The computer programming language known as "open source code"

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3026798220101130

by jchonphoenix • 16 years ago

70 31 16 years ago

I love it when outsiders to a community (like journalists) get things like this wrong, because it makes me rethink my mental categories.

We have absorbed a culturally agreed set of differences between a computer language, a platform, a framework, a library, an OS... and we're comfortable with licencing being coextensive with these units without getting confused, for example.

asnyder• 16 years ago

I'm not so sure about the library vs framework agreement. Many packages that would historically be labeled libaries, now call themselves a framework, making it even harder for the real frameworks to stand out among the clutter.

bodhi• 16 years ago

Isn't the difference generally that a library is used by client code, whereas client code sits 'inside' (for varying levels of inside) a framework? That's my rule-of-thumb anyway.

iwr2• 16 years ago

Why would this guy bother copying stuff off the Goldman servers when it was open source, and presumably freely available?

SpikeGronim• 16 years ago

I think that he claimed that the code was open source, but in fact it was proprietary.

frisco• 16 years ago

I think it was mostly oss (maybe with local changes, re: why not download a fresh copy?), but there was some proprietary code in there (which may or may not have been intentional), which is what tripped him up.

slashclee• 16 years ago

Or maybe Goldman Sachs built a bunch of stuff internally on top of open-source code.

wtracy• 16 years ago

Reading between the lines, this is my guess as to what's going on:

Goldman Sachs built an internal-use-only tool that relied on some GPL code. Aleynikov is going to claim that this made Goldman Sach's code fall under the GPL, and therefore he has a right to redistribute it.

I hope that's not what's going on, because the pointy-haired ones don't need another reason to be afraid of FOSS.

lenni• 16 years ago

To be fair when I talk about, say, legal issues I tend to blurt out dangerous half-truths that I deduct from supposed 'first principles'. On the other hand I would never write an article on the law like this person has done.

madd_o• 16 years ago

This phrase, spoken by someone who doesn't know anything about the subject, contains an unrelated grain of truth.

Today's projects are cobbled together by giants sections of open source code, customized for specific purposes. A project may span languages, and usually includes more than one.

His ignorance made me appreciate the meta-programming language one could call "open source code."

w1ntermute• 16 years ago

This makes me wonder whether all the articles out there on other stuff contains errors like this too.

dflock2• 16 years ago

They do. If you've ever had anything of yours reported in the press, you will discover that almost all articles are like this one.

taylorbuley• 16 years ago

It doesn't have to be that way

GHFigs• 16 years ago

Michael Crichton gave a name to the absence of such wondering:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070629011206/www.michaelcrichto...

lukejduncan• 16 years ago

Many journalist have invented their own language known as "the newspaper" to be sold public streets at low cost, but profitability issues are murky.

The computer programming language known as "open source code"

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