The Bikeshed

Q: Should questions regarding licenses and usage of OSS from other sites be migrated here

hey again :)

Trevor Clarke

1:33 AM

Hi

Why is no one posting anything

Meta Data

10:51 AM

0

I was looking for an answer to a concern of mine and occasionally found it in StackOverflow and it is closed as off-topic which it is there, but I think that the question is pretty on topic in here. Some of the examples below do feel like being a bit off-topic or too broad and might end up closed...

discussion

Meta Data

1:51 PM

-1

Q: Scavenging questions on-topic in the site from other SE sites

As a follow up on my previous question Should questions regarding licenses and usage of OSS from other sites be migrated here Should we start re-posting questions from SO which are tagged as licensing? If we are to do so, shouldn't that be task for mods so the site does not get flooded ...

discussion

Stack Exchange

2:03 PM

Do you need me to do a quicksort on the whiteboard or produce a generation of offspring or something? It might take me a bit, but I can do it.

2:19 PM

Does anyone know what the deal is with ParrotBot?

@Martijn It's @Zizouz212 's bot

it needed a little rep to be able to chat

I see

It was a little unsettling to see what seemed to be a bot answering questions

and then editing them based on feedback

2:35 PM

Oh lol

:D

If only it could...

You can go check it out!

ParrotBot, In the Skies, Flying above...

31 5

licensing

2:49 PM

@Martijn it's happening!

oh dear

find Sarah Connor!

@TrevorClarke I'm here, what's up?

@ArtOfCode Anyways, have you contacted Creative Commons or FSF?

@Zizouz212 The word here is and. Yes I have.

Okay :)

@ArtOfCode oooh

2:57 PM

No responses yet though. Admittedly I haven't checked my emails in the last 3 minutes, but hey :)

You don't have instant telepathic communications between yourself and your email?

:P

I wouldn't hold my breath for the FSF.

@ArtOfCode you should check them again

They are being checked.

@ArtOfCode no luck?

3:00 PM

Nope

I'll check again in 20 seconds' time.

You must check in 10 seconds...

Still no luck. Honestly.

@Zizouz212 first check in 20 seconds

You'd think they have lives or something

wait 10 seconds

check again

wait 5 seconds

check again

3:02 PM

Seriously guys?

repeat the pattern

Compulsive email checking

I have 5 different email addresses... that's a lot of checking

Any points I should include in the email? Finally found an email, and not a forum

@Zizouz212 Let me give you a copy of mine

Sure

3:10 PM

Good afternoon,

My name is <NAME>, and I am contacting you in my role for the website [Open Source Stack Exchange](http://opensource.stackexchange.com), where I am a user.

OS.SE is a newly-set up site in the [Stack Exchange](http://stackexchange.com) network of Q&A sites, focused around the topic of open and free information. Since our launch a week ago, we have reached out to organisations such as the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation. The OSI has since contacted us in return, and we have worked out an understanding between the two of us.

3:29 PM

>>points give trichoplax 24

user153821

@ArtOfCode Changed points for trichoplax by 24. New total: 224

→ 102 messages moved to Chatbot Dev

>>stop

user153821

@Zizouz212 Bot terminated.

Does this work?

@Zizouz212 I'm running KB here deliberately

It's ready for first deployment to the masses

3:30 PM

Okay, don't make much noise

It won't :)

Q: Make the site about Open Information!

5:27 PM

4

Note: I understand this is very long, but be sure to read and understanding everything in this post. Alright! Day 6 into the beta, and we're about to introduce a new addition to the scope! The issue of neutrality has been big since the definition phase of this site. Conflicts and arguments over...

discussion feature-request scope site-promotion neutrality

This question has 109 up votes, and both question and agreeing answer are ranked fairly positively.

Shall we go through with this proposal?

@Zizouz212 109??

Sorry, 109 views...

I would think it's received quite a bit of attention

I think give it a while

An extra day?

How's this, to the end of the day, UTC time! :)

Bear in mind that you asked it yesterday, and the CMs haven't even handled my flag asking for a featuring yet. It takes far longer than you think on these sites to get a good amount of attention. Some of those views can even be the same person more than once.

I'd say wait until the CMs handle the flag at least.

5:32 PM

They haven't?

I've seen them browse around a bit

Well the flag is still pending

Interesting... Then in that case, I'll wait until about a day or two after that flag is resolved. Can you let me know when that happens?

Will do

Thanks :D

→ 1 message moved to Chatbot Dev

room topic changed to The Bikeshed: General discussion for opensource.stackexchange.com [bikeshed] [discussion]

6:03 PM

Afternoon @kdopen

Q: When the private beta ends will users keep current privileges when the threshold goes up?

5

Currently according to the FAQ the freshold for gaining certian privledges on the site are lower while the private beta is running: (note that reputation requirements have been relaxed to very low levels for the brief duration of the private beta only) What happens to users' existing ...

support privileges beta

g'day .. just stumbled on this question from another site ... bummer

You didn't know?

The changes to public beta aren't that big though

500 to close

1000 edit

2000 mod tools

4000 trusted

We'll be lucky to have enough rep to edit questions when it gets launched

Aye, but we'll have enough people to review suggested edits at least

launched fully that is. How long does public beta last?

6:05 PM

Anywhere from several months to several years

Averages about a year and a half I think

Ah, okay. With newbies coming in and upvoting answers and questions we seeded we should pickup to 4K pretty quickly

Who changed this to The Bikeshed?

ProgramFOX

24 mins ago, by ArtOfCode

room topic changed to The Bikeshed: General discussion for http://opensource.stackexchange.com [bikeshed] [discussion]

Moi

Okay, I saw it and I was wondering...

I thought that guy came back...

6:13 PM

All I know is it was the highest voted suggestion

So how did you two get to be the "owners" of this room?

is it just by talking loudly? :)

Preeeetty much

I was just assigned owner after a while

amazing how few people seem to come in here. For myself I don't have a lot of opportunity but it seems more people would be here rather than in meta

more reactive here

we seem to be picking up a few new people, many coming in with the minimum '1' rep

I have nearly nothing to do during the summer, so I spend a lot of time on this site :)

6:21 PM

Ah, summer ... nearly 40 years since I left school. Now I'm lucky to get a couple of weeks off each year. Ain't growing up grand?

It's fun :)

It's like, you are free, you may do anything you would like now :D

yes, but contrary to the popular belief of the the young and free .. you actually lose most of your freedoms as you get older -- or they get overridden by responsibilities. Which is a sad disappointment to many 20-somethings just leaving college

Well at least I have several years left :)

so enjoy it now

I will :)

6:25 PM

I have a 15yo daughter who's all in a rush to grow up and be like her big brothers. I keep telling her to slow down and enjoy but ...

I'm 15 too, but I'm the oldest...

7:08 PM

@kdopen What country is this?

7:21 PM

@ArtOfCode USA

Fair enough

I was going to say tell her A-levels are hell, but that's UK

I actually did high school in Australia

different system again.

When I did it, everything rode on the final exams, cumulative over the last two years in 6 subjects

No calculators for math-based stuff, printed log and trig tables etc. English you had to have quotes memorized from shakespeare etc

My wife did A levels

Ouch

Both of us in the late seventies

Yep, but it was more intensive than here in the US. If you went to uni, there was no remedial stuff. No-one got out of high school without calculus, 4years of general science and two years of two different sciences (I did physics and chemistry, the other alternative was biology)

Most people didn't need or go on to Uni with that kind of education

My last two years were English (lit and lang), chemistry, physics, 'geography' (much more than maps), math, and economics

Went straight into embedded systems from high school and have been doing it for 35 or so years without a degree. Even here in Silicon valley where I'm now a Chief Architect

7:43 PM

sounds "fun"

well, actual fun actually :D

Ever have the feeling you're missing much on education? I never went to uni either, but I feel like I'm missing a lot of theoretical basis

I regret to inform that FSF/CC still haven't replied

Nor have OKFN

8:02 PM

Nah, I do courses in my spare time. Over the years I've actually picked up a couple of AA's (first two years of College in the US) in Economics and Business. Even had the experience of being on the Faculty Advisory Board for a major UC Engineering School along with people with multiple-PhD's. You get some discrimination, and job hunting can be hard because the HR people just junk your CV

WhenI look back, I've been more engaged in the academic/theoretical side of software engineering than nearly all the graduates I've worked with (or hired, fired, managed)

Helped standardise three programming languages, developed and taught courses, reviewed a lot of books for publishers (pre-publication), presented at conferences like OOPSLA, could find emails in my inbox from some pretty major names in the business

I actually get more out of the courses I take now than a young/full-time student because I can apply the stuff almost immediately

One of my math professors used to turn to me whenever another student asked the traditional "When would I ever use this?" question :)

@ArtOfCode you might not get an informal reply from the FSF, and a formal one takes some time

@MichaelSchumacher Aye. We'll just have to see.

btw, does anyone know why Debian's Iceweasel browser fails to login to the chat?

Nope :)

What's it telling you?

There is a question on meta.SE with a rather unhelpful 'use a different browser ' comment

8:15 PM

Well if that's the only solution

trichoplax

Is the bug raised with IceWeasel?

Where's the question?

Q: Icecat: chat-login brigs to global-fallback

5

I am using GNU IceCat 31.2.0 on Trisquel GNU/Linux. When I tries to login into chat, http://stackexchange.com/users/chat-login brigs me to http://chat.stackexchange.com/login/global-fallback. I've tried following things but no success:- Disabled HTTPS Everywhere Cleared all history, cache etc...

support chat login

@trichoplax I hope to have provoked a more informed reply to that question, to have some more info for a bug report

@ArtOfCode that can never be a solution, only a workaround

I'm not familiar with browsers of any kind, just use safari :)

solutions require code-level identification of the problem

8:22 PM

@kdopen I hope I'll get there eventually too :D I really enjoy FP in my spare time, but my lack of math really shows there to me, and learning is fairly slow for me in that regard

@kdopen on you latest question, maybe edit "Is this a natural consequence of the open development model?" to "Is this a natural consequence of the pemissive development model?"? Or does that not align with your original question?

trichoplax

@MichaelSchumacher I hope that works out...

@Zizouz212 btw, did you succeed to join the #fsf IRC channel? I recall comments about being unsuccessful

Freenode has a Web chat interface, if everything else fails

@Martijn Not sure. It might be more specific to permissive licenses

@Martijn Perhaps the question is more about the consequences of starting out permissive - i.e. initial license selection

I can't remember quickly whether licenses usually prevent you relicensing derivatives more or less strictly

I think it's the latter - otherwise you could get around copyleft by forking and relicensing the fork under MIT or Apache

But then a stricter license removes the rights/freedoms

8:37 PM

copyleft (GPL) restrics you from non-compatible re-licensing, which includes permissive re-licensing, so the entire question seems geared to permissive licensing

How's that edit

?

seems to make the question more consistent

Thanks. So does the 'incompatible license' thing apply to the copyright holder (assume a single contribuor)? are they prevented from relicensing as more permissive?

I like the question, and it makes for interesting discussion. I'm not sure it's a good fit. I think it could be answered well from examples, and maybe counterexamples

no, in the single contributor case, there is never an impediment to change license, but you can never revoke licenses either

an answer would probably be 'this is part of the whole idea of floss'

8:41 PM

yep .. I give it 3:1 odds of being closed 'primarily opinion based'

that you can never revoke is only an issue from going from more to less restrictive, for obvious reasons

less to more

/me facepalms

to me whether that's good or not is the whole basis of the free software/permissive open source idea

yeah .. I might have an opinion but I'd rather let someone else answer. Perhaps someone who needs the rep

that you might have an opinion would go to show it's primarily opinion based ;)

:)

well actually, I often have opinions about purely factual answers .. like "yes, you do have to pay taxes"

since there is no restriction on it in chat, I would say this is the ultimate fate of most permissive projects that gain enough attention to be permissively licensed

8:47 PM

to make it less opinion base: only ask for examples, maybe?

*based

again, if that's a good thing or not depends on your initial goals

I don't really think that helps all that much, as that would invite an open-ended list Michael

yeah but that doesn't answer the "does this override" and "subverting he intent" parts

BSD/Apple obviously comes to mind

A counter to that could be BSD is alive and well

a counter to that could be that BSD is alive, but not well

I would expect that the fsf have written about this problem

well it's got 1 answer and no close votes .. anyway gotta go earn some money

8:51 PM

the standard points are from the one side, this is not a problem, this is working as intended, and from the other side, that this problem is the reason not to publish permissive

yep, it;ll be interesting if we get both answers and then see where the votes go

(must close this tab so I stop getting notifications)

Mnementh

@Martijn a copyleft license presents the same problem, if you change your mind and want to go proprietary the old sources can still be used.

it rather presents the inverse problem

either you can't go closed commercial, nor can others (GPL) or you can go closed commercial or copyleft, and so can others (permissive)

when you're the sole contributor that's different, you can still go commercial if it was GPL

or you go the GPL + CLA route, and you can still go closed/commercial, but can't incorporate from forks

Mnementh

@Martijn If you're the copyright-owner, you can relicense as you wish.