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Huh? The company I worked for wrote 100% FLOSS software and was pretty profitable (and bootstrapped).
The basic idea is pretty much
- a project is successfull if we can (theoretically) be replaced without much hassle by our customers
- that mean the software needs to be readable, changeabel, do whatverrable
- that means data needs to be 100% customer owned
- it also means that a project is only successfull if the codebase is sufficiently modular/disentangled/readable
- customers understand the codebase, their inhouse programmers are well involved
By working strongly towards this goal one actually builds a very strong bond and eventhough it would be "easy" to be replaced it doesn't happen. It's kind of like people paying for artists that give their songs away for free on a corporate level.

While it's actually very old fashioned "customer first" thinking it also goes against most profit optimization strategies that tend to be used in the IT world. A lot of profit opportunities are not taken. You kind of trade very stable growth for a chance of radically faster growth.

There's a lot of these companies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kaby

Other talented candidates might be more likely to apply though!

That's basically it. They also tend to not want all that much money for their skill as long as a certain "fair" treshold is reached (and often don't really care about money at all).

Last edited by clowntable; 02-24-2015 at 07:11 PM.

Quote

02-24-2015 , 09:08 PM

#16853

jjshabado

Carpal Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 22,732

I'm doubtful that that's an even trade.

Furthermore the people that are 'more likely' to apply, probably aren't that much more likely to apply since the core values of the company are so appealing to them already.

Quote

02-24-2015 , 09:29 PM

#16854

e i pi

veteran

Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 2,230

I'm not exactly a free software nut but I do use a linux distro as my main OS. I actually have a virtualbox snapshot of windows with ms word in trial mode explicitly for making resumes (although I only ever sent out a handful like a year ago). I tested whether the libre office documents viewed the same on word and they definitely didn't. Maybe I just goofed that up somehow though.

Quote

02-24-2015 , 09:37 PM

#16855

Gullanian

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 14,014

Sorry to derail, and I've had a beer so this is probably just a dumb idea. Was just wondering what peoples thoughts were on this idea to significantly email spam. It's probably dumb but if someone can tell me why would be good

Sender initiates new email request to recipient
Recipient returns long random list of integers
Sender must send back ordered list of integers along with email
Recipient rejects email if integers are not ordered correctly

Aim is to make sender have to solve some sort of computationally expensive problem which is computationally cheap for the recipient to validate (there's probably better problems than just sorting lists).

If it takes 5 seconds computing time on a average computer to solve the problem, it'd take 2 months of your CPU at 100% to send 1,000,000 emails.

Perhaps even make the first problem around 15-30 seconds long but it only needs to be solved for the first email sent to recipient.

Quote

02-24-2015 , 10:08 PM

#16856

candybar

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 4,234

Quote:

Originally Posted by clowntable

Name one? I didn't say that they don't exist, merely that I'm not aware of any such companies.

Quote

02-24-2015 , 10:28 PM

#16857

anfernee

Won ****ty undertitle in BBB's Beanament

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 5,047

Quote:

Originally Posted by clowntable

Huh? The company I worked for wrote 100% FLOSS software and was pretty profitable (and bootstrapped).

Free libre open source software software.

Quote

02-24-2015 , 10:50 PM

#16858

jjshabado

Carpal Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 22,732

Quote:

Originally Posted by candybar

Name one? I didn't say that they don't exist, merely that I'm not aware of any such companies.

I think Hortonworks fits: http://hortonworks.com/

Totally agree its rare.

Quote

02-24-2015 , 11:25 PM

#16859

Larry Legend

Celtic Pride

Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 42,920

Does Hortonworks Data Platform fit the definition?

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02-24-2015 , 11:28 PM

#16860

iosys

old hand

Join Date: Sep 2011 Posts: 1,753

Gullanian that is an out of the box idea that can work.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 12:25 AM

#16861

daveT

S.A.G.E. Master

Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 23,955

Quote:

Originally Posted by clowntable

I disagree with this. Writer is fine and works cross platform (Latex is excellent for stuff that needs nice layouts, I don't even know what non-free tools one uses for this stuff). Excel is probably a lot better than Calc but I use neither beyound entering simple data. It's used a ton so it has to be decent enough. As a programmer I also think people overuse Excel but that's another debate.

Did you see that link I provided? You have to sort special, highlight, do equations, and all sorts of hoops that takes two button-clicks in Excel. Add in all of the other non-existent features and missing hot-keys, and Calc is a slow pony with a broken leg.

Quote:

Originally Posted by candybar

Name one?

Off the top of my head:

OTRS
Best Practical
EnterpriseDB
Canonical
Red Hat

Quote

02-25-2015 , 02:41 AM

#16862

goofyballer

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 70,719

Quote:

Originally Posted by candybar

What do people here use for continuous integration/delivery/deployment? Not too thrilled with TFS or Jenkins. TeamCity sounds promising though hosted would probably be better. Since our needs are not complex, something that handles all the way to deployment would be preferable. Is Bamboo any good? Any .NET people here have experience with AppHarbor?

We use TeamCity, and while I'm not familiar with how difficult it is/isn't to set up and maintain, its position in our workflow is pretty nice. Pull requests on GitHub automatically trigger a TC build, it runs unit tests and reports back if everything is cool or not, constantly builds latest versions of master branch with dev/release versions we can grab binaries from if we want (which I guess is more for the non-devs who aren't building locally like the programmers do).

Going from AAA games to a startup, one of the biggest differences is definitely the build process. Last company had an in-house build system that was pretty ironclad, custom tools everywhere that were well-supported internally, now it's like "grab whatever open source tools we can that will put this cluster**** of a project together" and somehow you wind up with working software.

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02-25-2015 , 02:53 AM

#16863

goofyballer

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 70,719

Random C++ of the day: I was pretty surprised to discover that this:

Code:

class Interface {
public:
  virtual void f() = 0;
};

class HelloWorld : public Interface {
public:
  virtual void f() override { std::cout << "Hello, world!" << std::endl; }
};

int main(void) {
  Interface* i = new HelloWorld();
  auto func = std::bind(&Interface::f, i);
  func();
  return 0;
}

doesn't make your computer explode into a ball of smoke. std::bind is, like, ****ing magic.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 03:17 AM

#16864

Larry Legend

Celtic Pride

Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 42,920

Yea hortonworks seems to fit. I'm never quite sure with professional services if they have proprietary or otherwise pre-built add-ons and such that they sell.

Red Hat has paid software

Quote

02-25-2015 , 06:12 AM

#16865

ChrisV

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 40,336

Currently trying to set up Thinktecture IdentityServer at work as a single sign-on solution. If I stop posting in the next week, you'll know I've killed myself. If anyone knows of a better SSO solution in the .NET world that doesn't cost a bajillion, let me know.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 09:12 AM

#16866

jjshabado

Carpal Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 22,732

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larry Legend

Yea hortonworks seems to fit. I'm never quite sure with professional services if they have proprietary or otherwise pre-built add-ons and such that they sell.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

My guess would be that they have private code they use for the professional services but that it isn't sold as an add-on or anything like that. More that they probably do a lot of the same stuff and re-use some amount of code to accomplish that.

I'm also not sure about a company like MongoDB. I think technically their database is all open source and the enterprise version is mostly extra support and setting things up - but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those integrations have private code that you only get by paying.

It's kind of an interesting game. There are very few companies that are completely 'free' and yet very many companies that do some open source. It's interesting to see what/how different companies do and guess what their motivations are.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 09:38 AM

#16867

candybar

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 4,234

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjshabado

+1. This kind of stuff that you and Larry Legend are talking about is what I was getting at. You never really know for sure and I know for a fact that the highest level of support for platform software often includes their engineers coming in and fixing your bugs and writing/rewriting critical portions of your software. And in open-source, that's where a lot of money is.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 09:43 AM

#16868

candybar

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 4,234

Quote:

Originally Posted by daveT

OTRS
Best Practical
EnterpriseDB
Canonical
Red Hat

I don't know about the first two, but EnterpriseDB and Red Hat sell closed source software AFAIK and Canonical has Ubuntu One, which is a proprietary service.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 09:54 AM

#16869

adios

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 22,530

Quote:

Originally Posted by goofyballer

Random C++ of the day: I was pretty surprised to discover that this:

Code:

class Interface {
public:
  virtual void f() = 0;
};

class HelloWorld : public Interface {
public:
  virtual void f() override { std::cout << "Hello, world!" << std::endl; }
};

int main(void) {
  Interface* i = new HelloWorld();
  auto func = std::bind(&Interface::f, i);
  func();
  return 0;
}

doesn't make your computer explode into a ball of smoke. std::bind is, like, ****ing magic.

Cool beans. C++ 11 ftw. Interesting.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 11:15 AM

#16870

jjshabado

Carpal Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 22,732

Quote:

Originally Posted by candybar

Yeah, if you think about it as "Companies that have no private source control repos" I'm sure the number is basically zero.

Clown, does your company have any internal only source control repositories?

Quote

02-25-2015 , 01:33 PM

#16871

Barrin6

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 6,947

Was just browsing through the linkedin job app and saw a job with the words in the title: "iOS Developer (iOS 8 experience REQUIRED)"

I founded that was kind of odd since iOS8 was released just 5 months ago on September 2014. And the requirements in all CAPS was very interesting. They must of needed someone who worked with iOS8. But anyone who has worked with iOS7 should have no problem doing the job right? Nonetheless, I have the experience so I opened up and read the job requirements.

Quote:

xxxxxxxxxxx, the world leader in the recruitment of creative and information technology professionals, has an immediate opening for an iOS 8 Developer.

Primary Responsibilities
Assist in defining the scope, objectives and deliverables for related projects.
Specify, design, develop, code, test, debug, document and maintain iOS 8 applications using OBJC, C, C++ and lower-level SDKs for custom UI, UX, and interfaces with multiple servers, and other dynamic applications.
Ability to approach complex UI and application performance problems with out-of-the-box thinking, utilizing novel approaches to the caching and display of rich media data.
Requirements:

Requirements
Two (2) or more years of experience in all phases of iOS 8 application development, from design through testing, documentation, and deployment.
Knowledge of, and experience in, coupling native applications to APIs with dynamic data sources utilizing XML, JSON, WSDL and BSON.
Knowledge and experience developing code using Objective C, C and C++.
Ability to develop and integrate custom graphical display controls and data processing libraries from the ground up.
Demonstrated and effective written, verbal communication, analytical and problem solving skills.
Ability to work independently and on small teams, and to multi-task across projects and platforms.
Experience with additional scripting languages such as PHP and libraries is advantageous.
Successful experience in other small technology companies.

Yea I didn't believe these job postings are real, but now I seen it.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 01:44 PM

#16872

Larry Legend

Celtic Pride

Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 42,920

Quote:

Originally Posted by candybar

IMO, it is kinda silly to try and achieve such strict rules as to what constitutes FLOSS and other business models.

Software needs to get paid for. Period.

If not, you get situations recently where Suzzer and others are donating $100 to a dude whose contribution is used by an unknowable amount of users, who makes barely above minimum wage.

While I am passionate about open source in general, and work at a company that uses a far majority of open source vs proprietary, the reality is that if no one is getting paid to contribute then you are going to just save money on licensing and use it for "custom development" which sounds nice, but it often times is bug fixing, security patches, connecting things so they actually work, etc.

While I sell the concept of open source frameworks and then paying only for customizations for your specific business, the reality is that what you gain in a free license, you often pay for in ongoing support and maintenance. The difference is often that open source is actually capable of those customizations, where the proprietary software will tell you "no" a lot more than open source will.

Open source basically can't tell you "no" to anything. Which is awesome, but it can be expensive. In my opinion, that is why I love open source, the ability to change anything and the visibility into everything.

Quote

02-25-2015 , 01:49 PM

#16873

iversonian

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 21,441

they want to poach the ios sdk developers at apple

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02-25-2015 , 04:49 PM

#16874

ChrisV

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 40,336

As an aside, what is the deal with people writing "Two (2) years"? Are they afraid I only know numbers in numeral form?

I get it on legal docs, but elsewhere it just looks pompous IMO.