Scott A. Yoder (syoder@ims1.imagestream-is.com) writes:
> David S. Miller (davem@redhat.com) writes:
> >
> > Now that's some ugly code...
> >
>
> Thanks. The ugliness is inversely proportional to the amount of coffee I've had.
>
> I know a lot of programmers who, like me, are very self-consious about their work.
>
> They are never really satisfied with their work, know that it could be done
> better/faster/smaller, and are almost scared to show their work to anyone for
> fear of being laughed at no matter how good the code may be.
>
> And now that I finally have software that I feel confident in what happens?
>
> I get slapped in the face by God himself.
<snicker> I guess this business isn't for those with fragile egos ;) We're about to kick a beta out for a new server-side scripting language that is so easy to learn, it's pathetic. It's designed to suck data out of databases and stuff it into web pages. DHTML for the simple-minded ;)
We've been having this *huge* debate internally over (1) do we go open source and let support/consulting drive revenue, or do we go binary-only and let the development side pay their own way? It's a huge problem, and being in the middle of the fray, I can understad both sides. I'd like to be able to make a living off this, but I'm so afraid of getting ripped off it's not funny. And, of course, there's the Miller Effect to contend with - no matter how good your code is, there's always someone out there who's going to make a comment about it's esthetics or style - and I like having my code laughed at as much as the next guy. People who know me for a while have taken to calling it the Carp Effect - the closer it ets to release time, the uglier the code gets because of the hacks and bug fixes!
> I understand your gut reaction to the press release, especially with the number
> of companies who are trying to "make a buck" off of the Linux bandwagon
>
> I get as pissed off as any other member of the community when I see companies take
> advantage of Linux.
> We had to sign some crappy NDAs with SDL to be able to use their WANic DDKs.
>
> That's the reason we can't distribute the source code to everything. I hope
I understand the rock/hard place - everyone's got to eat. But Diamond finally gave in when they realized they were missing a huge market by making people sign idiotic NDAs. NDAs for public hardware products don't even make any sense - you *want* people to use your stuff, and the best way to do that is make it as easy as possible for people to write to your APIs and to write drivers, and you don't do that by going to NDA route. Penny wise and pound foolish.
> The code is at a point in time where it needs a re-write. It has been shaped and reshaped
> into its current form mostly by the sales department. You know, they want to sell
> what hasn't been developed yet. I've seen the Linux kernel take on some amazing
> transformations during the development stages (usually after a production release like
> 2.0, 2.2). Structures are reworked, major semantic changes are introduced, whole
> subsections are rewritten.
The difference is, most of the kernel development has been driven by Linus - who has made a lot of technically sound decisions, and stuck to his guns even when people wanted him to do the "easy" thing. I commend him for sticking to a course that will allow Linux to grow and be the OS of choice for the forseeable future for PCs.
And I know what you mean about a rewrite - we haven't even gotten the beta out the door, and I've already started planning for version 2 :)
> I hate binary driver releases. I'm one of those guys who will beat the hell out
> of a company for source code especially for Linux software.
>
> I hate the position I'm in because my hands are tied.
>
> I can't release the WANic source code because of that damn NDA with SDL. I also can't
> release the Frame Relay source (as written) because of similar licensing problems.
>
> So I rewrote the crap they had with a design that allowed me to release as much of the
> source code as I legally could.
You might want to consider having someone else who has never seen your code do a rewrite. That would avoid the licensing issues.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Apr 15 2000 - 21:00:11 EST