3 ms·

Looks like mixing somewhat open-source with free-software? Again. Remembers me of late 90ies. And the intentions. It is fine to care about individual requireme

Looks like mixing somewhat open-source with free-software? Again. Remembers me of late 90ies. And the intentions. It is fine to care about individual requirements but not all target the common society. Flutter and Chrome (Blink) are mere exclusive Google projects, they just shall strength Android, ChromeOS and their cloud business. Same for Microsoft stuff, they add stuff which strength their cloud business - with Linux - or WSL. WebKit is developed in cooperation and there is WebKitGtk. This benefits the common. Also LLVM helps the common. But Apple tries to avoid the GPL whenever they can. The core of WebKit is luckily LGPL. This is also one of the reasons why many prefer GCC (GPL). btw. The sovereign tech fund (from Germany) is a good idea. A state must be interested in good infrastructure. Software and especially Linux is infrastructure. America had once back in time something similar by pure luck. AT&T was restricted to enter new markets. Out of nowhere they started developing UNIX, and C and provided the source and documentation. Sadly the restrictions where lifted. As far as I know this was the last time that BigIT was actively regulated in America. It was good and accelerated literally everything.

detourdog 3y ago
Before AT&T was broken up it was illegal to connect a fax machine or any other unauthorized equipment on their network.
- ho_schi 3y ago
  I think this wasn’t an either/or decision for the (drumroll) Regan administration. I’m also afraid that our Fax machines were even a priority. btw. Germany has a law which enforces the endpoint and declares that customers attach their own modems. Democracy allows citizen to decide - we can prioritize people’s needs over companies?
  - detourdog 3y ago
    I was just setting the environmental expectations the American phone network. The real disruption was the move to data networks. Architectural I think AT&T needed to set-up an out of band channel to control the network separate from the data channels. This channel I think was the A channel of an ISDN line which had 2 b channels. I once had a Cabbie in NYC tell me about Citibank getting the first Fax Machines installed in NYC. They connected the Manhattan Office tower with the Queens office. They remember it getting installed and there was a long lang time before anybody used. The opinion was that it didn't make sense compared to all the better ways to move documents.
roenxi 3y ago
> The sovereign tech fund (from Germany) is a good idea. Isn't it a non-idea? I'm seeing articles saying they spend order of magnitude single digit million dollars [0]. That doesn't sound like it'd be enough to cover the costs of much. Just look at the list of maintainers of the linux kernel, for example [1]. Germany would be doing much better if they had a few big software corporations, they tend to contribute more money voluntarily. They should focus on cutting back red tape and fostering some entrepreneurship. > It was good and accelerated literally everything. This position doesn't make sense, look at the the AI industry appearing out of nearly nowhere and is moving so fast even the people in the market can't keep up. And is mostly open source. We might be approaching the limit of what is physically possible. No changes to the situation are needed if we want things to move faster. Maybe winding down IP protections to maintain the speed, once the lawyers get involved that'll kill some of the momentum. [0] https://sciencebusiness.net/news/cybersecurity/germany-launch-sovereign-tech-fund-secure-digital-infrastructure https://sciencebusiness.net/news/cybersecurity/germany-launc... [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/maintainers.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/maintainers.h...
nox101 3y ago
I'm not really sure what your point is. Nearly every open source project is started in the interest of the people who create it. Chromium is used by Electron and through that 1000s of projects. Element, VSCode, Slack, Discord, Figma, Signal, Twitch and thousands of open source projects. It's also the basis for Edge, Brave, Opera, and several other browsers. Flutter is also used by 1000s of projects both commercial and open source. Android is also used by thousands of projects, Fire sticks, Refrigerators, TVs, USB Stick Computers, Security systems, and on and. All of these are "helping the commons". I've personally written 4 Electron apps. 2 are open source. They wouldn't exist without it as I wouldn't have had the time to make apps for multiple platforms.

detourdog 3y ago

Before AT&T was broken up it was illegal to connect a fax machine or any other unauthorized equipment on their network.

ho_schi 3y ago
I think this wasn’t an either/or decision for the (drumroll) Regan administration. I’m also afraid that our Fax machines were even a priority. btw. Germany has a law which enforces the endpoint and declares that customers attach their own modems. Democracy allows citizen to decide - we can prioritize people’s needs over companies?
- detourdog 3y ago
  I was just setting the environmental expectations the American phone network. The real disruption was the move to data networks. Architectural I think AT&T needed to set-up an out of band channel to control the network separate from the data channels. This channel I think was the A channel of an ISDN line which had 2 b channels. I once had a Cabbie in NYC tell me about Citibank getting the first Fax Machines installed in NYC. They connected the Manhattan Office tower with the Queens office. They remember it getting installed and there was a long lang time before anybody used. The opinion was that it didn't make sense compared to all the better ways to move documents.

roenxi 3y ago

> The sovereign tech fund (from Germany) is a good idea. Isn't it a non-idea? I'm seeing articles saying they spend order of magnitude single digit million dollars [0]. That doesn't sound like it'd be enough to cover the costs of much. Just look at the list of maintainers of the linux kernel, for example [1]. Germany would be doing much better if they had a few big software corporations, they tend to contribute more money voluntarily. They should focus on cutting back red tape and fostering some entrepreneurship. > It was good and accelerated literally everything. This position doesn't make sense, look at the the AI industry appearing out of nearly nowhere and is moving so fast even the people in the market can't keep up. And is mostly open source. We might be approaching the limit of what is physically possible. No changes to the situation are needed if we want things to move faster. Maybe winding down IP protections to maintain the speed, once the lawyers get involved that'll kill some of the momentum. [0] https://sciencebusiness.net/news/cybersecurity/germany-launch-sovereign-tech-fund-secure-digital-infrastructure https://sciencebusiness.net/news/cybersecurity/germany-launc... [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/maintainers.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/maintainers.h...

nox101 3y ago

I'm not really sure what your point is. Nearly every open source project is started in the interest of the people who create it. Chromium is used by Electron and through that 1000s of projects. Element, VSCode, Slack, Discord, Figma, Signal, Twitch and thousands of open source projects. It's also the basis for Edge, Brave, Opera, and several other browsers. Flutter is also used by 1000s of projects both commercial and open source. Android is also used by thousands of projects, Fire sticks, Refrigerators, TVs, USB Stick Computers, Security systems, and on and. All of these are "helping the commons". I've personally written 4 Electron apps. 2 are open source. They wouldn't exist without it as I wouldn't have had the time to make apps for multiple platforms.