Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
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This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit my employer
Novell which is an amazing company, and also
Dell who in days of yore provided me with a
free laptop for Gnome development / conferences.
Also if you have the time to read this sort of stuff you could enlighten
yourself by going to Unraveling Wittgenstein's net or if
you are feeling objectionable perhaps here.
Older items:
2010: (
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2009: (
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2008: (
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2006,
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2003,
2002,
2001,
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1999,
legacy html
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Up early, took babes to school with some triumphent six to
nine times-tables; perhaps they are finally getting them.
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Prodded mail, triaged meego bugs, Clarity, admin, read news.
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Thrilled to read that Intel finally did the right thing, and
dropped
the requirement for (C)
assignment (of whatever form) to be able to contribute to
clutter - making it a truely open project; nice ! I feel a sudden
urge to contribute, something, anything now it belongs to us all.
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It seems the H open published an interview
based on a not completely separated pastiche of some new bits with
some rather older quotes from around the web.
- To me, the most
interesting thing about OO.o that needs fixing - is the developer
community. That is still predicated on the Sun guys perceiving that
it might be nice to work together with others to build one, and
considering careful compromises to help make that a reality.
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To recap - the problem is that Sun (and some other corporates)
simply refuse to include code under the LGPLv3 (which would be our
preferred solution) unless they can avoid it's terms by owning the
code: nasty.
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My favorite awful compromise of the month (that retains the
well known barrier to entry, distrust breeding ground etc. that is
assignment) - but might at least make some progress would be to:
(wait for it) - assign everything to Oracle ! so they can own it
and do what they like with it - but - only on condition that
majority non-Sun written code modules are continued to be made available
to others under LGPLv3 plus a more lax license: perhaps MPL/CDDL,
Apache, BSD (in order of increasing laxness). That would effectively remove
the value of the exclusive ownership of code written by others (for
unseemly back-room arm twisting), while at least for the forseeable
future, not impacting the proprietary value of the bulk of the code-base.
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Clearly, by far the best approach is to pick a license you can
accept, with a suitable license steward, and go eclectic ownership -
letting creativity flourish: the Mozilla approach. This is also -clearly-
in the spirit of the (pure) Marketing around the 'Shared' nature of the
'Shared' Copyright Assignment (SCA) : if it is truly shared (it is not),
then why not allow it to be available under another license ? And again,
it is regrettable that they will not accept code simply under the terms
of the LGPLv3; our problem is not with the license - but the assymetry
between it and outright ownership of our code.
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I still hate (C) assignment with a fear and loathing; and
continuing it for OO.o drives away the developer help we need; but perhaps
this compromise might help re-unite the wider OO.o community, and at least
having the bigger corporate contributors working together can't hurt to
start with.
-
Printed out a gear and (at great length) a new geared extruder
housing, which (hopefully) will improve the reliability of the beast,
as/when I can knurl the M8 studding involved.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Novell, The
Lithuanian Gov't or Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's also important to
realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences,
bio.
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@novell.com)
