The only bigger problem is that many people in the bitcoin community refuse to consider deflation a problem - some even deny it is happening.
The consequence is that bitcoins are good for investors and speculators, but bad for actual sellers and buyers. People just hoard bitcoins, and sellers are constantly lowering their prices every day while no one buys from them, because who would buy in a deflation?
Bitcoin bubble will burst unless they manage to give incentive to actual sellers and buyers.
I am a fan of digital currency and currently accept bitcoins, but I am considering to stop doing that, unless bitcoin changes from investing commodity to a real currency.
This is a good project that attempts to add a bit of freedom back to the internet, but the DNS concept is not the right thing for a truly free internet. We need to take it one step further and get rid of domain names entirely, start building on the freenet concept and replace urls with hashes and domains with author signatures.
I am working on a simple system of that sort. I'm not sure I trust myself using crypto, so consider it a proof-of-concept. The system provides key-based domains, and allows sites to update them automatically over http or distribute them through websites.
This system can also work alongside ordinary DNS. When it is running, any domain you visit can provide a record and a public key. If the DNS record changes in future but the signed record isn't updated to match, the user continues to use the signed record.
The first version is probably going to be an HTTP proxy, but I'd like to make it a browser plugin if I can figure out how (it looked more difficult than I expected).
Example Scenario:
- I'm running wikileaks.com. I generate a key and upload a signed record with the IP.
- Clients visit wikileaks.com and automatically download the record and associate the key with the domain.
- Government sizes wikileaks.com domain.
- Clients are redirected to wikileaks.com-via-a-long-generated-domain...
- Clients are able to visit the site without interruption.
- I now register wikileaks.ch, and I use my key to sign an updated record with the new domain.
- Clients check wikileaks.ch and associate it with the key, then redirect any requests to wikileaks.com or the-long-generated-domain... to to wikileaks.ch.
I will provide a link when it's a little more complete.
I like him mentioning the programmer's mindset associated with GC being a big danger. Some people consider GC a magic bullet and refuse to think about what's happening under the hood. I do not consider that a good habit.
It seems to be far easier (i.e., possible) to go from a manual-memory-management style of development to an automatic one than the other way around. I've known plenty of Java-CS-degree programmers who just never could get the hang of writing C/C++ code without leaking stuff (and not just memory).
This is a key point that I think lots of GC proponents gloss over. Memory is not the only resource that needs to be managed. Open file handles, sockets, user sessions, whatever... they all need to be managed in much the same way as memory.
What bothers me is the trademark issue. Why should Oracle keep OpenOffice and the fork has to use another name? Trademarks exist to protect the public. Which of the projects is more true to the original one?
Trademarks are a legal thing - they are in effect "owned by someone". While the _code_ is open-source, that doesn't mean other people can come along and just use your trademark. Nor does it mean that a project originator should just have to "give up" the trademark to anyone who comes calling.
If you want the trademark to be owned by a neutral body, then by all means create a body to hold the trademark. That's a choice for the project originator (who usually holds the trademark). In this case there's no dispute that Oracle "owns" the trademark.
Leaving aside the legal implications of a trademark for the moment, your hypothesis is flawed at a social level. Who, after all, is "the community". Let's take an imaginary product - which was created by Fred and is now being developed by a "community" of 10 developers. There are say 200 users of the product.
Now 3 of Fred's developers decide to go and work on a fork. Does Fred give them rights to use his product name? What then does he call his product? How do customers differentiate between the two products with the same name? Since anyone can fork at any time, should we have 25 projects with the same name in the same product space?
Ok, 3 seems a little low - what about 6? What if 3 of those developers joined the project in the last month? Does their leaving count as more or less? What about if 9 developers leave?
How best then to determine which is best for the community of users? Who determines which project is "more true" to the original project? what criteria do we use to measure"trueness"? Does the language dictate trueness? Does the location of the original project lead?
In other words, your point is completely moot. Oracle gets to keep the name because they own it. period. (Although it seems they might now be prepared to give it up.) People have the right to fork the code at any time they like, but it's not in our interest to allow them to use the same name. The public is best served, and protected, by changing the name of forked projects. Anything else is just worse.
It is not that easy - that's why I added the comment - to start the discussion about open source and trademarks.
From wikipedia (sorry):
"Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service. By identifying the commercial source of products and services, trademarks facilitate identification of products and services which meet the expectations of consumers as to quality and other characteristics."
Trademarks exist to protect consumers, not the "owning" companies. In case of open source projects, this does not work so well and there are problems you have mentioned in your reply.
The "protection" you speak of is that consumers can associate a producer with a product. In this case the producer of the original product was Sun which is now part of Oracle. Thus someone who gets an update for "Open Office" is getting it from the one true source for Open Office.
The freedoms provided by the Open-Source license allow someone to fork that code to create a "new improved product" - but that product can't be called "Open Office". In this way consumers can't think they're getting x and end up with y.
If the consumers are concerned about Open Office, then it's their choice to go to Libre Office. They are in effect opting-in to a change. Changes of this nature have to be opt-in, there's no way around that.
Allowing multiple people to use a trademark, or worse encouraging court battles over who is the "one true heir" to a trademark would not be in the consumers interest.
Clearly a fork can not have any claim on a product name because if it did there exists the possibility for infinite forks, and infinite products with the same name. This in no way serves the consumer, and specifically it does not facilitate the identification of the product, not does it serve to identify quality or other characteristics.
In some countries, when trademarks are transferred, there must be a continuity in the underlying product or the trademark is lost. (You cannot just buy a famous trademark and ship something completely different with a sticker placed on it.)
Anyway, as you stated in the last paragraph, there may be an infinite number of forks, and that is the core of the problem with trademarks and open source. At the moment of forking, the source codes is identical. Then they start to differ. Which one is truer to the original one? Software is not a shoe. I see the continuity of a software project in the philosophy behind it.
Who is the true producer (the one that guarantees the "quality" for the consumer) in this case? The organization or the community? Which part of the community?
In my opinion, this is a big problem that needs to be solved in the future. Maybe using a trademark are not a good idea for an open source project...
"In some countries, when trademarks are transferred, there must be a continuity in the underlying product or the trademark is lost."
If you say so, but it's certainly not the case in the US, or most other countries. Ford for example regularly resurrects names like Mustang, or GT40, and there is seldom any continuity in the underlying product. BMW bought Mini from British Leyland, and developed a completely new car, which pays homage to the Mini shape, but there is no continuity between the two products.
In software there are endless accounts of "complete rewrites" which ship under the same name as an earlier product.
I think trademarks work perfectly well in the Open Source space. The project originator (usually) owns the trademark - others are free to get their own name. In this case it's pretty cut & dried. Oracle owns the product Open Office. Anyone can fork it, but the one true "Open Office" is the one from Oracle.
Now you may argue the merits of the fork surpassing the leader, and if customers buy into the argument they can "opt in" to the new fork. That's their choice. I don't think this hurts consumers, and I don't think it hurts Open Source.
"In some countries, when trademarks are transferred, there must be a continuity in the underlying product or the trademark is lost. (You cannot just buy a famous trademark and ship something completely different with a sticker placed on it.)"
[Citation needed]
In some ways you're technically correct I guess, but you're phrasing it in a way that leads to depictions of reality that are widely inaccurate. The thing is that you can't apply trademarks from one business domain to another willy nilly; but this has nothing to do with the transfer of them. (e.g. if I sell apples under the brand name 'chiquita', that may be a problem, trademark-wise; but selling tv's under the name 'chiquita' may not be). This has nothing to do with the transfer of the trademark.
Then again, I don't claim to know anything more than the generalities of trademarks in just a few countries, so I'm interested in examples of your points from specific legal systems.
Wikipedia is incomplete here, or flat out wrong, depending on how you interpret the article. Trademark doesn't exist solely to protect consumers, it has multiple functions, of which protecting consumers is one, and protecting companies against unfair competition is another. So your last sentence is incorrect - it does exist, amongst other reasons, to protect the owning companies.
I'd say LibreOffice is a better name. 'Open' is one of the most overused and diluted terms in tech. 'OpenOffice' sounds like a floorplan or an error state when the last person leaves without locking the door.
And, for the average user, does it matter more that the software is 'open' (whatever that means), or that it is 'free'/'Free' (as hinted by Libre)?
I'd say Oracle did the fork a favor by zealously guarding the old trademark.
In addition, the first 3 pages of a google search for "free office" does not turn up libreoffice (the first hit is OpenOffice). I'm sure this can be fixed with a bit of SEO, but I'm afraid TDF isnt thinking about its target demographic: non techies.
native english speakers - by which I mean USA, Canada and UK - know what libre means.
It's like the word "bazaar" - even if you say "baajaar", you will get most Indians to understand the meaning.
close to 90% asians will not even know the meaning of Libre even if you write it down.
Please understand, I am not debating the relative merit of using the word "open" as opposed to "libre" as a branding exercise - people just dont know what libre is.
They don't need to know - if they care, they can learn. How many people knew what "ubuntu" meant before the Ubuntu distribution? How many people know what "ubuntu" means now?
agreed - but the problem is two fold. I can say ubuntu to a person on the street and they remember it, because the word is phonetically easy. Libre isnt.
Again, this is not about branding - "libre" is a word that is extremely difficult to pronounce, read and remember for a lot of asians.
3D domain names are hot with domain investors so I would suspect this was not an example of domain name front running, especially if it was a week later.
I doubt those are habits, they seem more like abilities. A lot of people have these abilities, but great innovators can also manage themselves and actually do something...
After reading the article, I am not convinced, we should copy the techniques employed by porn sites when building all "ordinary" sites. On a porn site, the content variability is low - it is easy to pick one video, promote it, and it would probably satisfy all viewers to some degree. On a normal site, each user wants something else and pushing one video may annoy 90% of viewers, because it is not what they are looking for. On a less emotional and more informative site, you have to be less pushy.
I agree, this technique is definitely not for all sites. I'm specifically talking about web series, where there are usually some fairly obvious entry points. For a bigger content aggregation site or similar, you'd need another approach.
If I were given questions like these, I would politely refuse to answer them explaining they have nothing to do with the important things a typical software developer does.
Having a solid portfolio of past successful projects to demonstrate your abilities (including participation in a open source development) is way safer than being able to solve artificial problems.
And we would politely end the interview and not call you back. Questions like these are not made to decide who to hire -- They are made to establish a base level of competence.
The ability to answer these questions does not prove anything.
However, the INABILITY to answer these questions says quite a lot.
The only bigger problem is that many people in the bitcoin community refuse to consider deflation a problem - some even deny it is happening.
The consequence is that bitcoins are good for investors and speculators, but bad for actual sellers and buyers. People just hoard bitcoins, and sellers are constantly lowering their prices every day while no one buys from them, because who would buy in a deflation?
Bitcoin bubble will burst unless they manage to give incentive to actual sellers and buyers.
I am a fan of digital currency and currently accept bitcoins, but I am considering to stop doing that, unless bitcoin changes from investing commodity to a real currency.