Posts by Tim99

Re: Good job

Over 30 years ago, I emigrated from Blighty to a place that has 3,200 hours of sunshine a year. Frequent returns in the UK summer showed a related difference between the two places. When it got to 23C in the UK Midlands, blokes started taking off their shirts - Here on Christmas Day our maximum was 23C, we complained about how cold it felt (It should have been 28-30C).

Re: Red Hat much?

If you got that impression, I wrote my submission badly. What I meant was that systemd was *designed* to spread, such that it controlled other parts of Linux - Hence my inclusion of the statement by gnu.org "The choice of license makes a big difference: using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs".

As above, I suspect that this decision may not have been made in the best interests of users by the mythical "Really Enterprise Dependant Huge Applications Technology" organization. I believe that the LGPL can be, and is, used in open washing, as in the original article.

The Linux Kernel is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only - If you have the time, you may like to peruse the Linux Kernel COPYING file and its referred documents. I take them as indicating that the GPL is preferred. Linux is too important to be potentially damaged by incorporating systemd as a critical component when its licencing could potentially be abused.

Re: Red Hat much?

Like many complex systems systemd has been put together in a way that relies on many different components. The licencing page lists them here: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/tree/main/LICENSES. My main concerns are in the README.md file:-

"Unless otherwise noted, the systemd project sources are licensed under the terms and conditions of LGPL-2.1-or-later (GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 or later)

If we look at "Why you shouldn't use the Lesser GPL for your next library" at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html we find:-

The choice of license makes a big difference: using the Lesser GPL permits use of the library in proprietary programs; using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs.

I believe that, whilst agreeing with a definition of Open Source, this may indicate a level of control that may not always be in the best interest of the commons for something that is designed to be ubiquitous. I have been around this stuff for a long time and have learned cynicism - Here is a "modest proposal" I posted about what I thought about systemd on El Reg over 6 years ago: How can we make money? I have seen nothing since then that has changed my mind.

Before that (about 15 years ago) I replied to a question by Pamela Jones on her Groklaw site, here are the relevent sections:-

... The LGPL generally deals with software library packages. The library is copyrighted and requires a distributer to give a user all of the normal GPL rights for that library. The normal GPL requires that any software that is distributed should follow the normal GPL freedoms. However the LGPL allows for proprietary code to be linked to the library. One of the justifications for this approach is that the widest possible use of a LGPL library could encourage a LGPL project to become a de-facto standard. Only changes made to the LGPL library must be made available to other users under the LGPL. If identifiable sections of the distributed work are not derived from the Library, and can reasonably considered independent separate works, then the licence does not apply to this sections - i.e. Changes made to proprietary code that uses the library do not have to be made available to end users. Aggregation of another work not based on the Library does not bring the other work under the scope of the LGPL. I can see scenarios where a commercial producer aggregates a number of different FOSS libraries with a reasonable amount of their proprietary code. This could give a terrific hand-up in being the first to market a new product - This product could then be extended until it has market dominance, during which time the FLOSS libraries are depreciated and replace with proprietary “work alike” modules (Remember that the GPL is a copyright licence and not a patent, so that the ideas and methods in it are not protected). The LGPL prohibits the distribution of software that incorporates patents, but it does not prohibit you from gaining a dominant market share. In any case if you do not distribute the work, you do not have to distribute changes. A few years down the track you could have a dominant work that may (in the US) be patentable...

... Before I can explain my attitude to "Lesser" FLOSS licences, you probably should know my background: I am not a lawyer, any opinion that I express should not be used as advice in any software project. I am a (retired) scientist and software developer. My company has produced commercial software and a couple of successful small products used mainly by the public and community sector...

...I have been a volunteer technical assessor to a national accreditation and standards body for 15 years. During this time I have come to believe that open data and document formats are essential to all public organizations. Infrared and mass-spectral data are generated in standard formats. Raw instrument and sample data is transferred as CSV files of known formats. Whilst it is important to use FLOSS wherever you can to avoid proprietary lock-in - It is more important to mandate that a copy of all important data is held in a standard format. All of this data should be accompanied by its relevant metadata. Metadata is “data about data” and describes how data is assembled. Examples include size, colour depth, resolution, creator and date of an image; “Markup and Content” for XML; raw data from databases and the relevant schema (ASCII delimited/CSV data and Data Definition Language statements for SQL?); HTML structured documents and OS PDF. Currently we keep most of our data in proprietary formats and structures.We could all use FLOSS solutions for this, but this does not address the problem of when we don’t have access to the original developer or when a programme goes out of fashion. Perhaps the data is contained within an application that uses Java, C/C++, PHP, CSS/HTML and SQL - They are all standards - Can we find someone who can duplicate this if we have to move platforms?

Linux is claimed by many (most?) to be a Unix - Systemd definitely does not conform to the Unix philosophy that emphasizes building simple, compact, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design (Wikipedia).

Re: Finance dept. are at the root of this issue

My puerile aide de memoir before we had computers auto "correcting" was: Yogi Bear's burden. Naked bare bits...

Re: Sometimes there's a hidden benefit with irritating clients

I had a job where I had a "feeling" about the customer's MD, so I negotiated staged progress payments. We had to chase all of them, and the final payment was not forthcoming. He tried to get additional work done that was way outside the original spec, before he would authorize payment. I sent him a final demand that was ignored. I ”Dun and Bradstreet"ed them, and was told that he had form for this; and that he would probably pay a portion "without prejudice" if threatened with a legal letter. I did, and he did. I cashed the cheque immediately, and sent an invoice for the missing monies. He then phoned me and said that he would pay that if I did the additional work. I said that I would, but would send a quote for it which needed payment up front. He refused. Some months later I got a request from him to expand the system. I told him that it required settlement of the balance, and payment up front for the new work. He wanted to pay half up front and seemed surprised when I refused. I heard later that he had employed a different company for a rewrite. He stiffed them too.

Back in the day, 1st line support was the person who answered the help-line phone and read through choices on a menu. If they got to the end of the choices without resolving the problem they transferred you to a 2nd line support person - They had some knowledge of the system, and usually had access to the manuals and the "known problems" database. If they couldn't fix it, you were told that they were escalating your problem, and that somebody would phone you back. The "somebody" was the 3rd line support person - This could well be one of the people who had actually designed or written the system... In our small business I was often all of them. My calls ranged from "My computer thingy's disappeared" to obscure interaction problems (usually caused by Microsoft).

Re: In the days before t’interweb…

Digital had a line of cut down PDP-11 type workstations called DEC Professional. I was issued with a PRO-350. As I recall, the OS was a version of RSX-11 called "Professional Operating System" or P/OS - Most of us thought that it was. They lasted less than 2 years before they were replaced by genuine IBM ATs.