Re: [DotGNU]flexible for users, or flexible for developers? (wasRe: User Interfaces)

[Timothy Rue]

On 08-Jul-02 07:20:11 Boris Kolar <address@hidden> wrote:
>> > > Ironically, for a company that goes so far as to
>> > > patent a UI abstraction mechanism (ultimately what

 BK> My fear is, that somewhere along the road the DotGNU project will
 BK> have two choices: a) to fail, or b) to become "illegal" (but not
 BK> unethical). To many corporations, DotGNU is a "dangerous thing"
 BK> and I see a real possibility they'll fight it with stupid laws
 BK> (like SSSCA, patenting most basic ideas,...).

 BK> Some patents are amazingly stupid and they realy prevent
 BK> innovation. Why can't we simply ignore them? What can they do?
 BK> It's an international project, so such stupid patents and laws
 BK> surely don't (and won't) apply everywhere. I mean: who says US
 BK> legislation applies to this project?


Perhaps sometimes peoples thought processes go in a direction that leads
to being bogged down and stalling out.

To streamline the patent issue, or more correctly the anti-patent issue,
doesn't take the kind of money needed in the patent filing loop. In fact
all it takes is a matter of publishing with intent to prevent a patent on
what is published, to prevent such a patent.

It's called Prior Art. :)

going to the www.dotgnu.org I find a link to http://FreeDevelopers.net/
but upon further inspection it appears that effort has also gotten bogged
down almost to a hault, cept for Declaration of Software Freedom signing,
GNU.FREE software updates (voting software?) and perhaps a few other
direct FreeDevelopers projects. Seems dotgnu is related, but really a
project of it's own. But overall FreeDevelopers.net has stalled out. Even
the IRC channel comes up" -ChanServ- [#freedevelopers] FreeDevelopers.net
- A fallen hope." and the topic is "Liberate FD from totalitarian rule ||
FD is dead."

I suppose that is to be expected when you try and mix politics with
commercial business plans for a Free Software base.

But then business is the point of dotgnu, right?

Personally I think trying to clone the "enemy" is inherently flawed at the
very core or conception level.  But enough people have shown interest in
doing it that the dotgnu effort exist. So from my perspective, if it fails
or becomes illegal, will 20/20 hindsight expose why it was a wrong
direction to go at that time? I guess the point is to understand the
motive, the incentive of Microsoft to "invent" ".net" to begin with.

That to really conceive an effective counter effort, at this very initial
core, the motive, the incentive is going to be different. And it's from
that core of "reason" where the development direction should be guided.

I suspect that freedevelopers.net is in the right spirit but failed in
method used, that of having a political orientation as well as a
stockmarket game playing potential.

In contrast to freedevelopers.net one might consider non-profit
organizations where it should be strongly noted that non-profit does not
mean people don't get paid. Such an example of non-profit is National
Geographics in how it was classified for many many years until it was so
well established that turning it into a for-profit company, it was able to
still maintain the spirit of humanity that I believe the FSF is all about.

But getting back to dotgnu, it really is about the business of value
exchange in the area of "webservice". Be it financial or of other such
value.

One of the things that I'm bothered about .net is the bandwidth it seems
to require, and I do note how dotgnu has the ability to greatly reduce
bandwidth usage, due to it allowing a lot more to happen locally. And I do
recognize this as a direction guided buy a fundamental difference in
motive/incentive than that of .net, but I still wonder if there are not
additional fundamental changes in perspectives and therefor development
direction that would not only fully address and eliminate the concerns of
the post I'm responding to but as well address the thread and subject
line too.


What's the goal?

I'd like to think it's something along the humanitarian economy depicted
in some of the star trek series within the "earth" settings (not the
frengi settings.)

Where genuine science of software engineering is the central focus of a
non-profit (but still paid contributors) non-political (if software is
"Law" as Lawrence Lessig states then who needs politics, but rather simply
have caretakers that follow well defined and agreed upon procedures in
maintaining the "Law of Software", so it continues to run as intended)
..... freedev.net of genuine software engineered resources for use in
software development at a level that even end users can grasp, so that
these end users of various and even specialized fields can apply their
knowledge to produce what they need, for themselves.

Software development freedom should not stop with the general label of
"software developer" but rather extend to all you want to do things for
themselves via computers.

What the world is experiencing now with Free-Software and lesser models
such as Open Source Software is really more a first step away from
proprietary control. Certainly thru genuine software engineering science
we will be able to make breakthroughs that put software development ease
at a level that the general user can find the time and respources needed
for them to do things for themselves. Otherwise we will never ever get to
the point of being able to create software as complex yet easy to program
as is depicted by holodeck technology. And quite frankly, I know this is a
goal we can reach and in mostof our lifetimes, if not within an easy
decade.

And is not this really the sort of data accessibility level intended to be
reached by the dotgnu and .net efforts?

I honestly believe, based on research, that the only way to really achieve
this is thru FreeSoftware and GPL method. But I'm concerned that trying to
clone the "enemy" is perhaps putting a very big inherently biased dampener
on correctly achieving the goal.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6206.805T2889T7505727threeseas%40earthlink.net&rnum=8

The KNMVIC document can also be found in the results (comment #4 of
Written Comments - NOT part four of comment #1) of an USPTO RFC:
(note who some of the other commenter are.)

Issues Related to the Identification of Prior Art During the Examination
of a Patent Application.

(Do consider the scope, depth and width, of the "knowledge" being
addressed!)

Transcript of Public Hearing, June 28, 1999
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/priorart/prior_art1.doc
Transcript of Public Hearing, July 14, 1999
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/priorart/0714pato.doc
Comments Book - Table of Contents
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/priorart/comments_book.doc

*** HERE - comment #4 *** Written Comments 1 - 11
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/priorart/comments.doc

Written Comments 12 - 21
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/priorart/comments2.doc
Written Comments 22 - 29
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/priorart/comments3.doc


Point of showing it on the USPTO site is of course .... well where better
to be published for non-patentability than by and on the USPTO site?

Let it also be understood that GNU and GPL directions do extend beyond
just software, as for example the http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/



T.Rue

PS. I believe the Hurd will bring about the three primary User Interfaces
of Shell command line, Graphical User Interface and the User Accessable
IPC port interface, in such a manner that in analogy is like the three
primary colors of light - Red, Blue and Green - where upon removing one
from user access, wrongly and greatly limits what the user can create in
what is otherwise the full rainbow spectrum of software.

These three primary interfaces are a prerequsite for autocoding plus
environment.


---
Timothy Rue
Email @ mailto:address@hidden
Web @ http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/