The Industry choice

[Alex Martelli]

Updating the status of the recipes on the web site would be nice.

Please take this up with Activestate guys -- I have no say on what
happens on the website they own, nor any special status there.


Alex

 

[Dan Perl]

Please take this up with Activestate guys -- I have no say on what
happens on the website they own, nor any special status there.

I was under the impression that the status on the website reflects whether
the recipes are approved or rejected for the book (with a few more states
added: new, deferred, pending). I gather now from your reply that there is
no connection between that status and the book.

Okay then, I am adding my vote to posting the list of all the contributors.
I still think that the ActiveState website is an appropriate place to do
that, as they also have the recipes. Actually, what is the exact
relationship between the recipes on the website and the recipes published in
the book?

If not on the ActiveState website, then posting the list to another website
would be good too. Even if the list is not absolutely final and may be
changed later (a disclaimer to that effect would suffice). I have two
recipes submitted (for which I got permission requests) and I am curious.

BTW, I sent an email to (e-mail address removed) earlier today, before
I even saw this thread in c.l.p. I haven't received a reply from them yet.

Dan

 

[Premshree Pillai]

I was under the impression that the status on the website reflects whether
the recipes are approved or rejected for the book (with a few more states
added: new, deferred, pending). I gather now from your reply that there is
no connection between that status and the book.

No connection.

Okay then, I am adding my vote to posting the list of all the contributors.
I still think that the ActiveState website is an appropriate place to do
that, as they also have the recipes. Actually, what is the exact
relationship between the recipes on the website and the recipes published in
the book?

Recipes published in the book are taken from the website, AFAIK.
And if you want to know more:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2002/08/01/cookbook.html

 

[Steve Holden]

Alex Martelli wrote:

[...]

If you wished to count only _authored_ recipes (but that's a bit
misleading, since in several recipes-as-published there is a merge of
two or three separately submitted and accepted recipes, and here I'm
counting only the first-listed-author per published-recipe...):

1: 25 u'Luther Blissett'
2: 21 u'Alex Martelli'
3: 9 u'John Nielsen'
4: 8 u'Raymond Hettinger'
5: 8 u'J\x9frgen Hermann'
6: 6 u'S\x8ebastien Keim'
7: 6 u'Peter Cogolo'
8: 6 u'Anna Martelli Ravenscroft'
9: 5 u'Scott David Daniels'
10: 5 u'Paul Prescod'
11: 5 u'Michele Simionato'
12: 5 u'Mark Nenadov'
13: 5 u'Jeff Bauer'
14: 5 u'Brent Burley'

....but each still gets ONE free copy...!-)

And I *still* think we deserve to be told the Luther Blissett story ...

conspiratorial-ly y'rs - steve

 

[Bulba!]

Say that the city has ten hat shops of the same quality. One is in
Piazza dell'Unita`, all the way to the Northern border of the city. One
is in Piazza Saragozza, all the way to the Southern border. The other
eight are in Piazza dell'Orologio, smack in the middle of downtown.
Each shop offers hats taken from the same random distribution: we can
say that a normal curve measuring the utility function for the customer
(some function of price, quality, looks, fit, ...), with identical
average and variance, represents the best hat available today from a
given shop from the POV of a given customer.

Say that a customer has one day to shop for their new hat, and the
locations are too far apart for a customer to visit more than one
location within that day. If a customer chooses to visit the one
southern shop, or the one northern shop, the customer expects to be
presented with the choice of hat from said normal curve. If the
customer goes downtown, they expect a choice which overall lies along a
DIFFERENT curve -- the best-of-eight samples from the normal curve.
Sorry I can't model that analytically, but both intuitively and from any
little simulation (easy to code in Python) you can see the customer's
expectations are much better if they choose the location where they can
do more comparison shopping!

Obviously. I completely agree with you that is how it works _in a
model_, if reality were similar to that model.

What I doubt is that _in practice_ simple costs associated with
physical distance are so overwhelming. Maybe they used to be
in the past. I keep asking: what exactly is the premium to customer
to go to that place? what is the cost?

Suppose in your example the customer has to get in the car
in order to get to the hat shop anyway. And when he gets to
that quarter of the city, he finds no parking place. And we
know that even highly paid people tend to spend seemingly
irrationally much time driving around in order to find the
free place because they find the thought of having to pay
little money to pay for parking so disgusting.

Note that I'm not saying there are no forces pushing against clustering:
of course there are, varying by industry etc. But they're easy to
overstate.

True, true...

What I'm getting at is that "repelling forces" can also be easy to
understate and "pulling forces" can be easy to overstate.

Consider the highly skilled worker who has a choice: they
can stay in some crowded cluster, say Silicon Valley, and keep facing
congestion, high rents, etc, for high salaries and great opportunities
to keep hopping to the highest bidder; or, they can accept an offer at a
lower salary in some more isolated area, say a minor cluster such as
Austin, Tx, and get less congestion, cheaper housing, etc, although also
less opportunity to keep enhancing their careers.

I personally know a developer who worked in Orange County, absolutely
loved the place and refused to leave for years even though it consumed
almost half of his wage in rent. Then, one day, when he called me
(we like to have long talks over the phone), he said "screw it,
I truly hate to leave, but I'm not going to suffer that rent anymore".

Now he claims that due to other factors California is going down
the drain and educated people and businesses escape that state.
Apparently some stronger "repelling force" has overcome the
pulling clustering forces.

Which kind of worker
will tend to pick which of the two? Somebody who thinks they may be
past the peak of their career, and won't get many more lucrative offers
in the future anywa, might be more tempted by (say) Austin, while
somebody who's keenly competitive and on a sharp upwards path may keep
braving the congestion for the (to them) attractive lures and challenges
of Silicon Valley.

Not if the state has had rollling black-outs, which puts the
production on automated semiconductor line in danger, because
backup generators have not been designed to operate for such a
long black-out.

You see, I'm not disagreeing with you that your model applies
_where it applies_. I only disagree that it applies in face of
stronger forces. Now what kind of forces is dominant in
most frequent scenarios would have to be worked out in tedious
empirical research I think. Which I haven't done, because
learning some economics is just a hobby to me.

Of course there are a zillion other factors, but in
as much as we're talking about factors strictly related to clustering,
this is the bias, and therefore (in an Akerlovian model) this is the
message which tends to be sent by such choices.

This I agree with.

But there are other transaction costs, mostly connected to the need for
face-to-face interaction as being the most effective form. I've worked
for a SW development firm which tried to coordinate development
distributed across many locations via cheap video-based teleconferences
spanning timezones from California all the way to India; I've done way
more than my share of telecommuting and airport- and plane-hopping for
development projects geographically distributed and/or mostly located
far from the customers and/or other stakeholders; I know whereof I
speak...

Oh I do not mean smth so extreme.

I remember glancing at some costly booklet called something like "Poland
Infrastructure Report" back when an employer was considering setting up
a branch office somewhere in Poland (selling and customizing SW for the
mechanical industry), and back then issues such as internet and other
telecom access, easy availability of top graduates, ease for expatriates
from Italy to live in the place for a while knowing only English and
Italian, at most German and French, and not Polish or Russian, closeness
to good international airports and other good transportation, closeness
to partner firms and potential customers' decision-makers, all appeared
to point to Warsaw, if I recall correctly. Mechanical engineers with
some programming experience or viceversa, good translators, and good
salespeople with connections in the mechanical industry, are not as
ultra-specialized as all that, after all.

Most sales offices in Warsaw do not employ esp. educated people in
my impression. OTOH, the carmaking facilities nowadays require
more much more know-how and specialized workforce than a sales
office does. Or at least that was my impression when I worked at
the construction machine manufacturer in Berlin.

Capital investments per worker in auto industries are reportedly
very high. Simple physical tasks are done largely by machines,
like this 100 million Deutschmark costing laser-cutting installation
that I've seen there, where a pile of iron bars is pulled in at one
end and the pile of ready components is spitted out of the other end
(unlike typical thermal cutting, laser has the advantage of not
destroying the metal structure adjacent to the cut, so the parts
of the machines subject to high-stress are oft produced this way).

Oh, and by the way that installation doesn't get used much.
Somebody at the office didn't check carefully enough the
energy prices before ordering it and later someone discovered
that off-site specialized cutting firms that take advantage of
energy available at low prices at special times in other countries
can get it produced cheaper. Moving it elsewhere or selling
is not an option, since it is a specially constructed, low, 50-meters
long hall that stands inside the huge manufacturing hall of the
company.

100 million DM (when 1 DM was worth some half of Euro
back then) down the drain. When the company was in rather
bad financial situation (later I've learned it was finally bought
out by Americans). Oh well. No big deal.

I was utterly shocked. Having grown up in Soviet times I have
been used to seeing precious resources wasted by organizations
as if resources were growing on trees, but smth like this?! In a
shining ideal country of Germany?! Unthinkable.

The firm I was working for had a consensus decision-making process (even
I was involved) and managers (and other employees) and stockholders were
mostly the same people -- it wasn't all that large a firm at the time.
Nobody needed to practice risk avoidance.

Again, you may have had good luck. Where I worked (including
some places in Germany and UK) it was almost the only factor
that seemed to matter to people - they'd do ANYTHING not to
take a risky decision, to "pass the buck", not to stick their necks
out, not to declare doing some work that involved challenges.

Though maybe that is just my impression - such issues as
interpreting behavior of another human being are contrived
and tend to be heavily "filtered" in a subjective filters. Policemen
for instance place little value in witnesses of events, because
the testimonies tend to be made up of so much disinformation
and personal sentiments rather than perceiving what really
happened. If that happens re simple events, it is probably
much worse re interpretations of another person's motives.

The infrastructure advantages
of Warsaw vs other locations loomed HUGELY large, judging of course from
some consultants' reports purchased for the purpose --

I'd be skeptical of such reports - I don't know about situation from
the beginning of 1990s, where this partially may have been the
case; however, back then pretty much all of the country has had
lousy infrastructure, and today, many bigger cities have
comparatively good infrastructure.

Workers - here's the difference. Warsaw has been a big "vacuum
cleaner" for talented people from all over the country. This
may have been a factor.

it may look
different to people living in the place, although I'd like to get a
second opinion from Warsaw's Chamber of Commerce since you appear to
have a very specific individual bone to pick (and I can sympathize: even
though Milan may be the economically correct choice for foreign
investors, I'd never want to LIVE there myself, being a Bolognese... but
I must admit that Milan's infrastructure, connections, location, etc,
etc, may in several cases drive a rational decision to set up there).

It's not so much individual as the fact that 80% of foreign
investments in this country (in terms of amounts of money
invested) are made in Warsaw. While Warsaw REALLY does
not have so much better infrastructure.

There's the same problem with Russia: similar fraction of
foreign investments take place in Moscow, which drives
real estate prices there to simply insane levels. Even
though other big cities, e.g. Saint-Petersburg has 4.5
million inhabitants and lots of educated people there, too.

I doubt that foreign investments in more developed countries
are so concentrated in capital cities. Can your clustering model
really explain this difference?

IOW, I do not claim that your model has zero relevance to
real world. I only think that there may be other, fundamental
and stronger factors that overwhelm the "clustering forces".

There is another factor in this game: govt is a big customer
and stability and consistency of legal acts as well as transparency
in this country leave much to be desired with, to put it lightly.

So the companies HAVE TO be close to the centers of power,
just to have its property secure. In this way it is most definitely
rational decision to invest in Warsaw even thought the office
space there is more expensive than in London (at least that was the
case several years ago).

Not all corporations do that: in this country Coca-Cola has made

If their needs were for cheap land for greenfield factories, and cheap
workers for said factories, then they were acting under very different
forces than a midsize company looking to set up a mostly-sales branch
office, not an industrial factory.

True. I grant that.

That's addressing only the issue of endogenous vs exogenous original
causes for clustering. Many attempts to create clusters artificially
have happened ever since the economical advantages of clusters were
discussed in the literature, together with the crucial point that WHERE
the cluster originally happens is in most cases almost random, it's
self-reinforcing once it's properly underway.

Note that a lot of deliberate or half-deliberate attempts to create
clusters have failed: "content industry" in NY, there was a failed
attempt to create high-tech IT/telecom cluster in southern France,
etc. "Jumpstarting" the cluster should be easy if this model applied,
after which it should develop in a self-reinforcing manner. So why
deliberate attempts fail so frequently, while clusters appear in
other, unforeseen locations?

Most such attempts have
failed, because governments' powers aren't unlimited; Dublin is a good
example of this strategy succeeding.

I'm not sure if this is correlation, but not causation; perhaps except
in a wider sense, like creating other good reasons for foreign
companies to invest in Ireland at all.

I see the "clustering" forces as a sort of derived factor: first,
there are fundamental issues that make the company set up
in that place or not - see it as "mass" in a physical analogy.
Inter-dependency issues, or "gravity" in a physical analogy,
comes only later. I do not claim that they can't have the influence
at all, by no means. I'm just skeptical of claims if they are of
primary importance.

No matter WHY the good infrastructure is there, the tax breaks, the
thriving community of high-tech workers, etc, a firm deciding where to
set up may perfectly well find it rational to have all of these
advantages overwhelm the issues of rents, congestion, competition for
good workers. In other words, my disagreement with your thesis that,
because the government lowered taxes, taking advantage of that is NOT in
the best interests of a firm's stockholders, is now maximal: I find your
thesis not just wrong, but by now outright silly.

Huh? Of course it is in the interest of the company and stockholders
and they will most likely do it!

The point here is much more subtle: what I mean is that this
cluster has been created not so much by "gravity" and "repulsion"
forces as simple rational choice unrelated to inter-dependency
issues - so companies clustering in that place is definitely a
rational choice, given that Dublin is 2 million people city in a 5
million people country, they simply won't find workers elsewhere;
however, I'd hold this correlation as just correlation (with exception
of simple ability of finding most educated workers) and not
necessarily causation. That those were _other_ economic
factors - like Irish being highly educated, speaking English, and
living in a relatively inexpensive member country of EU - as the
decisive factors of that decision and not necessarily the typical
clustering factors like "being close to your customers". Speaking
in such terms, maybe Ireland as a whole country has been
such a "cluster", but then again, is such a cluster result of
"interdependency" issues or more fundamental factors, such
as historical circumstances, govt decisions, political stability,
secure property rights, corruption, etc? If the latter, I'd
argue that "clustering" in Ireland is a correlation, not
causation.

You are wrong, because the same decisions get rationally made by
sole-owner sole-manager companies where these considerations cannot
apply. Deciding where to site an imporant branch is a BIG decision: of
course it takes a long time, *DUH*, and all sorts of factors are taken
into consideration.

Then you have had a good luck of interacting with much, much
more reasonable managers than I have had. And that includes
some managers in some big multinationals, and not just in
this country. Sure, many managers I've seen were careful,
insightful and wanted to understand this issue well before
making the decision; but I have met equally many decisionmakers
who tended to be rash, careless and too quick in their judgments,
and really not prone to reconsidering their opinion if the new
evidence came in. Sometimes I was scared silly to see how
carelessly the important decisions were made, because I knew
I may have to live with the consequences.

So all of these factors are folded into a huge pile of reports in
companies where such decisions are at all likely to be challenged later,
and sign-off on the folders is carefully obtained for cover-up purposes.

If the local development agencies of the "middles of nowhere in that
country" don't do their job, including showering managers planning such
decisions with supporting materials, that's a bad sign: maybe due to
cultural influences foreign capital, professionals, and managers are NOT
welcome there as they would be in a relative metropolis, for example.

That was not a factor here really. Most of that has to do with
the fact that regional and local branches of govt are exceptionally
clueless and lazy (and corrupt), at least when compared to govt in
capital city. However, I've observed that they're learning, esp. in
the north to north-western part of the country. The East, as usual, is
a no-man's-land. It's also the poorest part.

The issue of parallels or otherwise is by now totally secondary, to me,
to the main issue that I find your approach to explaining regional
clustering problems across industries totally, irredeemably, and
horribly WRONG. So, I'm not going to make the post even longer by even
trying to address this part. Few, besides the two of us, can be left
reading by now, and clearly our disagreements on economics are so total
that it's unlikely we can get anywhere by our discussions anyway.

I prefer to think that those are contrived issues and we rather
had some disagreements. As usual, when you leave the trivia,
and start on more complicated issues, it's not simple anymore.

When you claim managers are acting rationally (if selfishly) to avoid
risk to themselves, you can't then justify this claim by adding that
they aren't rational at all.

But that was my attempt of (poor) sarcasm actually... I did
not mean that literally. Sorry for that.

Economics does cover, in its modern form,
both issues of agency problems (misalignment of incentives between agent
and owner) AND ones of "bounded rationality" (all the way from
asymmetric information, to transaction costs relating to acquiring and
processing information). Trying to throw economics overboard because
you can't be bothered to understand it is a kind of behavior that
reminds me closely of the "leftists" you excoriate in your signature.

I forgot to change this sig when switching to here from political
ng, sorry.. It's just a sig but still OT given the nature of the
group.

Re "throwing the economics overboard" - perish the thought!

I don't know why you came to this conclusion, perhaps
I did not indicate clearly enough I meant the last paragraph in
an ironic way. On the contrary, I have the impression that I
belong to the small minority of people who consider economics
as science. Au contraire, people oft perceive me as believing
too much in relevance of economics!

That doesn't mean I have to seee _particular economic model_
as relevant. The history of economics is scattered with such
examples, like Phillips curve or Bowley's law (my favorite book
by Mark Blaug, "Methodology of Economics", worth a ton
of gold, quotes a long litany of such broken models).

There's nothing wrong in principle about it: science is about
falsification (or at least Karl Popper told us so). I'm just wary of
what I see as excessive stressing one factor (like physical proximity)
over other, possibly neglected factors.

 

[Bulba!]

I'd go further. It's not possible to force anyone to share, but the
GPL aims to remove software from a system that instead aims to force
people NOT to share.

Nope. IMHO, GPL attempts to achieve the vendor lock-in. For different
purposes than another well-known vendor, but it still does.

It's actually even worse: the only thing you can't share on a
well-known vendor's platform is the software written by that
well-known vendor -- you can choose to share or choose not to
share whatever you or other people write on this platform.

If GPL folks had their way, it would not be possible not to "share"
_anything_ you create. It is widely acknowledged that GPL
license has the "viral" aspect of extending itself on your
software - can you point to closed-source licenses that would
have this aspect? None of the licenses I've read except GPL has
this aspect. LGPL is still a different story, though.

As the MPAA knows, people do want to share, and
forcing them not to do so is impossible without turning the world into
a police state.

What's the cost of copying music files vs cost of combining
some programs together, even in the form of e.g. using an
external library?

Maybe if Python were GPL, then Bulba wouldn't use it,
but since it's not GPL, some people find themselves much less willing
to contribute to it than if it were GPL.

Personally, I have precisely opposite impression: the OSS licensed
with BSD/MIT/Artistic/Python-like license gets contributed to a lot
simply because people like to use it and they are not afraid of
licensing issues.

When people share:

_it is not because this or that license of software used by them says
so, but because they want to for reasons orthogonal to licensing
issues_.

(I myself contribute bug
reports and maybe small patches, but resist larger projects since
there are GPL'd things that I can do instead). So catering to the
wishes of Bulba and Microsoft may actually be impeding Python
development. Yes, there are some people selfless enough to do long
and difficult unpaid software tasks so that Bulba and Bill G can get
richer by stopping people from sharing it, but others of us only want
to do unpaid programming if we can make sure that the results stay
available for sharing.

Actually, I get the impression that GPL-ed software is written by
programmers for programmers, not really for end users.

GPL folks just insulate themselves in their ghetto from the rest
of the world. More and more of the successful OSS projects have
non-GPLed licenses: Apache, Postgres, Perl, Mozilla, Python. Do you
_really_ see few contributions made to those?

 

[Rob Emmons]

I'd go further. It's not possible to force anyone to share, but the

GPL aims to remove software from a system that instead aims to force
people NOT to share.

Well said.

I do think the point is -- no one liscence fits all. The GPL
is a great tool for those that write software for the purpose of sharing
with those that want to mutually share. Personally it has the feel of
justice to me -- but that's just me.

But of course it does not fit all needs and the politics and
personalities of all developers and teams of developers. For example, RMS
developed the LGPL for other cases where it makes sense, and I think
I read somewhere that RMS encouraged the release of BSD (is that right?)
-- because that too is a help to free software in the end.

As for Python -- I think the best liscence depends on the goals of the
developers. If you want python to be infrastructure, especially, for
applciation scripting -- it's kind of nice that it's BSD like or perhaps
LGPL, on the other hand if you want it to be free software focused --
then GPL would be better. So there are many alternatives depending
on goals. You see this played out throughout the Open Source community.

In any case -- regardless of liscence -- I think Python is the greatest
and I have great respect for all those that have made it possible.

Rob

 

[Roel Schroeven]

If GPL folks had their way, it would not be possible not to "share"
_anything_ you create.

That's generally the goal of the Free Software Foundation: they think
all users should have the freedom to modify and/or distribute your code.
Most people who use the GPL don't feel that way; they think that each
author should have the freedom to choice if and how he chooses to share
code. They just see the GPL as an appropriate way to share their code.

It is widely acknowledged that GPL license has the "viral" aspect of
extending itself on your software - can you point to closed-source
licenses that would have this aspect?

Can you point to closed-source licenses that allow using the code *at
all*? With GPL, you have the choice: either you agree with its terms on
distributing the code and then you can use the code, or you don't agree
with it and you don't use (which is still no worse than closed source).

Some people call that viral, but I think it's a distortion of the truth.

> None of the licenses I've read except GPL has
this aspect. LGPL is still a different story, though.

Of course, different licenses have different terms. That's why there are
different licenses.

 

[Anand]

Yes, such a list is available.

I have uploaded a tentative list of contributors at
http://harvestman.freezope.org . The original list is courtesy Alex.

For the impatient, here are the direct links...

List of first authors:
http://harvestman.freezope.org/cookbook/credau.html
List of all authors:
http://harvestman.freezope.org/cookbook/creds.html
Hope this helps!

Regards

-Anand

 

[Stefan Axelsson]

Nope. IMHO, GPL attempts to achieve the vendor lock-in. For different
purposes than another well-known vendor, but it still does.

It's actually even worse: the only thing you can't share on a
well-known vendor's platform is the software written by that
well-known vendor -- you can choose to share or choose not to
share whatever you or other people write on this platform.

If GPL folks had their way, it would not be possible not to "share"
_anything_ you create. It is widely acknowledged that GPL
license has the "viral" aspect of extending itself on your
software - can you point to closed-source licenses that would
have this aspect? None of the licenses I've read except GPL has
this aspect.

Then you haven't read very many source code licenses, many (perhaps
most?) that state that if you've as much as looked at the code you're
not even allowed to write somethings similar twenty years down the line,
or anything that remotely resembles something similar. (Most do in fact
go a bit further than that, but the legality would be in question. Still
it would take you lawyers to get off the hook). Where do you think the
'clean-room approach' came from in the first place? Furthermore, you're
most often not allowed to change, disseminate, compile, discuss, etc the
code but in fact just look at it. (And when it comes to Microsoft's
binary licenses it's not as rosy as you would like to put it, read
through them sometime there's a lot more you're not allowed to do than
just 'share' it with others.)

Can you say NDA? Knew you could.

Now, Stallman might or might not want to achieve world domination, not
by sharks with lasers on their heads, but by aiming for all software to
be free software, but the GPL is actually a lot less ambitious than
that. All the GPL says is that: if you received a binary, the person who
provided you with it, must provide you with the source code that built
it. *All* the source code, not just what he happened to receive, on the
off chance that he's modified it. And as having the source code without
being able to modify it would be rather pointless, you're allowed to do
that too, it's a given. If you don't want to distribute binaries, that's
fine, and all of the GPL falls. The GPL doesn't *force* you to share
anything. It only says what must happen if you do.

And I'm rather tired of the GPL's so called 'viral' nature. Look, if
you're using my code, you play by my rules, that's called copyright. If
you don't want to play by my rules, fine, don't use my code. So far I'm
no better than Microsoft, or Sun (though that might change) or IBM for
that matter. With the GPL I'm actually not as bad as that, I'll even let
you look at the code, modify it, and distribute copies willy nilly
(though you I'm not forcing you to), in fact, I'll even *forbid* others
from taking that right away from you. If you use it, however, as a small
token of your appreciation, you'll have to also agree to not take the
same rights you had away from others.

Finally, what *you* do with *your* code is of no concern to the GPL. As
long as you don't use *my* code you can do whatever you please. But, and
that's a big 'BUT', it really irks me when people release code under
e.g. the BSD (or as has happened to me in the past, public domain), and
then bitch and moan when I incorporate parts of it in *my* software and
release the whole under the GPL. As if that was somehow 'unfair'. Look,
(and I'm obviously not saying this to the parent poster as he never
expressed any such sentiment, I'm just venting) that's what *you* wanted
when you released the code under that license. If you don't want me to
do that, then don't use those licenses, mkay.

Stefan,

 

[Alex Martelli]

...
And I *still* think we deserve to be told the Luther Blissett story ...

conspiratorial-ly y'rs - steve

Martin Elster's post back in Aug '02 already had just about all of the
necessary info...:

'''
I had just been reading about Luther Blissett, and this name is a sort
of umbrella name that is available for anyone that is interested, and
that has been used in different "underground" projects and pranks,
especially in Italy.
'''

Add other well-known facts, such as the fact that Bologna is or was a
hotbed of situationist pranks, Umberto Eco is a professor at Bologna
University, Umberto Eco's best-known historical novels from "The Name of
the Rose" onwards may be interestingly compared with Luther Blissett's
"Q", and so forth, and I'm sure you can design a perfectly adequate
conspiracy theory.


Alex

 

[Steve Holden]

Nope. IMHO, GPL attempts to achieve the vendor lock-in. For different
purposes than another well-known vendor, but it still does.

Well you are entitled to your opinion. But *my* opinion is that the GPL
attempts to ensure that if you re-use code by an author who so desires,
then redistribution of your code is only possible by making your own
extensions to it available on the same terms. This gives you a clear choice.

To put it another way, it allows an author to specify that their code
can't be hijacked for proprietary purposes *in distributed programs*. I
will specifically point out that there is *nothing* in the GPL that
requires you to reveal the source of program you write but do not
distribute, even when such programs incorporate tons of GPL'd code.

It's actually even worse: the only thing you can't share on a
well-known vendor's platform is the software written by that
well-known vendor -- you can choose to share or choose not to
share whatever you or other people write on this platform.

Well that's way over-simplified. And if you mean Microsoft, *say*(
Microsoft. And you certainly can't share GPL'd code on Windows without
doing so under the terms required by the GPL.

If GPL folks had their way, it would not be possible not to "share"
_anything_ you create. It is widely acknowledged that GPL
license has the "viral" aspect of extending itself on your
software - can you point to closed-source licenses that would
have this aspect? None of the licenses I've read except GPL has
this aspect. LGPL is still a different story, though.

The GPL folks are quite happy to have you "share" anything that *you*
create. Their simply-stated and elegantly-achieved intent is that you
don't "share" anything that *they* create except on the terms they have
required for their creations.

So, it seems to me, you are whining because the authors of GPL'd code
don't want you to release *their* code except under the GPL. What gives
*you* the right to dictate to them? How would you like it if Richard
Stallman insisted that you release your code under the GPL? Which, of
course, he doesn't.Socialism is unpopular for many reasons, and many of them are indeed to
do with maintaining the separation between individuals and thereby
retaining the ability to treat them as separate economic units. But we
aren't going to change that by insisting on particular software
licenses. Realize this is a very small part of a very large debate.

What's the cost of copying music files vs cost of combining
some programs together, even in the form of e.g. using an
external library?

And that is their choice. They should realize, however, that some
licenses (including the more recent Python licenses) are cleared as
"GPL-compatible". I believe this means that if I receive software
licensed under a GPL-compatible license, I am at liberty to distribute
it under the GPL.

I suspect that this point is far too infrequently stressed.

Personally, I have precisely opposite impression: the OSS licensed
with BSD/MIT/Artistic/Python-like license gets contributed to a lot
simply because people like to use it and they are not afraid of
licensing issues.

This merely goes to show that different people can form different
impressions when discussing the same sets of facts, and therefore how
useless impressions are as the basis for rational discussion.

When people share:

_it is not because this or that license of software used by them says
so, but because they want to for reasons orthogonal to licensing
issues_.

Absolutely not. Some people want to share under very specific
conditions, hence the proliferation of licenses in the open source world.

Actually, I get the impression that GPL-ed software is written by
programmers for programmers, not really for end users.

Not at all. It's written to be redistributed under specific terms, and
anyone who doesn't like those terms has the option of redeveloping the
functionality for themselves.

You can't insist that people give you their intellectual property on
*your* terms. That would be like insisting that the music industry bring
down the price of their clearly-overpriced products, or that the
Baltimore Orioles stop the concession stands from charging $4.50 for a
one-dollar beer. If you want a vote in such situations then your feet
are the appropriate instrument. Walk away, and stop whining .
Insisting will do you no good.

GPL folks just insulate themselves in their ghetto from the rest
of the world. More and more of the successful OSS projects have
non-GPLed licenses: Apache, Postgres, Perl, Mozilla, Python. Do you
_really_ see few contributions made to those?

More and more? Can we see some numbers to support this "impression"?
Since I'm taking issue with you, I will end by gently pointing out that
there's a substantial minority (? - my impression) of people who might
find your tag line (which I am sure is intended to be supportive of
Python and the c.l.py ethic, such as we might agree exists),
gender-biased and therefore just as unacceptable to them as the GPL
appears to be to you.

regards
Steve

 

[Steve Holden]

[...]
You see, I'm not disagreeing with you that your model applies
_where it applies_. I only disagree that it applies in face of
stronger forces. Now what kind of forces is dominant in
most frequent scenarios would have to be worked out in tedious
empirical research I think. Which I haven't done, because
learning some economics is just a hobby to me.

Yes, by all means let's just spout our opinions without any of that
inconvenient tedious empirical research which might invalidate them.

[...]

Italian, at most German and French, and not Polish or Russian, closeness
to good international airports and other good transportation, closeness
to partner firms and potential customers' decision-makers, all appeared
to point to Warsaw, if I recall correctly. Mechanical engineers with
some programming experience or viceversa, good translators, and good
salespeople with connections in the mechanical industry, are not as
ultra-specialized as all that, after all.

Most sales offices in Warsaw do not employ esp. educated people in
my impression. OTOH, the carmaking facilities nowadays require
more much more know-how and specialized workforce than a sales
office does. Or at least that was my impression when I worked at
the construction machine manufacturer in Berlin.

Again you are forming impressions form rather limited evidence: I might
agree with you about the relative intelligence and education of
engineers over sales people, but that might be *my* bias showing.

Capital investments per worker in auto industries are reportedly
very high. Simple physical tasks are done largely by machines,
like this 100 million Deutschmark costing laser-cutting installation
that I've seen there, where a pile of iron bars is pulled in at one
end and the pile of ready components is spitted out of the other end
(unlike typical thermal cutting, laser has the advantage of not
destroying the metal structure adjacent to the cut, so the parts
of the machines subject to high-stress are oft produced this way).

The same is true of plasma-arc cutting for thicker steels, and I believe
it's still not possible to cut 3-inch stainless with a laser. But what's
your point?

Oh, and by the way that installation doesn't get used much.
Somebody at the office didn't check carefully enough the
energy prices before ordering it and later someone discovered
that off-site specialized cutting firms that take advantage of
energy available at low prices at special times in other countries
can get it produced cheaper. Moving it elsewhere or selling
is not an option, since it is a specially constructed, low, 50-meters
long hall that stands inside the huge manufacturing hall of the
company.

And you are using this example to try and argue that engineers are
better-educated than sales people? Who sold this installation? Who
bought it? How much, therefore, is education worth?

100 million DM (when 1 DM was worth some half of Euro
back then) down the drain. When the company was in rather
bad financial situation (later I've learned it was finally bought
out by Americans). Oh well. No big deal.

I was utterly shocked. Having grown up in Soviet times I have
been used to seeing precious resources wasted by organizations
as if resources were growing on trees, but smth like this?! In a
shining ideal country of Germany?! Unthinkable.

Indeed not. Quite often the brown paper bag is a factor in purchases
like this. I wouldn't be at all surprised if somebody with a major input
to the decision-making process retired to a nice place in the country
shortly afterwards. You appear to be making the mistake of believing
that people will act in the larger interest, when sadly most individuals
tend to put their own interests first (some would go as far as to define
self-interest as the determinant of behavior).

Again, you may have had good luck. Where I worked (including
some places in Germany and UK) it was almost the only factor
that seemed to matter to people - they'd do ANYTHING not to
take a risky decision, to "pass the buck", not to stick their necks
out, not to declare doing some work that involved challenges.

Some people are like that. I chose a long time ago to try not to work
with them whenever I could avoid it and, while that may have had
negative economic consequences I an convinced it has improved my quality
of life immensely. Of course, I have no proof for such an assertion.

[and on, and on, and on ...]

regards
Steve

 

[Alex Martelli]

Can you point to closed-source licenses that allow using the code *at
all*?

As I recall, for example, Microsoft Visual C++ came with sources for
various libraries; all that the (closed-source) license for those
libraries forbade you from doing was to further distribute the _sources_
themselves. You could do modifications big or small to those libraries
for whatever purposes, and redistribute the _compiled_ form of the code
as a DLL, or statically linked into your own programs, etc, etc.

Is this what you mean by "allow using the code *at all*"? I think it's
a pretty common arrangement when the code being sold under closed-source
terms is a set of libraries, or a development system part of whose value
is a set of accompanying libraries.


Alex

 

[Roel Schroeven]

As I recall, for example, Microsoft Visual C++ came with sources for
various libraries; all that the (closed-source) license for those
libraries forbade you from doing was to further distribute the _sources_
themselves. You could do modifications big or small to those libraries
for whatever purposes, and redistribute the _compiled_ form of the code
as a DLL, or statically linked into your own programs, etc, etc.

Is this what you mean by "allow using the code *at all*"? I think it's
a pretty common arrangement when the code being sold under closed-source
terms is a set of libraries, or a development system part of whose value
is a set of accompanying libraries.

OK, I've been bitten by my exageration. There are indeed special cases
such as some libraries.

I was thinking more of end-user packages: if you somehow could lay your
hands on the source code of Visual Studio itself, you're still not
allowed to do anything with it.

 

[Alex Martelli]

OK, I've been bitten by my exageration. There are indeed special cases
such as some libraries.

I was thinking more of end-user packages: if you somehow could lay your
hands on the source code of Visual Studio itself, you're still not
allowed to do anything with it.

Yes, apart from libraries and similar cases (frameworks etc), it's no
doubt rare for closed-source "end-user packages" to be sold with
licenses that include source and allow you to "do anything with it".

However, allowing customization (at least for internal use within the
customer organization), while rare, is far from unheard of. I used to
work for a software house which sold rich and complex packages of
software meant for 3D mechanical design. The packages came with tens of
thousands of lines of (closed-source) code, in a proprietary scripting
language implemented by the package itself, which users (typically
mechanical engineers) were _expected_ to tweak to customize the overall
product for their specific purposes -- such modified parts of the
"scripting source" of the overall product were routinely shared among
different customers, and occasionally sold from one to another.

The choice of which parts of code in the scripting language were made
thus customizable and sharable was quite deliberate: the application
contained much more code in that scripting language, but most of it was
only distributed in compiled form (or even with the compiled form
already turned into data in some library or executable) -- the parts
that were sold as sources were picked to be those which would be most
useful for customers to customize and share, yet not damage the business
model of the software house. (and yes, it WAS closed source software,
anyway -- customers were theoretically not permitted to give our source
or derived works thereof to others who _weren't_ customers, I think;
anyway the engine needed to run the scripts was not redistributable, so
that provisions, if there, was of modest value).

I wouldn't be surprised if such a mixed model was reasonably common
among "end-user packages" which include a substantial proprietary
scripting component, particularly if the end-users are expected to be
technically skilled (mechanical engineers aren't programmers, but they
will probably have some vague clue about it; a consumer product might be
different). Just a guess, but, wouldn't, say, Mathematica or some
similar closed-source product benefit from this kind of arrangement --
including, as part of the product being sold, some rich amount of
scripting code, freely customizable and sharable among customers
(perhaps with the license prohibiting giving it away to non-customers)?

I believe some (closed-source) games, including ones which use Python as
their scripting language, may also do something of the kind -- include
Python sources for "scenarios" with full license to tweak and
redistribute (making new scenarios which are derived works of ones sold
by the games' authors). Here the language is not proprietary but no
doubt the scripts use large amounts of calls to proprietary modules, so
again there is no damage to the game author's business model anyway.

Hmmm, come to think of it, doesn't Apple include very large amount of
working Applescript code with many of its closed-source applications?


So, although your general point is no doubt sound, almost by definition
of closed source, you may perhaps still need to tweak it further, beyond
libraries and frameworks, to also exclude that closed source with is a
"scripting", "configuration", or otherwise "ancillary" part of the
application.


One last reflection -- I believe there are or used to be some programs
written by people no doubt of very good will, distributed with all
sources and often with no profit motive at all, which are NOT open
source because they include in the license some restrictive clause, such
as "no military use", "no use by organizations which perform testing of
cosmetics on animals", or something of that kind. These would be
examples of closed-source software which DO allow ALMOST any kind of use
-- any EXCEPT the specific one the authors dislike so intensely.

While most people may not think of such programs as "closed source",
they most definitely ARE: the definition of open source is very strict
about this aspect.


Alex

 

[Jeff Shannon]

Bulba! wrote:
Indeed not. Quite often the brown paper bag is a factor in purchases
like this. I wouldn't be at all surprised if somebody with a major input
to the decision-making process retired to a nice place in the country
shortly afterwards. You appear to be making the mistake of believing
that people will act in the larger interest, when sadly most individuals
tend to put their own interests first (some would go as far as to define
self-interest as the determinant of behavior).

Indeed, it is almost expected that those in charge of any large
organization (whether government, corporation, trade union, industry
association, fan club, or whatever else) are likely to act in their
personal interests at the expense of the organization's interests.
This is why things like public-disclosure laws and oversight
committees exist. As they say, power corrupts. (Of course, this is
not at all limited to people in charge; it's just most notable there,
since those people can direct the efforts of the rest of the
organization for their personal gain, whereas a rank-and-file member
can typically only direct their own efforts.)

It's also noteworthy to consider that many times, waste happens not
because of corruption or self-interest, but simply because of errors
of judgement. Humans being as we are, it's inevitable that over time,
some "obvious" important details will escape our attention, and the
resulting imperfect information will result in poor decisions. This
is a simple fact of human nature, and (ob-Python ) it's one of the
reasons that Python is designed as it is -- it makes a serious effort
to reduce the number of details that might escape detection.

(One should also consider that many business failures are a case of
simply having played the odds and lost. Many ventures depend on
outside events playing in a certain way; when by chance those events
happen, the decision-makers are called "bold and insightful", but if
things don't work out, they're called foolish or misguided. Often,
though, it was not foolishness but shrewd risk-taking -- if you take a
one-in-three chance of making a tenfold return on investment, then 66%
of the time you'll lose.... but if you hit those odds just once,
you'll come out way ahead.)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International

 

[Bulba!]

That's generally the goal of the Free Software Foundation: they think
all users should have the freedom to modify and/or distribute your code.

You have the freedom of having to wash my car then. ;-)

Most people who use the GPL don't feel that way; they think that each
author should have the freedom to choice if and how he chooses to share
code.

Whatever they feel, GPL is designed in such a way that essentially
is an attempt to extend itself onto all the software in the world.

They just see the GPL as an appropriate way to share their code.

And why is that?

Suppose they want to ensure "no forking" or that "bugfixes
and enhancements of original software are given back".

OK, LGPL is fine for this goal. When you say "they see it
as appropriate way to share their code", there's nothing
in this statement that openly and honestly indicates what
is the goal of this method.

Can you point to closed-source licenses that allow using the code *at
all*?

Which code?

_Their_ code? I.e. written by them?

Back then in days of yore I was using C-tree DB library for some
time, that came with source - or actually in practical terms "as
source". My boss wrote quite a lot of nice C++ wrappings thanks
to that (that I didn't bother to use, because I could not be
bothered to learn C++ . They still sell it that way:

http://www.faircom.com/products/ctree/

I don't remember being forbidden to redistribute source
code of what _we_ wrote at the company. Just the redistribution
of C-tree source code itself was not allowed. Redistribution of
the compiled binary with the product was OK (and no royalties
were required).

With GPL, you have the choice: either you agree with its terms on
distributing the code and then you can use the code, or you don't agree
with it and you don't use (which is still no worse than closed source).

With all due respect, this is a universal statement that applies
to all the licenses - obviously, if you don't agree to the terms,
you can't use it.

However, it's not aboot agreement to conditions per se, this is
aboot the freedom of speech, err, this is aboot what those
conditions actually are.

Some people call that viral, but I think it's a distortion of the truth.

How so? If you combine source of your program with GPLed source,
your source no longer can have the license of your choosing - it
has to have GPL license, or at least contain the key GPL conditions.
Other licenses do not require you to disclose _your_ source. It's
a really, really weird world in which having to put "obnoxious
advertising clause" is considered as more of imposing yourself on
other people than requiring them to disclose your source.

This is "money with strings attached" approach. It's just ignored
for sake of Grand Goal that few people actually believe into, along
the lines "end justifies means".

OK, I rambled enough, this group should not degenerate into *.advocacy
trash dump.

 

[Peter Dembinski]

[...]

That's remarkable, first time I see smth like this -
out of curiosity, could you say a word where was that?

Are you the same Bulba I know from alt.pl.comp.os.hacking?

 

[Bulba!]

I was thinking more of end-user packages: if you somehow could lay your
hands on the source code of Visual Studio itself, you're still not
allowed to do anything with it.

And why would anybody want to waste their time reading the
source code of Visual Studio? ;-)

<duck>

No, honestly, after all most of the time what programmers learn
is just API. The very point of having libraries after all is not
having to learn the low-level mechs of this thing, but just
using them in a push-button manner!

My boss read the C-tree code. I was programming reports
and other "peripheral" stuff, so I never had to do it. I was
just using a subset of the C-tree functionality, and even that
was a very small subset actually. Now I'm sure that B-trees
used in there are a wonder of engineering - however, I simply
have other goals and not enough time to learn them to
appreciate that.

Personally, I think that for most people the _direct_ benefits
of access to source code are greatly exagerrated. I would
place much, much more emphasis on indirect, derived
benefits of availability of source code.

Yes, you CAN read the source code. But the point is, you
DON'T WANT TO.

Because economically speaking, division of labor applies,
and idealistically speaking, it's better to stand on the shoulders
of giants.