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Why is this guy zed getting so much coverage? If you have something under the BSD license, you can do anything you want with it (complete freedom). This is no
by rick888 17y ago
Why is this guy zed getting so much coverage?
If you have something under the BSD license, you can do anything you want with it (complete freedom). This is not the case with the GPL license (proprietary apps are a good example).
This is why many people choose to use apps only under the BSD license.
- Zak 17y agoThe celebrity effect is present to a lesser degree in hacker culture, but it's still there. Zed wrote Mongrel, which helped make Rails a practical option for more people, so he's famous. That means he gets attention when he does something less noteworthy, like post rants against people who whine about what he's willing to let them do with code he gives away free of charge.
- drawkbox 17y agoHe didn't get famous from writing Mongrel. He got famous when he called Rails a ghetto. You can look this past up. Right or wrong that is what propelled him into the news. This is the same formula. I would say Zed knows more about marketing than he leads on because drama is one way to really advertise things. People and programmers especially, love a good versus, it is a natural, competitive, easily manipulated feature/function of psychology. It is possible that Zed was motivated entirely to write this just to have the GPL vs. BSD argument in public. Maybe that was the whole point.
- mattyb 17y agoIf that was the point, I'm glad he did it. I'd read both licenses before, but hadn't given their ramifications too much thought. I'm probably not speaking for just myself when I say that I used to believe that 'FOSS' == 'GPL'. The discussion about his (and Jacob's) articles has cleared up some issues for me, and I'm sure more people give the license choice more thought now.
- rbanffy 17y ago"He didn't get famous from writing Mongrel" His whole rant is because he didn't get famous for writing Mongrel. In fact, I (and just about everyone else) never heard of him before he called Rails a ghetto. And yes, I also find him very predictable.
- drawkbox 17y agoYeh, it is kinda sad really. A good engineer/software developer's job is to make things work, simplify them, and get out of the way. It is creative but you also painfully remove yourself from style in the software (other than simpicity, minimalism etc). If you have a creative side sometimes you need to let it out other ways. The backend is very forgetting. Zed is right, noone really does care who wrote it, they just want it and want it to work.
- redcap 17y agoIt's also nice to be paid as well. While I can understand saints who just contribute, I grok the argument that the author makes regarding making his latest package GPL instead of BSD-licensed if that will help him get acknowledgement and/or get paid. Sure an software engineer can be like an artist, but preferably not a starving one.
- jonny_noog 17y agoWell I would say it was a combination of the two that has led to whatever degree of fame it is that he now possesses. If he hadn't written Mongrel and been quite well known in the Ruby/Rails community, in close contact with some of the core members of that community, no one would have noticed when he did his "Rails is a Ghetto" bridge burning rant.
- grandalf 17y agoZed is a master of the stupid publicity stunt... It's annoying but mildly entertaining.
- snth 17y agoHe's getting so much coverage because his posts are interesting to read.