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Messylaneous for 2010/05/27: destroying flash, Unix, programming

I had a sudden buildup of things to link to.  It’s three items, but there’s enough info here to eat a few hours…

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Things that are done

There’s a number of things that all came together in the last 24 hours or so, which means: bullet points!

  • Jen Lentfer took my suggestion and ran with it.  He’s got an update to Sendmail 8.14.4 on the way too.
  • Binary pkgsrc-2009Q4 packages for DragonFly 2.4.x/i386 are all uploaded.
  • I finished a build of pkgsrc-2009Q4 for DragonFly 2.5.x/x86_64 – take a look and fix some of the broken items, if that interests you.
  • Weekend reading: check out this Trivium post as there’s some interesting historical items.  I may try that LackRack idea in a environment that doesn’t fit a normal rack well…
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The best way to do open source.

It’s the weekend, so it’s a good time for a digression.  This blog post from Matt Trout describes a lot of the code work he’s done for Perl, and what he thinks the best contribution is.  The important part is the end of the post.  He notes that for all the code he’s added, the best return has come from encouraging others to contribute.  The net result has been a magnification of effort, as more people donate time.

The reason I’m posting this is to note that DragonFly, as a community, has been excellent so far at providing a low-drama environment for people to have ideas and contribute work.  Keep this in mind; the best benefit to DragonFly isn’t lines of code, but people welcomed.

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License reading

Here’s some lazy Sunday reading about software licenses.  Before you panic and quickly click away to something more fun, these are not flamewars.

This InformIT interview with David Chisnall of Étoilé talks about various things, but has an interesting note about BSD code and Apple about halfway down.

I think this is a much better way of encouraging corporate involvement in open source than legal bludgeons like the GPL. The BSD license is easy for even a non-lawyer to read and understand, so there is no confusion when using BSD-licensed code.

I’m thinking about this because there are people who still can’t figure out the difference.

Along the same lines, I was surprised by the number of open source programs found just by license listing in the new Palm Pre.  I wish I had a spare $200.

Wandering even farther off topic, is Étoilé what Windowmaker should have evolved into?

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More media reading

I linked to articles from last week’s issue of the Economist before, but now that I made it to the other end of the magazine, there’s another one of interest that doesn’t mention open source but still relates to it: An article on intellectual property that covers how to handle antitrust legislation and companies where the property is mostly virtual.  Useful to anyone who has dealt with the GPL and/or Microsoft.  (i.e. everyone)

Also, not really open source related, but computer games can be good for you.  I really like this magazine – not because I agree with them, but because they at least examine things in depth, and avoid the usual computing blunders you see in print.

If you don’t want to read the whole magazine yourself, there’s a nice summary available.  (that link covers the previous week; recap of this issue possibly this weekend.

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Roguelike roguelike hacklike

Two recent roguelike items:

Gamasutra has a 4-page article about Rogue, emphasizing its origins being intertwined with the original BSD UNIX.  Read the comments for some BSD history, from that actual people involved.  (via)

The latest @Play column about roguelikes is very long, and that will not be a surprise after you read the title: How To Win At Nethack.  I find articles like this fascinating, but then again, I also enjoyed reading through the AD&D Dungeon Master Guide for the charts.