twshoopboop

"it's not unfair; it's just how it is"

It kind of is unfair. Why should someone get preferential treatment just because you happen to know them? Also there's a difference between recommending someone for a job and "Hey this is my buddy, don't look at her resume and we can also skip most of the interview process". There's different degrees of nepotism, they are all usually a bit 'unfair'. But then, life is unfair and so you just deal with it and do the best with whatever resources you have.

Sure, that's why I said "I wish". I'm well aware of the $50-300+/month commercial development license. Qt is a high quality product and often worth the price tag. I'm not sure that the original intent of releasing it under LGPL was to use it as a means to push people to go commercial for certain platforms.

In the original announcement for LGPL as a license option:

"Adding LGPL version 2.1 will greatly increase adoption of Qt across Windows, Linux, embedded Linux, Mac, S60, Windows CE, maemo, and Ovi web services. Having a larger number of users, including Nokia developers, providing feedback and contributions will help Qt remain a cutting edge, robust UI and application framework."

To me it seems like the intent was to increase adoption (including in embedded and mobile), but after the recent Digia/Qt Company corporate changes you can tell there's been a shift in the way the LGPL is interpreted. For example, before they had guidelines on their wiki (back when qt-project was still around) on LGPL compliance for mobile platforms that basically said 'Android was okay'... but now if you look at their new guidelines on qt.io after they changed everything, they are pushing for commercial license adoption. I'm pretty sure that was the motivation behind the LPGLv2 -> v3 change as well.

I apologize for using a term that is derisive. I'd be fine if contributing back was the only requirement. The other terms however at the very least inconvenience developers in how they build and deploy applications, and at worst simply exclude entire platforms. Therefore, I disagree that LGPL is 'the best' for contributing back because the MPL maximizes utility and potential targets. On the other hand with the additional LGPL terms, I don't see how they improve the 'contributing back' part. They instead extend additional user level freedoms which in my opinion are orthogonal to contribution. I'm not starting a permissive/restrictive flamewar here, both the MPL and LGPL have a very similar flavor so I think its fair to compare them.

Most developers I know use the LGPL only because they want any improvements contributed back and not because they want to restrict linking or platforms. Plenty of LGPL libraries come with linking exceptions, and lots of devs don't even know about potential platform limitations.

"Mobile & web designers have had too much freedom during the past years"

Pretty funny to hear this from a designer. Lets just kill individuality altogether and make every website and application based off of Material Design.

More that I have something to point people that complain about the moc to :)

* copyleft license

Complete agree, it was stupid to move to the ODbL.

* vandalism

I've only seen once instance of serious vandalism -- I reported it on their IRC and it was updated within a few hours. And this was a mass attack by 4chan. I don't know if there's a practical way around this system. If people were vetted and had to wait before changes were accepted I think it would hurt contributions.

* Last use

I agree but all maps have the problem of getting outdated. Unless mapping is completely automated (drones+CV+ML? get on it HN) how would you avoid this?

* Inconsistent tagging

Yeah this sucks but you can deal with it at the application level usually

* Multipolygon areas

I haven't used OSM much recently but I know they did a decent overhaul with the site and the editor (the old editor was some flash tool I think). Dealing with complex polygons in software sucks so I understand why this is an issue. They should provide simple guidelines (CCW for the outside polys, CW for the inside polys), reject invalid polygons and provide a suggestion to go on IRC if they are having issues.

* Bezier curves

This is not a good idea. Why would you want to support bezier curves in map data? Its un-needed complexity. I could see support in an editor that then just creates an approximated poly line.

* One huge database

OSM is supposed to be a generic data set for many purposes. Some people might want hiking trails, others might want all the bus stops in a city, others may only want all the highways in a country, etc. Creating a system to extract and serve specific data would not only be complex it would be expensive. You'd need a lot of compute time. There are tools and tutorials for extracting what you need from the data set. There are also localized data sets available for many places (country, province/state etc).

* American volunteers

Yes its really strange that this is the case. Its impressive to see some of the places in Europe (like Germany!) and how rich the OSM data is and how active the community is compared to here. There are local meet ups in cities though where people get together and map stuff. If it interests you, you can always participate.

That's because OpenStreetMap is just that -- a source of data. It doesn't aim to offer the kind of utility you expect. Rather, it can serve as a data source for developers that might want to take on that task. The ODBL license they use has some unfortunate terms and the committee seem more interested in license-wanking than progress which is why I think there haven't been a lot of major players creating rich and powerful applications and services with it. For instance, mixing your own proprietary data with OpenStreetMap data isn't allowed. This hasn't been a complete show stopper as some great companies like MapBox have popped up, but I do think its had a chilling effect in general.

This is awesome. Olivier (author of that post) has made some really cool stuff if you go back through their blog posts. Also I wonder if this means the CopperSpice guys will stop development.

I often find myself wishing that Nokia had licensed Qt under the MPL or a custom 'contribute back' license instead of the venomous LGPL. I don't think there's any other framework out there that does all the things Qt does for C++ devs and I'd use it for a lot more things if it had a more reasonable license. Its one thing to expect modifications back (which I complete agree with), but mandating how code can be linked and excluding closed platforms (embedded, mobile) are horrible terms to have to adhere to.

"We’re building a multi-platform digital game subscription service called Boondogl that delivers native web games to desktop, mobile, console, and VR devices, and we’ve bet our entire business on native web technologies – HTML5, WebGL, JS, and soon WebAssembly."

What exactly is "native web"?

>The first 15 minutes are free. After that, it's 25 USD per hour.

>WHAT WE CAN HELP YOU WITH HTML CSS JavaScript jQuery React.js Node.js

Sorry, how is it better than SO? Extremely limited scope, no searchable database, no freely available information

>Depending on the design and the requirements of an application modal dialogues and in rare cases even disabling leaving via the back button absolutely make sense.

Sorry, I disagree with you. On a typical non-web application, a modal dialog doesn't prevent me from accessing other applications. It doesn't prevent me from forcefully killing crapware either. The idea that web applications should be able to break user expected control at the browser level is silly.

Browsers have Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop buttons, Tabs, cookie prefs, DNT prefs etc. Anything contained in a browser should respect these things. Browser devs should enforce this as browsers become more and more like their own operating systems.

Except my point is I'm completely okay with this because its not modal at an application level if its HTML. I just want to be able to leave the site. Change the way the page is rendered all you want, disable interactivity etc but I don't feel a website should be able to prevent me from closing it which is what a modal dialog does.

Anyone think that back in the day a lot of what coding bootcamps do was on the job training? It just seems like companies want to hire engineers that are faster to on board and easier to dispose of. After reading that many (most?) of these coding bootcamp students are already people that have degrees (with a lot of STEM degrees in the mix) I find it hard to believe that they are incapable of writing software without a couple of months or training.

Its more like paying the institution money to place you at a job. I've even heard some of these places have terms that basically tell you that you need to accept offers you get etc.