Disqus - Latest Comments for shanecurcuru

Re: A Guide to Leveraging Open Source Licensing

Shane Curcuru — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 09:28:55 -0000

One important nuance: [with copyleft] “no one can take your work and charge money for it.” is incorrect - other people can take your GPL code, re-ship it, and charge for it; the GPL and FSF explicitly say it's OK to charge money for "free software".
What copyleft does do is prevent is someone else doing that privately - copyleft licenses ensure that if someone else re-ships the code, they also have to provide the source code publicly as well, so you - and everyone else - can see what they're doing.
Great to see more thoughtful articles on what using #opensource licenses really means for a project!

Re: Redis will remain BSD licensed -

Shane Curcuru — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 09:24:58 -0000

Personally, you can choose whatever license you want for the work you do; the choice of license helps me decide if I want to use your software, certainly, but it's your work.

The issue for me (and the ASF too) is in branding: do not call it "Apache + whatever". Call it the "Redis Modules License" or something. It is neither the Apache License 2.0 nor is it open source, so including the word "Apache" in the naming of your license is confusing and possibly deceptive. Please, pick a new name (and use it consistently).

Thanks.

Re: Why Not So Hadoop?

Shane Curcuru — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 07:08:11 -0000

Just a friendly reminder: the proper name is "Apache Hadoop". It's also a registered trademark of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), where the many individual volunteers on the Apache Hadoop project build this great software.

Crediting the right community - and company, the non-profit ASF - is important.

Re: WSJ Hortonworks Headline Makes Heads Explode

Shane Curcuru — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 16:54:58 -0000

Great article, and nice fact checking and background provided.

One minor correction: While Roman Shaposhnik, and a number of Hortonworks folks (along with myself) are Members of the Apache Software Foundation, it's not 200. You might be trying to say that "200 employees of Hortonworks are contributors to different Apache Software Foundation projects", which sounds like it'd be correct.

The ASF provides independent governance for it's 170+ top level projects, led by a core of hundreds of Members (shareholders in the corporation) and including 5000+ Committers, or individuals who collaborate on the code:
http://www.apache.org/found...

Re: Open Source Assignments for Non-Programming Classes?

Shane Curcuru — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 09:51:45 -0000

What license do you ask/suggest that your students use for their blogs discussing the work?

You're right, there's a lot of nuance to "open source", especially as it applies to non-software creations. But the first step is having a license for whatever you're publishing - otherwise, by default, everything is (C) copyright with no rights for others to re-use the work.

For me, the first step would be a module about copyright and licensing - just enough to get students to understand how it's not legal to photocopy a textbook and sell copies to students, but for *this* book - offered under a CC license - it *is* legal to copy, as long as you follow these rules.

Going through the CC licenses with your students might also be a good way to showcase the differences. Compare CC-BY with -NC for starters, versus CC0.

Then, the question is: what, specifically, should students create as "open source" during the class? The meta story of how they learned to create it? The rules for the game, and any images used for tokens or boards? Their instructions for how you can make the game yourself from recycled bits? Something else?

As a long-time software open source person, the "open" concept in education is really exciting for me, and it's great to see schools not just working in the open, but really thinking through the ramifications of what and how you open something up.

Re: Hadoop Creator: If You Want To Succeed With Big Data, Start Small - by Matt Asay

Shane Curcuru — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:57:11 -0000

You know what's even better than Hadoop?/http://communityovercode.co... Apache Hadoop®!

Re: The Future of Groovy & Grails Sponsorship

Shane Curcuru — Fri, 23 Jan 2015 08:26:54 -0000

Best of luck with the future. Key point: please standardize and clearly document your project and brand governance, to ensure the community really can choose it's own direction going forward.

There are several existing foundations that provide governance and a home, although not always direct sponsorship, including Apache, Eclipse, and SFLC - Software Freedom Conservancy. Consider asking one of them for advice on community governance, even if you're not interested in joining one as a project.

Also: don't start your own foundation, it's not worth the organizational overhead to your community. Either find a corporation to be your new home (and realize they will then own the brand), or join an existing foundation. It's a lot of work using engineers and volunteers to setup a legal non-profit!

- Shane Curcuru

Re: Out in the Open: The Abandoned Facebook Tech That Now Powers Apple

Shane Curcuru — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 16:07:38 -0000

Seriously? An entire article about Apache Cassandra, and not a single mention of, y'know, Apache?

http://cassandra.apache.org/

Facebook took the effort to donate the IP and help start a community at the Apache Incubator, where Apache Cassandra is doing great stuff - and indeed being re-used by a variety of software vendors to build amazing apps.

Re: Seven Ways Your Company Can Support Open Source

Shane Curcuru — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 10:27:54 -0000

Amen! In particular, #2 and #3 are the simplest, low-or-no-cost things for any company to do with most open source projects.

In particular showing your support for the open source software that your company uses is simple and important. Honestly representing the source of open source software you use is free, and greatly helps open source groups get the credit they deserve for the software they produce.

Recognition in particular is important for open source projects as well as their contributors. Even simple public thanks to open source groups is appreciated, and helps to reinforce the value of that open source software - both to the public, to it's contributors, and also to other companies who might want to contribute there in the future.

Re: SourceForge back-end code to be donated to Apache

Shane Curcuru — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 09:56:49 -0000

Great article, thanks Brian. Two clarifications:

- You state "... because the ASF will own the copyright.", which is not necessarily the most important point. When large chunks of new code are brought to the ASF, like a corporation donating code for an incubating project, the code is licensed to the ASF under a Software Grant Agreement. This essentially allows the original author(s) to maintain their copyright to the original work - while granting sufficient license rights to the ASF to re-license the code to the world under the Apache license.

The ASF does not ask for copyright assignments - only for a license grant. However the effect is similar to what you're saying: once the ASF gets the code and makes it available to the public from our systems, it is from thereon forward always available (from us) under the Apache license.

http://www.apache.org/licen...

- Please note that Allura has been accepted for incubation by a vote of the Incubator's Project Management Committee already!

http://markmail.org/message...

It will take the list of initial committers and mentors a while working with ASF Infra to organize the checkin of the original code, but it's definitely got it's start!

Re: Office Suites: LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org?

Shane Curcuru — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:10:16 -0000

Glyn (and Tim L.) Please note one very important correction: "...because Apache-licensed code requires copyright assignment from coders, and LibreOffice doesn't." is incorrect.

The ASF has never, and will never, require copyright assignment. In fact in most cases Apache projects don't even *want* your copyright - the ASF would far rather that developers keep their own copyright.

What the ASF does require is an Individual Contributor License Agreement, or iCLA (at least for large amounts of work). This simply licenses your contributions to an Apache project to the ASF under the Apache license. You still maintain your copyright, and you may still license your independent work separately elsewhere. All the ASF needs is this non-exclusive license to ship your code in our projects, so that our users can be confident that Apache projects are properly licensed under the Apache License.

To learn more about the Apache iCLA, see our Licenses page: http://www.apache.org/licen...

Re: OpenOffice.org "can't be allowed to die" | TechCentral.ie

Shane Curcuru — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:46:02 -0000

Please read this morning's statement from the Apache Software Foundation about the transition from the previous OpenOffice.org project to it's new home as the Apache OpenOffice podling:

https://blogs.apache.org/fo...

In particular, please note that the Apache OpenOffice podling is alive and healthy, compiling code on multiple platforms and is working on plans for a great new Apache OpenOffice product release.

Fundraising for all Apache projects and podlings, including Apache OpenOffice, is always done by the core Fundraising team at Apache, which can be found here:

http://www.apache.org/found...

- Shane

Re: Scripting News: Dropbox at $5 billion

Shane Curcuru — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:11:03 -0000

Exactly - saying setting up a server isn't hard is just like saying making Crêpe Suzette is easy, changing your oil is easy, and programming in Ruby is easy. Sure, they're easy to some people - but really, for the vast majority of humans on this planet, those are all hard tasks.It's a more interesting problem to figure out how to better showcase the many existing companies that provide interesting services in a way that's approachable by a normal human being, not a geek. There are plenty of services you pay a reasonable amount for available; how do you find them? Similarly, there are plenty of services you pay the hidden 'cost' of advertising or loss of privacy to use; how do we educate the world about these hidden costs?Excellent points otherwise.

Re: Hudson's future

Shane Curcuru — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:45:13 -0000

Groklaw just wrote an interesting post that's related to controlling your trademarks which is worth a read. It's about the upcoming OpenSUSE project, and features the same (apparent) issue: the existing corporate entity exerting it's control by controlling the name of the project.

http://www.groklaw.net/arti...

This is definitely why having a community-led group leading the project is crucial for it's long-term survival. It's also a key part of why Apache, SFLC, and other truly community-led projects work so well: the community (through their boards) control their names - not corporations.

Good move on the new name, and good luck!

Re: Who's driving this thing?

Shane Curcuru — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:48:49 -0000

Hmmm, Oracle attempting to exert control over an open source project, to the apparent detriment of the actual developers who make the project work? Seems familiar:

https://blogs.apache.org/fo...

The Apache/Oracle issue is different (and more complex); but the essence is similar. There, Oracle is refusing to uphold their contractual obligations under the JSPA to license Apache (and essentially, anyone else besides OpenJDK) to actually build a compatible Java SE product. Sounds like they're using a somewhat similar tactic here: they own the trademark, so they feel they can control the project.

Note that the Apache Incubator has a (somewhat long-winded) process about making project submissions to the ASF:

http://incubator.apache.org...

Re: Who remembers Caldor Middlesex Mall?

Shane Curcuru — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:55:06 -0000

I bow to your superior grammatical, y'know, skills.

But I really meant to take a picture of the aisle sign that said "Mexican Food" in English and Korean.

Re: Who remembers Caldor Middlesex Mall?

Shane Curcuru — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:34:26 -0000

Key points about tonight's visit:
- Old friends are good to catch up with
- The food court at H Mart isn't cheap
- The H Mart bakery has buy-one-get-one during the last little while of the shopping day
- H Mart closes at 9pm! (Some superstore - ha!)
- At closing time, you can often score free bakery items if you hang out at just the right time
- Everyone who went remembered the Caldor there

Re: 301working

Shane Curcuru — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:54:42 -0000

Thanks for the well-reasoned and informative posting. The life of URL shortening companies may be short and often highly competitive lately, but it's great to see someone thinking about - and honestly trying to create, in a fair and open manner - some form of permanence for the ephemera of shortened links.

Good luck with 301works, I hope you can find some other supporters - especially if you can work with a nonprofit, to ensure it's managed fairly for any sizeable shortening database (including competitors). Sounds like you have a good start.

Re: Apache Shows How to Handle a Network Compromise

Shane Curcuru — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:37:54 -0000

Thanks for the posting, and for the praise (which all belongs to the folks behind @infrabot - both paid staff and many volunteers).

The openness is obvious: that's part of how the ASF does it's technical business. Open collaboration is part of The Apache Way. We don't necessarily publicize how all of our internal networks work (partly for security reasons, but mostly because it's too noisy), but once the issue and the hack was addressed, the infra@ team wanted to make sure our end-users knew what the risks were: in this case, the code and downloads were all proven safe fairly quickly. Hopefully we'll also get a few additional eyeballs on our suggested improvements to security.

I was really impressed how quickly infra volunteers - several working very late hours - both shut down the attack, and especially figured out which machines were still safe and could be brought back up quickly. +1s all around to infra@ (which many folks have already passed around).

One of the nice things about the forensics was that the original breach wasn't on an ASF owned system - the attackers originally broke into someone else's hosted box.

Re: 2 reasons I don’t like Au Bon Pain coffee

Shane Curcuru — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:12:47 -0000

Yes, I do. It's a matter of both overall fat content and taste; the ABP light cream has a different taste than my preferred half-and-half. I add less (or attempt to!) light cream than I would half-and-half, and then add the touch of milk to try to get the flavor right.

Update: a very hot cup with a carefully secured lid, and double-cupped (to save my fingers) still leaked, although only on the second cup, so no disasters. But the lids still just don't seal around the seam on the cup there. Very annoying.

Re: I need a NAT

Shane Curcuru — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:10:29 -0000

Sorry Jon - I decided to go for cheaper with built-in features and got the QNAP TS-219P instead. Thanks for the note though. With house construction I've only had time to dump my music and photos on it so far. There's just not enough time in the day for the fun things, like setting up proper backups on all the laptops...