Posts by geraldew@fosstodon.org
(DIR) Post #ASOGZoVJfVuUQbllTc by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-02-06T03:40:23Z
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@post @aral Can't help with lawyer but curious which reasons are being given for switch to a permissive license?
(DIR) Post #ASOuKhdUuyCswxwgsa by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-02-06T11:05:52Z
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@post so apart from a possible Google concern that their devs as users might extend a fully free app, then we can guess they wish to always be able to produce a non-free derivative.For that distinction perhaps quote an earlier post of mine on that duality topic.A wish to avoid licence clashes is valid, but is a nice-to-have not a must-have.If it was me, I'd like to be certain no user is getting a non-free version with unknowable variances.
(DIR) Post #ASOygS0S6pg0f9JAX2 by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-02-06T11:54:37Z
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@post certainly there is nothing simple about the possible business model complications. Everytime I think I've heard them all another variation or new concept comes along.Some business models depend on the licence type but many do not - with examples existing of contrary combinations.Ditto for community involvement.That begs the question of: which aspects or ramifications do you feel are at play in this case?
(DIR) Post #ASPAaO76rs2WIoIVsW by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-02-06T14:07:59Z
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@post good points, and I like your reversal of mine via "Copyleft is the minimum shield for a company that does only FOSS development. Who think Copyleft is for users is wrong."To admit, I'm familiar with the copyleft enabled strategy of "use the free or pay to get non-free", especially where the service/support only comes with the latter.Personally I think a solution to that is spreading the ownership via external contributions but that's from my user side of the glass.
(DIR) Post #ASW6gltYK4dA5PSqXY by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-02-09T22:25:07Z
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@simon by habit I always take a close look when I see someone using rank() rather than row_number()That's because I see a lot of mistakes made where people assume or don't know that multiple rows can produce the same rank for a partition.Am glad to see that's not an issue in this case, because the rank is being used for recentness.
(DIR) Post #ATcZaJ8zDzvKxANOyG by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-03-14T22:08:11Z
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@sjvn quite a confusing piece until I realised it needs the word "American" inserted throughout, as it's really about American projects dealing with the American taxation system.
(DIR) Post #AUbzrfxXkJ6SYI93p2 by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-04-13T10:55:43Z
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@thelinuxEXP Not a new point to make, but the FSF was based on a pre-Internet idea of how free software would be made. It matches how they've never embraced "social" development. At the risk of being glib, this is why I don't think it is possible to reform it into an organisation that does inherently understand openly collaborative development. That will require yet another structure/organisation/collaboration built by people from/of the new "dev" world. Perhaps a world one rather than American.
(DIR) Post #AXTSLZktMEsQR1Vasa by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-07-08T05:01:50Z
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@simon my open question is how dependent that method is on all usages - both building and importing - being for having quite current versions of Python running.Every time I read about changes to the packaging approaches, the "depends on Python X.YZ" seems to be left unsaid.Maybe there's no such dependency but with nothing said I don't feel I can trust to that.
(DIR) Post #AbnJJtzBxjrf4qXDt2 by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-14T10:26:06Z
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@webmink seems to beg the question of how similar the changes to a fork can be without becoming a copyright violation - or at least one worth a legal action.For example, if maintainers of the fork note which things become known bugs and then write their own solutions. Ditto new features.Does this take us all the way back to the "clean room" theatre of the 1980s (which I mention wondering why I haven't seen that term written for a very long time)?
(DIR) Post #AcCNd7QK1cnSSNF2rg by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-26T11:37:46Z
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Years ago, in some coding at my workplace, which means it was in VBA, I added spoken voice clips to let me know when processes reached various stage points.It just played canned spoken phrases that I'd made with a free program I found online.At the time I had a very large cubicle with few neighbours who were mostly absent. It let me get things running and then go work on another computer, but hear exactly when I needed to attend to the process running one - i.e. without watching it.
(DIR) Post #AcCNd8W1xsxPqMv7Oy by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-26T11:44:10Z
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To be honest I don't clearly recall why I stopped using the technique.It might have been because cubicles got smaller and denser, and a talking computer was a problem rather than a solution.But it might equally have been that I found it too hard to get the balance right - between constant chatter and prudent status updates and requirement of reactions. And thus the whole method annoyed me more than I felt it worth resolving.Or maybe my need for running long processes went away.
(DIR) Post #AcCNd9Ix205aI5oBea by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-26T11:51:44Z
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As it happens, all these years later, I'm back to writing a new application - and I've once again created a custom logging method for it.Wherein I have that same issue of needing to resolve just how much logging to do via what methods.And until I read a recent post on here, I hadn't even considered using spoken voice as part of that.I don't know if I will head down that path, either inherently or just to enable it, but it's been a curious joy to be reminded of paths I've trod before.
(DIR) Post #AcCNdABXl1l31PLmkK by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-26T11:57:37Z
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As either a programmer or a data analyst I don't use my ears at all. But listening to classical music I can recognise instruments, composers, musical eras and individual singers.Which then is more odd:- that I don't think to use that ability in my code or data work?- or that I don't have ready tooling too enable such approaches?
(DIR) Post #AcGIgw4qQkYhHo2JGa by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-28T10:07:24Z
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@wauz Quite by coincidence, just before seeing your response, I had seen mention of:"Chicago’s Lyric Opera is aiming to make its performances more accessible via the SoundShirt, a garment that vibrates to match the music."Where that was via The Overspill from Charles Arthur@charlesarthurhttps://theoverspill.blog/2023/11/28/popular-science-magazine-journalism-end-start-up-2121/(i.e. an indirect link to not bite the hand that feeds)
(DIR) Post #AcGKh5PtuDpAA25JCK by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-28T10:14:45Z
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@wauz @charlesarthur but perhaps the more important part to quote is:“There are often technical solutions designed by people without disabilities for people with disabilities that do not solve barriers that we have.”Still, sometimes an unimportant usage (e.g. abled people finding it a cute play idea) can get the tooling made that can then be put to more important uses.Alas, to be clear, not that I have the skills to do that. Foldatry alone has taken me years to write in my spare time.
(DIR) Post #AcGM3hCqBcSVggJxAW by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2023-11-28T10:45:08Z
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@wauz Well then "play" is indeed the word.Reminds me that way back, a younger me actually emailed Microsoft with a suggestion of how their V-Chat program could be used by geographically dispersed organisations with parallel mapping to local physical layouts. The idea being that a remote session chat would also enable comments such as "I also mentioned topic Z to Erica who is two desks to your right".Needless to say, nothing came of that (nor of V-Chat). See Wikipedia for when that was.
(DIR) Post #AlsLjvTulyC1Qnyp04 by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2024-09-10T14:47:18Z
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@lproven FWIW a nitpick:- the quip "Unix represents filenames as nul-terminated byte arrays, not Unicode" is misleading because Microsoft's Unicode for filenames was UCS-2 and while they say they now use UTF-8 instead I've never managed to pin down when/where they changed and how to know what's ever there, notably when reading the file system not using the Windows version that wrote it. The Linux description is accurate but just means the Linux kernel is neutral about filename encoding.
(DIR) Post #AlsLjwLRYx0k6p1ZR2 by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2024-09-10T15:04:08Z
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@lproven Re early Microsoft networking in my memory Microsoft kept adopting or re-implementing things made by others. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBIOS for the other vendors who extended MS-DOS. As for when NT actually shipped with support for anything other than Microsoft specific network protocols, my memory is unclear.Checking at https://web.archive.org/web/20151229084950/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/6/19/05641/7357 we see that again MS bought in TCP/IP code from someone else and only later re-implemented with their own.
(DIR) Post #AwecI7aYz4Wa5RLP96 by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2025-07-30T09:01:37Z
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@foone I might adopt that. I've never liked that "self" is a convention rather than a language definitive. Using "elf" would be more obviously arbitrary but still be close enough to convention to not throw off those who depend upon them.
(DIR) Post #AxzhFkJJBfi5CadMzQ by geraldew@fosstodon.org
2025-09-08T10:58:44Z
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@BrodieOnLinux not the copypasta, but the place I'd go to look for earlier versions of what Stallman wrote is Usenet.To whit:https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.advocacy/c/_O03Hyoggw8/m/mf_k31nArikJfrom 31 May 1996<quote-extract>Here is the text of the file etc/LINUX-GNU from the GNU Emacsdistribution.... hope those concerned about this issue will read and consider what rms actually has to say, instead of what people areclaiming he said....thanx -len http://www.ai.mit.edu/~tower/home.htmlDirector, Free Software Foundation</quote-extract>