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As I often say, open-source is the 7th wonder of the world. In no previous situation have humans worked together on a larger scale to create a software that pow

As I often say, open-source is the 7th wonder of the world. In no previous situation have humans worked together on a larger scale to create a software that powers literally everything in the world, and even a helicoper on Mars. And just to put it at scale, the engineers of Apollo were so early before our times that they had to code the timestamps in negative.

bmitc 4y ago
Isn’t it fair to say that most of the biggest open source projects and/or most useful projects are developed by people employed by either universities or companies? > And just to put it at scale, the engineers of Apollo were so early before our times that they had to code the timestamps in negative. I don’t understand how this relates to the scale of open source software or Apollo software engineers. I guess I know the Unix epoch is 01/01/1970, but how does that relate to Apollo and negative timestamps? Those timestamp definitions came after the first several Apollo missions, didn’t they?
- cratermoon 4y ago
  > Isn’t it fair to say that most of the biggest open source projects and/or most useful projects are developed by people employed by either universities or companies? Yes, except that largely those projects are tangential to the "real" research. Larry Wall, creator of Perl and other useful things, is a linguist who was "studying linguistics with the intention of finding an unwritten language, perhaps in Africa, and creating a writing system for it."[1]. Perl was just a side project. 1 https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/225 https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/225
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
  > how does that relate to Apollo and negative timestamps? I'm not certain, but perhaps the parent commenter wasn't being literal. Maybe just a way of saying that the Apollo engineers did their amazing work before what the rest of us consider to be the "beginning of time"?
  - eastbound 4y ago
    Yes, GP here, it was a joke, Unix is so young that the moon landing is pre-historic to it, it already belonged to another epoch literally. I took the joke from this comic: https://www.commitstrip.com/2015/10/06/before-timestamp-0/ https://www.commitstrip.com/2015/10/06/before-timestamp-0/
hotpotamus 4y ago
Wait a minute - is that true lol? I vaugely remember epoch time being a 32-bit signed integer, which seemed silly to me, but did they actually use that sign prior to 1970?
- saghm 4y ago
  I'm guessing that "Unix timestamps" were not used before Unix itself became widely used, which would be after the Apollo missions
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Yeah, I don't know the history here, though in thinking through this, it ocurred to me that of course computers might need to represent time before 1970 for some reason, hence the sign, but of course there is still the limitation of 32 bits. Time is one of those things that seems simple, but always seems to bite you somewhere - things like leap seconds or if Juneteenth counts as a business day always seem to throw a wrench in.
- narag 4y ago
  Nobody would consider the present as negative. Maybe he meant that previous work had to be coded as negative, after the zero was set. Or maybe it's a joke. We used to say that some guy has his ID number in roman numerals... or used spears for the matter.
singaporecode 4y ago
Have you seen the quality of most open source software? It’s a joke. Most of it is about people pushing their own agendas and self promoting
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law There's so much good open source software that I'm not even annoyed at how wrong your statement really is.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    Well they’re right in that all software is a mess, but oss is certainly not worse than anything else.
- carapace 4y ago
  > Have you seen the quality of most open source software? It’s a joke. Sadly, yes, you're not wrong. However, have you seen the quality of most proprietary software? No, you haven't, no one has, because it's proprietary. > Most of it is about people pushing their own agendas and self promoting Perhaps, but some of it is not, and that is the difference to proprietary software.
Helmut10001 4y ago
I work at University and I only publish Open Source (GPL, MIT, or CCBy). It would be hard for my University to claim IP rights after I published something with these licenses.
- suchow 4y ago
  At many universities (in the U.S. at least), on paper, it’s the technology commercialization department that makes the call about pursuing patent protection and the burden is on the PI to report all potentially patentable inventions before release so that the university has time to make the determination. In the case you describe, they’d in principle find you in violation of that policy, but in practice can’t because they don’t know about it unless you tell them.
  - Helmut10001 4y ago
    Yes, I think you're right. It _depends_, as always. Mostly on the field, and in my case, on country. I am in Germany and Universitities are mostly State financed. There has been a pretty liberal trend at Universities in Germany the last 10 to 20 years, pushing towards open science for society (any society, not just Germans). We have such a department you describe, too, but no one has ever heard of it and its not really used, or lets say regulations exist but are not enforced. The University itself also pushes for Open Source publication and free sharing of results and technology, except for rare cases.
aliswe 4y ago
You do not nerdsnipe us! Not today - sir.

bmitc 4y ago

Isn’t it fair to say that most of the biggest open source projects and/or most useful projects are developed by people employed by either universities or companies? > And just to put it at scale, the engineers of Apollo were so early before our times that they had to code the timestamps in negative. I don’t understand how this relates to the scale of open source software or Apollo software engineers. I guess I know the Unix epoch is 01/01/1970, but how does that relate to Apollo and negative timestamps? Those timestamp definitions came after the first several Apollo missions, didn’t they?

cratermoon 4y ago
> Isn’t it fair to say that most of the biggest open source projects and/or most useful projects are developed by people employed by either universities or companies? Yes, except that largely those projects are tangential to the "real" research. Larry Wall, creator of Perl and other useful things, is a linguist who was "studying linguistics with the intention of finding an unwritten language, perhaps in Africa, and creating a writing system for it."[1]. Perl was just a side project. 1 https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/225 https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/225
andyjohnson0 4y ago
> how does that relate to Apollo and negative timestamps? I'm not certain, but perhaps the parent commenter wasn't being literal. Maybe just a way of saying that the Apollo engineers did their amazing work before what the rest of us consider to be the "beginning of time"?
- eastbound 4y ago
  Yes, GP here, it was a joke, Unix is so young that the moon landing is pre-historic to it, it already belonged to another epoch literally. I took the joke from this comic: https://www.commitstrip.com/2015/10/06/before-timestamp-0/ https://www.commitstrip.com/2015/10/06/before-timestamp-0/

hotpotamus 4y ago

Wait a minute - is that true lol? I vaugely remember epoch time being a 32-bit signed integer, which seemed silly to me, but did they actually use that sign prior to 1970?

saghm 4y ago
I'm guessing that "Unix timestamps" were not used before Unix itself became widely used, which would be after the Apollo missions
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Yeah, I don't know the history here, though in thinking through this, it ocurred to me that of course computers might need to represent time before 1970 for some reason, hence the sign, but of course there is still the limitation of 32 bits. Time is one of those things that seems simple, but always seems to bite you somewhere - things like leap seconds or if Juneteenth counts as a business day always seem to throw a wrench in.
narag 4y ago
Nobody would consider the present as negative. Maybe he meant that previous work had to be coded as negative, after the zero was set. Or maybe it's a joke. We used to say that some guy has his ID number in roman numerals... or used spears for the matter.

singaporecode 4y ago

Have you seen the quality of most open source software? It’s a joke. Most of it is about people pushing their own agendas and self promoting

bigDinosaur 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law There's so much good open source software that I'm not even annoyed at how wrong your statement really is.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  Well they’re right in that all software is a mess, but oss is certainly not worse than anything else.
carapace 4y ago
> Have you seen the quality of most open source software? It’s a joke. Sadly, yes, you're not wrong. However, have you seen the quality of most proprietary software? No, you haven't, no one has, because it's proprietary. > Most of it is about people pushing their own agendas and self promoting Perhaps, but some of it is not, and that is the difference to proprietary software.

Helmut10001 4y ago

I work at University and I only publish Open Source (GPL, MIT, or CCBy). It would be hard for my University to claim IP rights after I published something with these licenses.

suchow 4y ago
At many universities (in the U.S. at least), on paper, it’s the technology commercialization department that makes the call about pursuing patent protection and the burden is on the PI to report all potentially patentable inventions before release so that the university has time to make the determination. In the case you describe, they’d in principle find you in violation of that policy, but in practice can’t because they don’t know about it unless you tell them.
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  Yes, I think you're right. It _depends_, as always. Mostly on the field, and in my case, on country. I am in Germany and Universitities are mostly State financed. There has been a pretty liberal trend at Universities in Germany the last 10 to 20 years, pushing towards open science for society (any society, not just Germans). We have such a department you describe, too, but no one has ever heard of it and its not really used, or lets say regulations exist but are not enforced. The University itself also pushes for Open Source publication and free sharing of results and technology, except for rare cases.

aliswe 4y ago

You do not nerdsnipe us! Not today - sir.