devyn changed the topic of #elliottcable to: 22:53:14 <+whitequark> also there was a fragment about Swiss embassy being located on top of a 1000-ft pole, inside which there was a gigantic arms exhibit
<alexgordon> a module store
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<whitequark> it's called... rubygems!
<whitequark> or CPAN or whatever
<alexgordon> right but lots of those suck
<whitequark> or do you actually mean "made a programming language with a walled garden"?
<alexgordon> not at all
<whitequark> ok then I don't see your point
<whitequark> at all
<alexgordon> ok so let people charge say a dollar to use a module
<whitequark> that implies closed-source modules, right?
<alexgordon> not necessarily
<whitequark> the majority of modules are designed to be closed-source
<whitequark> hrm
<alexgordon> could do GPL + proprietary license
<alexgordon> or just do BSD and guilt people into paying a dollar
<whitequark> you're working against a social factor
<alexgordon> how so?
<whitequark> people who would need to pay you in this scheme would stay the fuck away from such language
<cuttle> yeah i think this would be a deterrent
<whitequark> e.g. hardware vendors (working with arguably the biggest gpl deployment) absolutely despise it
<whitequark> they just have pretty much no choice
<whitequark> with linux
<cuttle> also it's actually not too uncommon for game engines
<alexgordon> they wouldn't be paying *me*, they'd be paying the module authors
<whitequark> doesn't matter
<cuttle> like, Unity has a sizeable set of paid addons made by other people
<cuttle> and that actually does work
<cuttle> Unity is prevalent
<cuttle> but that's also because:
<cuttle> it's way way good, and people are used to paying for game engines
<whitequark> it's a very niche market also
<alexgordon> well what you'd probably end up with is two tiers
<cuttle> so if your language is in the game dev world you'd probably be able to do it
<cuttle> whitequark: well, it's a huge niche market if you want to call it that
<alexgordon> low quality free modules and higher quality paid modules
<whitequark> so do you pay it once?
<cuttle> whitequark: like, game dev is a huge world and not really a niche
<alexgordon> whitequark: ?
<whitequark> I'm a company, I write banking software and distribute it to 100k customers
<whitequark> how do I pay for modules I use?
<whitequark> just $1? how would that motivate the module author?
<alexgordon> whitequark: it would motivate them if a thousand people bought it!
<whitequark> $1k is a month's rent here
<alexgordon> hell I'd write way more OSS if I got $1 for every download
<alexgordon> whitequark: not if you live in your mom's basement :D
<alexgordon> basementware?
<whitequark> ugh.
<alexgordon> whitequark: would it motivate them any less than if it were free?
<alexgordon> which is the current state of things
<whitequark> yes
<whitequark> counter-intuitive, perhaps
<whitequark> if I get paid $100 per month for writing, say, parser, I'm not going to give any fucks about it
<whitequark> because $100/month is shit
<alexgordon> now write 20 modules
<alexgordon> $2k/month passive income
<joelteon> you have 100 different people use your modules every month?
<whitequark> but when it's free, what motivates me is a social factor
<alexgordon> joelteon: I'm thinking of the tj's of this world
<cuttle> whitequark: it's like patreon or whatever
<cuttle> it builds up
<cuttle> you do enough that you get passive income going
<alexgordon> look at https://github.com/visionmedia and imagine how many downloads he gets. now obviously not all of those people would pay $1 for it, but lots would
<whitequark> still. it's well-known that the results of writing software for free and for money are wildly different
<alexgordon> in which direction?
<alexgordon> free (as in beer) software is a mixed bag for me
<whitequark> e.g. the kickstarter effect: the scope of the project will expand until it matches the budget
<alexgordon> you get shining examples of perfect software like sqlite
<alexgordon> and shitty abandonware (like stuff on my github)
<whitequark> quite possibly leading to outright failure
<alexgordon> this would incentivise people to maintain their software, otherwise someone comes along and usurps you and your income goes down
<whitequark> it would also add a heavy dose of "I PAID YOU $1 BITCH ANSWER ME WITHIN ONE MINUTE"
<alexgordon> haha but you get that with free users :P
<whitequark> sure, but you can tell them to fix it themselves!
<whitequark> now you'd basically be expected to work as tech support, which is shitty
<alexgordon> the way I envisage it is someone looks at the networking libraries and says "I can do better", so they build a better one and it gets a better rating, and they get the $s!
<alexgordon> capitalism, it works
* alexgordon says to the russian
<alexgordon> and this would also kickstart the language
<alexgordon> people will want to monetize their open source easily
<whitequark> I don't think that it would optimize for best software, not at all.
<alexgordon> and so the language will get a reputation for having a lot of good quality batteries
<alexgordon> whitequark: it would because it's a competitive system
<whitequark> look at, say, ST3
<whitequark> the author doesn't give a fuck and didn't really touch it for years now
<whitequark> why? because he can
<alexgordon> right but that's because he got his fuck you money
<whitequark> are someone else going to step in and replace ST3? no, not really, because writing an editor is a major PITA
<whitequark> *exactly*
<alexgordon> I haven't got fuck you money with chocolat and I can assure you I spend lots of time on it
<alexgordon> you wouldn't get fuck you money selling open source for a dollar
<alexgordon> you might get a passive income however
<alexgordon> *as long as* you keep your shit updated
<alexgordon> so that someone else doesn't come along and steal your income from you
<alexgordon> so more of a semi-passive income
<whitequark> that would also lead to interesting issues like
<whitequark> authors of popular libraries actively sabotaging others' code in order to manipulate the market
<alexgordon> mmm maybe, but it would show in git no?
<whitequark> idk
<whitequark> it just looks like you're taking the worst of open-source and the worst of capitalism
<whitequark> and throwing together
<alexgordon> you could do it more subtlety by flooding their bug tracker with spurious feature requests
<alexgordon> then let them feature creep themselves to death
<alexgordon> whitequark: well I am evil!
<whitequark> basically, replacing altruism with greed
<whitequark> what could go wrong
<alexgordon> greed is not a bad thing though
<alexgordon> merely a powerful thing
<alexgordon> without greed, humanity would be nothing
<whitequark> greed doesn't optimize for good software though
<alexgordon> I disagree
<alexgordon> I think altruism doesn't optimize for good software
<alexgordon> and I think that we are not fully harnessing the world's programmers to write good libraries
<whitequark> I'm not sure whether you are trolling at this point
<whitequark> have you ever seen, say, upstream Linux code and vendor Linux code?
<whitequark> or pretty much any upstream OSS code and vendor modifications to it?
<alexgordon> but that's different, the vendors don't have a direct incentive to write good code
<whitequark> that's right, they're motivated solely by profit
<whitequark> which is exactly what I'm talking about
<alexgordon> but if they *did* have a direct incentive, in the form of money
<alexgordon> they'd write better code
<alexgordon> hell I have so many ideas for open source projects, but I never bother writing them because I know it's pointless
<alexgordon> my time is better spend on things which I can make money with
<alexgordon> *spent
<whitequark> unless those OSS ideas are all extremely worthwhile, nothing would change
<alexgordon> LOL burn
<purr> LOL
<whitequark> hm?
<alexgordon> you said my ideas aren't worthwhile
<whitequark> seriously, for all my projects except parser, if I got paid $1/download (unrealistic), that won't even cover the food
<alexgordon> but if you knew you'd be getting $1/download you'd take more care making really good craic
<whitequark> no, I'd care about having more downloads
<whitequark> there's no reason to believe that incentive translates to better code
<alexgordon> wait I actually don't think the word "craic" means what I thought it meant. always thought it meant "stuff" but it seems it's more specific than that
<whitequark> it's more about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. people who care about thing they do write good code. people who don't, not really
<whitequark> and you can't make people care by throwing money at them
<alexgordon> maybe not russian people...
<alexgordon> it would work for me *shrugs*
<purr> ¯\(º_o)/¯
<whitequark> first, that's a really dumb insult
<whitequark> second, what I'm saying is relatively well-established, it's not just my musings
<whitequark> look up, for example, the effect of kickstarters on OSS projects
<alexgordon> but kickstarter is not like it at all, because you get paid upfront
<alexgordon> here you do the work, *then* people pay you
<alexgordon> if you write crap, nobody will pay you
<whitequark> you know what? write a blog article about such an ecosystem, make it completely serious
<whitequark> even slightly pretentious, but not too much
<whitequark> and post it on HN. I would gladly watch the ensuing bonfire
<alexgordon> hahahaha
<alexgordon> austrian schoolers vs fsf supporters
<alexgordon> yep, would be amazing
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<whitequark> this is awesome
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<alexjames> whitequark: -___-
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<joelteon> guys
<joelteon> so i want to change banks
<joelteon> because i get like a 0.01% interest rate at this one
<joelteon> do you have any recommendations
<joelteon> since i'm young and naive
<devyn> cuttle: ever play around with DOpE? basically L4-based operating system with a GUI that's capable of hosting L4Linux in a window within it
<devyn> cuttle: oh Fiasco specifically, I think
<devyn> not entirely sure haha
<devyn> oh other way around?
<devyn> meh
<cuttle> devyn: basically the only os-playing I've done is arch in a vm
<cuttle> not big into os play
<cuttle> devyn: but yeah sounds sweet
<cuttle> l4 is cool
<devyn> yeah I was considering just scrapping the work I've done so far on kit's kernel and just using L4 as the base
<devyn> it's such a thin, yet useful abstraction
<devyn> the fact that I can read through the entire manual for L4's API in less than an hour is refreshing
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<cuttle> devyn: yeah, i haven't done anything with it but my brother was hyped about it
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<joelteon> what is it about banks that make them especially really bad at user experience
<alexgordon> joelteon: they're rich
<joelteon> is that really it