4 ms·

Regarding RR he says: > we probably need to capture some of the value of this technology via a for-profit company I hope this doesn't mean making it proprieta

Regarding RR he says: > we probably need to capture some of the value of this technology via a for-profit company I hope this doesn't mean making it proprietary. I mean obviously a person gets to decide how to best compensate themselves for the fruits of their labor. But I've seen too many compelling technologies fail to achieve the impact they could have because they were proprietary. I mean, DTrace languishes despite being open-source, because it wasn't open-source enough

cyphar 11y ago
DTrace doesn't languish. It just doesn't have a Linux port, because of people's contrived rewriting of the history of the GPL.
- gsnedders 11y ago
  It does, it's part of Oracle Linux. Oracle obviously therefore believe that a CDDL kernel module is fine.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Oracle also owns SUN, who originally licensed it that way...
  - cyphar 11y ago
    It wouldn't be distributed as a kernel module (DTrace probes are far more invasive than that). But yes, I posted this before I realised that Oracle Linux has sublicensed it under the GPL in their port to Linux (for their customers), so it's fine for us to do the same as long as we "base it on their port".
- haberman 11y ago
  Let me put it this way. In the last say five years, I can't think of a single article I've come across where someone describes DTrace making their life better (except one I wrote in 2011: http://blog.reverberate.org/2011/05/using-dtrace-on-os-x-to-debug.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2011/05/using-dtrace-on-os-x-to-...), or a single time anyone I know or work with has even mentioned DTrace. This is a technology that received an innovation award from the Wall Street Journal in 2006. Whatever impact DTrace is having today, it should have been much larger.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    You really aught to look at Bryan Cantrill's twitter feed then. It happens frequently enough that he notices blog posts and tweets them.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Then again Cantrill has an axe to grind. In case others are wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill
      - chris_wot 11y ago
        I'm no fan of the man, but it doesn't mean that dtrace is not an excellent tool.
  - JonathonW 11y ago
    Dtrace isn't completely dead; it's used to great effect as the underlying technology behind Instruments (performance analyzer/visualizer) on OSX. It never has really managed to catch on as a standalone tool by itself, though. Part of that's the licensing situation on Linux, but I'd hypothesize that part of it is also that it's a pretty complicated tool to use, interpret, and act on-- you don't hear a lot about SystemTap (same concept, GPLed for Linux-friendliness) these days, either.
    - seliopou 11y ago
      I'd push back on the 'complicated' part. The dtrace language is heavily based on awk, which every modern *NIX ships with, and that every software engineer and sysadmin have at least a passing familiarity with. The main difference between the two is whereas awk is meant to operate over a stream of semi-structured lines, dtrace operates over a stream of probe firings. The high-level structures of the scripts, though, are the same: /pattern/ { statements } In a awk, when a line matches a the patter, the corresponding statements fire. In dtrace, when a probe matches a pattern, the corresponding statements fire. Integers, strings, arrays, and all those other sorts of features of the language are the same (though there are some special functions introduced by dtrace to help you collect and visualize aggregations). So from a language perspective, if you know awk, you mostly know dtrace. All that's left to do is learn the pattern language. If you want to do that effectively, you have to know not just the syntax of the patterns, but useful probes to listen for, and useful ways to use the information that's gleaned. This involves knowing things about operating systems. Most software engineers don't know much about operating systems so they think the tool is stupid.
mathattack 11y ago
There's a decent market for selling consulting consulting services on top of open source technology. Being the expert on applying an open source technology to solve specific problems comes with a decent rate card.
- davidbanham 11y ago
  You're still selling your labour rather than a product, though. It's possible to be well off doing that, but basically impossible to become ludicrously rich.
  - shmerl 11y ago
    He didn't say his goal is to become ludicrously rich. He said he has ideas that Mozilla can't and shouldn't provide resources to realize, so some for profit company would work better for it.
  - mathattack 11y ago
    True. There is a potential multiplier when you're selling a product or money, rather than time. It's a matter of priorities and risk appetite.
- easytiger 11y ago
  http://undo-software.com/undodb/ http://undo-software.com/undodb/ is a rival which i have marketed at me on linkedin frequently
roca 11y ago
There are multiple ways to fail at spreading technology. One way is to choose a business model that makes it difficult for potential users to actually use the technology. Another way is to choose a business model that doesn't generate enough revenue to bring the technology to its full potential.
chris_wot 11y ago
Collabora does for-profit work on LibreOffice, but integrates their work into LibreOffice's master. Mostly they even do this fairly openly and don't batch up commits then push them but make their changes small(ish) then push them. You can definitely be a for-profit company AND work in the open.

cyphar 11y ago

DTrace doesn't languish. It just doesn't have a Linux port, because of people's contrived rewriting of the history of the GPL.

gsnedders 11y ago
It does, it's part of Oracle Linux. Oracle obviously therefore believe that a CDDL kernel module is fine.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Oracle also owns SUN, who originally licensed it that way...
- cyphar 11y ago
  It wouldn't be distributed as a kernel module (DTrace probes are far more invasive than that). But yes, I posted this before I realised that Oracle Linux has sublicensed it under the GPL in their port to Linux (for their customers), so it's fine for us to do the same as long as we "base it on their port".
haberman 11y ago
Let me put it this way. In the last say five years, I can't think of a single article I've come across where someone describes DTrace making their life better (except one I wrote in 2011: http://blog.reverberate.org/2011/05/using-dtrace-on-os-x-to-debug.html http://blog.reverberate.org/2011/05/using-dtrace-on-os-x-to-...), or a single time anyone I know or work with has even mentioned DTrace. This is a technology that received an innovation award from the Wall Street Journal in 2006. Whatever impact DTrace is having today, it should have been much larger.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  You really aught to look at Bryan Cantrill's twitter feed then. It happens frequently enough that he notices blog posts and tweets them.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Then again Cantrill has an axe to grind. In case others are wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Cantrill
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      I'm no fan of the man, but it doesn't mean that dtrace is not an excellent tool.
- JonathonW 11y ago
  Dtrace isn't completely dead; it's used to great effect as the underlying technology behind Instruments (performance analyzer/visualizer) on OSX. It never has really managed to catch on as a standalone tool by itself, though. Part of that's the licensing situation on Linux, but I'd hypothesize that part of it is also that it's a pretty complicated tool to use, interpret, and act on-- you don't hear a lot about SystemTap (same concept, GPLed for Linux-friendliness) these days, either.
  - seliopou 11y ago
    I'd push back on the 'complicated' part. The dtrace language is heavily based on awk, which every modern *NIX ships with, and that every software engineer and sysadmin have at least a passing familiarity with. The main difference between the two is whereas awk is meant to operate over a stream of semi-structured lines, dtrace operates over a stream of probe firings. The high-level structures of the scripts, though, are the same: /pattern/ { statements } In a awk, when a line matches a the patter, the corresponding statements fire. In dtrace, when a probe matches a pattern, the corresponding statements fire. Integers, strings, arrays, and all those other sorts of features of the language are the same (though there are some special functions introduced by dtrace to help you collect and visualize aggregations). So from a language perspective, if you know awk, you mostly know dtrace. All that's left to do is learn the pattern language. If you want to do that effectively, you have to know not just the syntax of the patterns, but useful probes to listen for, and useful ways to use the information that's gleaned. This involves knowing things about operating systems. Most software engineers don't know much about operating systems so they think the tool is stupid.

mathattack 11y ago

There's a decent market for selling consulting consulting services on top of open source technology. Being the expert on applying an open source technology to solve specific problems comes with a decent rate card.

davidbanham 11y ago
You're still selling your labour rather than a product, though. It's possible to be well off doing that, but basically impossible to become ludicrously rich.
- shmerl 11y ago
  He didn't say his goal is to become ludicrously rich. He said he has ideas that Mozilla can't and shouldn't provide resources to realize, so some for profit company would work better for it.
- mathattack 11y ago
  True. There is a potential multiplier when you're selling a product or money, rather than time. It's a matter of priorities and risk appetite.
easytiger 11y ago
http://undo-software.com/undodb/ http://undo-software.com/undodb/ is a rival which i have marketed at me on linkedin frequently

roca 11y ago

There are multiple ways to fail at spreading technology. One way is to choose a business model that makes it difficult for potential users to actually use the technology. Another way is to choose a business model that doesn't generate enough revenue to bring the technology to its full potential.

chris_wot 11y ago

Collabora does for-profit work on LibreOffice, but integrates their work into LibreOffice's master. Mostly they even do this fairly openly and don't batch up commits then push them but make their changes small(ish) then push them. You can definitely be a for-profit company AND work in the open.