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Open Source

Ask Slashdot: Building an Open Source Community For a Proprietary Software Product? 85

An anonymous reader writes: I run a company that develops scientific computing software. Our core product is a traditional proprietary application — we develop the software and deliver the "binaries" to our customers. We're considering changing our deployment to include all of the source code and giving our customers some additional rights to explore and extend it. The codebase is HTML/JavaScript/Python/SQL, so a lot of the code is available in some form already, albeit minified or byte compiled.

Because we are in a scientific domain, most of our customers use Open Source software alongside our product. We also maintain Open Source projects and directly support others. We're strong supporters of Open Source and understand the value of having access to the source code.

We also support a free (as in beer) version of the software with a smaller feature set (production and enterprise elements that individual users don't need are removed). We'd like that version to use the same model as well to give users that don't need the full commercial version the ability to extend the software and submit patches back to us for inclusion in future releases.

Overall, we'd really like to find a model that allows our core product to work more like an Open Source product while maintaining control over the distribution rights. We'd like to foster a community around the product but still generate revenue to fund it. In our space, the "give the product away but pay for support" model has never really worked. The market is too small and, importantly, most customers understand our value proposition and have no problem with our annual license model.

We've looked at traditional dual licensing approaches, but don't think they're really right fit, either. A single license that gives users access to the code but limits the ability to redistribute the code and distribute patches to the "core" is what we'd prefer. My questions for the Slashdot community: Does anyone have direct experience with models like this? Are there existing licenses that we should look at? What companies have succeeded doing this? Who has failed?
Hardware

Ask Slashdot: What Hardware Is In Your Primary Computer? 558

An anonymous reader writes: Here's something we haven't done in a while: list the specs of your main system (best one) so we can see what kinds of computers Slashdot geeks use. Context would be interesting, too — if you're up for it, explain how and why you set it up as you did, as well as the computer's primary purpose(s). Things you can list include (but are not limited to): CPU, motherboard, video card, memory, storage (SSD/HDD), exotic Controllers (RAID or caching), optical drives, displays, peripherals, etc. We can compare and contrast, see what specs are suitable for what purposes, and perhaps learn a trick or two.
United States

Report: Big Issues Remain Before Drones Can Safely Access National Airspace 129

coondoggie writes The story sounds familiar – while the use of unmanned [aerial vehicles], sometimes illegally, is increasing, there are myriad challenges to ultimately allow them safe access to national airspace. The watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office issued a report on the integration of unmanned aerial systems, as it calls them, in US national airspace (NAS) today ahead of a congressional hearing on the topic. As it has noted in past reports, the GAO said the main issues continue to include the ability for drones to avoid other aircraft in the sky; what backup network is available and how should the system behave if it loses its communications link.

Comment Re: Different colors (Score 1) 267

The effect the OP describes, where after lying on your side for a while the eye which is lower down sees things as slightly warmer (more red) than the eye that is higher up, is completely normal AFAIK. I notice it at least once a week or so. All my family members have confirmed that they experience the same thing--we actually discussed this in our family facebook group a few months back.

Since it seems unlikely that we all have tumors pinching our optical nerves, I'm guessing it's something that happens to everyone and you just haven't noticed it yourself.

Comment Re:n/t (Score 1) 278

Hi, statistician here.

For a single model to predict temperatures higher than what actually happens and for the result to be within the error bars is unremarkable. When all 73 models predict results higher than what happens that indicates some serious systematic bias in the modelling (assuming there wasn't selection bias on the other side, of course--if the heartland folk intentionally ignored models that predicted less warming than actually happened then that's a huge problem). If the models are unbiased ("right on average") I would probably expect about half of them to predict above and half of them to predict below the actual results. (It wouldn't necessarily be exactly half and half, because the error distribution is not necessarily symmetric, but it should probably be somewhere around there.)

I believe that climate change is happening, but I think we're probably generally overestimating both the size of it and our precision.. There are well-recognized biases in various steps of the academic/scientific system--obtaining funding, getting published, making a name for yourself--that encourage this kind of exaggeration of results, in terms of both size and precision.

This is my judgement as a statistician--a kind of meta-scientist, if you will. I have no expertise in climate so I can't speak to the soundness of the mdoels being used, but the statistical behavior of them does raise some flags.

Comment Re:Repatriation, yeah right. (Score 2) 389

I'd bet it's Leavenworth, assuming they let him live. The guy is now claiming "He was a spy" which means he is admitting to espionage. To me, that makes him no-longer a whistle-blower, but something quite different. He's admitting to being a traitor, which entitles him to a trial on charges that can carry some serious penalties, including death. I'd be surprised if they went for death, given he's still alive.

He is claiming that he was trained and worked as a spy for the US government, not (as you seem to think) that he spied on the US government for a foreign power.

Cellphones

Really, Why Are Smartphones Still Tied To Contracts? 482

Bennett Haselton writes: "It's not trivial to explain why cell phone companies find it profitable to sell phones at a deep up-front discount and make it back over a two-year contract. Why don't other companies sell similarly-priced goods the same way? (And why, for that matter, has T-Mobile found it more profitable to do the opposite, selling the phone and the service separately?) I'm trying to come up with an explanation that makes realistic and consistent assumptions about the stupidity of the buying public, and still makes sense." Read on for the rest of Bennett's thoughts.

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