Re: Richard Stallman is responsible for the shrinking economy

Jon Kirwan wrote:
"On Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:00:39 -0500, Walter Banks
<walter@bytecraft.com> wrote:

przemek klosowski wrote:
>

On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:47:52 -0400, Walter Banks wrote:
>

At that level of software products you are right, but that is only

part

of the story. The open source has put a lot of pressure on

innovation in

software technology. When expectations are that software products

are

low or zero cost there is less potential reward for taking

speculative

risk exploring new ideas.
>
The whole industry suffers. We are using operating systems that were
designed 20 years ago, running for the most part on processors with
instruction sets designed for hand written assembler.

>
Walter, you obviously have a track record of innovation in this

industry

that gives you first dibs on speaking on this topic, but I just don't

see

your point. Are you claiming that the progress in embedded technology
in the Open Source era, which I would arbitrarily define as the last

10

years, was significantly impaired? I just don't see it this way.

>
The open source has had the effect of putting price pressure on
innovation in software technology by making lowering the potential
reward ./ risk ratio. The open source movement has not embraced
standards and has not generally participated in the standards process.

I assume here you are speaking from your own experiences with the c
standards processes.
Since you probably have some ideas about this, how would a single
representative be selected and representative of the "open source
movement" in the standards processes? I mean this seriously. I'm
curious how that might be made to work well and I'd like to hear your
thoughts about it.
It might be that the well-worn paths in the standards processes are
tuned, more because of historical circumstances, to the traditional
models that existed earlier and it may be expecting a lot to imagine a
situation with an "open source movement" working without some
significant adaptations.
In the above, I am intentionally conflating "open source movement"
with GNU c. I know I'm doing that "on the table." I intend it as a
prod to ask you to tease the two things apart, again. In so doing,
that I understand the comments better.

GCC has not participated in any meaningful way in WG14 the
ISO international standards group (represented in the US
by ANSI). What is more disturbing is GCC has not made a
significant attempt to be ANSI/ISO compliant. The test suite
distributed with GCC is a regression list of past bugs and
development \test cases not a language syntax test of organized
code generation test.

Well, that regression list is for obvious reasons -- in the flurry of
contributed activity unlike what a single organized group working
together experiences, to "form a floor" beneath which they cannot
(hopefully) sink. Clearly, it's needed.
What you are really talking about is the ANSI/ISO compliance and
participation. I am already asking you above about how that
participation might meaningfully take place -- in a room _full_ of
people representing commercial interests, it might be interesting --
at a minimum. But if you feel it can work, I'm interested in hearing
how.
As for compliance, I have to admit my own ignorance. Can you
elaborate with some examples so that I can understand and comment?

This thread has generally shown respect for IP rights and licenses
the exception has been respect for standards. C standards
organizations are partly paid for by publications to users.
(Standards participants are not paid) It is disturbing that
some of the strongest advocates for open source are also willing
to violate standards copyrights and undermine the organizations
that help everyone open or otherwise.

Do you have any insider information or educated guesses about why it
is that FSF hasn't participated, or other significant groups in the
open software movement? Other than just to say that you are concerned
they haven't participated more? Frankly, I've only some vague guesses
about it and I fear most of them are rather ill-informed ones at that.
I'm curious not so much about the simple facts you claim as about why
you think they have come to be that way, today?

The proliferation of standard platforms, . . . enabled an amazing
acceleration of
novel, innovative things. Open Source can't claim the entire
responsibility, but it certainly contributed to the overall climate of
interoperability.

>
It is a question of degree. Academic innovation based on the GCC
or other FOSS core has been limited. There are a lot of major
University projects that just have not moved the technology forward
in any significant degree.

I think the wider thesis you propose isn't about academic innovation.
Taking your larger arguments here as a whole, you seem to me to be
complaining that this lack of innovation across the board -- academic
and commercial.
In the commercial spaces, I tend to agree. On the academic side, I
don't as much. I have pulled down and had a chance to read a few from
lots of very good papers coming out over the last decade and a half --
all of which date well after the (now) ancient 1986 version of the
Dragon Book and JR Ellis' excellent Ph.D. thesis on Bulldog (some of
which _could_ be applied well today, but isn't.) My limited exposure
sees more of a lack of delivery, and less a lack of good research.
But on that lack of delivery, I might take your point that GNU c has
had some impact in inhibiting risk taking. You'd know better than I
would about that.
Another facet that crosses my mind is the sweeping change in those who
consider themselves programmers in my lifetime. In my earliest days,
you were pretty much a graduate of some kind -- often physics -- and
this meant a very high level of caliber could be expected. And
"consumers" were very large corporations that could afford the custom
built, air conditioned rooms and the near-million-dollar expenditures
for the hardware. Companies hired the best on all sides, and got it.
Today, computing is accessible to nearly everyone. I've already
commented before here about a student coming up to me, complaining
that the 2nd year course seemed too hard and that maybe their choice
to choose a CS degree instead of an accounting degree was wrong... But
when, when CS degrees didn't exist and people got into computing from
the physics or math departments, there was no such question in
anyone's mind I ever met. Not on the radar scope. But today, we have
almost anyone with almost any level of native talent becoming
programmers here and there. Not bad. Not good. Just different. And
the marketplace itself, because of that, is also different. And so
are the relative levels of research for various areas, I suppose.
Maybe everything is just a two-edged sword. With choice and options
and lower prices for consumers, there is a reduced level of innovation
due to lack of excess profits to invest in research, for example. And
a different consumer type, as well. A practical balance is probably
the better we can hope for, if so. I wouldn't want the pendulum swung
to one side or the other. In any case, there is no going back.
Accountant types ARE choosing careers as programmers. It's life in
the modern world.
Anyway, I'm curious why you think it is important GNU/FSF folks get
involved in the committee activities and how they might meaningfully
do so. I would have imagined you didn't care, before your comments,
because the standards activities go on through thick and thin and with
hardly a word or complaint. Now, I wonder why you think this is
significant. Unless all this was really just about the impact on tool
developers making enough to innovate and maybe where you conflate
these two together because you see the close connections better than I
do.
Jon"
I used to study space engineering with a lady who had become hired by NASA as an electrical engineer. She has recently gone to a board of a bank.
A then workmate at the European Space Agency planned a career change to the European Central Bank. We all thought that it is a strange career change. Within weeks he left the ECB and returned to ESA explaining that the ECB's problems are political whereas ESA's problems are technical.
Sincerely.
Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester
http://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/VHDL