I suppose you're talking about OWL. The thing is most programmers look at OWL, see the words class and property and immediately think that it's OOP, that they don't have to look more into it and it has the same problems.
But OWL is not based on OOP, it's based on Description Logic, which is a much more powerful abstraction than OOP and it let's you easily represent things which are very hard with something like Java. OWL includes the concept of complex class, in which you define the logical constraints of the class and then it is inferred automatically by a reasoner. This means that you can build really complex multidimensional hierarchies pretty easily.
For example, you can solve the circle/ellipse this way: the class circle is a complex class which is the intersection of the class ellipse and the class of two dimensional geometric shapes in which both major and minor axis have the same length. Any object that satisfies those constraints is a circle!
About the greek problem: you have to declare that the human class and the complex class which results from the intersection of the class two-legged animal and featherless animal are equivalent. It means that every human is two-legged featherless animal and viceversa.
You can even declare equivalences between ontologies, which lets you build conceptual bridges.
OWL has problems related with the maturity and performance of its implementations, and it remains to be seen if it's possible to treat the web as a gigantic Prolog program, but its conceptual model is powerful and sound.
Yes, picadas (which means chopped in Spanish) are pretty common in Argentina and people usually drink beer with them. You can order them at pubs and they are something standard in social gatherings.
But I think mezze includes more elaborated food; the typical picada includes cheese, cold cuts, olives, peanuts, bread, snack food and that's it. The things served are more similar to the italian antipasto, but the way of serving them (many small dishes distributed over the table) resembles the mezze.
Maybe I'm missing something, but asado de tira is one of the two most common cuts in Argentina's parrillas, the other one is vacío (flank steak). It's so common that you can just order "asado" and you will get that.
That's probably right, Fernet with Coke is a kind of national drink, especially in the province of Córdoba, where everything suggests it was invented.
If you order a Fernet in Argentina, it is assumed that it includes Coke. Nobody that I know of drinks it alone, and it sounds weird to us to do that.
In the movie "The Dark Knight Rises" there's a scene in which Alfred goes to Florence and drinks Fernet Branca alone. The comment from many Argentinians was "What? No Coke? That's gross!".
I try to be as cautious as any free software loving programmer when it comes to Microsoft, but it's hard to see how they could get away with that strategy in TypeScript's case. The code uses the Apache License 2.0 (FSF approved, OSI approved and compatible with GPL v3) and it's been on github for a year with lots of forks.
You don't need to depend on anything from Microsoft for development, I've toyed with TypeScript using Node.js and Eclipse on Linux without issues. And as stated before TypeScript compiles directly to Javascript and they are trying to align their syntax with ES6.
Seems quite kosher. I think at this point if Microsoft tried something shady a community fork is very doable, or if it doesn't happen you can always compile to plain JS and continue working there.
It's really different from the situation you describe because developers and users won't tolerate a MS JS that only works with MS browsers, they have to remain compatible with the others or risk irrelevance.
No, the AGPL uses strong copyleft, so any future derivative work must be released under the same terms (and the same license or later versions if I'm not mistaken). The only possibility is to start a closed source clone that doesn't use any of the original code from zero.
The cases in which the community forks a project licensed with a copyleft license (like LibreOffice) has to do with insatisfaction with the direction in which the company that owns the original trademarks is leading said project. There's no risk of closing the source code.
> No, the AGPL uses strong copyleft, so any future derivative work must be released under the same terms (and the same license or later versions if I'm not mistaken). The only possibility is to start a closed source clone that doesn't use any of the original code from zero.
Slava @ RethinkDB here.
This has one exception -- the copyright owner can choose to start releasing enhancements as closed source, and they wouldn't be legally obligated to open source them. Currently RethinkDB, Inc. owns the rights to the code -- if we wanted to continue developing closed-source enhancements, technically we could. If we were acquired and our acquirer chose to do that, they could too (since they'd end up owning the rights to the code). Copyright and licensing are different things -- essentially the copyright owner has the right to relicense future code in a different way.
We have extremely strong incentives not to engage in bad behavior (and it runs against our beliefs), but I thought I'd point out that there is no legal barrier.
One caveat with this: if your project is open source and has accepted submissions from non-affiliated entities, you would either need to get them to assign the rights to that code to RethinkDB or remove them from the source if you were to relicense under something that would break the AGPL. This is where things like code releases come in.
This is also why many open source startups don't accept code submissions from outsiders until they've determined they're going down the path of a consulting-focused business model. It's just too risky.
Just a note: the comparison with foundation db isn't all that apt -- Sun/Solaris+ZFS/Oracle is probably a more apt comparison to what could hypothetically change if RethinkDB is bought up (by, say, Oracle..).
I'm not suggesting that is likely, but that it's more what would/could happen -- there is already a real, working, full product that wouldn't disappear over night. And a commercial fork would likely be pretty painful for everyone, just as closed Solaris is looking less and less interesting as both many of the minds behind the great parts of Solaris work on Open Solaris in one form or another, and as fewer community resources go into closed Solaris.
I see the AGPL (as opposed to some ad-hoc license) as another benefit for RethinkDB. Many might not like the copyleft-part -- but at least it is a known and well-documented quantity -- no surprises likely to come from/with forking and/or when trying to merge with other Free software (be that BSD or GPL or...).
- You & and your team have put in 5 years of effort.
- You have generously shared your mind product. The community has it.
I don't [know] about you, but over here in NYC, we have to pay for food, rent, clothing, medical insurance, entertainment, etc. Not a single one of these transactions involves counter parties that would smile my way and say "it's on the house".
I don't know about the JVM, but what you mention about MySQL has to do not strictly with the GPL but with it being dual licensed (GPL and propietary) and as a result many Linux distributions like Red Hat, OpenSUSE, Fedora and Arch decided to make MariaDB -which is only GPL, compatible with MySQL and has more features- the default and it's readily available in most -if not all- distros, Windows and Mac OS X. So I would take the part of "competitors always a step behind you" with a very big grain of salt.
But that's perfectly OK and working as intended. I mean, if you want to distribute a closed source product, then you're working against what the FSF and GPL were created for, and it's wise to stay away from them. Remember, free software doesn't measure its success by the number of corporations that choose their code to use in closed source products, but by the amount of freedom it gives to its users (not just the developers). Having corporations use GPL code in their products is great but not the main objective.
You have some guarantees of access to the present source code (and as jdjb points out, not necessarily), but you're certainly not guaranteed access to changes made in the future by that or other parties like the GPL does. That's the whole point of copyleft and why I prefer it, I don't want to worry if I'll be able to access the features and fixes that will be made by others or if I will be left in the dust. And fair's fair, if you benefited from the work made by others then it's only fair to them to benefit from yours.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I have the feeling that many -of course, not all and I'm not saying that you do- think that their precious code is so amazing and it will give so much competitive advantage that they need to leave open the option for a closed source version that will make them rich, and that's why they defend "freer" licenses very passionately. Newsflash, it almost surely -like 99,99%- won't happen.
Yes it is because people expect their office suite to handle MS formats flawlessly as a basic requirement, and the best at that is naturally MS Office. Nobody cares how or if Word handles ODT files, but if another word processor doesn't handle DOCX for exporting and importing without issues then it will be treated as unusable by lots of users, no matter how wonderful it is in other respects.
In this space UI and features are (for me, sadly) secondary and support for a specific file format is king.
I would say that the main selling point of MSO is Excel - because it's the program the people who sign the cheques live in all day every day. So they buy themselves and everyone MSO, not anything else.
Completely agreed. There isn't a credible competitor to Excel, because Excel isn't in the spreadsheets business--spreadsheets are in the Excel business, and nobody else is good at being Excel. (This is distinct from the file format, because we're talking about bug-for-bug compatibility at runtime too.) Even Mac Office isn't sufficiently good at being Excel to be Excel.
Until that changes--I'll check back in a decade or two--LibreOffice and friends, no matter how legitimately good, will be also-rans in the corporate world.
That's questionable. Is Google Apps a friend? 'Cos a lot of offices are shifting to that, even if its spreadsheet is pitiful. With Excel for the few that seriously need it.
I do concur that Calc is the main issue for LO. They've finally got it to a state where serious improvement work can start ...
But OWL is not based on OOP, it's based on Description Logic, which is a much more powerful abstraction than OOP and it let's you easily represent things which are very hard with something like Java. OWL includes the concept of complex class, in which you define the logical constraints of the class and then it is inferred automatically by a reasoner. This means that you can build really complex multidimensional hierarchies pretty easily.
For example, you can solve the circle/ellipse this way: the class circle is a complex class which is the intersection of the class ellipse and the class of two dimensional geometric shapes in which both major and minor axis have the same length. Any object that satisfies those constraints is a circle!
About the greek problem: you have to declare that the human class and the complex class which results from the intersection of the class two-legged animal and featherless animal are equivalent. It means that every human is two-legged featherless animal and viceversa.
You can even declare equivalences between ontologies, which lets you build conceptual bridges.
OWL has problems related with the maturity and performance of its implementations, and it remains to be seen if it's possible to treat the web as a gigantic Prolog program, but its conceptual model is powerful and sound.