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cdibona

2,808 karma · joined November 13, 2008

Open Source guy, programmer, Former Google. Email me at chris@dibona.com or find out more about me at http://dibona.com

I run a game company developing http://fracturedveil.com and help governments, film/tv productions and companies worldwide on issues related to technology, open source and manufacturing.

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cdibona··on A History of IDEs at Google
This is what I'm here for. Indeed the Atlanta team bet it all on Brightly, and while it was so ahead of its time, it didn't get enough of an uptake to satisfy... certain executives in engineering.

They subsequently shuttered Atlanta and it would take five or more years before they'd allow engineers there again.

It was very Google. Lost some truly talented (Hi Bruce!) software engineers who would go on to make terrific software elsewhere.

cdibona··on Pebble Watch software is now open source
The closest we got to a fully open source android release was probably in the Nexus one days with some 9 proprietary blobs and , worse, user space support programs (IIRC the compass calibration routines, annoyingly.) , all for various chip/radio support.
cdibona··on How a Gas Compressor Station Works
The smart pigs honestly look like a pigs snout flying down the pipe.
cdibona··on How a Gas Compressor Station Works
If you wanna see cutouts of a bunch of this equipment, a pig in a transparent pipe, and just happen to be in Oman, the petroleum development museum there is super.

Id imagine there's something similar in Houston, this stuff is legit fascinating.

cdibona··on Lessons learned from bringing promotional sweets to a conference
Back around ...2007 or so I had papabupple make a 'google (heart emoji) open source" hard candy, they were absolutely terrific. People loved those things. Papabubble had a shop in SF in those days. Expensing 600 lbs of candy was a first for google accounting I think.
cdibona··on Whistleblower Aid
Assange worked with Rusbridger, Guardian's editor in chief at the time, I think. So .... the guardian should go to the guardian and get their help! :-)
cdibona··on Amazon's Silent Sacking
But the iPhone came out in 2007 and the for g1, 2008..... so, uh.....
cdibona··on Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
It was a very big printer, Jeremy.
cdibona··on Steve Wozniak suffers minor stroke
Aside from the risk of age, he had documented memory issues after his airplane crash in 1981, i don't know if that makes him more or less vulnerable during a stroke, but I'd be worried for sure.
cdibona··on What I learned getting acquired by Google
Yup, we wanted Renee to make the mascot for Go.I personally really loved Glenda (the plan 9 bunny) and was enthusiastic. It turned out pretty cute! We even ended up ordering a few containers full from squishables in that first year of go being released outside google.
cdibona··on Dagor Engine and Tools source code from Gaijin Games KFT
It might have been OSU , not sure, it's been a long time.
cdibona··on Dagor Engine and Tools source code from Gaijin Games KFT
Psu open sourced guidance software in the mid 2000s and it found its way into other drone corebases and into a variety of missiles, including the quassam 4.

Since it was open source and developed in public ,the itar folks determined it was okay to release.

cdibona··on Apple Execs on Facebook (2011)
Yea, but,not gonna share. What I told Sergey was to tell Steve 'you can't take a person away from a job they love'
cdibona··on Do open source licences cover the Ship of Theseus?
So once you reduce the remaining pieces of the ship to api calls or interfaces or simply constant definitions, you'll find that copyright still attaches, but that's okay.

The whole point of the final rulings in the oracle/google trial is that is indeed copywritten by the author, but fair use. So source code stanzas that are ...well...totally banal or generic aren't actually suddenly not covered by copyright, but the argument you'd make (after fourteen years in court in googles case) is that it is fair use, wether that copyright is under open source or proprietary licenses.

There isn't a magical ability to declare something a derivative work when it isn't, just because it's open source/copyleft.

That said, when engineers or pms came to me asking to remove copyright attribution, I almost always said no.

cdibona··on Lisa Su saved AMD – Now she wants Nvidia's AI crown
It does ignore a ton of contributions from a ton of people, but that is the job of the CEO and cofounder. If anything I always want to know more about Chris Malachowsky, Nvidia's cofounder. Their relationship I thought was pretty special, esp in the beginning. Nothing like the woz/jobs relationship, imo.
cdibona··on Google Pixel Fold
I have the flip (Fi sim) for when I go skiing, it's waterproof and small. I got one of those strappyncases so I don't worry about dropping it off a lift, which is nice.
cdibona··on Google Pixel Fold
I have the fold 2 and I absolutely love it, been using it almost nonstop for a few years. When the 5 comes out I'll replace the 2 for it. The 2 is just showing some wear at the bend point on the screen, the flip I've replaced the protector once but it went smoothly at the Samsung store.

I think the google/nexus/pixel fold looks nice, but the pixel reliability track record has been pretty grim, so maybe I'll give it an iteration or.... Nine before trying it out.

cdibona··on Google Mars (2005)
Noel and Michael launched mars and moon in about three weeks after starting as 'interns' under me, as that was the fastest path to a badge. They're both still at Google, I think. (As employees!)

Someday I'll write up the story, but that was a heck of a fun project!

cdibona··on Open source and the future of nuclear physics
One project that I didn't see in the article was the rtos https://marte.unican.es/ which a number of prominent experiments use.
cdibona··on Google Summer of Code 2023
While the program was part of my portfolio, it really has been Stephanie Taylors' work for years. She's pretty remarkable!
cdibona··on Bank run on Silicon Valley Bank
They're not allowing approval of wires via SMS or their app, and no one is picking up the phone there and most numbers are fast busy. Smells deeply bad. I had an account at a bank that went under a few decades ago and it took a while for ... bofa? to pick up the pieces.
cdibona··on Amazon is closing its cashierless stores in NYC, San Francisco and Seattle
I went to one of these last year and it's was basically a gas station convenience store without the gas or convenience. Poorly stocked, weirdly expensive, and, well, shabby.
cdibona··on What is Google doing with its open source teams?
This is pretty much the only comment I'm going to reply to (I'm technically a google employee until march 31st) and just say how pleased I am to see this. The Screensavers was so much fun to do, Leo, Morgan and the crew were just terrific, and made it very easy for me to look like I knew what I was doing.

Thanks for watching!

cdibona··on Information for foreign citizens in Longyearbyen [pdf]
We stayed at the Radisson blue and it was pretty terrific, could walk to the main drag, etc... I mean , it was -35, but it was great.
cdibona··on I *detest* the crazy industry politics that made ECC memory so “special”
Depending on the model, most of the larger capacity synologys require ECC when expanding (1821+ for me recently)
cdibona··on I enforced the AGPL on my code (2020)
It's extremely intentional! I wouldn't even call it a leak...
cdibona··on Breach at Dickey’s BBQ Smokes 3M Cards
You'll note this is noted as happening a year + ago, when I had a credit card, yes, copied from the dickies online ordering system for a local franchise. Blaming the franchises and treating them terribly is why my local bbq place dropped their franchise and now is just their own shop.
cdibona··on Why we’re changing to the AGPL license
I just wanted to point out that we've never restricted gplv2 or v3 contributions. AGPL? Sure. But The GPLs have always been mainstreamed for us.

Have we made contributing to all allowed project/licenses more efficient over the years? For sure :-) Maybe that's what you noticed. We switched to asychronous permissions for 99%+ of all patches.

cdibona··on DigitalOcean's Hacktoberfest Is Hurting Open Source
WRT GSoC We're constantly tweaking the program to make it more relevant and less time wasting for projects. Early on, we got people doing extremely negative things to 'succeed' in the summer of code.

It's reasonable to bow out if it's not working for your project. Maybe check us out every few years to see if we've addressed your problem :-)

cdibona··on United orders 50 new Airbus long-range jets to replace Boeing 757s
The Max wasn't supposed to replace the 757 except in a few niche cases. As mentioned in the article, the nma launch delay being put off to 2020 lost Boeing this contract.
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