Posts on Unix systems programming

ericw · September 7, 2011, 7:22pm

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Eric W. [email protected]
wrote:
[…]

No objection. It is my strong preference that you accept
patches/pull requests/contributions/updates via email (and explicitly
state so) to not encourage signups/logins, though.

Wow! You are a true git.git person :).

[…]

I have no intention of using a web browser or GUI at all for this project

Why so much hate for web browser or GUI?

ericw · September 7, 2011, 7:39pm

Anurag P. [email protected] wrote:

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 10:40 PM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

I have no intention of using a web browser or GUI at all for this project

Why so much hate for web browser or GUI?

All too complicated and clunky for me.

ericw · September 8, 2011, 2:49am

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:38 AM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

Why so much hate for web browser or GUI?

All too complicated and clunky for me.

LOL.
hi, Eric, pls include me on your new list, too.
thanks and best regards -botp

ericw · September 8, 2011, 1:50pm

On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 08:00:26AM +0900, Eric W. wrote:

I don’t consider myself a great writer nor programmer, but several folks
expressed interest in learning this subject to me directly. I don’t
know if anybody else is willing to teach this subject or contribute, but
if I’m to do it, it’ll be over my preferred medium: plain-text email[1].

I’d be happy to contribute as well. I’m both a Linux programmer, very
interested in increasing my Posix-knowledge, and a Ruby enthusiast.

ericw · September 8, 2011, 4:16pm

You most definitely have my full support on this. If I can help you with
it
in any way please let me know and I will help.

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

if there are no objections. I’ll try to space the posts so they’re
reader feedback and contributions; and (plain-text, minimally quoted)
protects readers who circumvent DRM if distributed in proprietary
All I want from this is more people to understand Unix systems

–
~Wayne

Wayne E. Seguin
[email protected]
wayneeseguin on irc.freenode.net
http://twitter.com/wayneeseguin/
wayneeseguin (Wayne E Seguin) · GitHub

ericw · September 7, 2011, 7:31pm

Chad P. [email protected] wrote:

On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 08:00:26AM +0900, Eric W. wrote:
I think this would be great, and if it ends up being on a separate,
dedicated mailing list (as some people have requested), I hope we’ll be
informed enough in advance so that nobody misses anything (especially
me).

Will do, it’ll be a separate post with [ANN] in the title.

All of my posts will be licensed under the GPLv3, but code examples will
be all-permissive and reusable freely without attribution.

Do you plan to use something like the Creative Commons 0 waiver or the
GNU All-Permissive License to explictly establish this permissive
distribution permission?

I’m leaning towards CC0. The GNU All-Permissive License still mentions
retaining the copyright. I’ve also considered WTFPL.

I understand it. In some respects, Creative Commons Attribution License
(CC-BY, the most permissive Creative Commons license apart from public
domain statements and waivers of copyright protections) is actually more
protective against DRM by simply disallowing “any effective technological
measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work
from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms
of the License.”

GPLv3 neutralizes laws like the DMCA (“3. Protecting Users’ Legal Rights
From Anti-Circumvention Law.”). The GPLv2 did not do this.

Preventing DRM could be problematic to some distributors (e.g. Debian).
This is part of the reason I chose GPLv3 over the GFDL.

Of course, I think that any attempt to address DRM for something like
this is unnecessary licensing complexity, but if you feel otherwise I
think these considerations are worth . . . considering. In addition, the
GPLv3 deals with a lot of complexity that does not really apply to
non-code content, which some might consider reasons to use a license more
appropriate for documentation per se, or that does not make assumptions
about the form of the materials distributed.

standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this should not be taken as
legal advice, blah blah blah, please don’t sue me.

I’m not a lawyer, either. I’m strongly in favor of readers being able
to modify/update/translate all future versions. DRM is a threat to
that. I think the GPLv3 is the best understood and most accepted
license for doing what I want.

ericw · September 8, 2011, 5:55pm

I am looking forward to the posts to come on this subject!

ericw · September 9, 2011, 6:09pm

On Wed, 7 Sep 2011 12:36:26 +0900
Brian C. [email protected] wrote:

# First ruby program
puts "Hello world"

With syntax highlighting:

# First ruby program
puts "Hello world"

I’m the type that would fork a repository, make such changes and send a
pull request.

If the author is bigoted against the web and its common uses, then as
long as someone else mirrors the original documents (wherever they
begin) somewhere convenient, then I would take that content and improve
its style.

Well, maybe not the code style… my code style would probably generate
some hate.

puts( “zomg extra spaces!” )

My recommendation is to have things in stages like so:

Creation
Mirroring
Cleanup
Bundling

1 - The author’s original, unaltered, source. No stress placed on him
for formatting or delivery.

2 - Everyone interested takes a copy, mirrors it as they wish.

3 - Hopefully just one combined effort to “clean up” the text so it’s
suitable to general readership - like a GUI browser.

4 - Bundling into various formats. PDFs or other etext type stuff.
It’s also easy to get text printed onto dead trees.