) runs against, and then python2/python3 packages you can optionally install if you want to run python scripts.

• Kernel 4.18

• No more ntpd, chrony only

• /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts is a ghost town, save for a lonely ifcfg file for my network adapter. No more /etc/init.d/network, so /etc/init.d is finally cleaned out. It looks like static routes still go in route-<adapter> and you ifdown/ifup to pull those in (it calls nmcli).

• Pretty colors when running dmesg!

<comment><USER3> It makes a lot of sense that OS-stuff points to a seperate Python interpreter, don't you think? I like this approach.

<comment><USER4> Do you think that there should be separate platform-sh interpreter for system shell scripts, and so on? That kind of strange for me. Probably difference is that shell is "complete" program, while Python is not.

<comment><USER5> The difference with system shell scripts is that you can't accidentally clobber libraries that the system tools require to work - shell scripts don't really have any notion of installable libraries.

<comment><USER6> It's not like you can't clobber PATH with ease and in diverse ways… It's just less easy to unclobber: huge hacks like Nix are born in this quest.

<comment><USER7> > huge hacks like Nix are born in this quest.

Would you mind elaborating on this? Maybe I'm using Linux wrong, but Nix seems like a huge step forward fixing a lot of my frustrations. Admittedly, I haven't used it in production.

One huge benefit of language-specific package managers is having multiple versions of packages on the same system and you can choose which you'd like for the project (without changing the OS). I feel like 10 years ago I heard a lot of grumbling about languages like Ruby or Python should just use apt/rpm, but I haven't see any OS package manager put much effort into this use-case (this is ignoring mac/win support). The closest I've seen is something like Red Hat's Software Collections.

Personally, I feel strongly that any software that's critical to your company should be decoupled from the OS. This is borne through painful and much delayed OS updates and following it makes things much easier long term.

My personal use-case is that different projects (working on multiple in tandem) need different stacks of versions. Also giving the ability to swap versions on the fly. Here's one package manager specifically designed for it [https://github.com/nerdvegas/rez](https://github.com/nerdvegas/rez)

Swapping versions in Linux is pretty heavy out of the box (with rpm/apt); download, remove old versions files, write new versions files. Only one installed at a time. a/b comparing libraries is a pain. For the things I need, I build things into folders like libjpeg-turbo/2.0.2 and nasm/2.14.02 and set the ./configure flags to point to these...basically a more ad hoc approach to what Nix does.

Where am I going wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> w-m Here are the actual release notes (which don't seem to be linked anywhere from this marketing page):

[https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en- us/red_hat_enterp...](https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en- us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html-single/8.0_release_notes/index)

<comment><USER8> Good news: They ship PHP 7.2

Bad news: ...without ext/sodium

That's a frankly irresponsible decision for Red Hat to make.

<comment><USER9> > That's a frankly irresponsible decision for Red Hat to make.

You say that without knowing anything at all about the situation? If you're a Red Hat customer, you could file a support ticket to get it pulled back in.

Historically speaking, Red Hat is rather conservative about the number of crypto libraries they pull into their system because of the requirement to validate the system for certifications. But if there are legitimate requirements to have it included and managed by the base system, then usually they'll work to fix this if they are informed that it's needed.

Again, if no one has officially requested it, then why would they pull it in?

It can also help to file bugs on RHEL 8 in the Red Hat Bugzilla: [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Red%20Hat%...](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Red%20Hat%20Enterprise%20Linux%208)

<comment><USER8> > If you're a Red Hat customer, you could file a support ticket to get it > pulled back in.

I have never spent $1 of my own money on Red Hat. After seeing this, I never will.

<comment><USER9> Just so you know, there's a bug report requesting this extension to be enabled and shipped: [https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1714591](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1714591)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing to keep in mind if you build a lot of C++ -- this is the first RHEL version to use the C++11 ABI. Be prepared!

</comment><comment><USER11> In case someone from RH is reading this: "Get the Study" links to [https://www.redhat.com/en/page-not-found](https://www.redhat.com/en/page-not- found)

<comment><USER12> working link: [https://www.redhat.com/en/engage/economic-impact- rhel-s-2019...](https://www.redhat.com/en/engage/economic-impact- rhel-s-201904230659)

found by removing the query part

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have no appreciable Linux skills so forgive my naïvety with this question:

In the promo vid on their site, there are a couple of people gaming. Is this alluding to the fact that you can game on RHEL or that it powers the backend of games?

Just curious...

<comment><USER14> Probably a little bit of both.

You _can_ game on RHEL but it wouldn't be my first choice of distro for it - IMO, Ubuntu and Fedora are both better-suited for that task.

<comment><USER13> Why is that? Is it driver-related? Or is it that RHEL is more for stability rather than speed?

<comment><USER15> RHEL comes with a price tag (although I think they now have free developer licenses.)

Also RHEL development moves sloooowly. This is a feature and one of the main reasons to go with RHEL instead of not only unsupported distros but also supported-but-faster-moving distros, kind of like on Windows LTSB (I know to little about both to compare them, but enough to know that in certain organzations the promise that it will stay the way it is and by default only receive security updates is a huge feature.)

<comment><USER16> They do have their Software Collections with new major releases for nodejs, python etc., though. It is only the base system that moves slowly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Woooooooohooooooooo!

We basically packaged our own RHEL8 on top of 7 and I'm glad we don't have to do that for 95% of the packages anymore.

</comment><comment><USER18> They don't appear to have updated their official Docker registry yet but it should hopefully be available soon for anyone who needs to test things:

[https://access.redhat.com/containers/?tab=images#/registry.a...](https://access.redhat.com/containers/?tab=images#/registry.access.redhat.com/rhel8)

Following the pattern of [https://access.redhat.com/containers/?tab=images#/registry.a...](https://access.redhat.com/containers/?tab=images#/registry.access.redhat.com/rhel8-beta) and [https://access.redhat.com/containers/?tab=images#/registry.a...](https://access.redhat.com/containers/?tab=images#/registry.access.redhat.com/rhel7)

<comment><USER19> See [https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introducing-red-hat- universal...](https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/introducing-red-hat-universal- base-image)

<comment><USER18> Thanks! I hadn't seen that before and it's definitely relevant, especially the free-to-share part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I only saw one beta. Thats crazy if they released with only doing one beta.

<comment><USER21> Fedora is their alpha, and beta to some extent

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> anyone have any insights on how oracle does their intake of this to create OEL? it's always been a bit of a mystery to me.

<comment><USER23> Download CentOS

grep -rli 'centos' * | xargs -i @sed -i 's/centos]/Oracle\ Unbreakable\ Linux/gi' @

done

<comment><USER24> It is a little bit more than that.

<comment><USER22> I know there's quite a bit of testing involved to verify their unbreakable kernel stuff and ksplice stuff is compatible. I would suspect there is also the spacewalk integration stuff that is fairly different than redhat's satellite stuff.

<comment><USER23> I didn't realize, until recently, that satellite 6 is no longer based on spacewalk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I sure Love that "web consol".

<comment><USER23> looks like a toned down version of webmin.

<comment><USER26> It's Cockpit.

[http://cockpit-project.org/](http://cockpit-project.org/)

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I know it's cockpit. I'm not sure what it brings to the table. It's already possible to lock down webmin pretty heavily if I want to trust a windows admin to do linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> With the whole IBM thing going on, I bet CentOS 8 is going to take longer than usual to be released.

<comment><USER28> What is IBM doing with this?

<comment><USER29> They acquired RedHat

<comment><USER30> The sale is not completed, yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> With Shadowman gone and Redhat now a branch of IBM, this RHEL release is really dampened for me.

<comment><USER32> Can you expand on that?

<comment><USER33> I learned that the logo now is all hat: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/goodbye-shadowman-red-hat- chan...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/goodbye-shadowman-red-hat-changes-its- logo/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Migrate from Google+ to what exactly? - <AUTHOR> I have been a happy user of Google+ for years, mostly for its Circles feature. Now I need to find something to replace it.<p>(See post below for more details)<p>Suggestions very much welcome... <comment><AUTHOR> I have a few hobbies/interests and I like to disseminate information (links to other internet resources, mostly, including stuff I read first through HN). I have currently almost 300 followers, and 28 circles.

Before Google+, whenever I encountered something interesting (say, an article about Japanese language and culture) I had to just send an email to a group of people, while role playing gamers where mostly a distinct group, even if some of these where maybe also in the SW developer group, or interested in Japan too...

I could of course just do the same, mapping all the current circles to mailing lists or aliases, but this would probably be much more cumbersome to manage (i.e. when posting from my iPhone) and of course I would lose the "community" aspect: a lot of my current 300 followers were people I got in touch because we were both following others on Google+.

\- I have no Facebook account and I do not want to change this. \- I do have Twitter but is basically dormient (I created an account for purely technical reasons but I have tweeted maybe 3 messages on it and do not use it as a reader, either). \- Getting people like friends and family to follow me on Google+ was already a bit of a pain when it was alive and kicking (but then it also allowed to make posts "public", which helped a bit) so moving to something maybe even better but obscure (e.g. Diaspora) I am afraid would be very self limiting.

Having said that, what would you suggest? Remember that is mostly to be able to tell people "you can find stuff I am interested in here..." so I am thinking of Tumbler, even if I understand that there is no way to segment the posts by "circles" so people interested in Calligraphy will have to sort through RPG related posts and other stuff they are not really interested in.

(I do have a personal website, but it is not a blog and it is static, backed by an HTML generator, so updating via iPhone is impossible)

<comment><USER2> _I am thinking of Tumbler, even if I understand that there is no way to segment the posts by "circles" so people interested in Calligraphy will have to sort through RPG related posts and other stuff they are not really interested in._

You could do a BlogSpot site and use labels to sort things, or make a separate blog for each interest that correlated to a specific circle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, tagging blog entries is also a possibility - I could probably embed the blog somewhere in my website. A side effect (which entails both pluses and minuses) is that by using a blog I might curate the links a bit more: with Google plus most of the time I just paste the link and select the appropriate circles.

<comment><USER2> If you go with blogspot, you can also use pages to better organize posts. You have an RPG page and a calligraphy page and you list new posts on the appropriate page. If you remember to do it consistently at the time you create the post, it's an extra 30 seconds of work. It's only a pain if you forget for long periods and have to devote time to going back through a bunch of posts

<comment><AUTHOR> Tags seem to me to be the best solution because sometimes a post would have been shared to multiple circles: e.g. a link to an article about historical Samurai weapons/tactics could go to "martial arts", "Japanese language and culture", "Role playing games".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to leave [https://hashnode.com/](https://hashnode.com/) here, because I enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER4> We are actively developing [https://october.app/](https://october.app/) right now - check us out and give us feedback!

<comment><USER4> here's an alpha invite code: [https://october.app/qr/TQSRG](https://october.app/qr/TQSRG)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I registered and will follow it for a bit, but I doubt I can convince many to follow me there :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> WordPress blog

</comment><comment><USER6> diaspora* works very similarly.

</comment><comment><USER7> Mastodon!

<comment><USER8> There is a wonderful tech community in mastodon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mastodon?

</comment><comment><USER10> Diaspora?</comment>


Prehistoric Climate Scientists Get into a Turf War - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/02/prehistoric-climate-scientists-get-modern-day-turf-war/ <comment><USER2> I like that this piece does not try to tell the reader in advance which "team" they should be rooting for. Is the "Coexistence Approach" something favored by Climate Skeptics or Climate Scientists? Does the Paleoflora database in its current form show that paleo climates were hotter than today, colder, or the same? Should the data be open for the good of the world, or kept private so it's not abused?

We (assuming most readers are not already familiar with this particular debate) don't know, and thus have to assess who is doing "good science" and who is being "obstructionist" without knowing in advance whose side we would be supporting. I'd hope that articles like this can help achieve communication across the otherwise overly politicized divide.

Edit: In case anyone else is trying to track down the original sources, I think this article conflates two of Grimm's similarly named articles. "Fallacies and Fantasies: the theoretical underpinnings for the Coexistence Approach for palaeoclimate reconstruction" which is mentioned in the article is by Grimm and Potts ([http://www.clim-past- discuss.net/11/5727/2015/cpd-11-5727-20...](http://www.clim-past- discuss.net/11/5727/2015/cpd-11-5727-2015.pdf)), while "Fables and foibles: a critical analysis of the Palaeoflora database and the Coexistence approach for palaeoclimate reconstruction" is by Grimm, Bouchal, Denk, and Potts ([http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/03/10/016378.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2015/03/10/016378.full.pdf)).

<comment><USER3> You're doing it wrong if you read scientific debates as a question of just deciding who to root for.

In this case most on either side of this debate are going to be on the side of climate science. The question isn't where our climate is going in the 21st century. It is what methods we use to determine what climate was probably like 5 million years ago. And in particular whether a particular closed and poorly audited data set is acceptable to use to produce answers.

<comment><USER2> I agree with all of this, and was praising this article because it avoided the cheerleading approach that I think dominates the media. That said, one of the main contentious issues in contemporary climate science is whether current conditions are "unprecedented". Usually this concerns times more recent than those talked about there, but the more parallels that can be made with the past, the better we can model the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One particular approach to Climate Studies - "Coexistance Approach" \- is being criticized by folks following the other approaches. And it appears that the controversy is heating up (sorry...).</comment>