I have some patches saved up coming your way once I leave my current employer, who doesn't allow external open source contributions. Though that is not for a few years probably.
Love the libraries BTW. Thank you for all of your hard work.
I feel like it'd be kinda a jerk move to contribute anonymously when you know that might create an IP issue for an open source project. Even if the code truly has no IP issue, legal attention from an litigious company would likely be devastating to even a well resourced project.
Well the idea is that you determine the intention of the “IP issue” and act accordingly:
If there is an actual IP issue then even waiting after you’re out of the company will not resolve said IP issue. If you’re using your employer’s IP then waiting is unlikely (both legally and especially morally) to magically resolve it - it’s still your employer’s IP.
If it’s just to avoid red tape but otherwise the IP is yours and has nothing to do with your employer (aka you could’ve done it just as well even if you weren’t at your current employer, and your employer’s competitive advantage is not based on having a good WebDAV implementation) then it should be fine and you’re just taking a shortcut to save time on both sides.
Basically, if your employer is a vendor of WebDAV libraries, yeah of course there’s a (legal, or a least moral) issue. If not, then all fine.
(Obviously this is just opinion and not legal advice - but legality only matters if they can figure out who did it ;)
I think the situation your missing is when the employer has a much much more aggressive stance to IP. Even if you are 100% confident that your contribution doesn't violate your employer's IP, they can still sue and ruin your life.
Some employers have an unbelievably unreasonable interpretation of non-compete and IP. They think they own everything their employees do, and even though they're wrong. That doesn't stop them from ruining you and whatever unfortunate open source project they set their sights on with vexatious litigation.
I think most non-lawyers agree with this and consider it common sense. But, the US legal system explicitly disagrees.[0] My understanding is that it does affect the damages though, meaning the damages scale down based on the level of pre-existing frailty.
This is an issue of the law struggling to catch up to technology yet again. I think the only novel thing here is applying eggshell to psycological frailty. But that may just be because I'm not a lawyer and not aware of cases around this that might exist (beyond the extreme bullying cases like [1]).
I would buy one of these if they sold a kit. Although I have the skill-set to assemble an working copy of folk myself without the kit, it's something that I just haven't prioritized doing. And a kit is probably enough for me to get over that hump.
Imagine if the 3D printing movement ideologically refused to sell kits. 3D printing would have remained irrelevant instead of starting a revolution and creating millions of home makers. Same for Arduino and so many other devices.
If the goal of dynamicland & folk is to empower everyone to participate in computing by moving it into the physical world, I'm not sure why lowering the barrier to the necessary hardware is off limits. That's what dynamicland is doing with the UI, but how can anyone interact with the UI if it only exists in Oakland, CA?
Folk is doing the messy work of making dynamicland-style physically interactive computing available on hardware that normal people have access to and in the environment where they currently are.
The vast majority of people talking about how big university endowments are don't care what the rules are on it. It's not that people don't know how endowments work; they just find the rules to be bullshit to justify universities continuing the status quo.
I don't have experience with .NET. So that's nice to hear you've got a reliable setup. But, this has generally not been my experience with Microsoft.
There's tons of old programs from the Windows 95-XP era that I haven't been able to get running. Just last week, I was trying to install and run point and click games from 2002 and the general advise online is to just install XP. There was a way (with some effort) to get them working on Windows 7. But, there's no way to get them to work that I've seen on 10/11.
HellCopter in my case. Few years ago I still somehow manages to get some edition running, no luck this time. Rot is a thing and the retro gaming & archival communities a blessing.
That won't work, Youtube is fundamentally dependent on massive storage, massive compute and massive internet connectivity PLUS a revenue mechanism for creators. A whole lot of infrastructure.
Monopoly laws and taxes are punitive. In other words: they can only ever create a situation where there is fundamentally less available. They cannot create a second Youtube, they can only destroy Youtube. Unless the government builds the infrastructure, which is a nonstarter.
If you cannot use state power and/or resources to create a second and third Youtube, then letting Youtube be a monopoly is probably the best option. The big difference between competitors and a monopoly is that a monopolist can only improve outcomes by growing the market ... which is exactly what we want.
Unfortunately it is very much not what the government wants. Well, it is not what governments (plural) want. Governments think they're god, and of course like two people in a madhouse that both think they're god, there is a rather fundamental disagreement here. They will realize, eventually, just how stupid it would be for god to let other gods (anyone but themselves, other governments, but also private people) control mass media. This means we will get closer and closer to the situation that Youtube cannot satisfy multiple governments. This could even apply to multiple parties within one state structure. You would hope this means they'll build infrastructure, but we all know what will really happen: they'll destroy it. Youtube will end because governments will see it as a threat to them, and they just won't care how much damage they're doing. Just look at the current government.
There are a LOT of economy texts, some quite old that warn about the dangers of letting private interests control the only market for anything. They suggest the government should make sure they own or at least control the market itself, but that includes paying for infrastructure. This has it's own problems (like censorship), but there is really no alternative. Either you do that or eventually the monopolists will BE the government.
YouTube isn't a monopoly. Quite a few creators I watch heavily promote their videos on other sites, usually targeted specifically at learning. I guess they get a better revshare there.
Unfortunately for them, I don't watch enough of their learning content to care about subscribing. But it's an option, and if I wanted to spend more time watching videos I could do so.
Operating a site with all the features and scale of YouTube is prohibitively difficult just because YouTube sets the bar so high, but operating a smaller more targeted competitor isn't. There are no barriers to entering the market. And that's largely thanks to Google and how they pushed so much video functionality into Chrome itself!
For most people, "entering the market" includes scoring high on virality, or even just "potential for virality". If not on YT or TikTok (or maybe insta too), it is very, very, very hard to score highly for those metrics.
> Youtube is fundamentally dependent on massive storage, massive compute and massive internet connectivity PLUS a revenue mechanism for creators. A whole lot of infrastructure.
Yes, and YouTube essentially gets all of this infrastructure from its parent company for free and still operates at a loss. So no other company who doesn't already have such infrastructure for other purposes can effectively compete with YouTube, and all such attempts were effectively destroyed by YouTube because YouTube could offer better services while still operating at a loss.
Monopoly laws should've prevented a situation like this.
Of course YouTube wouldn't be able to provide its services at current scale if it didn't have Google backing. But perhaps that could've made the current content market better. If YouTube had to place some restrictions on uploaded content because it wouldn't afford unlimited storage and bandwidth, it wouldn't push creators to make every video 10+ minutes long, and if creators had to pay at least some minimal fees (while they could still get residuals from ads if the video was successful) to post videos, we wouldn't have so much low quality videos there. And the competition could maybe give us better features we don't even dream of today.
Yeah I'm not sure what the parent is getting at. The point of breaking up Google or "destroying" YouTube is to remove the entity sucking the air out of the market. The vacuum it leaves is opportunity for new entrants in a proven market.
For the employer, the question is self fulfilling. Either way they get what they want. Even if someone knows enough to lie, the lie betrays that they’re desperate enough to be unable to resist anything management demands.
Or it shows that you put a very low value on your honesty, and will happily say or do anything other people want to hear as long as it's to your advantage.
Yes! This is my #1 issue with the library as well.