thruflo

> Consumer hardware product development just doesn't align with this kind of thinking.

Doesn't or didn't used to?

That is the incidental value in the system. You get to see what people think you do for a living.

Hi James,

I agree with the substance of your analysis on OpenDesk. I don't accept its extension to the WikiHouse project.

On OpenDesk, our aim has been to let people cut and customise the designs themselves. We weren't aware (before this thread) of a contradiction between NC and open source. We'll have to address this in our narrative.

On WikiHouse however, the project truly is and aims to be open source. All designs are released public domain. The goal of the project is to create a collaboratively developed open commons resource.

On both projects, I don't doubt that the design files we release aren't componentised enough and aren't in enough formats. However, we've carefully mastered the OpenDesk designs so they can be both cut from and re-modelled, and you can already see many structural components, as well as whole designs, in the WikiHouse library[1]. That there aren't more (and perhaps that designs aren't modelled more intelligently) is a reflection of our capacity, not our intention to restrict use.

See the WikiHouse constitution[2] and development goals[3] for more. Plus see an example OpenDesk download here[4].

James.

[1]: http://www.wikihouse.cc/library [2]: http://www.wikihouse.cc/static/doc/968a0b62b832d8a2661616e36... [3]: http://www.wikihouse.cc/static/doc/c977861f2bd29b1a53532f4f1... [4]: https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/opendesk-assets/gfx/desig...

Fair enough -- thanks for the reference. On this point their rationale[1] is:

> to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.

Unambiguously opposed to a NC license being defined as open source.

[1] http://opensource.org/osd-annotated

We're actively building the OpenDesk maker network, specifically looking for pro CNC makers with finishing capacity (sanding, oiling, etc). See the info on the https://www.opendesk.cc/contact page. (Plus we'll be on the sketchup stand at Maker Faire next month).

If you're more looking to get into CNC making generally, you can build your own CNC machine or maybe check out a local fablab, like techshop, etc.

The http://wikihouse.cc/community group is active with people who know more than me...

That's an interesting suggestion and an interesting distinction -- thank you.

I agree that any and all license restrictions stifle innovation / building on each other's work. I also think it would be nice to limit the application of "open source" so that in a perfect world, you don't get the kudos if you don't encourage the innovation.

On the other hand, the literal meaning of open source is pretty clear: that the source code is available for you to view, tinker with and re-compile. Which with OpenDesk is, I hope, the case -- despite the NC license restriction.

Aside: `license the brand` vs `license the design` reminds me a touch of the What colour are your bits article re-posted yesterday http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 A name is just a tag that can easily be snapped off...

Thanks for such an insightful and supportive comment :)

I think you're right that the free design / pay to get made model does to some degree undervalue the design. It only really fitted for us because we a) had the designs and b) wanted to explore the local making proposition.

With other designers and ranges, we see a model where designers can name their price for the use of their design / IP. In fact, with the current OpenDesk system, a design fee is already included in the price to "get it made".

We're also interested in designers controlling their distribution: the territories they want to sell to, with a price breakdown they control.

Our license is here: https://www.opendesk.cc/license -- it is CC Attribution-Non-Commercial (we dropped the Share Alike as an unnecessary restriction).

Our intent is to allow anyone to download, adapt and make the designs for free whilst retaining the right to charge a markup on commercial manufacture / distribution. I.e.: we're not just about Open Source but also about a local making marketplace that (transparently) we make a cut from, in exchange for value offered in QA and ease of purchase.

What we have definitely found is that it is not clear what exactly "Non-Commercial" means. On the one hand, we want to approve makers who commercially re-sell OpenDesks. On the other, we don't want to stop you taking a design to a local CNC shop yourself and asking them to cut it. We'd welcome both legal instruction on the validity of that position and any steer on appropriate license text.

N.b.: if you're interested in a "purer" effort to create a public domain library of CNC-able designs, check out the next stages of the WikiHouse project: http://www.wikihouse.cc/community

Hey, we're working on this with http://www.madeonjupiter.com/ -- see the parameterised OpenDesk design walkthrough http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-ubblgDmc

With SpokeCreator and similar tools, it is a matter of mastering a design as a kind of logic network. I blogged on it here: http://thruflo.com/post/56330542825/inside-the-distributed-m...

OD dev here. Check out our sister project http://wikihouse.cc -- an open source construction set for CNC printed houses.

OpenDesk dev here. Just spotted this thread and that the traffic had caused the site to fall over.

I've removed some web service calls and allocated some more hosting resources. Fingers crossed this will keep it up -- it's running OK for me atm.

Because my repo is clean whilst my working folder is messy.

If you "care about sharing improvements" then choose a license to maximise contributions.

The GPL imposes major headaches / restrictions on potential adopters. This reduces uptake, which reduces contributions, thereby reducing sharing of improvements.

The article moves away from its interesting proposition to just restate something bland about keeping scopes tight.

We can't build software as fast as we can think because we don't have the tools. What those tools should be is an interesting and important thought experiment.

Choosing a university degree to maximise your salary is a counter productive waste of opportunity. Become a generalist where command line foo is your super power, not your day job.

People hire to get stuff done. They have zero interest in your qualifications. They have every interest in your github repos. One cool project trumps your degree.

Employment offers plenty of scope to increase your salary. What it doesn't offer is much space (unless you work for decades to earn it) to study anything for the sake of it. That's your current opportunity: you can choose to study something for the sake of it, like Mathematics & Philosophy, History of Computing or Smart Geometry.

Don't put yourself in a box. Plenty of other people will be trying to do that for you.

Or enable availability monitoring with the (free) newrelic addon.

Might be useful to serve that page over https so the .onion address it contains can't be changed by a man in the middle.

The title "Sorry, Digital Ad Exec, I Probably Don’t Want To Work For You" resonates with me more than the post.

I expected an article ridiculing the expectations of agency execs with nonsense comms projects, i.e.: that addresses the spuriousness of the commissions, not the incompetence of their management.

One important note is to use pip>=1.3 (included in virtualenv>=1.9) as prior to this version, pip downloaded from pypi using http and was thus vulnerable to man in the middle attacks.

You might also like to check out wheel, which allows you to compile signed binary distributions that you can install using pip.

No. Use homebrew for system packages and use pip to install python packages. It's much more flexible and doesn't rely on package managers keeping up with releases.

In the real world, a typical pip requirements.txt file will have a mix of package names (which pip looks for and downloads from an index like pypi), git repo urls (eggs installed directly from a git server, eg from github) and bleeding edge track the latest changes -e git-repo#egg=eggname urls. That you can switch between these with ease is important, eg to switch to using your fork of some package rather than the last official release.

I'm an existing customer using python with gunicorn. I'd be very keen to see any learnings about an optimal setup.

Fwiw, I've found the addon / db connection limits to be the primary blocker when load testing so far.

It may be de-rigueur to bash Heroku in the wake of the Rap Genius drama/revelations but this kind of "downtime to apply critical security patch" announcement is precisely why I choose them.

I spotted the announcement of the postgres vulnerability and thought "sounds serious". Now I read that my production databases will be fixed as soon as the patch is available without me having to engage with the details.

Let me google that for you http://speed.pypy.org

That's excellent news! Having explored the workarounds, involving additional layers of deployment stack and / or manual compilation, I'll be delighted when this gets released and package managed.

So why don't we work less? Is it really because we want more stuff? Or is it driven by social competition, desire to move up maslow's heirarchy, ...?

I know I will be happier if I work less. But I don't.

    Because ‘newegg’ was taken.
    Python packaging - reinvented.
    A container for cheese.

From https://bitbucket.org/aragilar/wheel/src/38ab0c4bca96/docs/i...

FWIW having first contributed patches to the backbone-firebase lib, l got annoyed with it clobbering backbone.sync and rewrote a similar but slightly different binding here: https://github.com/thruflo/mobone/blob/master/firebase.coffe...

I think the concept of redistribution is more interesting than which license. By what method could redistribution be achieved? Transparently accounted voluntary micropayments shared out though the reputation graph of a repo.

Call it, ahem, redis-tribution.

From the docs looks like a quality solution to a real faff in python. Kudos.

Those prizes are derisory.