[ale] mint 13 vm running out of storage space

[Tim Watts]

On Tue, 2013-10-15 at 14:11 -0400, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:

<SNIP>

> All the freedoms you and others mention are certainly desirable and
> beneficial.  But, they mainly apply to the user's.  I was mainly
> speaking about the implications for the developers.

Au contraire, mon frère.  On balance I'd say they lean a bit more toward
benefiting developers directly and users indirectly.

0  The freedom to run the program, for any purpose 
        - Clearly more beneficial to users.
        
1  The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does
your computing as you wish.
        - More beneficial to developers.

2  The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
        - Equally beneficial to users and developers.  

3  The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to
others. 
        - More beneficial to developers.

> My main points from a developer standpoint were:
> 
> A) If xyz organization or entity or person or group wants to develop
> complex software, and if they don't have access to tens of thousands
> of hours of free labor, and if that development will cost millions or
> billions of dollars, then the developer CANNOT develop the software.

Unless they're in N.Korea, the fact is they DO have access to free
developer hours.  (Well actually, N.Korea offers that too but only to a
select few.)  The cost is inspiring a community with a worthwhile
mission.  If you can't do that then, true, your project won't get done.
But if you can't do that you might want to think about whether the
mission is really worthwhile.

Of course, "worthwhile" here is meant to be specific to a problem domain
(e.g. map building).  Feeding yourself and family is worthwhile, and
ordinarily won't inspire a community to help.  Doesn't mean it's not
worthwhile.

> B) Furthermore, in the above conditions, even if they have the deep
> pockets to absorb the cost, they probably will not have enough
> incentive to develop the software without a profit motive.

Yes and no.  Many developers contribute code because they love the
project(s) they're involved with.  Some have been lucky enough to merge
their main/commercial development time with FOSS projects -- in effect
getting paid to develop FOSS (the WebSphere platform seems to be
synergisticly linked with some of the Apache projects).  But there's
many more developers who would love to contribute to a project but
simply can't -- they've got full time jobs already and we seem to be
stuck with this "only 24 hours in a day/needing 8 hours of sleep" thing.

I'm getting more sympathetic to your point, however.  While FOSS has
been great at improving the quality of and access to great software it
hasn't been too successful as a scalable economic platform. (Not that it
was ever intended as such; but it has had big impacts on our economy).
A significant part of this probably related to the fact that the English
language doesn't clearly differentiate between free as in liberty and
free as in no money.  It's hard to think clearly about things if the
language blurs unrelated ideas.  If you can't think clearly you can't
solve problems.  Consequently, I think we've struggled to sustain a
"liberated" economy that also supports huge numbers of people needing
livelihoods.  Would LOVE to hear ideas to move us forward on that front!

So much work gets done these days by volunteers and interns that I think
it has significantly impacted the opportunities for actual employment.
I'm thinking not just about software development but in many areas of
work (the local food movement and not-for-profits, for instance).
Getting "free stuff" has become an expected part of our culture.  I
think this is an unintended consequence of the Internet and FOSS.

I'm getting too OL (Off-Linux) now and into stuff I haven't really
thought about enough so I'll end this part now.

<SNIP>
> Here's another thing I just thought of.  I don't want the flight
> control software (or hardware) on the Boeing 747 I might be sitting in
> at 30,000 feet above the ground to be FOSS (or FOSH).  I want that to
> be rigorously designed by highly trained engineers working in a
> cohesive manner and thoroughly tested.  Furthermore, if I'm an airline
> and I bought the plane, I want world class support in case there are
> problems.

Whether or not it's FOSS would not, by itself, influence my confidence
in the system.  I WOULD want to know that it's been thoroughly tested by
the agencies responsible for deploying it.  In fact, knowing that it's
FOSS AND thoroughly tested would undoubtedly RAISE my confidence by an
order of magnitude.  Transparency and all that good stuff, ya know.

Surely you understand by now that not just any dope can commit a patch
to an open source project, right?  They all have owners thoroughly
invested in making the code better.

> I'm not bashing FOSS.  I'm questioning the concept that it is the only
> viable or proper way to do things.

I can think of only one person on this list who might feel that way; and
I may be wrong about them too.

> Sincerely,
> 
> Ron

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