FoRK

I trust that you've read the excellent essay "And then there's Haskell..." http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20070219/044101.html (Edit: After further research if you were on Hacker news mid january last year this would in fact be old news, sorry for the unwitting repost)

How do venture funds not do better technical due diligence(or any at all)? They trust people and credentials -- it's not about the technical details. There's a great chapter in Randall Stross's "EBoys" about TriStrata -- which raised millions based on essentially nonsense claims of an "unbreakable" encryption technology. (The chapter is excerpted at the bottom of this message: http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/april00/0460.html )

>The terms "free software" and "open source" have a specific meaning in the software ecosystem. The former is defined by the Free Software Definition and the latter by the Open Source Definition, respectively published by the FSF and OSI. These definitions both require that the software is available for commercial use without restriction, among other things. Problem: The OSI did not coin the term 'open source'. OSI partisans claim that Christine Peterson coined the term at a strategy meeting in Palo Alto on 3 February 1998. However, the term and the concept was well known prior to that. Martin Tournoij does a decent enough job of collecting prior citations [1] that go all the way back to 1990. All the OSI did was take an existing philosophy, scribble some new restrictions in crayon, and called it Open Source(tm)(c)(pat. pending). Honestly, though, I do love it when this comes up. It gives me the opportunity to irk new guys telling them that Lyle Ball, head of public relations at Caldera, has an earlier citation than the OSI in the form of a press-release announcing Caldera OpenDOS[2][3]. :D [1] https://www.arp242.net/open-source.html [2] http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html [3] http://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pc/caldera/OpenDOS.701/license.txt https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504021

> No, open source means the same thing it's always meant since the term was first coined. See the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition: https://opensource.org/osd. Problem: The OSI did not coin the term 'open source'. OSI partisans claim that Christine Peterson coined the term at a strategy meeting in Palo Alto on 3 February 1998. However, the term and the concept was well known prior to that. Martin Tournoij does a decent enough job of collecting prior citations [1] that go all the way back to 1990. All the OSI did was take an existing philosophy, scribble some new restrictions in crayon, and called it Open Source(tm)(c)(pat. pending). Honestly, though, I do love it when this comes up. It gives me the opportunity to irk new guys telling them that Lyle Ball, head of public relations at Caldera, has an earlier citation than the OSI in the form of a press-release announcing Caldera OpenDOS[2][3]. :D [1] https://www.arp242.net/open-source.html [2] http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html [3] http://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pc/caldera/OpenDOS.701/license.txt

Haskell is such a great language. I've been recommending this book for a while now. If you are in doubt whether you should start learning it, read this post by Jeff Bone: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20070219/044101.html After I read it, I immediately began learning Haskell. Since then, Haskell made my brain melt multiple times. But it has also enabled me to build an expression parser and analytic differentiator that I use every day (among other things, but that's what I'm most proud of). Such a program would be a lot harder to create, if it weren't for Haskell's ridiculously powerful type system and pattern matching. Also, after learning the Haskell way of things, I recognized the reasons for many issues I had with code written in another programming language. Don't just go out there and do object-oriented programming because everybody else seems to do it, often it is imperative (pun intended) to use the declarative (functional) programming paradigm to keep you out of debugging hell. edit: clarification

It's a programming language + standard library. The particular feature of REBOL that makes is special is the ease with which you can define your own DSL within the limits of the REBOL lexer. This allows libraries for specific purposes, such as making UIs or parsing text, to be very succinct yet readable. A bit Lisp-y but with a stronger focus on what in Lisp would be macros. When first published, REBOL was way ahead of its time, having explicit support for a variety of well-designed DSLs before the term DSL even existed (or at least, was widely known). The downsides of REBOL always were its closed source commercial model and the lack of a strong community as a (probable) result therefore, plus the fact that by default, the UIs made by the built-in UI library look absolutely horrible, which isn't a big problem really but helps scare newcomers away. That one first downside seems to have been taken away now. A nice REBOL showcase is, IMHO, it's oneliner page: http://www.rebol.com/oneliners.html Plus the (excellent) associated commentary on some mailing list: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html

This an early 'open source' - it did not allow for free commercial use! http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html > an open source code model ... Individuals can use OpenDOS source for personal use at no cost. Individuals and organizations desiring to commercially redistribute Caldera OpenDOS must acquire a license with an associated small fee.

https://www.dankohn.com/health Though it hadn't been updated. There was a FoRK post on the 26th. http://xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20201026/066478.html

It was in use, both in software and in the world at large (especially the intelligence community). I suppose how it depends how you define "common" but "people use the term in official announcements and assume everyone knows what they mean" seems common enough to me. - The OSI claims to have coined the term in 1998 https://opensource.com/article/18/2/coining-term-open-source-software - Here is a use of the term, 7 times, and as the main object, from 1996 http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html - Here is a use of the term, as a proper noun, from 1993 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.wi…

Well, there are references of "Open source" being in use earlier; for example: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.wi… http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fall96/0269.html Especially that Caldera one seems pretty high profile. "Open source" has always been used as a generic term, because it's a very descriptive adjective+noun one. Trying to reserve such terms for one particular narrow usage seems like an fools' errand to me, which is why these discussion are being held all the time.

"world domination", specifically, refers to a long-running joke about the corporate-sponsored capitalist competitors to FLOSS. See [0] for an example of the joke being used to title a talk and frame business decisions. [1] contains a history of the phrase in the Linux world. Note that Linux and git share the same original author/designer. [0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-20… [1] http://xent.com/pipermail/fork/2002-January/008429.html

Java's type system and FP features are really weak compared to Haskell's :-) But it compares favourably with ES6's, until you start using ImmutableJS, and ES6 currying. Then Java lags far behind... I've always been deeply into it, and using it for years at work, so no good off-hand reference. I'd be picking one as random as any web search that you'd perform, sorry! I should never have learnt Haskell. It messes with your mind [1] whenever you write in any other programming language, yet you can hardly ever use it in practice. Well, certainly here in South Africa. [1] Obligatory link: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20070219/044101.html

left-pad not a BUILT IN language primitive --- NON-STARTER! Dammit people! http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html

Python is elegant, and my first real commitment to a language, but imo nothing beats Haskell in elegance (though scheme has a certain beauty about it). Perhaps this is just me being temporarily enamored though, I can't help but to link to this post: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20070219/044101.html Haskell and I have been doing well so far in the "RealWorld" and I hope it keeps going that way :D If not, I'll probably put more time into python and C again.

Thinking about Haskell, reminds me of this http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20070219/044101.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/23/microsoft_open_source_science/… Despite not being natural persons, corporations are recognized by the law to have rights and responsibilities like actual people. Corporations can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation Yeager said Stanford's lawyers asked him to review a copy of Cisco's software. He found his own work in it. Stanford officials in charge of licensing debated what to do. ``Cisco mess'' was the heading of one e-mail discussing the issue. Earnest urged a lawsuit and even raised the idea of criminal charges against Bosack. He e-mailed colleagues: ``The fundamental problem is: how do you negotiate an equitable agreement with crooks?'' http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/2001-December/007210.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

Not that I agree, but here's one from the thread: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20080128/048257.html

It was. You probably care not, but: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20080128/048253.html

There are occasional applications of the adjective "open" to the noun "source" or "source code" in Usenet articles going back to the 1980s, but it wasn't a "term", even after Adam posted this article to FoRK with the abbreviated subject line. Reading in 2019, you might be tempted to parse the headline "CALDERA. ANNOUNCES OPEN SOURCE CODE MODEL FOR DOS" as containing the subtree "((OPEN SOURCE) (CODE MODEL))" but it seems clear to me that it was intended as "((OPEN (SOURCE CODE)) MODEL)". So, no, I don't agree that it was "a term that was already in use". When Eric circulated the mail to get support from free-software leaders to change the name from "free software" to "open source", I read it, I read the generally positive responses, and I read Stallman's furious response, which I believe was the next day. I don't recall anyone claiming the term was "already in use". And I was an administrator of FoRK a few years after that message was posted; my first post was probably http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/nov98/0351.html. So I'm not just trying to reconstruct the history based on fragmentary documents. I also have my own memories. We also have this graph, which shows pretty conclusively that the term appeared suddenly in 1998 after Chris Peterson invented it: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=open+source+software&… You can see from…

> The phrase "Open Source" is not necessarily just the summation of the constituent words "open" and "source". "Open Source" is a unique concept with a unique meaning... and the de-facto definition of that concept, is the OSD[1]. The use of the phrase "Open Source" predates the very _existence_ of the OSD by years[1], so it's somewhat laughable to claim that people are "trying to muddy the waters and being intentionally disingenuous" for simply not complying with the OSI's attempt to retroactively redefine the phrase to mean something other than the conventional and obvious meaning. [1] The OSI was formed in February of 1998. The OSD had been drafted 9 months prior, in mid 1997. If, as claimed, the meaning of the phrase "Open Source" sprung forth from the ether with the OSD, then why, pray tell, is it dead easy to find uses prior to 1997 in which people are obviously referring to the ability to see the source-code and obviously _not_ referring to the ability to exploit it commercially? For instance, here's a post from 1993 on comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.wi… > If a developer wants money for shareware, paying the fee should automatically grant the user a copy of the source code for their personal use. Restrictions could prohibit modifying and redistributing binaries, but should allow distribution of "deltas" for bug fixes, etc. > Anyone else into "Source Code for…

The problem is exclusive containment. Folders/directories are an example of hierarchical exclusive containment. The author suggests avoiding the problems associated with this by getting rid of the hierarchy. However, the author is onto something: storing functions in a database. Using the file system results in exclusive containment (file can't be in two different directories - link don't count) that a database can avoid. If you are lost, think of Gmail's tags with nesting. You can still have the hierarchy but data can be "located" under different tags. A lot of times the problem is using the file system as the back end. Python's modules, for instance, do not inherently enforce exclusive containment; the file system imposes this constraint. I had a chat with Jeff Bone a year ago after I read his partially-related rant here: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html I wish I could paste everything he said to me in here; he pointed me to a lot of examples of good file system / graph database examples that get a lot of these things right. Quick further reading list: Original ReiserFS design, BeFS design, FluidDB, LUFS, and Tannenbaum's design for the directory services and file system of Ameoba.