Hans Reiser wrote: > > > > > Yes, I believe that, and that is my concern.
I can understand that. That's why I'm working on the 'creditsd' infrastructure. Decoupling the credit content from the visual aspect of the program's performance makes the following possible... 1. It makes it possible for people that created your system to achieve notoriety. This is very important for people that are rarely paid directly for their contributions. If the credits achieve a relatively fine granularity, it could create a workable 'credits' currency. A currency where egoboo has a tangible metric. From a systems and cybernetics viewpoint it creates a more rapid feedback loop. More egoboo. More "free" code. Faster. In economics I believe that's called 'velocity'. 2. You'd have to go to extreme and undeniable lengths to re-brand and remove attribution from those who deserve it. You will be shunned by most of the engineering community. It would be very black-and-white. No chance for "he said, she said" equivocation. 3. It takes credits out-of-band, so you don't have to worry if displaying a credit message will: a. annoy or confuse the end-user at the wrong moment (not what we are trying to do) b. negatively affect performance c. risk the chance that a well-intentioned credit at startup will be buried because the programming that displays the credit lives at a completely different level. (ie: shell command being invoked from a GUI, or a web page served by apache/linux/reiser4). 4. No need for "...and then you go to jail". If developers are getting attribution in proportion to their efforts -- gaining notoriety and generally feeling good about their contributions, there will be no need to modify the GPL v2. The occasional transgressor, a pariaha in the community will have little to no effect on the economics of the situation. Economics, like physics, is not an option. There is an economy of free software. We can either work with it or against it. Perhaps this is a step towards that goal. (BTW: Has anyone actually written a formal book on the economics of free software? I know about the Cathedral and the Bazaar, but that's more about the philosophy and the environment. I want to see supply, demand, Laffer curves, etc...) I'll try to forward some rough ascii art later.... jim burnes security engineer great-west, denver