About the calculus for the project [LWN.net]

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 10, 2012 10:16 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: About the calculus for the project by landley
Parent article: A tempest in a toybox

If this is all about Android then why the page was started with talks about GPL infringement facilitation? It still talks about this aspect first and about potential usage in Android second.

Better userspace for Android will be easy sell. GPL infringement facilitator is not. Even if technically it's the same project.

P.S. Actually userspace for android is slightly different project because to support Dalvik you need different set of tools then to support traditional POSIX userspace.

to post comments

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 10, 2012 16:19 UTC (Fri) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]

"We'd like to get as many patents as possible to protect ourselves from the insane patent system via mutually assured destruction and cross-licensing agreements."

"We'd like to get an alternative to BusyBox to protect ourselves from the insane out of control SFLC/SFC and their demands about third-party binary only kernel modules and vendor toolchains we've never even seen the source code to if we shipped a vanilla unmodified busybox but didn't SAY we shipped a vanilla unmodified busybox."

"We'd like to distance ourselves from this legal quagmire rather than try to navigate an endless shifting maze."

That's not _my_ motivation, but I can certainly see spraying for lawyers holding an appeal for people, especially when legal stuff isn't what they _do_. And if it makes 'em more likely to use the code I already _wrote_ and am still adding to (which is technically better than the alternative)? Sure, why not?

Rob

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 10, 2012 16:22 UTC (Fri) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link] (5 responses)

By the way, another analogy for all the insane GPL zealots to ponder:

Don't put lifeboats on your cruise ship. Make it unsinkable. By planning for what happens if the boat sinks, you're planning to sink the boat! Shame on you, lifeboats are EVIL!

Rob

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 10, 2012 17:21 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

You are not putting lifebots on a ship. You are adding couple of lifebots to Titanic.

This makes no sense whatsoever. If you don't expect for it to be sunk then why bother with lifebots at all? If you do expect crash and burn scenario then why do you plan to save just a handful of people, not all of them?

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 11, 2012 14:35 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, that's not fair on Titanic ...

She had FAR more lifeboats than were legally required.

And could have saved a lot more people, if they hadn't messed up evacuating the boat. Plus a load of people didn't want to get on the lifeboats because they felt safer staying on board (pretty much the same as happened in the recent cruise-ship sinking in Italy ...)

(I think the law nowadays says you need enough spaces on EACH SIDE of the boat for the entire passenger/crew complement - ie 2 spaces per person. Most boats carry even more. It makes sense, actually, if the boat is listing you can lose half your usable lifeboat capacity in the space of seconds.)

Cheers,
Wol

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 11, 2012 15:39 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Actually, that's not fair on Titanic ...

She had FAR more lifeboats than were legally required.

Sure. Law required just 16 lifeboats while Titanic had 20. With total capacity of 1,178 people on a ship with capacity of 3,547. Less then ⅓ space per person. Good idea. Not.

And could have saved a lot more people, if they hadn't messed up evacuating the boat. Plus a load of people didn't want to get on the lifeboats because they felt safer staying on board (pretty much the same as happened in the recent cruise-ship sinking in Italy ...)

That's another issue. Yes, even if you have enough lifeboats you still can lose a lot of lives in a case of crush. But if you don't have enough lifeboats to save all passengers then loss of life is inevitable.

I think the law nowadays says you need enough spaces on EACH SIDE of the boat for the entire passenger/crew complement - ie 2 spaces per person. Most boats carry even more. It makes sense, actually, if the boat is listing you can lose half your usable lifeboat capacity in the space of seconds.

Sure. More then one space per person may be good idea. How much more is subject of the debate. Less then one space per person is pointless - and this is exactly how Titanic was equipped.

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 12, 2012 15:51 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

btw, you might stand more chance of convincing people rather than repelling them if you didn't routinely call them insane. Just a thought.

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 13, 2012 8:27 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

This is true. But I don't think Rob is calling all GPL zealots insane...? That's just a tiny subset.