Re: [DotGNU]Re: DotGNU and business

[Timothy Rue]

On 11-Jul-02 08:07:07 Norbert Bollow <address@hidden> wrote:
 NB> Timothy Rue <address@hidden> wrote:

>>  NB> Here are the three main goals of the DotGNU project:
>>
>>  NB> The main goal is to prevent .NET, and the webservices wave in
>>  NB> general, from destroying the essentially-free-as-in-freedom
>>  NB> nature of the internet that we value so much today.
>>
>> Consumer choice, the anti-trust Law, should be all you need in
>> supporting any genuine option. Perhaps it's just a matter of
>> comming up with a genuine and better option?

 NB> "Coming up with a genuine and better option", that's definately
 NB> necessary, and in fact that's the focus of the DotGNU project.

so long as it's exclusive to dotGNU developers "original vision" and
control by....... them?

Or don't you realize the integrity of the sum of your comments is comming
across to me in such a nature of expressing to exclude the users with the
idea of such an exclusion being for the benefit of the developers/
"contributors."

Seriously, I'm trying to be productive here. I went to a delphi conference
once. The speaker was busy showing the room full of developers how easy
Delphi was to use and in how upgrading parts of a system you were working
on could be done without taking the system down. But in all the ease of
use, the Speaker was sure to assure the group that typical end users
wouldn't be using delphi, and he proceeded to name some of these users by
profession which included "carpenter."

At that point I perhaps should have stood up and told the room full of
what must have been at least a couple hundred people/developers, what I
do for a living and why I was there. And put that speaker in his place,
even if it was just me vs. all the developers in the room.

 NB> IMHO the most serious threat to this strategy is that the courts
 NB> might consider "RAND licensing" of software patents to be good
 NB> enough for meeting the requirements of anti-trust law.  ("RAND
 NB> licensing" of patents makes the corresponding "inventions"
 NB> usable in proprietary software only.)

Like I've said, there are things you cannot patent, of which common sence
prohibits. One such thing not patentable is the concept of "innovation".
Or at least if you do somehow manage to get a patent on it as perhaps a
business model, then I'm sure such things as natural human rights to
make improvement that benefit oneself and society, the constitution of
the US, etc. would be plenty enough that such a patent holder trying to
defend their patent in a court room, would most certainly fail.  So Why
the focus on what you may not be able to do, when there is plenty that you
can do and certainly expand upon?

>>  NB> Secondary to this is the goal to create useful software that
>>  NB> the contributors to the DotGNU project consider to be
>>  valuable.
>>
>> That's scary. Remove one rule to replace it with another one rule.
>> Shouldn't it be about what is useful to everyone, which includes
>> the contributors?

 NB> No, we're not in the business of trying to decide what is
 NB> "useful to everyone".  (I think that's what Microsoft Inc
 NB> is trying to do :-)

??? this comes across to me as a rather large contridiction to the spirit
of GPL. Having a goal of making stuff that is useful to as many others as
possible vs. trying to dictate what is useful to everyone, are two
different things. Perhaps I wasn't making myself clear?

 NB> Those who contribute have the freedom of deciding what parts
 NB> they want to contribute to, and thereby it's the contributors
 NB> who ultimately determine what the final product will be like,
 NB> within some contraints like that we'll not allow anyone to steer
 NB> the DotGNU project away from its original vision, and that we'll
 NB> not tolerate any violations of GNU policy.

What is the "original vision"?

>>  NB> Thirdly it is a goal to find ways in which DotGNU project
>>  NB> contributors can earn good money through contributing to
>>  DotGNU.
>>
>> What is "good money?"

 NB> What I mean is that by contributing to DotGNU, developers should
 NB> be able to make enough money to allow for having a family, a
 NB> decent standard of living, and building up a personal reserve.

What happens when the majority of work on dotgnu gets completed where
what is left is maintainance and general slower comming improvements? Or
is dotgnu to continue on with feature creep leading to bloatware?

Perhaps I just don't understand what the "original vision" is.

Can you explain or point me to a url that explains the stages of dotgnu
development, where "contributing to DotGNU" is an ever expanding or at
least a sustaining continuing process for to whole of contributors?

I'm under the impression that the idea MS has is to "rent" access to .net
development resources and such while applying licensing limitations. But
how is that to work for DotGNU?

I can see building a developer resource accessible thru the internet,
used by developers in creating job/company specific internal applications
and such, but that resource doesn't have to be continuely re-invented,
only maintained and updated in what would be a slower process than
creating the resource anew, and something that would require alot fewer
"contributors" or at least result in alot fewer code contributions.

>> Some things need to happen before other things can
>> be done. For example, the industrial revolution needed to
>> happen before the information revolution could happen,
>> otherwise the information revolution would be running on what
>> and communicating what?
>>
>> In other words, there may be an issue of putting the cart
>> before the horse here.

 NB> Yes.  It's not quite clear to what extent we can reach this
 NB> goal.  Still, it's a goal of the DotGNU project, and a good
 NB> objective to keep in mind.

???? the goal you are refering to is?  to build the online developer
resource? If that is what it is then I have no doubt that it will get
done. As it seems rather clear what needs to be done to create a GNU
verion of CLI. And time has proven the undeniable force of GNU in moving
forward, regardles of how slow that moving forward may seem at times.

>> In the GNU theme of decentralized authority I think you will
>> have a better chance of putting togther a business that bids
>> on GPL projects, and hires the help as needed for fullfilling
>> the project.

 NB> I'll encourage everyone who has the necessary skills and
 NB> experience to start a business of this type.

perhaps there is an evolution beginning to happen, in a new earnings
or cash flow model. Consider mixing a single developer bid process with
http://www.pubsoft.org/ where developers interested can post their
availability and projects interested in helping, along with income/time
period bid.

Having a go between like this can allow doing as much as can be matched up
to do.

 NB> Greetings, Norbert.

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