brlcad

That radio tutorial conversion is awesome.

Looks like the code is at http://svn.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/tovero/trunk/ ? That's some impressive work, particularly some of the advanced geometry entity mapping going on in there.

There was discussion a few years ago about adding CAD to the list of free software priority areas, to direct talent and energy where it's needed. That would likely help. Finding ways to leverage existing efforts too. BRL-CAD has been working bottom-up with a focus on analytic correctness, capability, hybrid representation. FreeCAD has been working top-down with a focus on usability and parametric interactive editing. Both will likely get there eventually tailored to different markets.

For what it's worth, BRL-CAD has over 450 full-time staff years of effort invested with ongoing dev funded by the U.S. Gov't. It was made open source specifically so that investment could be shared with the world, to help commoditize CAD like has been done for browsers and compilers. It's a long road to get there no matter what.

Licensing notwithstanding, it'd be cool if we could find a way to collaborate. I just learned about solvespace this past year and kudos on your progress.

Spot on the nose about number of people and their endurance tilting at the hard problems. BRL-CAD's been going at it longer than anyone, and the backlog only increases. I do believe open source CAD can get there, but it'll require more coordination.

Working with solid geometry and boundary representation structures is immensely more complicated and affects everything from dev velocity to GUI design to usability to acquiring devs. Content modelers (e.g., Blender) deal with considerably simpler geometry representations that are not typically valid or easily verifiable for engineering purposes. That's why it's very non-trivial, decades worth, to turn something like Blender into a CAD tool. Even seemingly simple features like CAD converters can take years of effort. BRL-CAD's primary investment has been on geometric analysis (e.g., solid ray tracing) and it's unparalleled in that regard, but that's a niche audience without better usability.

I would assume because it's only 2-chars (me) and they're filtering anything <3 as invalid.

The amount of mass exhaled as CO2 at night is nowhere near as much as the loss through perspiration and evaporation. Water loss happens pretty much constantly and is why one dies of dehydration after a couple days.

This is pretty awesome.

NIST does this on the regular with ISO standards that they're involved with. That said, having a reference implementation with a test suite doesn't work around anything. Someone needs to have access to the standard to create the reference implementation. Not really a "loophole" but those on the committee that develops a given standard typically have free access to draft versions, often even the final version ratified by ISO.

In fairness, there’s the whole you-just-might-die aspect. They’re shouting from experience.

I don’t believe so, especially given how dangerous it is. Several died a few years back and policies became even more restrictive. It’s other name is the Underwater Explosive Testing Facility.

That article is out of date. It’s still operational and in use. Policies changed after three deaths in close succession. Still, the point is that manmade pool exists and has for years contrary to the article.

The DoD has one 150 ft deep at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD: the Underwater Explosive Test Facility aka "Super Pond".

The Superpond at APG, Maryland run by the DoD is 46meters (150ft) deep.

The article is misinformed. The Superpond at APG, Maryland run by the DoD is 46meters (150ft) deep.

That is awesome. Maybe even frameworthy.

Prototype concept car spotted:

https://imgur.com/a/LhAyUF9

I love open source and appreciate free software tenants, but think this is absolutely an argument against using the GPL for library-style codes.

Your point is an ancillary benefit. Most authors don't publish libraries to encourage the greater FSF-ecosystem or free software agenda -- they publish to make it available to others and see it get put to use. Picking a license that limits prevalence of use is contrary to that objective, plain and simple.

It also does not necessarily follow that proprietary would have been the alternative to free software. Published as ISC/MIT/BSD, lots of additional open source software would have been able to make use of the library, advanced more quickly, more easily permitted additional open source and free software derivatives, etc.

More power to authors that choose to use GPL on a library code, as they are certainly entitled to do so, but it is a substantially limiting factor in the near and long term. We do not have to agree on these points. ;)

It would absolutely change. GPL defines any incorporation or usage of a GPL work as a derivative work, thus effectively only permitting other GPL codes to use this library. That means any software in the Apache, Eclipse, or BSD-style ecosystems (among many others) cannot use this.

As for multiple authors, in theory you were required to have their permission to release it under the GPL (or any other open source license) in the first place. Given your uncertainty, it's possible that permission wasn't obtained and you could already be on unstable legal ground. I would reach out to all contributors and ask them for permission to release under a more flexible license like BSD/MIT or Apache2 to encourage more widespread use.

Wow, this is just wrong. The L originally did stand for Library but FSF/Stallman wanted to discourage its use, so it was renamed it to Lesser.

LGPL was created to appease authors that didn't want license terms to propagate like GPL, exceptionally common with library and embedded codes. Alas, ignorant authors were also choosing LGPL simply because they were creating a library and FSF didn't like that trend. It was a completely political move to fit their agenda.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_Lice...

The open source projects that participate in Google Code-In (GCI) cater to beginners with little to no experience: https://www.google-melange.com/gci/org/list/public/google/gc...

For GCI, they have to maintain lists of tiny tasks that can be completed in just a few hours. You don't have to be participating in GCI to work on those tasks. They will also have people in their community interested in helping you.

Source: I'm the admin for one of the GCI orgs.

Even better, I would recommend looking at the Google Code-In organizations. Those communities are specifically set up to deal with new inexperienced contributors whereas many GSoC orgs simply are not: https://www.google-melange.com/gci/org/list/public/google/gc...

The GCI orgs all have loads of tiny tasks spelled out that can be completed in less than a day too.