skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What are a startup's ethical responsibilities to the open source community if your startup is based on an open source stack?

I'm going to go with "None whatsoever".

I think Zed has a point: Why aren't they open sourcing more of it?

Isn't this "Why aren't you releasing code with a license more conducive to meeting my needs?", just coming from the other end of the table?

When a startup exits, should they contribute financially to the open source devs that helped them build that startup?

A copy of my software costs $30. It would not be possible without the support of: Nginx, Firefox, Firebug, YSlow, Ruby, Rails, Prawn, Java, the Apache Commons HTTPClient library, Google Charts, the Ruby Google Chart API wrapper, Wordpress, six wordpress Plugins, Netbeans, Eclipse, Ubuntu, the whole Linux toolchain, launch4j, JarBuilder, the hominid gem, InnoSetup, and the guy listed in the credits who wrote the font selection dialog whose name I can never remember but who licensed it under the condition that I put his name in the credits.

[Edit: In five seconds since posting this I have thought of at least six projects omitted above. Do I need to remind people that I sell a freaking bingo card maker? A full accounting would sound like I, Pencil: 2009 edition, and if I had to do it for a more technically involved project my head would explode.]

Do you have a sane scheme for identifying a fair way to distribute $30, or $3 million, between all of the individuals and corporations who cooperated in the release of the above? If you do, your scheme left someone out. By what basis have you decided that their contribution is morally less important than those of the people who you included?

If you want to get money from the people who use your software, charge the people who use your software money.
Clearly ETH Zurich http://www.inf.ethz.ch/ or www.ethz.ch
About 6 years ago I was running a "top list" script that was exploited. They planted a backdoor in an obscure folder, so that even after I removed the script they got in again twice. Took me a week to dig out every dodgy file they'd put in.

Also had my very first PHP script exploited (2004ish). I was threatened by some jerk who told me if I didn't remove it from my server he'd exploit it. I didn't, he did, lost months worth of work.

Been nothing since, touch wood.
Bing Delivers Credibility to Microsoft
> If you want to get money from the people who use your software, charge the people who use your software money.

Sure. But money isn't the only currency. "Thanks!" is a really good start. It makes my day when someone says thanks for something I've done. Beyond that, actually contributing a little bit here or there, where possible, is really appreciated too.
Thanks a lot! My hope is actually to operate the site as a going concern (with a paid version offering additional features). We saw what happened last time someone sold one of these bookmarking sites to a big company...
Another approach to securing sessions without (much) SSL is SessionLock: http://ben.adida.net/projects/sessionlock/
> In five seconds since posting this I have thought of at least six projects omitted above.

I think your misconstruing the point. Indeed most of the projects you listed can hardly be considered crucial or core technologies :)

I think the main point here is if you take a core code base, say Lamson (seeing as Zed is the source of this whole debate :D) and built a popular enterprise mail server/client (say something like Kerio Mail Server) out of it. Is it not "good form" to perhaps put some obvious credit "built with the cool lamson". Or perhaps offer Zed a bit of cash to iron some bugs you found. Or farm back bug fixes into the Lamson source. 90% of companies probaboly wont bother - and they should, right? :)

I also think you assuming the idea is distribute cash according ot some scheme or other. As I see it the point is that it would be "nice" if more companies considered it good form to show appreciation for the core technologies that make their businesses tick :) (in whatever form they can afford / deem appropriate).
ETH Zürich (http://www.ethz.ch/) for Bertrand Meyer (Eiffel), Ueli Maurer, ...

EPF Lausanne (http://www.epfl.ch/) for Martin Odersky (Scala), ...
i've been trying to say this for a while, but everything is going to move to the mobile device. as the hardware catches up, the experience is going to become as ubiquitous as the desktop (or rather the laptop).

your driver's license? put it on your phone. paying for something? put it on your phone. waiting in a line? just order it on your phone. there's obviously some technical barriers right now, especially with e-commerce, but it will come. social media is flavor of the day right now, but when the hardware catches up, things like wallets are going to disappear.
If the signing can be done without a human providing the key/passphrase, then the whole thing is worth nothing anyway.
You don't do a morning prayer to the holy Edison just because your alarm clock woke you up. Clearly I don't think there is a requirement to give back. It is just utterly stupid not to give back. If you don't nuture the community that feeds you, you just show short-sightedness (and that's bad for you).
Also, I believe Magnolia did do daily backups. They just weren't that good at it.
I've met North Koreans who are reasonably savvy crackers.

Similairly there are a few rich NK's with the resources to purchase a bot net from a russian gang.

This attack isnt rocket science (either in ability or cost).
On Releasing Early
I like how you're subtly calling the libpurple developers idiots.

Some people can live with making enough money to have a pretty good life and not worrying about maximizing their revenue streams while just being happy that their work has meaning to others.
I have never aborted signing up because the form asked for the same information twice. Nor can I imagine doing so if it was obviously intended.

I could've done A/B testing and I could've done a full statistical analysis of the results. But I don't think splitting hairs like that is particularly useful. I simply had no reason to believe that it would affect our growth negatively, nor do I have such reason now. We are growing very, very fast.

But what I was really referring to was the customer service overhead. Almost every account that had a failed e-mail address would cause us some customer service. People creating another account which needed approval to prevent multiple accounts per user (which is cheating the game), or just asking questions. I cannot imagine people asking less questions if they paid for an account and can't access it.
Yes. Many years ago I ran my own Windows Server network out of my home office -- Exchange, SQL Server, SMS, etc. It was all part of learning how to use the tools and staying on top of the technology. At the time I had a T-1 leased to the office, which gave me tremendous speed (relative to everybody else in town, that is)

The problem with this plan was that Microsoft is a place full of really smart people making really complicated software. Each of these server programs was it's own world of consultants and gotchas -- it was too much to manage while doing other "real" work. Patching and tweaking alone could have took all of my time.

I guess it took about a month for me to figure out that my Exchange Server had be pwned and was sending out spam email for somebody with a Russian IP address. I figured it out when I went to the box for something else and realized the CPU was pinging out at 100%. A little digging around and wham! Guess what? You've been punked.

I played around with cleaning it up for a couple of days but it just wasn't worth the hassle. I learned a lot about Exchange Server databases in the process, but I have no desire to be an email technician. And with Microsoft, everything is tied into everything else: it's never just one complex product, it's fifty.

So I shut the entire thing down. Swore that if I needed server or storage stuff I'd let somebody else worry about the details. It was one of the smartest things I've done as far as network administration -- understanding my own constraints. Now if I want Microsoft Server programs, I just rent them off the web. But I've found that, with the exception of SQL Server and IIS, most of the MS Server products are simply too overblown to make it worthwhile for an advanced hobbiest to play around with.

As a humorous side note, the next New Year's Day I got an email from some Russian guy who wished me the best for the coming year. We exchanged email pleasantries on New Year's for a few years after that. I always wondered what happened to him. I was hoping for jail, but he's probably got a villa and big ship in the Med somewhere.

Punk. (grin)
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:) That wasn't my intention. I said I would feel like an idiot. Everyone has different viewpoints, and maybe they're happy to donate their work both to end users, and to multimillion dollar companies. The issue I see is that in the case of Meebo for example, a large part of that $200m worth undoubtedly comes from their ability to work with IM protocols - which has been largely 'donated' to them, from open source folks.

(Again, I'm not saying Meebo is bad for doing this, I'd do exactly the same).

Lets suppose you reverse engineered skype. Would you open source it? Or seek to make at least a little money from it. If you chose to open source, it's likely many others would make money from it instead of you.
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I only mention it because users actually do behave strangely this way. Every field you show them loses a percentage of them. It's weird.

Here's an experience I had a couple years ago where a small tweak to remove a signup barrier more than doubled the number of people signing up:

http://twiddla.blogspot.com/2007/04/1000-signups-on-day-one....
Chemical used to retain memories isolated...could "Mindwipes" be far behind?
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stuck on debuging javascripts. im not sure if its #5
Indeed, this is a very good recall on the old security saying: "If I need your password, I call you and ask you for it."
I don't often agree with Zed wholeheartedly, but in this instance I do. I've said pretty much the same thing repeatedly on various license threads here at HN (and I work on projects under both BSD-like and GPL licenses, because the two licenses do result in very different results in the market of ideas and money).

Regardless of whether we can name lots of people who've done more (there's always somebody better, no matter what the qualifications, and they're probably better than you and me, too), Zed is absolutely right in this case, and if fame and fortune is part of his motivation for doing this stuff, he should choose licenses that are amenable to that.
A major part of the content Zed's post is his own appraisal of himself and how wonderful he is and how he never gets any attention for what he does. When he makes it the topic himself it's a perfectly valid to discuss whether it's true or not.

IMHO his attitude and public persona absolutely may have to do with what he experiences wrt his software. He's obviously brilliant and does great code, but I know I wouldn't hire him as even a temporary contractor because his personality is just incompatible with the needs of a sane business environment.
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As a small business owner of what is essentially a one-man show, I side with the folks who say that you should raise your rate. Pricing has a way of setting expectations and providing a perception of quality. If you bill half as much as anyone else, the question on anyone's mind is going to be, "What's the catch?"

Sometimes there isn't a catch, and sometimes there is. Unfortunately, in my experience it is a pretty safe bet with most people I could conceivably subcontract my work to that if they are naive enough to work for an obscenely low rate, they are not up to the task because they are also naive in other ways. I hate that this prejudice also hurts people who are just legitimately happy with a lower rate, but that's just how it goes.
Yes, at this point - although it is looking hopeful - it is useful even as a pure R&D platform for Perl 5.
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Another possibility is that XP worked Microsoft out of a "job" (upgrade cycle) by coming, over its life cycle, to be extremely rock-solid.

Most upgrade cycles are initiated by a perceived lack of future compatibility in a fairly imminent time frame. If compatibility is expected indefinitely, there just isn't an incentive.
At least for me--someone unsatisfied with the bloatware del.icio.us has become, willing to try something new, and really not too fussed about a signup fee lower than MeFi's--the cost was actually an attraction. It says "We're serious" and "We want to keep out spammers", both of which are fairly crucial to a bookmarking service.

It also makes the site stand out: probably only URI shorteners are more common than social bookmarking services, and the increasing signup fee differentiates it from all the others (I doubt I'd have given it a second thought otherwise).
I wonder how that article mixes with this one...

'Exposure to New York City as a Risk Factor for Heart Attack Mortality'

http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/61...
The Avastin Paradox
If you want to compare UK universities then have a look at the league tables: http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tol_gug/gooduniversityguide....

Just type in the subject you're interested in. When I used it, I ordered the list by research quality.
Imperial and Cambridge, in that order.
How on earth would I make money from reverse engineered Skype? I can't even fathom it, the amount of work it would take TO make money from a reverse engineered protocol for communicating with Skype servers. I would not even know where to start.

Here's what I think: the $200MM going to Meebo has NOTHING to do with them using the libpurple library. My reasoning: Any other web based chat company would have the same capability to exploit libpurple in their strategy. Web companies don't get funding for their technology ever. They get funding for their eyeballs and stickiness.

Finally, on the subject of backhanded insults: Imagine that you were physically speaking with a group of libpurple developers and said, "Boy, if I were in your shoes, I'd feel like a bunch of idiots!"
I'm sorry, if you released the software under a liberal open source license then you weren't "burned". I don't get what it is that makes people release software under licenses that say "do whatever you want with my code" and then suddenly get all self-righteous when someone actually does that. Be pleased and flattered your software is being used - if that wasn't your original motivation then you chose the wrong license to begin with.
I think it has to do with a referer check, if you copy the links without referring to pingwire it still works.

Pingwire really is mostly javascript, the site is a simple container to deliver that javascript to your browser which will then do the rest of the work all by itself.

It also seems the block isn't perfect, if you let it run long enough some pictures will make it through.
or double your hourly rate + 10-15%
Horribly misleading and sensationalist subject.

Summery: Index puts £10.5m into fast food ordering "Just-East"
If the GPL version is enough, then yes, it is free. But the free as a beer binary is not free for his purposes.
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Claims about the law being "locked behind a cash register" are overblown, because everything the article is talking about are available from public libraries. While this might not be enough for people who are used to consuming everything they read through a web browser, it is not the same as "secret" or even "closed-source." (And, by the way, both patents and the CFR are indeed available online, just not in one single bulk download).
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How to not get blown up by an IED in Afghanistan: Go home to your own country and fix its problems.
Combine something like this with ubiquitous RFID and a refrigerator/pantry/freezer that can read it and you could have a program that keeps track of the food you have, warns you when something can be expected to go bad, and suggest recipes based on what you have. That would be useful and would reduce the amount of food wasted.
I'm not sure that you have an authority to make such judgments. The way he is on his personal website may have nothing to do with his professional behavior. We are wired in, so we see his rants and internalize them, but that doesn't mean that they present an accurate picture of reality.
in bed!
Successful Logo and Identity Design Starts with a Solid Name
"If there is hope, it lies with the proles." -- Winston Smith, in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
It seems to me (and I might be wrong) that a large portion of your customer base might be people that are comfortable with email but not RSS, and thus could benefit from a sentence of copy on what exactly RSS does for them.
Good point, the attack has been traced back to an IP address in the UK. At this point they don't know the actual source, but authorities are investigating all possibilities. That raises a whole other conversation about law enforcement in UK and whether it has the skills or resources to aid investigation.
Yeah, he is the same guy.
Even in densely-populated European countries, 3G network coverage isn't anywhere near good enough to allow this sort of thing.

FM (and DAB) radio will be around for a very long time - they're simply the most efficient way of delivering music and radio programming to large numbers of people across a wide area.

It works for you now because about three people and a dog are doing it, but if even a fraction of the audience of an average regional FM radio station started to stream their personal Pandora / Last.fm accounts or listen to on-demand programming over the 3G network instead, it would very quickly reach capacity.
I am not a big fan of re-inventing the wheel but I am also not a big fan of copy-paste programming. Often times you unwittingly introduce errors, assumptions, or complexities into your program without realizing it. Having said that, it is a great way to get a general idea of how to solve problems if you're stumped.

[EDIT]

I really like the design. It is very clean visually and seems well thought out from a UI perspective.
Story says the source of the attacks was Uk. That is a fair comment. the UK should have sufficient control to prevent ISPs and datacentres in its geography launching this sort of attack, regardless of who commissioned it in the first place. It is perfectly feasible that the attack was bought 'off the shelf' - but it is important ot find the site from which the attack was launched, as well as the ultimate controllers. Remember McCollo?
Ethical responsibilities? None.

But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't open source any of your code. Spending time on things which are not your core functionality is bad -- this is why services like AWS are so popular. All of those open source libraries which you're using? They're not your core functionality -- so it's better for you to contribute your changes/improvements back so that someone else can maintain them rather than spending time on that yourself.

Tarsnap is built around the excellent bsdtar tar archiver and libarchive archive-handling library written by Tim Kientzle; whenever I write code for tarsnap which could conceivably be useful in bsdtar or libarchive (bug fixes, SIGINFO handling, reworking of internal buffering, etc) I contribute it back because it reduces the amount of work I need to do merging changes when I update to a new
version of libarchive in the future.

Of course, this argument doesn't apply if the open source code you're using is your core functionality -- but at that point, you've got bigger problems to tackle than figuring out whether you should contribute code back.
unprofessional? Please, he's not a lawyer or a PR agent he's an engineer. An engineer that calls a spade a spade and speaks their mind has the right kind of attitude.
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It's hard to answer this without first answering the more general question of what we believe about business ethics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_ethics#Ethical_issues_...) which would probably make an interesting conversation thread in itself.
Actually, if you read the rant, it's also about money.

Kudos to Zed for giving the hackers code and the businesspeople invoices.
Imperial College. In addition to a very strong Computing department (see other reviews, league tables or just believe me, I've got MSc Advanced Computing from there), it's situated in London, where many exciting IT companies are based. I would never have met so many great hackers/founders etc. if I chose not to study in London.