This[1] was mentioned in its other thread. Not related to programming but the amount of thought process went into it is just amazing.
[1] "SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A
-13 karma · joined December 5, 2015
[1] "SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A
[1] pg 12, para 5.
Did you mean stack pointer ? base pointer gets set once where as stack pointer changes between every function call.
> Here is how I implemented a small instruction set for the VM of my experimental language, without using GPRs.
stack pointer is still necessery unless some memory region is predefined as stack pointer.
'A class' can be made more space efficient by dividing stack into 16 chunks and then instruction would only need 4bit to address.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardware_wallet
> and whose internet connection cannot be arbitrarily blocked or filtered by governments and corporations.
I am not aware of even one instance where bitcoin or anyother protocol has been successfully blocked.
> On today's Earth, this group of people is vastly smaller than the number of people who can carry out cash transactions in person, not just because of poor adoption, but because of a fundamental UX problem.
Yet. There is no reason why cant UX be n00b-friendly or may be it already is. Low adaption is probably due to either people are unaware or there is lot mis-information. Anycase, adoption is steadly increasing.
> Does it matter who sets the exchange rate when the more pressing concern is who controls your ability to participate in the network in the first place?
Its not. None can control participation. Thats why dark markets deal in bitcoin.
> You can set your own exchange rates, too, if you're really serious about it. It will be $10 for this wad of marijuana, not $15 like this other guy says, thank you very much.
Considering there are zillion laws regulating money flow between any given two parties, I doubt it would look as appealing as a widely-accepted crytocurrency.
Its also suprising to see that this question popped up after 500+ points.
Things I Won’t Touch: Hydrofluoric Acid (2004) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10678571
(81 points by networked 100 days ago | past | web | 63 comments)
Google HN for intitle:"Things I Won't" : https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinato...
But it does not show parent's links. One more reason for a more explicit search engine.
Most worthwhile open source contributions are paid by commercial companies. And if given a choice they will spend their money in contributing to BSD/MIT softwares rather than GPL. By picking GPL you would be decreasing potential contributions.
We havnt even discussed the elephent in the room. How your project can turn into legal battle ground, divide the community and fill the maillist and issue tracker with nonsense rather than actual work. Or how *GPL licence is so complex and still there is no common consensus on its interpretation. Or how little it is tested in courts and even that in just two countries. Or what GPLv4 turned out to be and would it recieve the same fate as GPLv3.
> The GPL is intended to promote the freedoms of the end users of software. It is not really that concerned with developers as a special category of users. People already understand all the points you are making about developer freedom being more important that user freedom and either: (1) agree with you or, (2) disagree.
You twice brought users into the discussion but its about effect of GPL on devs.
> If you don't like it just don't use it on your own work and use liberally licensed libraries in your own projects, don't complain on the internet about how other people choose to treat their own IP.
I am not complaining. I am convincing that GPL is dev-unfreindly. That is convincing devs to stay away from GPL not dictacting how they should licence their own softwares.
I am also sad GPL people have made great massively collabrated projects (where most contributers do not even realize what restrictions they are imposing, even on themselves) like OpenStreetMap canserous. I will be very happy when this ideaology dies.
> Also your definitions are contrary to the generally accepted and fairly clearly defined ones which will just lead to confusion for you and people you interact with. Maybe it would be easier to just use the right words rather than fighting to re-define them?
Okey now you are just nitpicking. There is only one place where I can be misunderstood, and I have clarified it twice.
No sane developer agreement[1] would require the modification/usage and all other associated confidential IPs to be disclosed. Or it would suffer heavy market share just like GPL. Ofcourse this does not mean such proprietary softwares does not exist but they would be abandoned once another competing product without such restrictions comes to market, just like GPL.
[1] Or even EULAs if the software is likely to be used as building block such as Photoshop/Unity etc.
[2] I am assuming here. I would like to know if such softwares exist.
> It seems you've created your own definitions for both "open source" and "free software" in order to exclude copyleft from both categories
Copyleft is not a requirement for open source or OSI Open Source. It is for FSF Free Software though.
I am aware of how "free software" can be misinterpreted. Thats why I havnt used it. But allow me to explain whats wrong with FSF definition. The word free implies unrestricted freedom like MIT/Public Domain which is true for users but not devs (proprietary devs to be specific). Nothing wrong with intention of this perticular definiton. But choice of the word is misleading. "republic software" may be ? Also note both are lawyers definitons.
Just curious what would you label something whose source you can view and/or modify for personal use ? Google says open source.
All this definition debate aside, last 5 posts have been about dev unfriendly restrictions of GPL/copyleft/share-alike. Free software was not mentioned at all. Only once[1] I mention open source which is to illustrate the point that proprietary does not necessarily mean you cannot view the source and cannot modify for personal use. Proprietary certainly does not come with same big restrictions as GPL. For a dev,
MIT/BSD > Proprietary with source > Proprietary >>> GPL.
> Both of these terms have definitions going back decades by now which contradict yours; in the open source case, one of the reasons for starting to using the term in the first place was to avoid possible misconceptions or misunderstandings of what "free software" referred to!
Yes both have been standardized but I doubt the actual adoption.
[1] Okay I have used it more than once. But every other usage works with either definitons.
The BSD/MIT is the agreement between original devs and binary provider. There is no BSD/MIT between binary provider and you. If all the company is giving you binary but not source I dont think there can be BSD/MIT. So if someone gives you something labeled as BSD/MIT its going to be open source with no string attached.
> This is certainly wrong. Unless you're not using OSI definition of open source, but something of your own. Or if we mean something different under the term "proprietary".
It appears I am using my definiton for open source. To me open source means something whose source files are available.
So proprietary can come with sources which is likely for dev centric software.
> It was predicted long ago - as most users don't possess any engineering skills, they don't exercise their freedoms to access the source code, modify it and distribute the modifications. The freedom to distribute the original software lost it to the unauthorized distribution ("piracy") and freemium-type software. Users don't care (actually IIRC it was shown that they tend to cope with whatever inconvenience they find, rather than try to fix it - that's also how privacy wars were lost), and developers find it that proprietary software has a well-known business models to bring profits, while free software requires to tread carefully.
I agree GPL is user-friendly but it is so at the cost of dev-unfriendliness.
> Yet, it's wrong that "all it does is stop devs from using it". The word "all" is surely incorrect. It does stop some devs from using it - two groups, actully: a) those who want to develop proprietary software and b) those who just can't stand it for any personal reasons. But that's not all it does - I've mentioned what it also does above.
We are on HN so almost all devs are people who develop proprietary softwares. Even HN aside, all most all software development is proprietary. Hence the trend.
In my ideal world open source development works like this. We come togther, do our part while asking nothing in return and solve a common problem. Thats it. No strings or condition or anything.
> I can't call "unfriendly" asking to respect another developer's will to keep their code free for everyone. Yes, the licensing makes their code unfit for the purposes of developing proprietary software, but being unfit is not unfriendly.
We are arguing semantics here. The point is, a dev cannot make use of GPL software in closed src. GPL software has a VERY BIG cost/restriciton and it will most likely outweigh open sourceness where as Proprietary/MIT/BSD does not require every confidential intellectual property it touches to be made public.
> When I obtain a proprietary piece of software, I can either curse my way through reverse-engineering (as far as it's legal in my juristdiction) or wait until the proprietors would do something. That said, I'm basically powerless.
Proprietary software can be open source. Beside we are not talking about open source here. We are talking about viral nature of GPL.
> When I obtain a BSD or MIT-licensed piece of software, it depends on the good will of the developers whenever they provide me with the source code (and license grants) or not.
BSD/MIT automatically implies open source.
> If they do, my options roughly match the GPL case
Except the big restriction.
> GPL doesn't hinder the experience of those who're sharing anyway, and simply excludes those who don't want to respect their users with "if you don't want others to use your code, then don't use my code - write your own" attitude.
This is fine attitude to have if you are the only contributing. But most open source contributors do not care. They rather contribute than waste their time in flame wars. Case in point: GPL/share-alike adoption has been in steady decline.
All GPL does is stop devs from using it rather than create more open source softwares as GPL creaters hoped. You donate open source not demand it. But its seems GPL creaters missed that point.
Tell that to devs listed here https://web.archive.org/web/20100622191216/http://ffmpeg.org... or the people burned by SFLC/SFC.
> The LGPL terms are really not very onerous (we're not talking about the GPL here), and do make users' lives a lot easier.
We are talking about complex licences here. If you are going to release something in public good, please make the licence short and sweet like MIT/BSD.
GPL ( even LGPL) are dev-unfriendly licences and restrict devs freedom.
They are pretending they are free software but they are not. They pretend they are non profit but use scare tactics like commercial companies. Seriously its one thing to contribute for public good and another thing to restrict its usage. I am sorry but no matter how many times GPL envenglists redefine "free", its not.
Notice how ffmpeg devs keep bringing money on discussion.
Avoid GPL like a cancer I say.
If this discision was taken at state or city level, would be much better. Otherwise citizens/customers lose either way.
> In your hypothetical, companies have a strong incentive to start in countries that have strong infrastructure and services (safety nets to reduce risk for founders and early employees, higher-education to ensure a supply of educated workers, etc), then move to a low-tax jurisdiction once they are successful.
In this hypothetical, governement will know that a company will migrate away once it find a better one. This will be reflected in how gov't will charge. It will probably mean the end to "% of income" based taxes instead fixed taxes.
Think of government as a corporation providing some services because that what it will be once movement and /citizenship/ becomes easy. The people who stay (i.e. actual citizens) will play the role of shareholders and (hopefully) will be more critical of their goverment.
* High performence overhead and complexity of VM.
* Hypervisor vulnerabilities.
* Unikernel are small because the responsibilities are shifted to the process.
* "Unikernels are entirely undebuggable."
---
IMO process isolation (segmentation, paging etc) already gives 100% performence with most security. And since these are old and simpler hardware designs, hardware bugs are less likely to happen.
NaCl (>90% of native performence) comes to mind. Too bad NaCl apps can only be downloaded via chrome web store not by visiting url like PNaCl (~10% of native performence).
IMO Open Development is what open source originally meant. Open development is only sustainable if devs == users, otherwise devs going to burn out eventually. Open source companies (as per your defintiton) are profitiable because the oss is not the primary product but a feature. Their primary products are indeed closed.
I acknowledge that not everyone can think/worry about everything. Hence why there would be always need of regulatory/look-out-for-me authorities. However, in this fast paced and diverse world, I propose that they should be opt-in/opt-out.
What about when it goes against users ? Even now, it has gone against some users. Why do you think its a good thing for <1000 people (TRAI) to affect 1.25 billion ?
The goverment intervention was absolutely unnecessary. They should have left it to market to judge.
RE regulation on software engineers, Its impossible. For a software written, its PURPOSE and AUTHORS are subjective interpretations. It is much much harder to get common consensus if the software is surveillance, malware etc. So any regulation would do nothing but increase the already-so-complex-and-huge set of laws.