So this is the moment where everyone with a sufficient device / install marketshare decides they need to buy cloud expertise?
"Samsung will immediately benefit from having direct access to Joyent’s technology, leadership and talent. Likewise, Joyent will be able to take advantage of Samsung’s scale of business, global footprint, financial muscle and its brand power."
Samsung is (and has been) terrified that their handset business will be slaughtered in the race to the bottom of the hardware industry. They tried to create their own OS to give themselves an edge over other Android manufacturers.
Their fears have come true (and now it's even happening to Apple). Hardware is an incredibly difficult, risky business, and differentiation is now in the services/software arena. That's why Samsung, in particular, needs this acquisition (and others like it).
One thing that I never understood was how the Android hardware ecosystem never saw contributing resources to developing more efficiently abstracted core Linux + Android support for their hardware compatibility challenges as a competitive advantage.
Disclaimer: I'm not involved in that space, so maybe they've started?
Samsung is in a good position to utilize Joyent in Asian markets, better than most cloud providers, and given the "smart" features of most of their devices, and how much they probably feel they're leaving money on the table compared to even Android's Play Store, it makes sense... doesn't mean it'll work... but even if it only applies to Asia and Africa, where they leave the more firm Android in place elsewhere, it could be a significant boost.
I don't expect to see Samsung take on GCE, Azure or AWS directly though... and would be really unsure if I were a Joyent customer right now.
Well, buffering 4K video, while running other active services in the background... finally broke down and installed FB messenger again, and it's definitely better, but there are a lot of consistent apps that tend to be very bloated as it is.
Given how well React Native tends to work, and I have to be honest, I like the ecosystem structure better than most apps I've worked on in general, I can see it actually working out better in many cases.
> finally broke down and installed FB messenger again,
Prob not great for more advanced messenger functionality but Face Slim (https://github.com/indywidualny/FaceSlim) does notifications and simple/group chats fairly well.
What sucks is I was perfectly happy with fb web, until they started cutting features in mobile (can't post to a friend's wall, can't do a lot of things now). The biggest issue is FB the app didn't respect the environment/usability settings for extra large fonts.
The only thing JS has going for it is it's wide adoption. Basing a new language on it to run on low end devices just seems like a dead-end for me. At least the first link is to a typed subset of JS.
Samsung is a typical asian electronics company (has a hardware focused history and very good at it, but doesn't understand or respect software). I'm so glad that node.js is not under Joyent control.
Seems like the average complaints people have working at BigCo.
Compared to the kind of stuff that Microsoft, Apple have done in the past in the software world.
And I do not see how this is bad, maybe Samsung is trying to learn why 'Western' engineering is so much superior to 'Asian' engineering by this acquisition ?
Some of the rumors going on say that management back home is very provincial and are rigidly Confucian (hierarchical), which they enforce on their satellite operations. Also, your basic big corp in tech are quite internationalized from the start even at home; e.g. IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, Apple already employ those from many different cultures even in their home offices.
> And I do not see how this is bad, maybe Samsung is trying to learn why 'Western' engineering is so much superior to 'Asian' engineering by this acquisition ?
It depends if you want to be part of their learning experience or not! Chinese companies have adapted pretty well to acquisitions and satellites, so it isn't an Asian thing. Japanese companies have been known to have similar problems in the past and even currently (though it really depends on the company, and many have had a lot of time to gain experience).
Actually, Japan is another country that is notorious for not being as great as they should be at software, maybe there is a common thing going on?
Microsoft is a software company. Samsung is not. If you think they are, then you probably haven't used one of their bloated, buggy phones that they stop updating way too soon.
I have no personal experience working for Samsung but know quite a few who did work for their US team and most don't have a positive experience. I also know some who worked for other South Korean companies. Lets just say the Korean work culture is quite different than in a typical US company. Hopefully the Joyent guys will be shielded from all this.
I worked with two project managers from their US team STA (Samsung Technologies America). One was OK. The other one was a fucking psychopath. I'm talking about needlessly and viciously backstabbing all in range. Totally unbelievable. Never seen anything like it, and god help me I hope I never see it again.
Later, I visited their HQ in Korea and met some of their Indian and Korean development teams. They were competent but the work culture was toxic. People were expected to attend 11PM daily review meetings where the issues list was painfully re-read pointlessly and nothing at all was achieved. Koreans were expected to live in numbered company compounds, catch a numbered company bus and ascend to a numbered floor in a numbered company skyscraper after an airport security style physical check. Smoking allowed strictly twice per day in a designated corner of the compound. All movement is tracked. Psychotic Confucian management style. I honestly thought to myself: if this is a vision of the future, I want no part of it.
Then you should see the japanese way of working, it's also quite fun! I believe this is common in most of asia. I have worked in China and it's not quite different at all from what you're saying.
My experience in Shanghai/Suzhou is very different fortunately. Not very long days if not needed, high salaries and quite a bit of freedom. Very Western feel while we work with Chinese companies with no Western employees.
Working in China is way different from Japan/Korea, at least for the companies I've been exposed to. There is much more freedom in how you get things done, there is less hierarchy, there is more value placed on programmers (which is why Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese seem to come here to work in spite of the pollution).
China is definitely way better than Japan. Maybe imitation of all western products year over year could help them to have more western way of working style and etc but still culture is workaholic, robot like obeying, not criticising at all.
From what I understand Samsung is a huge conglomerate of divisions that have little to do with each other.
Samsung Semiconductor is happy to supply chips to Apple even though they're the biggest rival of Samsung Telecommunications the builds the Galaxy phones. Conversely Samsung Telecommunications may or may not pick Samsung chips for their Galaxy phones, it doesn't really matter.
So I guess it depends to what division they will be attached. If they're attached directly to the group, they may actually keep complete freedom and just have a different owner.
Considering Samsung has been known to push for proprietary technology (they tried to create market of Android apps that would only work on Samsung's phones) I'm little worried there is going to be some sort of new node.js fork that's incompatible with current one and has some weird licensing stuff or something.
What it has to do with it being Asian is the culture of conformity and group think; this is in stark contrast to Bryan's statement that at Joyent everyone leads and is led by taking individual initiative.
Don't know. There isn't even a word about Node in the statement from then CEO, but before today I didn't even know what the main business of Joyent is so I can't say how they and Samsung think it's important for them. Just figure, my first thought was "Samsung wants Node, but why?" :-)
Anyway, it's not tightly bound with Joyent anymore so even a worst case scenario won't affect ot much.
Having worked in a Samsung office for enough time to have an informed opinion, I can emphatically say that the "hardware focused history" has nothing to do with their lacking on the software front. They have some amazing engineers (especially at HQ in Korea), but the main obstacles are partly Korean culture in general (especially as it pertains to engineers) and partly the management practices of the company. The best things they develop (either in partnership or internally) usually never have a fair leg in the market. I'm certainly not apologizing for the company, just saying don't think the issues you see are directly the engineer's fault.
I don't remember the exact Korean wording, but a common phrase said by Samsung engineers (under their breath) in Korea basically translates to "I'll do what you say, but it's only because I'm at <name of a Japanese labor camp that I forget now>." My time there really made me appreciate how much better we have it here!
> They have some amazing engineers (especially at HQ in Korea), but the main obstacles are partly Korean culture in general (especially as it pertains to engineers) and partly the management practices of the company.
Can you explain the cultural aspects (and management shortcomings) in more detail for those of us who haven't experienced Korea? Thanks.
I only have secondhand knowledge (my brother worked at Samsung HQ for almost two years after grad school & a post-doc), but Samsung managers are often corrupt and treat their employees like trash. Foreigners have it a little better, they're allowed to go home at relatively more normal hours, but if you're from Korea and Korean, you do whatever the boss tells you or they retaliate hard since there are plenty of starry-eyed hardworking Koreans ready to take your place to work for the biggest company in & the pride of Korea. My brother wasn't completely immune either, they stiffed him on bonus pay by 50% on a max bonus year & lowballed him compared to all other foreigners by almost 2x compensation for similar credentials (our suspicion is because he's Korean - they refused to give him a reason. When he tried to go higher through a former Samsung VP relative of ours, who got a high ranking HR person to investigate, he got warned by his HR manager with an implicit threat), and he was a hotshot who finished his chemistry PhD at 25 at a top 25 US program who had his choice of jobs/academic positions. He ended up making it through by making a deal with his boss to leave him alone and my brother would avoid exposing corruption/bad decision making & getting him sacked (boss refused to teach or lend any resource for learning technical Korean chemistry terminology because his experience in American graduate school had him learning it on his own - it was explicit retaliation against western academia), and my brother still hated his life there (thought about suicide almost every day there); his first reaction setting foot on US soil again was "I love the taste of freedom!".
Whenever someone in HQ tells you to do something, you do it, and if not, you get punished, whether that's through decreased compensation or they fire you. You can be the engineer that tells managers that you can't draw parallel lines that intersect (metaphorically speaking), but they don't want to hear it unless the competitor proves them wrong with sales results - they are notorious for not innovating, but copying competitors. Samsung runs on waterfall from top to bottom. Oh, and if they tell you to do something early in the morning, you jump.
Samsung also tends to mainly promote Koreans - if you're not Korean and want to get ahead, you'd best look elsewhere because you're not likely to accomplish it. I hear this also applies to their American divisions as well, but I do not know anyone who has worked for them here. The family who owns the company has had some history with corruption in Korea as well, so this isn't too surprising.
More on the cultural side, Koreans can be very rude by western standards - it also is demanding on expectations. You're often expected to dress a certain way (this part is no different from most of the world, but disregarding norms is probably more harshly regarded in Korean culture than most), as well as join bosses & other co-workers going out to drink and doing karaoke at night. Deferring to father-like/older figures is built into the language with even how one addresses another, and that bleeds into how companies operate (& people treat each other - even being one month older can come into play unless you have leverage of some sorts). There are also built in opinions on processes, from parenting to schooling to work. Koreans tend to also be quite xenophobic/racist, even against Koreans who cannot speak Korean (maybe even moreso towards Koreans who cannot speak the language). Society sort of disowns those who are not immersed in the culture. Non-Asian foreigners are special, but they are excluded from much of anything of consequence (probably to avoid stirring the pot with other nations).
There's probably a lot more I'm missing here, but tl;dr if you aren't an extremely mentally tough person, working for a Korean company in Korea can crush you thoroughly. It is a different world, and people who do...
That's not a corporate thing, it's the culture of the entire country. Try not to condemn an entire culture just because you disagree with how they do things. From the perspective of Koreans, Westerners do lots of really unpleasant things as well.
There's also lots of very positive things about Korean culture, just like there are about Western cultures.
Just to provide another perspective, I'm an American anglo who has lived off and on for over 30 years in South Korea, speak the language near fluently, have worked in a variety of Korean institutions from a rural health center to a top research university. Along the way I have benefitted mightily from friendship with some great colleagues and much enjoy the rich culture and fascinating challenges of living in a rapidly changing society. Well-satisfied expats such as myself are not few in number. No surprise, the key is learning the language and using it for creative engagement with Korean society.
That said, I think it's fair to say that among many Koreans Samsung is viewed with respect but no affection. The company history dates back to the Japanese colonial period and is imbued with the pre-WWII Japanese zaibatsu mentality. What some posters are generalizing as "Korean" seems more the rather specialized local culture of Samsung. Personally, I would never work for them.
Haven't experienced a Korean workforce first hand, but as a Korean I can probably provide some insight into the culture.
In general, the culture is very hierarchical (respecting elders) thus seniority and age play a big factor in leadership. I would assume that this makes it very easy for mediocre (but good enough to survive) management to stay in positions far too long. Asian culture, but Koreans especially, can be masochistic1 and martyr2 like in their methods. In some ways this creates a tremendous amount of excellence, but it also creates soldiers who may not necessarily be incentivized to innovate, and those who innovate, out of cultural respect will tend to not dare "disrespect" seniority. Being a good soldier makes for career advancements.
Management can also claim the failures of the company as their own personal failures, rather than the gray collective failure of a group(e.g. japanese ceo's claiming company failure as their own), thus employees kind of get absolved of blame.
Work in Korea also tends to be a live at the office kind of affair. It's not uncommon for the white collar folk to go into work at 7a, and stay until 7-9p. Then go drinking with coworkers until midnight, and rinse and repeat. While this makes for very strong bonds amongst coworking peers and better teams, I would imagine that it also takes a toll on the mental capacity of the workforces.
Mainly, I wouldn't be surprised if work in Korea tends to be death marches all the time based on the martyrdome syndrome and masochistic syndrome for career advancement.
It's been a while since I was there but as a lowly US Army Private stationed there and working closely with Koreans old and young as an ambulance driver, there are a few things I still remember clearly.
Basic courtesy and being polite are pretty much universal, so try to be humble and keep an open mind and observe. Older people often are more experienced and savvy about how to handle something so being deferential to them is a no-brainer. You'll spot the incompetent ones soon enough and so continue being polite but ignoring their guidance.
One thing that drove me nuts but took a little while to figure out was that people would almost never say no to a request. I would ask if something was possible and they would pretty much always say yes, not wanting to disappoint, but I would have been better off hearing a 'no, sorry'. I wanted a realistic answer and theirs were often far too optimistic.
Me: "Mr Son, can we make it to Osan in 30 minutes?"
Him: "Yes" (always yes)
An hour later we show up late to another hospital with a very impatient air crew idling and waiting for our patient transfer. We would have all been better off hearing a "No, it takes an hour". Just one small example but this scenario repeated frequently.
I learned that when speaking to a group or doing a presentation it was customary to apologize for your inexperience on the subject and promise to do your best. Tim Berners-Lee could start a talk with "I'm sorry I don't know much about the World Wide Web..." for example and Westerners would laugh but the locals would be like "He's off to a good start".
Understanding this helped me get more realistic answers though. Even if I thought I knew an answer I would keep the question more open-ended to solicit a better response.
Me: "Mr Son, I'm sorry but I forget how long it takes to get to Osan, can you remember?" (said even after making the trip solo dozens of times in often difficult and stressful conditions).
Him: "Ah yes, there is new road construction halfway there so I'll teach you an alternate route to bypass it. We'll be there in about 40 minutes".
Had I not learned to ask a better question, I never would have learned his faster alternate route.
Korea was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed hanging out with the older Koreans who worked on our base, they were a constant source of good info once learned how to talk to them. I also had a 'ration card' entitling me to buy the occasional bottle of Crown Royal on base and give them, which always helped!
I've heard that too, I remember a story from a worker who said they put all the Engineers into a room and said they can't leave until an issue was fixed. Took them two days.
> Having worked in a Samsung office for enough time to have an informed opinion
That's Samsung proper. Not their incubator setup, which is different. Companies like Mapzen were bought by Samsung, but have a completely different culture.
There's a reason Samsung seems to be not that great as a software shop. I wrote up a long post on HN almost 2 years ago (God, it's been 2 years!!). I'm reposting the link here.
How do you come to the conclusion that the entirety of Samsung don't understand or respect software, when they clearly show great contributions to OSS? [0].
Well, in the case of Linux they are legally bound to provide the source code to any modifications they ship in binary form to a third party due to the GPL, I don't know what their track record is when they don't have to release the source code.
Yeah, this comment is ignorance at its finest. Mapzen, for example, was also acquired by Samsung, and it still operates as its own little startup, just with more financial security. Joyent seems to be going the same way. They will remain Joyent, but with support from Samsung.
Joyent funded most of node.js' development since 2010. Once node became popular and competing companies appeared, with the commensurate agitation and political fallout, Joyent became less involved with it.
In case anyone's curious, I blogged about the backstory of the acquisition.[1] tl;dr: We at Joyent are elated, and we believe that this will be a huge win for our customers, for our technologies and for the communities that they serve!
It's the first sentence of the linked blog post, and the meaning seems pretty clear - instead of waffling on about how amazing an experience it's been and how much they've learned blah blah blah they just say "hey we got bought by Samsung."
Congratulations. I hope Samsung nurtures the technical excellence at Joyent.
Please, please continue to develop your public cloud offerings. Having options other that the myopic, me-too, feature-matching, monoculture that is AWS/GCE/Azure is incredibly important.
That said, for my use profile, you guys need to work on your price competitiveness. Hopefully Samsung will inject the necessary cash for economies-of-scale.
I think a lot of hardware companies are still in the "smart" transition phase. In the sense that they've only been offering a product line with GUI driven software component for the past ~5 years.
Which means the larger companies* are probably on schedule for development to start slowing because of technical debt. And therefore solving that (modern development practices and open source involvement!) will become a competive advantage.
* Sadly, the smaller companies will probably always be hacked-together-MVP stacks on top of whatever release they started dev on
The Samsung TV I got came with a pirated copy of linux, which is quite a feat (came with a copy of the GPL 3, which is a clear breach of the GPL 2 only license of linux).
Linux has a specific amendment to the GPLv2 stating that it must always be distributed under the terms of the GPLv2, not the GPLv3 or any later version.
Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this? Software licenses are not all that interesting to me, I just like making things, but now I have to also read pages and pages of legalize for every single dependency. I thought it would be good enough to know most mainstream licenses, but apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even comprehend it properly.
It's starting to feel like I need to consult a lawyer before I could ever publish an open source project, and that's never going to happen. I'd rather just stop publishing.
> apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that, nor would I trust myself to even comprehend it properly.
The amendment is actually the first paragraph of the COPYING file. If you modify any of the terms of the license directy, you have to remove the preamble and refer to it as something other than the GPL.
The other option for modifying the GPL is to distribute a separate LICENSE file alongside it stating something like "this software is released under the GPL, except for <specific changes>". When this happens, there's almost always an FAQ somewhere on the internet describing what the changes are intended to mean.
So, basically - check the source files to see if they mention a license, then check if there's a file named LICENSE, then check if there's a file named COPYING. One of these should always point you to the right license.
Additionally, as a point, it's not actually a modification of the license, merely a clarification - see section 9 of the GPLv2, which states that the program must explicitly state that it is usable under later versions of the GPL to be usable under later versions of the GPL. The boilerplate text that GNU give you to put at the top of each source code file does that by default, but, it's not required.
Which in turn means that the only way to check whether code you're using is GPLv2-only and cannot be combined with GPLv3 code is to check the license header in every source file. I guess that's not too hard - I mean, Linux only has 40,000 or so source files?
Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this?
That is a good, honest question, but there is a different standard of expectations for some random programmer doing a project and one of the biggest, most powerful multinational corporations on the planet with business operations (and legal advisors) in most of the world's countries.
If Samsung has the legal muscle to go up against Apple and others in the courtrooms of the world, and the technical muscle to customize multiple operating systems for countless products, they have the resources to read and understand the Linux license. While inept bungling is always a possible explanation for any party, a more likely explanation for a license violation for something as fundamental as an operating system by any party with that level of resources (if one were to ever occur) would be that they examined the issue, understood the situation, and decided that they could probably get away with it.
> Honest question, how is anyone expected to keep up with all of this?
* ... apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that,*
From the point of view of a personal project it doesn't matter that much. If you accidentally breach a license and someone notices they'll tell you and you'll fix the issue.
It gets much hairier once money is involved (i.e. OS code used by a company like Samsung) but the process they need to go through is no different from the due diligence that they have to do when licensing non-OS code from other bodies (commercial or otherwise).
When transitioning from pet project to commercial interest things are a bit more muddy. In the case of an individual or small company making the transition there may be some pain as they are not initially setup for this, but in the case of a commercial interest taking over (buying the project, taking over the smaller company, employing the individual specifically to work on the project, just negotiating non-OS use of the code etc.) this is again covered by the same due diligence requirements they follow when dealing with commercial code.
> I'd rather just stop publishing.
This only affects making modifications to other projects or taking some of their code to supplement your's (in both cases you are creating a derivative work), and even then only if you subsequently publish the work (i.e. it isn't purely a personal or in-house project). It shouldn't stop you publishing work that is definitely your own, just chose a license that you do understand.
If in doubt, write it yourself. For bringing in libraries (as "write it yourself" is seldom completely practical for all but the smallest projects) keep to the "soft" licenses that you understand (in no particular order this for me is: BSD, MIT, CC, LGPL, ASL) and avoid the "hard" OS licenses (GPL proper) & non-OS licenses unless you intend to stay GPL or accept the limitations of commercial/other licensing, and ignore code under other licenses unless you have time to read and understand them. Also avoid code with no clear license.
This is why I won't use any third party library that's not available under a MIT/BSD style license (and likewise, when I release source it's always under a very permissive license.) I hate wasting time trying to parse legalese and I hate being strongarmed by viral licenses, and I wouldn't inflict either on anyone else.
About 3 years ago Samsung realised that they were having trouble understanding how to deal with free and open source software. They were actively recruiting people to help them improve on that area.
Source: I applied for the job. I didn't get it ;-)
They are legally bound to contribute their modifications back to Linux (if they distribute them), it may be a different matter when they don't have to.
I can't say I know either way, however I do recall their Tizen SDK licensing not being accepted as open source due to it only granting the right to use certain components on 'Tizen Certified Platforms'.
No.. they are obliged to provide the source... not contribute them back. (Although the cost of maintaining patches internally, makes it cheaper to contribute them back)
We use Joyent for nodejs microservices, chiefly any server side DOM manipulations (using jsdom), and it's been solid! Currently evaluating docker container management and will give Triton a go...
I'm happy for you. I love your talks and your passion for good software that goes beyond feature checklists and the bare minimum to ship and be patched later. Have fun and fuck Oracle, the anti King Midas of companies.
Bryan - hope you see this since I don't appear to have your email anymore. Do you guys have a list of maximums for Manta anywhere? Specifically object count - but node count/total storage/etc. I'm guessing that was part of the samsung testing :)
I always thought Microsoft/Google or the likes would acquire Joyent as it is good product fit. Microsoft chose linkedin instead :)
For Samsung this is all about IoT .Samsung wants to own both the devices and backend. A good move IMHO
> Joyent as it is good product fit. Microsoft chose linkedin instead
It's a good product fit, but the fit is so good that Microsoft basically built a more-complete competitor in the form of Azure. They built Joyent instead of buying it.
LinkedIn was different because Microsoft could never build LinkedIn itself.
Microsoft has good PaaS story when it comes to .NET stack. Especially product Azure App Service[1].All though it can technically host nodejs,java etc ,it still is based on IIS and windows stack. Joyent has more native offering for nodejs which could have been Paas for nodejs(Azure App Service for nodejs )
MS already has Azure, with an infrastructure built on their windows core... Not to mention having more services... and while Joyent's Docker story is really nice, MS seems to be heading in a very similar direction with the Windows Subsystem for Linux as Joyent took with SmartOS/Solaris, it's a poor tech fit.
I'm not sure where this will take things with Samsung, likely backend services to support their own "store" on their devices separate from Android. If it's internalized, I only hope they release more of their infrastracture tooling, which is very cool to say the least.
There is a world of difference between a new, untested implementation of Linux system call translation to a _very_ different type of Kernel on a desktop class operating system than the version on Illumos. The best thing Microsoft could do with their cloud is burn it to the ground and start again with Joyent's tech.
The work on desktop Windows and Linux integration is mainly for developer experience and making Windows attractive for non .net devs. Doubtful that it'll have an impact on Azure unless it becomes extremely mature quickly or if that was MS's intentions at all.
I'm ignorant on why Joyent is so superior to Azure. Can you give some reasons? As an outsider, Joyent looks like a small company with unproven (large, successful customers are the main criteria) products that cost more than the comparable solution from AWS, GC, Azure.
Joyent's tech is very good, don't me wrong, but I think this is a bit harsh.
- lx-branded zones and window's new layer are both doing system call translation---you're post doesn't contradict this but doesn't make it clear either.
- At some point lx-branded zones where equally untested.
- "Desktop class" is misleading because NT was designed for servers. Now yes Windows as a whole is hamstrung by a business model putting desktops and backwards-comparability first, but by definition the Linux layer can ignore a lot of Win32 precedent.
- Yes Illumos is Unix and NT isn't, but the difficulty in translating linux systems calls lies not with the ones backing posix-interfaces, but the Linux-specific ones. (Joyent devs can give you some great horror stories here.) It may be a bit harder with NT but it was hard already.
As Microsoft becomes the new IBM, except for XBox, their future revenue is firmly from the Global 10000 Enterprise space. LinkedIn gives them the entire database (up to date! SF.com doesn't give you that!) of decision makers in their target market and their web of professional relationships.
edit: I should have been more specific.. when an open source project is under a company's wing and it gets acquired, you don't know what can happen, even under MIT. Look at express recently. Since it's the under the Node Foundation now, this is not a big deal. Had it happened a short time ago, there may have been further turmoil in the community.
Given that Node.js has always been MIT licensed, that's impossible. That's one reason why it had a liberal license; just listen to Cantrill's Oracle rants sometime to get a better idea.
Cantrill advocated the fact that CDDL was copyleft as a good thing[1] (it's a bad license overall, but the point is the same) specifically mentioning that the fact that Oracle couldn't use new DTrace and ZFS improvements from the community was a good thing. I agree (though I much prefer the GPL).
So actually all of Cantrill's worries with Oracle exist with Node.js's license. I am sad when I see large free software projects licensed under MIT, we are doing ourselves a disservice by allowing proprietary software to take advantage of the free software we've developed.
[1] It's part of his Fork Yeah! talk about the fork that is illumos.
There are people out there like myself who are convinced that GPL is the most vile, fascist license out there.
On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL. I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux. I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa), but I'm even more happy that Linux isn't. <--- I do not represent anyone but myself, the position expressed here is my own and not of anyone else.
> There are people out there like myself who are convinced that GPL is the most vile, fascist license out there.
Not proprietary software? Not "open source" licenses that don't allow modification (which is also proprietary)? The GPL? The thing that gave us free software in the modern world? Well, that's certainly one opinon.
> On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL.
The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.
> I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux.
What are you talking about? Why do you care if GNU/Linux takes your code and modifies it? No damage is done to the original.
> I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa)
Actually, because CDDL is somewhat-but-not-really copyleft, many BSDs essentially have copyleft requirements if you enable ZFS or DTrace. Which is funny, given how much they go on about "freedom to make proprietary software" (something I'm against).
> I do not represent anyone but myself, the position expressed here is my own and not of anyone else.
> The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.
Wait until you discover the BSD license, which lets you do whatever you want with the code... you might get a stroke (:-D)
GPL gave me no freedoms, it gave me the GNU userland tools and GNU/Linux (illumos / SmartOS and AT&T SVR4 tools are just fine, thank you, do not want GNU!)
Luckily I don't have to license anything under the GPL, GPL cannot take that away from me as long as I don't link with the kernel code licensed under it, or derive code / work from it.
And I'll be extra careful I don't ever land myself in a position where I would have to license something under the GPL. Any other FOSS license is better than the GPL, I have no problem with open sourcing, and cannot wait to clean up my code in order to set it free.
But not under the GPL license.
Finally, CDDL is both FSF and OSI approved: the open source initiative looked over the CDDL license and deemed it to be in compliance with open source. I will take what is in my view their expert finding over your position, but thank you for sharing your opinion.
> > The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.
> Wait until you discover the BSD license, which lets you do whatever you want with the code... you might get a stroke (:-D)
Including someone taking my software, making it proprietary and mistreating users. I would prefer that less people use my code than someone doing that.
> GPL gave me no freedoms, it gave me the GNU userland tools and GNU/Linux (illumos / SmartOS and AT&T SVR4 tools are just fine, thank you, do not want GNU!)
Wow, so much vitriol for a license that actually created the world we live in today. I'm slightly impressed by how much you hate a license that gives users perpetual freedom. Also, why do you think that CDDL's weak copyleft is better than GPL? I understand, but don't agree with, people who hate copyleft altogether -- but you only hate the GPL.
> Luckily I don't have to license anything under the GPL, GPL cannot take that away from me as long as I don't link with the kernel code licensed under it, or derive code / work from it.
You can dual-license modifications to GPL code. I think doing that is dumb, but you can do it.
> And I'll be extra careful I don't ever land myself in a position where I would have to license something under the GPL. Any other FOSS license is better than the GPL, I have no problem with open sourcing, and cannot wait to clean up my code in order to set it free.
It's so sad that you don't ever want to make contributions to a large body of free software.
> Finally, CDDL is both FSF and OSI approved: the open source initiative looked over the CDDL license and deemed it to be in compliance with open source. I will take what is in my view their expert finding over your position, but thank you for sharing your opinion.
I know its a free software license. I'm just saying it's a bad free software license. The original BSD license was also a bad free software license (requiring you to add a line to all advertising about the source project).
> Wow, so much vitriol for a license that actually created the world we live in today.
Yes, and since that world is the world of GNU/Linux, it sucks, because compared to illumos and SmartOS, GNU/Linux is a vastly inferior product in terms of capabilities, performance, end to end data integrity, post mortem analysis, as well as storage, day to day system administration, and development capabilities.
I don't want to live in a world with those kinds of "freedoms". I don't want to live in a world where people who do not have enough experience, or do not care break my applications because they constantly mess with the core OS functionality in a way which breaks or fundamentally changes things, arbitrarily, because they can't see past their lone desktop personal computers, but they think they can, and they think they know what needs to be done. I don't want to live in a world where the core OS functionality like startup and shutdown is still in violent flux, along with everything else. If it weren't for GNU, if it weren't for GPL, we would not have the world we have right now. The situation is bad, so very, very bad.
I want to live in a world where my data is safe, where my operating system provides a solid foundation of end to end data integrity and guarantees me backwards compatibility so I can build good, reliable software, and when that software needs troubleshooting, I have all the tools I need to perform effective telemetry analysis. That world is a world without GNU/Linux, a world where SmartOS is the substrate and illumos is the kernel, and where I, and not the FSF, hold (sometimes joint) copyright to the work I did.
If I had it my way, copyright law would be completely abolished, making all of this license nonsense completely pointless, and it would be survival of the best coder / company: if you are really so good, beat me at my own game, like it has always been on the cracking and the demo scenes.
> I'm slightly impressed by how much you hate a license that gives users perpetual freedom. Also, why do you think that CDDL's weak copyleft is better than GPL? I understand, but don't agree with, people who hate copyleft altogether -- but you only hate the GPL
GPL license attempts to dictate to me what and how I am to do with my own code I write ("you must license all derived work under the GPL").
I do not accept that, even if I firmly believe that open sourcing software is the right thing to do, and believe that open source, free software is the way to go.
> > I'm slightly impressed by how much you hate a license that gives users perpetual freedom. Also, why do you think that CDDL's weak copyleft is better than GPL? I understand, but don't agree with, people who hate copyleft altogether -- but you only hate the GPL
> GPL license attempts to dictate to me what and how I am to do with my own code I write ("you must license all derived work under the GPL").
> I do not accept that, even if I firmly believe that open sourcing software is the right thing to do, and believe that open source, free software is the way to go.
The CDDL has the same requirement, except it's file-based. What are you even talking about FFS.
>What are you talking about? Why do you care if GNU/Linux takes your code and modifies it? No damage is done to the original.
This is more about the fact that when they take it it's worse for the project than a proprietary fork. When BSD/MIT/(other permissively licensed code) is used, modified, and re-licensed to GPL, the permissive project can't take those improvements without also re-licensing. The CDDL indeed saved illumos from being cannibalized and disappearing as a community. Had its features been easily ported to Linux without a licencing problem, the project would probably not have survived, simply due to the fact that there would have been few reasons to stick with it. It's not just about what code is out there, and you should know that.
>Actually, because CDDL is somewhat-but-not-really copyleft, many BSDs essentially have copyleft requirements if you enable ZFS or DTrace. Which is funny, given how much they go on about "freedom to make proprietary software" (something I'm against).
Only in regard to changes to DTrace and ZFS. Still totally fine to build proprietary versions of BSDs that include those pieces.
I won't go so far as the grandparent post here, but I'm one of those developers that couldn't give half a care about "user freedom". It's nice to have source as a developer, but my motivation has never been "freedom", insofar as using and understanding the software, so I understand where he's coming from in his complaints about the GPL. As a developer, it's more constraining than the permissive licenses out there. To some, that's a good thing.
> >What are you talking about? Why do you care if GNU/Linux takes your code and modifies it? No damage is done to the original.
> This is more about the fact that when they take it it's worse for the project than a proprietary fork.
... Who is it worse for? First of all, that almost never happens. But for users, there's no difference (if anything it's an improvement because they now have better protection of their freedom) and the original developers can just ignore the fork or merge the code and change license (which isn't possible with a proprietary fork).
> The CDDL indeed saved illumos from being cannibalized and disappearing as a community. Had its features been easily ported to Linux without a licencing problem, the project would probably not have survived, simply due to the fact that there would have been few reasons to stick with it.
I think that's a very irrational fear. GNU/Linux took plenty of BSD code and BSD still exists, many different projects take ideas from each other -- it's what's called "collaboration".
> I won't go so far as the grandparent post here, but I'm one of those developers that couldn't give half a care about "user freedom".
It's disappointing that you don't want to actually make the world a better place (not in the standard bullshit silicon valley sense) by giving people freedom.
You think the world isn't better as a result of GNU/Linux existing? I personally think that GNU/Linux has had a positive impact on the world, and without it the world would be a worse place. Sure, my impact as a single developer is very small, but I want to help a movement that I agree with.
Linux destroyed so many good things, and some projects like SmartOS now have to spend major effort in educating the populace at large on why SmartOS is a better solution for the cloud and why data integrity and correctness of operation are important. And all of that just because GNU/Linux is argumentum ad populum. What a nightmare.
Would you prefer Windows? Because that's where the world was heading in the 90s. History happened, and what it shows is that Linux arose at a time when EVERYONE thought that Windows was going to steal Unix's throne. It's amazing you have such negativity about a piece of software.
I would prefer sgi IRIX 6.5, but that's dead.
In the absence of IRIX, illumos and SmartOS are the next best thing, so that is my next preference.
> Because that's where the world was heading in the 90s.
> History happened, and what it shows is that Linux arose at a time when EVERYONE thought that Windows was going to steal Unix's throne.
Not everyone. I went through the entire '90's using Sun SPARC, sgi, hp PA-RISC and Commodore Amiga computers, and neither did Sun Microsystems. Didn't touch an intel-based PC until 2002, when I put together my first one, and even my current intel based PC runs Solaris 10.
Sun Microsystems was the only company which refused to bow, and continued developing Solaris. And while we know that eventually that company died, the OS lives on, and is being very actively developed, with new features added, and new technology invented.
> It's amazing you have such negativity about a piece of software.
You would also have it if your telephone rang with priority 1 incidents at two o' clock in the morning because Linux has a problem which I would not have had if I were using SmartOS. Then you'd have bonus negativity when you'd have to log into a crisis bridge and explain to a whole bunch of angry managers (who don't understand a thing about their decision to use Linux) that the application broke because Linux killed the service when it ran out of memory and oh by the way the data is also corrupted because the filesystem is a design from the '90's of the past century. And no I cannot find out why the application ran out of memory because the OS is locked up and when I reset it, I cannot get a core dump for analisys because I do not have adequate tools for that on Linux.
Computers and UNIX are my life calling, and since I am passionate about them, I spend extraordinary amounts of time working on them and researching them. Even what little free / spare time I have, I spend doing computer research and system engineering. So when according to my research and experience, something as inferior as GNU/Linux starts to push out a better solution just because of ignorance, it is only logical I have developed an intense hatred of it. It is messing with something I hold very dear, illumos and SmartOS - it's messing with UNIX.
And when I cannot find any SmartOS jobs where I live because every single ad says Linux-blah-blah Linux, you bet I hate it even more, since working on it, I get to experience first hand just how bad Linux is. When I'm forced to suffer because I am ordered to use Linux, and have problems I would not have if I had been on SmartOS, it's becomes personal, and it also becomes not just personal, but professional.
At home I have SmartOS and do not have a single issue I have at work, because I am using a different OS, a better one, and I love every microsecond developing on it and using it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to do some more software engineering. On GNU/Linux.
BSD wouldn't have been free software without Stallman (he convinced them to release their changes under a free software license publicly). Same with OpenSolaris (the idea of free software wouldn't have existed). So, GNU was central to us not being in a world dominated by proprietary software.
But GNU was never going to be ready (Hurd will never be finished), so Linux offered us the opportunity to live in freedom. And people ended up using it. Yes, the kernel Linux has _many_ problems. But without it, we would be living in a much worse world than even the most broken of Linux interfaces and semantics. But GNU/Linux definitely was a saviour for Unix.
Yes, Sun was still holding on to Unix. But they were the only one (apart from Be, which folded soon after). But do you really thing they would've ever created OpenSolaris if GNU hadn't come into being and GNU/Linux hadn't started to dominate the market? I doubt it. History is odd like that.
> Yes, the kernel Linux has _many_ problems. But without it, we would be living in a much worse world than even the most broken of Linux interfaces and semantics. But GNU/Linux definitely was a saviour for Unix.
Maybe you would be living in a much worse world, if your entire world up to that point in time consisted of Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and an intel based PC tin pail.
I was fine with using a binary only version of Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX; so long as I could get those gratis, along with compilers and software RAID, that was fine by me, as I had no interest in building my own OS at that point in time (unlike now). I also grew up on Commodore computers, where, when one bought a computer, it would come with detailed schematics, and the hardware was documented in detail[1][2].
I can only offer you empathy for the world you grew up in, but that does not give you the right, nor are you correct in assuming, that everyone else lacked the same freedoms you lacked: not everybody grew up in the United States which has fascist copyright laws. The country where I grew up did not have any copyright laws, and if it weren't for that, it would still be in the dark ages of Informatics and computer science, and I would not have ever become a computer professional. Other countries, for example Sweden and Spain, still have lax copyright laws, and thank goodness for that. The point is, don't make the error of assuming that the entire world was mis-fortunate and lacked freedom in this sense.
> I was fine with using a binary only version of Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX; so long as I could get those gratis,
That's not the point at all. You didn't have any software freedom -- how did you modify your software? It's great that you could distribute it in your country, but you didn't have the means to practically modify software.
Also, gratis isn't the point. I don't care if I have to pay for GNU/Linux or any other software, I just care about whether or not I get software freedom as a result.
> not everybody grew up in the United States which has fascist copyright laws
I didn't grow up in the US.
> don't make the error of assuming that the entire world was mis-fortunate and lacked freedom in this sense.
You lacked the practical freedom to modify software (okay, so you didn't have copyright but if you don't have the source then you can't pracically modify your software without spending far too much time reverse-engineering it). I hate to break it to you, but you did lack freedom.
> You didn't have any software freedom -- how did you modify your software?
In a program called a debugger, which back then was known as a monitor. You pressed a button, and the monitor was started from a cartridge, or you loaded a monitor, and then you loaded the machine code. And then you stepped through that disassembled code, and then you inserted a breakpoint in a strategic place. And when the program would stop execution, you'd consider the state of the program, and then you'd make the desired modifications, either by changing the existing processor instructions, or by adding your own code and hooking it in. Worked for an entire generation of crackers, I don't see what the big deal is.
So in that sense, there was no closed source, as nobody can really hide machine code, and believe you me, people have tried, and then some! But to a cracker, to a really good coder, every piece of code is open source, because there is nowhere to hide.
A much bigger deal was if you were not capable of this, because it meant you were a lamer and didn't make the cut.
Are you kidding me? The Linux rabble will happily take what they want and discard the rest like a rotten carcas, with fanfare all the way how "Linux is the best!" Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want a superior operating system to be discarded for that steaming pile of excrement after the Linux "developers" swipe every good piece of technology from it.
> It's disappointing that you don't want to actually make the world a better place (not in the standard bullshit silicon valley sense) by giving people freedom.
We do (well, I do), just in a world without GNU and without GPL. That is a better world for me.
GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back.
"Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out.
Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time. But once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back."
— Theo de Raadt, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt
> The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.
No, that's a pretty standard severability clause that helps the user. It means that if one section of the CDDL is found invalid, users can still use the software. The GPL on the other hand, by refusing to have a severability clause, means that if any part of the GPL, no matter how inconsequential, is found invalid, the entire license is null and void and no one can use it. That intentional omission makes the GPL a much more user-hostile license than it should be.
> > The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.
> No, that's a pretty standard severability clause that helps the user. It means that if one section of the CDDL is found invalid, users can still use the software. The GPL on the other hand, by refusing to have a severability clause, means that if any part of the GPL, no matter how inconsequential, is found invalid, the entire license is null and void and no one can use it. That intentional omission makes the GPL a much more user-hostile license than it should be.
The GPL's severability clause says that the section is invalid, not the whole license. But the CDDL allows for the license to be changed after the fact.
Severability was intentionally removed in GPLv3 to make it an all or nothing license. The FSF's rationale is that if they made it an all or nothing, it would be less likely for courts to find any clause unenforceable. Whether or not this will stay true in practice remains to be seen.
I was incorrect in remembering what the CDDL had if a clause is found to be unenforceable. A reform clause has a lot of overlap with severability. While a contract can be altered in such a case, reform means that the spirit of the unenforceable clause must remain intact. Were it severable, then the entire clause would be excised, potentially altering the license much more through omission.
You know fascism is a political/economic system that advocates a nationalistic war focused culture and foreign policy, a military aristocracy and sort of mid-level command economy right? Which is to say literally nothing like any possible outcome of the GPL.
What does the license have to do with anything? Joyent themselves are now behind SmartOS, which is based on Solaris and its CDDL license. An open source license being more free or more liberal has absolutely nothing with the ability of the community to fork and/or continue support if the original owner discontinues it.
It's already been successfully forked once, under 'io.js', when a group of developers were frustrated at the slow pace of Joyent's custodianship. io.js came back to node.js after politicking.
Same initial reaction. I can't stand Samsung and refuse to have anything to do with them. All started when they took my 5k dollar tv and started injecting ads and such all while claiming they didn't (this was before the recent media caught on)
Hats off Samsung. You have just acquired a truly world class Engineering team.
Congrats to all my former colleagues who are absolutely amazing at their jobs and wonderful people to work with. Samsung looks like a very good match. Hope the transition goes well.
Forgive my ignorance but can someone explain how Joyent's acquisition moves Samsung towards their strategic objectives? In other words, how are they going to exploit this technology (and brain gain)?
Samsung generates a lot of sensor/IoT type of data (e.g. smart phones, smart TVs, medical, industrial). They'll need the infrastructure to process and store all these data.
From the CTO's blog post, it seems to me that Samsung became interested in Joyent not for its most famous product, Node.js, but for its new product, Manta, which is some sort of serverless, distributed, data-storage and processing service (https://www.joyent.com/manta). Manta might be well-suited for the new hotness, the Internet of Things.
So that's how I saw it progressing. Samsung was looking into how to get in on the Internet of Things, stumbled across Manta, and it went from there.
Manta seems like they are throwing the kitchen sink at those problems, tons of containers, proprietary OS, proxies, etc.
If you want to store objects in a distributed way, why not just use something like RethinkDB, which has proxying/sharding etc. built in? RethinkDB even has a way to execute code with 'js'.
Or for serverless processing, why not AWS lambda or the crop of clones?
Manta doesn't run on a proprietary OS, but runs on SmartOS, a distribution of illumos [1][2]. In fact, almost everything at Joyent is open source, including all of Manta [3]. As for why not anything else, Manta has been around since 2013 [4], before other similar solutions, and allows you to run arbitrary programs on your data. As an example, some of our customers run ffmpeg on videos that they upload, to produce different variants to then store in Manta.
For the record, there is no "proprietary [operating system]" involved here. The Triton stack (upon which Manta is based) runs on top of SmartOS[1], a wholly open source operating system built around an illumos[2] core.
I have the same reaction, for me samsung is more a hardware company and the software they make is only to support their hardware. So is all future Joyent software development will be close sourced and only used by Samsung?
I sure hope so, but the high performance nature and intent of SmartOS is at odds with the low electricity consumption, low number crunching performance of the Acorn RISC Machines processor. SmartOS is optimized for CPU bursting and squeezing as many tenants at bare metal speed as possible, while ARM is designed not to consume lots of power at the expense of raw performance.
That said, since SmartOS is based on illumos, and illumos is designed from the ground up to be portable, running SmartOS on ARM would be cool, since it would open the doors for illumos on embedded devices.
I would so love me an illumos based, iPad Pro-like tablet...
Android on servers, like Linux? SmartOS on Arm servers would probably make a lot of sense, given that Samsung might then have a vertically integrated infrastructure: mainboard/chipset, cpu, ram, ssd and software all made by Samsung for Samsung?
Hey, maybe Joyent can finally afford to refund the people who supported it when it was textdrive and then went back on their word!
Snarky I know but I'm still bitter about how it was all handled..
As a fellow early textdrive supporter, I'm pretty happy with the value I got out of the deal. I'm still using my free strongspace account 10ish years later. I think there was some email about a free hosting account I could theoretically use with some company, but I never looked into it. Honestly, textdrive's hosting was never really of a quality I could use in a professional context anyway. I understand some bitterness, but any "lifetime" deal has to be taken with a pretty big grain of salt, and I'm pretty happy about what I got for the money.
> I think there was some email about a free hosting account I could theoretically use with some company, but I never looked into it.
We were offered either one or three free years of hosting on a Joyent SmartMachine, depending on what your initial investment was. After this free trial, you would be converted to a regular customer.
Adding my voice to the bitter-parade. Joyent wouldn't be where they are today without us early bootstrap investors. It was basically a Kickstarter campaign before Kickstarter existed. Not only do I feel like I failed to receive my early investor benefits, but WORSE off was how the whole situation was handled. We had to beg and plead to get our data back. The company essentially went dark to all of their oldest, most loyal customers.
It wasn't about the money or the value I got out of it.
For me, it was the way I felt like I was treated.
It felt like, hey, we've pivoted the company but we still have to support these old users and they are becoming a pain, let's give them a credit on something that's kinda like what they paid for and be done with them.
Then when enough people complained, then they tried to find some solution at the last minute and even that felt dubious.
Let's try to cobble something together that's barely working for these people and make it someone else's problem.
I totally take the "lifetime" deal with a grain of salt but it wasn't like the company folded because it ran out of money or wasn't successful. It was more like we got successful so we forgot about the little people.
"How long is it good for? As long as we exist." As a lifetime plan purchaser, I wouldn't say no to a new Samsung fridge... Although, I think we're just beating the dead horse for old time sake—which in this case is fun in itself. Though, it would be kinda awesome to hear a Samsung exec weigh in on the matter.
Although perhaps Samsung's acquisition might continue with the trend, improving Joyent's bottom line by ignoring all previous financial obligations that may have existed before the purchase...
I'm sorry but how is this a good fit? What is the synergy here? This particular sentence is incredibly vapid:
"By bringing these two companies together we are creating the opportunity to develop and bring to market vertically integrated mobile and IoT services and solutions that deliver extraordinary simplicity and value to our customers."
Best wishes to all at Joyent. Thanks for all your work in the community over the last few years, particularly with node.js. Hopefully Samsung will give you the resources and reach to go on to better things in future.
As I toil away on a node based project that is interfacing with Samsung's Artik platform (both the Artik 10 board and Artik Cloud) I finally decided to call it a night -- check HN real quick -- and discover that Samsung is buying the original stewards of node. I almost thought the lack of sleep was putting me into psychosis...
255 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] thread"Samsung will immediately benefit from having direct access to Joyent’s technology, leadership and talent. Likewise, Joyent will be able to take advantage of Samsung’s scale of business, global footprint, financial muscle and its brand power."
Their fears have come true (and now it's even happening to Apple). Hardware is an incredibly difficult, risky business, and differentiation is now in the services/software arena. That's why Samsung, in particular, needs this acquisition (and others like it).
Disclaimer: I'm not involved in that space, so maybe they've started?
I don't expect to see Samsung take on GCE, Azure or AWS directly though... and would be really unsure if I were a Joyent customer right now.
Given how well React Native tends to work, and I have to be honest, I like the ecosystem structure better than most apps I've worked on in general, I can see it actually working out better in many cases.
Prob not great for more advanced messenger functionality but Face Slim (https://github.com/indywidualny/FaceSlim) does notifications and simple/group chats fairly well.
- AOT compilation for a subset of JS: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2015/EECS-2015-13...
- "A JavaScript engine for Internet of Things": http://samsung.github.io/jerryscript/
This is good news for node.js since what this means is more money gets poured into node.js development.
For example Microsoft pouring money into JS seems to have lead directly to Typescript.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Samsung-Research-America-R...
This could just be clashes between US and Korean management culture, or perhaps just some instability in a new research lab.
Compared to the kind of stuff that Microsoft, Apple have done in the past in the software world.
And I do not see how this is bad, maybe Samsung is trying to learn why 'Western' engineering is so much superior to 'Asian' engineering by this acquisition ?
I guess they are making efforts to work on this:
http://qz.com/288923/samsung-is-trying-to-improve-its-corpor...
> And I do not see how this is bad, maybe Samsung is trying to learn why 'Western' engineering is so much superior to 'Asian' engineering by this acquisition ?
It depends if you want to be part of their learning experience or not! Chinese companies have adapted pretty well to acquisitions and satellites, so it isn't an Asian thing. Japanese companies have been known to have similar problems in the past and even currently (though it really depends on the company, and many have had a lot of time to gain experience).
Actually, Japan is another country that is notorious for not being as great as they should be at software, maybe there is a common thing going on?
Microsoft is a software company. Samsung is not. If you think they are, then you probably haven't used one of their bloated, buggy phones that they stop updating way too soon.
Later, I visited their HQ in Korea and met some of their Indian and Korean development teams. They were competent but the work culture was toxic. People were expected to attend 11PM daily review meetings where the issues list was painfully re-read pointlessly and nothing at all was achieved. Koreans were expected to live in numbered company compounds, catch a numbered company bus and ascend to a numbered floor in a numbered company skyscraper after an airport security style physical check. Smoking allowed strictly twice per day in a designated corner of the compound. All movement is tracked. Psychotic Confucian management style. I honestly thought to myself: if this is a vision of the future, I want no part of it.
Samsung Semiconductor is happy to supply chips to Apple even though they're the biggest rival of Samsung Telecommunications the builds the Galaxy phones. Conversely Samsung Telecommunications may or may not pick Samsung chips for their Galaxy phones, it doesn't really matter.
So I guess it depends to what division they will be attached. If they're attached directly to the group, they may actually keep complete freedom and just have a different owner.
I don't remember the exact Korean wording, but a common phrase said by Samsung engineers (under their breath) in Korea basically translates to "I'll do what you say, but it's only because I'm at <name of a Japanese labor camp that I forget now>." My time there really made me appreciate how much better we have it here!
Can you explain the cultural aspects (and management shortcomings) in more detail for those of us who haven't experienced Korea? Thanks.
Whenever someone in HQ tells you to do something, you do it, and if not, you get punished, whether that's through decreased compensation or they fire you. You can be the engineer that tells managers that you can't draw parallel lines that intersect (metaphorically speaking), but they don't want to hear it unless the competitor proves them wrong with sales results - they are notorious for not innovating, but copying competitors. Samsung runs on waterfall from top to bottom. Oh, and if they tell you to do something early in the morning, you jump.
Samsung also tends to mainly promote Koreans - if you're not Korean and want to get ahead, you'd best look elsewhere because you're not likely to accomplish it. I hear this also applies to their American divisions as well, but I do not know anyone who has worked for them here. The family who owns the company has had some history with corruption in Korea as well, so this isn't too surprising.
More on the cultural side, Koreans can be very rude by western standards - it also is demanding on expectations. You're often expected to dress a certain way (this part is no different from most of the world, but disregarding norms is probably more harshly regarded in Korean culture than most), as well as join bosses & other co-workers going out to drink and doing karaoke at night. Deferring to father-like/older figures is built into the language with even how one addresses another, and that bleeds into how companies operate (& people treat each other - even being one month older can come into play unless you have leverage of some sorts). There are also built in opinions on processes, from parenting to schooling to work. Koreans tend to also be quite xenophobic/racist, even against Koreans who cannot speak Korean (maybe even moreso towards Koreans who cannot speak the language). Society sort of disowns those who are not immersed in the culture. Non-Asian foreigners are special, but they are excluded from much of anything of consequence (probably to avoid stirring the pot with other nations).
There's probably a lot more I'm missing here, but tl;dr if you aren't an extremely mentally tough person, working for a Korean company in Korea can crush you thoroughly. It is a different world, and people who do...
There's also lots of very positive things about Korean culture, just like there are about Western cultures.
This quote from the parent comment: "Samsung managers are often corrupt and treat their employees like trash"
makes me feel like I'm not fully aware what really goes on and is not something I like to actively support.
That said, I think it's fair to say that among many Koreans Samsung is viewed with respect but no affection. The company history dates back to the Japanese colonial period and is imbued with the pre-WWII Japanese zaibatsu mentality. What some posters are generalizing as "Korean" seems more the rather specialized local culture of Samsung. Personally, I would never work for them.
In general, the culture is very hierarchical (respecting elders) thus seniority and age play a big factor in leadership. I would assume that this makes it very easy for mediocre (but good enough to survive) management to stay in positions far too long. Asian culture, but Koreans especially, can be masochistic1 and martyr2 like in their methods. In some ways this creates a tremendous amount of excellence, but it also creates soldiers who may not necessarily be incentivized to innovate, and those who innovate, out of cultural respect will tend to not dare "disrespect" seniority. Being a good soldier makes for career advancements.
Management can also claim the failures of the company as their own personal failures, rather than the gray collective failure of a group(e.g. japanese ceo's claiming company failure as their own), thus employees kind of get absolved of blame.
Work in Korea also tends to be a live at the office kind of affair. It's not uncommon for the white collar folk to go into work at 7a, and stay until 7-9p. Then go drinking with coworkers until midnight, and rinse and repeat. While this makes for very strong bonds amongst coworking peers and better teams, I would imagine that it also takes a toll on the mental capacity of the workforces.
Mainly, I wouldn't be surprised if work in Korea tends to be death marches all the time based on the martyrdome syndrome and masochistic syndrome for career advancement.
1 - http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2010/01/koreans-english-acqui... makes 30k vocab flash cards to learn english 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yD4OfY8cM boyfriend gives up both eyes for girlfriend he blinded. Why not keep 1 eye?
Basic courtesy and being polite are pretty much universal, so try to be humble and keep an open mind and observe. Older people often are more experienced and savvy about how to handle something so being deferential to them is a no-brainer. You'll spot the incompetent ones soon enough and so continue being polite but ignoring their guidance.
One thing that drove me nuts but took a little while to figure out was that people would almost never say no to a request. I would ask if something was possible and they would pretty much always say yes, not wanting to disappoint, but I would have been better off hearing a 'no, sorry'. I wanted a realistic answer and theirs were often far too optimistic.
Me: "Mr Son, can we make it to Osan in 30 minutes?"
Him: "Yes" (always yes)
An hour later we show up late to another hospital with a very impatient air crew idling and waiting for our patient transfer. We would have all been better off hearing a "No, it takes an hour". Just one small example but this scenario repeated frequently.
I learned that when speaking to a group or doing a presentation it was customary to apologize for your inexperience on the subject and promise to do your best. Tim Berners-Lee could start a talk with "I'm sorry I don't know much about the World Wide Web..." for example and Westerners would laugh but the locals would be like "He's off to a good start".
Understanding this helped me get more realistic answers though. Even if I thought I knew an answer I would keep the question more open-ended to solicit a better response.
Me: "Mr Son, I'm sorry but I forget how long it takes to get to Osan, can you remember?" (said even after making the trip solo dozens of times in often difficult and stressful conditions).
Him: "Ah yes, there is new road construction halfway there so I'll teach you an alternate route to bypass it. We'll be there in about 40 minutes".
Had I not learned to ask a better question, I never would have learned his faster alternate route.
Korea was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed hanging out with the older Koreans who worked on our base, they were a constant source of good info once learned how to talk to them. I also had a 'ration card' entitling me to buy the occasional bottle of Crown Royal on base and give them, which always helped!
That's Samsung proper. Not their incubator setup, which is different. Companies like Mapzen were bought by Samsung, but have a completely different culture.
jk.
There's a reason Samsung seems to be not that great as a software shop. I wrote up a long post on HN almost 2 years ago (God, it's been 2 years!!). I'm reposting the link here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7712192
[0]: http://linuxcontrib-inn.rhcloud.com/
[1] https://www.joyent.com/blog/samsung-acquires-joyent-a-ctos-p...
Wiki: "In journalism, lede is an alternative spelling for lead paragraph."
Please, please continue to develop your public cloud offerings. Having options other that the myopic, me-too, feature-matching, monoculture that is AWS/GCE/Azure is incredibly important.
That said, for my use profile, you guys need to work on your price competitiveness. Hopefully Samsung will inject the necessary cash for economies-of-scale.
I'm sure they will. They are a top contributor to open source:
http://linuxcontrib-inn.rhcloud.com/
Which means the larger companies* are probably on schedule for development to start slowing because of technical debt. And therefore solving that (modern development practices and open source involvement!) will become a competive advantage.
* Sadly, the smaller companies will probably always be hacked-together-MVP stacks on top of whatever release they started dev on
It's starting to feel like I need to consult a lawyer before I could ever publish an open source project, and that's never going to happen. I'd rather just stop publishing.
The amendment is actually the first paragraph of the COPYING file. If you modify any of the terms of the license directy, you have to remove the preamble and refer to it as something other than the GPL.
The other option for modifying the GPL is to distribute a separate LICENSE file alongside it stating something like "this software is released under the GPL, except for <specific changes>". When this happens, there's almost always an FAQ somewhere on the internet describing what the changes are intended to mean.
So, basically - check the source files to see if they mention a license, then check if there's a file named LICENSE, then check if there's a file named COPYING. One of these should always point you to the right license.
Additionally, as a point, it's not actually a modification of the license, merely a clarification - see section 9 of the GPLv2, which states that the program must explicitly state that it is usable under later versions of the GPL to be usable under later versions of the GPL. The boilerplate text that GNU give you to put at the top of each source code file does that by default, but, it's not required.
That is a good, honest question, but there is a different standard of expectations for some random programmer doing a project and one of the biggest, most powerful multinational corporations on the planet with business operations (and legal advisors) in most of the world's countries.
If Samsung has the legal muscle to go up against Apple and others in the courtrooms of the world, and the technical muscle to customize multiple operating systems for countless products, they have the resources to read and understand the Linux license. While inept bungling is always a possible explanation for any party, a more likely explanation for a license violation for something as fundamental as an operating system by any party with that level of resources (if one were to ever occur) would be that they examined the issue, understood the situation, and decided that they could probably get away with it.
* ... apparently Linux has a modified version of the GPLv2? I would never notice that,*
From the point of view of a personal project it doesn't matter that much. If you accidentally breach a license and someone notices they'll tell you and you'll fix the issue.
It gets much hairier once money is involved (i.e. OS code used by a company like Samsung) but the process they need to go through is no different from the due diligence that they have to do when licensing non-OS code from other bodies (commercial or otherwise).
When transitioning from pet project to commercial interest things are a bit more muddy. In the case of an individual or small company making the transition there may be some pain as they are not initially setup for this, but in the case of a commercial interest taking over (buying the project, taking over the smaller company, employing the individual specifically to work on the project, just negotiating non-OS use of the code etc.) this is again covered by the same due diligence requirements they follow when dealing with commercial code.
> I'd rather just stop publishing.
This only affects making modifications to other projects or taking some of their code to supplement your's (in both cases you are creating a derivative work), and even then only if you subsequently publish the work (i.e. it isn't purely a personal or in-house project). It shouldn't stop you publishing work that is definitely your own, just chose a license that you do understand.
If in doubt, write it yourself. For bringing in libraries (as "write it yourself" is seldom completely practical for all but the smallest projects) keep to the "soft" licenses that you understand (in no particular order this for me is: BSD, MIT, CC, LGPL, ASL) and avoid the "hard" OS licenses (GPL proper) & non-OS licenses unless you intend to stay GPL or accept the limitations of commercial/other licensing, and ignore code under other licenses unless you have time to read and understand them. Also avoid code with no clear license.
So, if you "know must mainstream licenses", you should be aware of this.
Source: I applied for the job. I didn't get it ;-)
I can't say I know either way, however I do recall their Tizen SDK licensing not being accepted as open source due to it only granting the right to use certain components on 'Tizen Certified Platforms'.
"In February 2014, Joyent announced a partnership with Canonical to offer virtual Ubuntu machines."
We use Joyent for nodejs microservices, chiefly any server side DOM manipulations (using jsdom), and it's been solid! Currently evaluating docker container management and will give Triton a go...
Just saying, there's a bit of bias that's probably worth recognizing.
It's a good product fit, but the fit is so good that Microsoft basically built a more-complete competitor in the form of Azure. They built Joyent instead of buying it.
LinkedIn was different because Microsoft could never build LinkedIn itself.
[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/app-service/web/
I'm not sure where this will take things with Samsung, likely backend services to support their own "store" on their devices separate from Android. If it's internalized, I only hope they release more of their infrastracture tooling, which is very cool to say the least.
I'm ignorant on why Joyent is so superior to Azure. Can you give some reasons? As an outsider, Joyent looks like a small company with unproven (large, successful customers are the main criteria) products that cost more than the comparable solution from AWS, GC, Azure.
- lx-branded zones and window's new layer are both doing system call translation---you're post doesn't contradict this but doesn't make it clear either.
- At some point lx-branded zones where equally untested.
- "Desktop class" is misleading because NT was designed for servers. Now yes Windows as a whole is hamstrung by a business model putting desktops and backwards-comparability first, but by definition the Linux layer can ignore a lot of Win32 precedent.
- Yes Illumos is Unix and NT isn't, but the difficulty in translating linux systems calls lies not with the ones backing posix-interfaces, but the Linux-specific ones. (Joyent devs can give you some great horror stories here.) It may be a bit harder with NT but it was hard already.
http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
edit: I should have been more specific.. when an open source project is under a company's wing and it gets acquired, you don't know what can happen, even under MIT. Look at express recently. Since it's the under the Node Foundation now, this is not a big deal. Had it happened a short time ago, there may have been further turmoil in the community.
So actually all of Cantrill's worries with Oracle exist with Node.js's license. I am sad when I see large free software projects licensed under MIT, we are doing ourselves a disservice by allowing proprietary software to take advantage of the free software we've developed.
[1] It's part of his Fork Yeah! talk about the fork that is illumos.
On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL. I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux. I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa), but I'm even more happy that Linux isn't. <--- I do not represent anyone but myself, the position expressed here is my own and not of anyone else.
Not proprietary software? Not "open source" licenses that don't allow modification (which is also proprietary)? The GPL? The thing that gave us free software in the modern world? Well, that's certainly one opinon.
> On the other hand, I have nothing against CDDL.
The CDDL has a provision that if any part is held unenforcible it will be modified to make it enforceable. As a matter of licensing, that's incredibly devious and bad. There's other super dodgy parts of the CDDL that make it a bad license purely from a license point of view, let alone from "freedoms given to users" perspective.
> I think the incompatibility of CDDL with the GPL is what saved the illumos community (even if inadvertently) from having their technology cannibalized by GNU and Linux.
What are you talking about? Why do you care if GNU/Linux takes your code and modifies it? No damage is done to the original.
> I'm happy that BSD is benefitting from illumos (and vice versa)
Actually, because CDDL is somewhat-but-not-really copyleft, many BSDs essentially have copyleft requirements if you enable ZFS or DTrace. Which is funny, given how much they go on about "freedom to make proprietary software" (something I'm against).
> I do not represent anyone but myself, the position expressed here is my own and not of anyone else.
Your position is also wrong.
Wait until you discover the BSD license, which lets you do whatever you want with the code... you might get a stroke (:-D)
GPL gave me no freedoms, it gave me the GNU userland tools and GNU/Linux (illumos / SmartOS and AT&T SVR4 tools are just fine, thank you, do not want GNU!)
http://www.blinkydog.com/wp-content/uploads/Dogs-Do-Not-Want...
GNU / GPL: DO NOT WANT!
> Your position is also wrong.
Luckily I don't have to license anything under the GPL, GPL cannot take that away from me as long as I don't link with the kernel code licensed under it, or derive code / work from it.
And I'll be extra careful I don't ever land myself in a position where I would have to license something under the GPL. Any other FOSS license is better than the GPL, I have no problem with open sourcing, and cannot wait to clean up my code in order to set it free.
But not under the GPL license.
Finally, CDDL is both FSF and OSI approved: the open source initiative looked over the CDDL license and deemed it to be in compliance with open source. I will take what is in my view their expert finding over your position, but thank you for sharing your opinion.
> Wait until you discover the BSD license, which lets you do whatever you want with the code... you might get a stroke (:-D)
Including someone taking my software, making it proprietary and mistreating users. I would prefer that less people use my code than someone doing that.
> GPL gave me no freedoms, it gave me the GNU userland tools and GNU/Linux (illumos / SmartOS and AT&T SVR4 tools are just fine, thank you, do not want GNU!)
Wow, so much vitriol for a license that actually created the world we live in today. I'm slightly impressed by how much you hate a license that gives users perpetual freedom. Also, why do you think that CDDL's weak copyleft is better than GPL? I understand, but don't agree with, people who hate copyleft altogether -- but you only hate the GPL.
> Luckily I don't have to license anything under the GPL, GPL cannot take that away from me as long as I don't link with the kernel code licensed under it, or derive code / work from it.
You can dual-license modifications to GPL code. I think doing that is dumb, but you can do it.
> And I'll be extra careful I don't ever land myself in a position where I would have to license something under the GPL. Any other FOSS license is better than the GPL, I have no problem with open sourcing, and cannot wait to clean up my code in order to set it free.
It's so sad that you don't ever want to make contributions to a large body of free software.
> Finally, CDDL is both FSF and OSI approved: the open source initiative looked over the CDDL license and deemed it to be in compliance with open source. I will take what is in my view their expert finding over your position, but thank you for sharing your opinion.
I know its a free software license. I'm just saying it's a bad free software license. The original BSD license was also a bad free software license (requiring you to add a line to all advertising about the source project).
Yes, and since that world is the world of GNU/Linux, it sucks, because compared to illumos and SmartOS, GNU/Linux is a vastly inferior product in terms of capabilities, performance, end to end data integrity, post mortem analysis, as well as storage, day to day system administration, and development capabilities.
I don't want to live in a world with those kinds of "freedoms". I don't want to live in a world where people who do not have enough experience, or do not care break my applications because they constantly mess with the core OS functionality in a way which breaks or fundamentally changes things, arbitrarily, because they can't see past their lone desktop personal computers, but they think they can, and they think they know what needs to be done. I don't want to live in a world where the core OS functionality like startup and shutdown is still in violent flux, along with everything else. If it weren't for GNU, if it weren't for GPL, we would not have the world we have right now. The situation is bad, so very, very bad.
I want to live in a world where my data is safe, where my operating system provides a solid foundation of end to end data integrity and guarantees me backwards compatibility so I can build good, reliable software, and when that software needs troubleshooting, I have all the tools I need to perform effective telemetry analysis. That world is a world without GNU/Linux, a world where SmartOS is the substrate and illumos is the kernel, and where I, and not the FSF, hold (sometimes joint) copyright to the work I did.
If I had it my way, copyright law would be completely abolished, making all of this license nonsense completely pointless, and it would be survival of the best coder / company: if you are really so good, beat me at my own game, like it has always been on the cracking and the demo scenes.
> I'm slightly impressed by how much you hate a license that gives users perpetual freedom. Also, why do you think that CDDL's weak copyleft is better than GPL? I understand, but don't agree with, people who hate copyleft altogether -- but you only hate the GPL
GPL license attempts to dictate to me what and how I am to do with my own code I write ("you must license all derived work under the GPL").
I do not accept that, even if I firmly believe that open sourcing software is the right thing to do, and believe that open source, free software is the way to go.
> GPL license attempts to dictate to me what and how I am to do with my own code I write ("you must license all derived work under the GPL").
> I do not accept that, even if I firmly believe that open sourcing software is the right thing to do, and believe that open source, free software is the way to go.
The CDDL has the same requirement, except it's file-based. What are you even talking about FFS.
This is more about the fact that when they take it it's worse for the project than a proprietary fork. When BSD/MIT/(other permissively licensed code) is used, modified, and re-licensed to GPL, the permissive project can't take those improvements without also re-licensing. The CDDL indeed saved illumos from being cannibalized and disappearing as a community. Had its features been easily ported to Linux without a licencing problem, the project would probably not have survived, simply due to the fact that there would have been few reasons to stick with it. It's not just about what code is out there, and you should know that.
>Actually, because CDDL is somewhat-but-not-really copyleft, many BSDs essentially have copyleft requirements if you enable ZFS or DTrace. Which is funny, given how much they go on about "freedom to make proprietary software" (something I'm against).
Only in regard to changes to DTrace and ZFS. Still totally fine to build proprietary versions of BSDs that include those pieces.
I won't go so far as the grandparent post here, but I'm one of those developers that couldn't give half a care about "user freedom". It's nice to have source as a developer, but my motivation has never been "freedom", insofar as using and understanding the software, so I understand where he's coming from in his complaints about the GPL. As a developer, it's more constraining than the permissive licenses out there. To some, that's a good thing.
> This is more about the fact that when they take it it's worse for the project than a proprietary fork.
... Who is it worse for? First of all, that almost never happens. But for users, there's no difference (if anything it's an improvement because they now have better protection of their freedom) and the original developers can just ignore the fork or merge the code and change license (which isn't possible with a proprietary fork).
> The CDDL indeed saved illumos from being cannibalized and disappearing as a community. Had its features been easily ported to Linux without a licencing problem, the project would probably not have survived, simply due to the fact that there would have been few reasons to stick with it.
I think that's a very irrational fear. GNU/Linux took plenty of BSD code and BSD still exists, many different projects take ideas from each other -- it's what's called "collaboration".
> I won't go so far as the grandparent post here, but I'm one of those developers that couldn't give half a care about "user freedom".
It's disappointing that you don't want to actually make the world a better place (not in the standard bullshit silicon valley sense) by giving people freedom.
Self-righteous much?
This is embarrassing.
Would you prefer Windows? Because that's where the world was heading in the 90s. History happened, and what it shows is that Linux arose at a time when EVERYONE thought that Windows was going to steal Unix's throne. It's amazing you have such negativity about a piece of software.
I would prefer sgi IRIX 6.5, but that's dead. In the absence of IRIX, illumos and SmartOS are the next best thing, so that is my next preference.
> Because that's where the world was heading in the 90s. > History happened, and what it shows is that Linux arose at a time when EVERYONE thought that Windows was going to steal Unix's throne.
Not everyone. I went through the entire '90's using Sun SPARC, sgi, hp PA-RISC and Commodore Amiga computers, and neither did Sun Microsystems. Didn't touch an intel-based PC until 2002, when I put together my first one, and even my current intel based PC runs Solaris 10.
Sun Microsystems was the only company which refused to bow, and continued developing Solaris. And while we know that eventually that company died, the OS lives on, and is being very actively developed, with new features added, and new technology invented.
> It's amazing you have such negativity about a piece of software.
You would also have it if your telephone rang with priority 1 incidents at two o' clock in the morning because Linux has a problem which I would not have had if I were using SmartOS. Then you'd have bonus negativity when you'd have to log into a crisis bridge and explain to a whole bunch of angry managers (who don't understand a thing about their decision to use Linux) that the application broke because Linux killed the service when it ran out of memory and oh by the way the data is also corrupted because the filesystem is a design from the '90's of the past century. And no I cannot find out why the application ran out of memory because the OS is locked up and when I reset it, I cannot get a core dump for analisys because I do not have adequate tools for that on Linux.
Computers and UNIX are my life calling, and since I am passionate about them, I spend extraordinary amounts of time working on them and researching them. Even what little free / spare time I have, I spend doing computer research and system engineering. So when according to my research and experience, something as inferior as GNU/Linux starts to push out a better solution just because of ignorance, it is only logical I have developed an intense hatred of it. It is messing with something I hold very dear, illumos and SmartOS - it's messing with UNIX.
And when I cannot find any SmartOS jobs where I live because every single ad says Linux-blah-blah Linux, you bet I hate it even more, since working on it, I get to experience first hand just how bad Linux is. When I'm forced to suffer because I am ordered to use Linux, and have problems I would not have if I had been on SmartOS, it's becomes personal, and it also becomes not just personal, but professional.
At home I have SmartOS and do not have a single issue I have at work, because I am using a different OS, a better one, and I love every microsecond developing on it and using it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to do some more software engineering. On GNU/Linux.
BSD wouldn't have been free software without Stallman (he convinced them to release their changes under a free software license publicly). Same with OpenSolaris (the idea of free software wouldn't have existed). So, GNU was central to us not being in a world dominated by proprietary software.
But GNU was never going to be ready (Hurd will never be finished), so Linux offered us the opportunity to live in freedom. And people ended up using it. Yes, the kernel Linux has _many_ problems. But without it, we would be living in a much worse world than even the most broken of Linux interfaces and semantics. But GNU/Linux definitely was a saviour for Unix.
Yes, Sun was still holding on to Unix. But they were the only one (apart from Be, which folded soon after). But do you really thing they would've ever created OpenSolaris if GNU hadn't come into being and GNU/Linux hadn't started to dominate the market? I doubt it. History is odd like that.
Maybe you would be living in a much worse world, if your entire world up to that point in time consisted of Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and an intel based PC tin pail.
I was fine with using a binary only version of Solaris, IRIX, and HP-UX; so long as I could get those gratis, along with compilers and software RAID, that was fine by me, as I had no interest in building my own OS at that point in time (unlike now). I also grew up on Commodore computers, where, when one bought a computer, it would come with detailed schematics, and the hardware was documented in detail[1][2].
I can only offer you empathy for the world you grew up in, but that does not give you the right, nor are you correct in assuming, that everyone else lacked the same freedoms you lacked: not everybody grew up in the United States which has fascist copyright laws. The country where I grew up did not have any copyright laws, and if it weren't for that, it would still be in the dark ages of Informatics and computer science, and I would not have ever become a computer professional. Other countries, for example Sweden and Spain, still have lax copyright laws, and thank goodness for that. The point is, don't make the error of assuming that the entire world was mis-fortunate and lacked freedom in this sense.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Reference-Manual-technical-r...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Amiga-Memory-Kernel-Reference-Manual/...
That's not the point at all. You didn't have any software freedom -- how did you modify your software? It's great that you could distribute it in your country, but you didn't have the means to practically modify software.
Also, gratis isn't the point. I don't care if I have to pay for GNU/Linux or any other software, I just care about whether or not I get software freedom as a result.
> not everybody grew up in the United States which has fascist copyright laws
I didn't grow up in the US.
> don't make the error of assuming that the entire world was mis-fortunate and lacked freedom in this sense.
You lacked the practical freedom to modify software (okay, so you didn't have copyright but if you don't have the source then you can't pracically modify your software without spending far too much time reverse-engineering it). I hate to break it to you, but you did lack freedom.
In a program called a debugger, which back then was known as a monitor. You pressed a button, and the monitor was started from a cartridge, or you loaded a monitor, and then you loaded the machine code. And then you stepped through that disassembled code, and then you inserted a breakpoint in a strategic place. And when the program would stop execution, you'd consider the state of the program, and then you'd make the desired modifications, either by changing the existing processor instructions, or by adding your own code and hooking it in. Worked for an entire generation of crackers, I don't see what the big deal is.
So in that sense, there was no closed source, as nobody can really hide machine code, and believe you me, people have tried, and then some! But to a cracker, to a really good coder, every piece of code is open source, because there is nowhere to hide.
A much bigger deal was if you were not capable of this, because it meant you were a lamer and didn't make the cut.
Are you kidding me? The Linux rabble will happily take what they want and discard the rest like a rotten carcas, with fanfare all the way how "Linux is the best!" Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want a superior operating system to be discarded for that steaming pile of excrement after the Linux "developers" swipe every good piece of technology from it.
> It's disappointing that you don't want to actually make the world a better place (not in the standard bullshit silicon valley sense) by giving people freedom.
We do (well, I do), just in a world without GNU and without GPL. That is a better world for me.
"Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out.
Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time. But once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back." — Theo de Raadt, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_de_Raadt
The GPL actively reduces freedom.
No, that's a pretty standard severability clause that helps the user. It means that if one section of the CDDL is found invalid, users can still use the software. The GPL on the other hand, by refusing to have a severability clause, means that if any part of the GPL, no matter how inconsequential, is found invalid, the entire license is null and void and no one can use it. That intentional omission makes the GPL a much more user-hostile license than it should be.
> No, that's a pretty standard severability clause that helps the user. It means that if one section of the CDDL is found invalid, users can still use the software. The GPL on the other hand, by refusing to have a severability clause, means that if any part of the GPL, no matter how inconsequential, is found invalid, the entire license is null and void and no one can use it. That intentional omission makes the GPL a much more user-hostile license than it should be.
The GPL's severability clause says that the section is invalid, not the whole license. But the CDDL allows for the license to be changed after the fact.
I was incorrect in remembering what the CDDL had if a clause is found to be unenforceable. A reform clause has a lot of overlap with severability. While a contract can be altered in such a case, reform means that the spirit of the unenforceable clause must remain intact. Were it severable, then the entire clause would be excised, potentially altering the license much more through omission.
Congrats to all my former colleagues who are absolutely amazing at their jobs and wonderful people to work with. Samsung looks like a very good match. Hope the transition goes well.
So that's how I saw it progressing. Samsung was looking into how to get in on the Internet of Things, stumbled across Manta, and it went from there.
If you want to store objects in a distributed way, why not just use something like RethinkDB, which has proxying/sharding etc. built in? RethinkDB even has a way to execute code with 'js'.
Or for serverless processing, why not AWS lambda or the crop of clones?
[1] https://github.com/joyent/smartos-live
[2] https://github.com/joyent/illumos-joyent
[3] https://github.com/joyent/manta
[4] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/25/joyent_object_store/
[1] https://www.joyent.com/smartos
[2] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate
Say what? SmartOS is based on illumos, the only free, open source SVR4 UNIX out there.
Get the code: https://github.com/joyent/illumos-joyent
Build it! https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/Building+SmartOS+on+Sma...
Modify it: https://wiki.smartos.org/display/DOC/SmartOS+Developers+Guid...
Data locality.
https://twitter.com/gruber/status/560507384536498176
That said, since SmartOS is based on illumos, and illumos is designed from the ground up to be portable, running SmartOS on ARM would be cool, since it would open the doors for illumos on embedded devices.
I would so love me an illumos based, iPad Pro-like tablet...
[0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/joyent
We were offered either one or three free years of hosting on a Joyent SmartMachine, depending on what your initial investment was. After this free trial, you would be converted to a regular customer.
Adding my voice to the bitter-parade. Joyent wouldn't be where they are today without us early bootstrap investors. It was basically a Kickstarter campaign before Kickstarter existed. Not only do I feel like I failed to receive my early investor benefits, but WORSE off was how the whole situation was handled. We had to beg and plead to get our data back. The company essentially went dark to all of their oldest, most loyal customers.
I totally take the "lifetime" deal with a grain of salt but it wasn't like the company folded because it ran out of money or wasn't successful. It was more like we got successful so we forgot about the little people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TextDrive
"By bringing these two companies together we are creating the opportunity to develop and bring to market vertically integrated mobile and IoT services and solutions that deliver extraordinary simplicity and value to our customers."
If anybody deserve it, it's you guys.