MetaFilter posts tagged with opensource and programming

Architecture of Open Source Programs

Rubbstone — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:06:32 -0800

Architecture of Open Source Programs The Architecture of Open Source Programs is a guide into the functional implemenation of major opensource code bases. Notable Open Source Projects that are included: BASH, CMAKE, LLVM,GDB,Puppet and PyPy among others

WordPress, Thesis and the GPL

ao4047 — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:28:16 -0800

Who gets to make money off WordPress? Dust-up brewing in the world of WordPress as theme author Chris Pearson and WordPress head honcho Matt Mullenweg battle out the question: Is a theme a 'derivative work'? If so, then WordPress themes must be freely distributed under the same license as WordPress, the GPL 2 license (inherited from b2evolution, a previous project WordPress is based on). If not, then Chris (author of the Thesis theme at DIYThemes) and similar designers can sell their themes and not release their code back to the project. Other theme studios have already gone GPL and make their money on consulting, support and customization. Also at stake is the business of premium/paid WordPress plugins. Andy Warner hosted the happy couple at an interview that turned sour (includes transcript). Matt presents research from the Software Freedom Law Center:

When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP’s include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client. On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works.

Chris cited lawyer Mike Was's blog and opinion that GPL does not extend to WordPress themes due to Fair Use guidelines and things ratcheted up when he claimed he is one of the top 3 most important figures in the history of WordPress and told Matt "Either you sue me or you don't. Or you continue to talk, or you don't." Chris retired to a blog for a shirtless rant as Matt tweets missives and the discussion spilled over into Twitter (#thesiswp) and Hacker News. One developer ran a comparison script between the WordPress source and the Thesis theme and found several instances where Thesis uses exact code copied and pasted from WordPress. Andy from the WordPress team says that simply extending one of WordPress's PHP classes qualifies as a derived work. WordPress UX designer Jane recounts her conflicts with Pearson over this issue. Drupal, another GPL system is of the opinion that themes and modules built for their CMS are also derivative works.

Programmers? Hackers? Journalists.

zarq — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:01:09 -0800

"The Journalist as Programmer" is an academic, ethnographic case study (pdf), which considers whether the New York Times' Interactive Newsroom Technologies unit, source of the paper's Open Source Developer Network, should be thought of as a template for the future of Web Journalism. Slide Deck. (Previously on MeFi.) NYMag profile of the INT team from '09: The New Journalism: Goosing the Gray Lady. ("What are these renegade cybergeeks doing at the New York Times? Maybe saving it.")

Open Source Language Checking Technology

brundlefly — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:23:11 -0800

After The Deadline is an open source spell/style/grammar checker from Automattic for WordPress, Firefox and other stuff. Here's a demo of the Firefox plugin and here's a (rather poor quality) presentation from WordCamp NYC 2009. I saw this guy's presentation at WordCamp SF and thought it was pretty neat.

The R Project for Statistical Computing

parudox — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:07:47 -0800

R is quickly becoming the programming language for data analysis and statistics. R (an implementation of S) is free, open-source, and has hundreds of packages available. You can use it on the command-line, through a GUI, or in your favorite text editor. Use it with Python, Perl, or Java. Sweave R code into LaTeX documents for reproducible research. Good places to get started: official manuals and FAQ, Quick-R, R help, and the R Wiki. (R translations exist for MATLAB users and Octave users.) Handy resources: RSeek and the R reference card (PDF). See also intros to R for psychology and must-have R packages for social scientists. There's even some books on R. Check out some neat graphs (with R source code). Popular graphics packages for R include lattice, ggplot2, and RGL or rggobi for more complex data visualization. Melt down and recast your data with the reshape package. Many R GUIs are available, including R Commander, JGR, Rattle for data mining, and even an R GUI Generator. Or use R through text editors: Emacs Speaks Statistics, a vim plugin, SciViews-K for Komodo, and Tinn-R. The Omega Project has some other interesting R interfaces. Happy data crunching!

Repent! (With money)

ctmf — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:13:49 -0800

Feel guilty about some of that terrible code you've inflicted on the world? Worse Than Failure (formerly the Daily WTF) introduces bad code offsets for purchase to atone for your crimes. Proceeds go to a handful of open source/self funded projects. What's next, arms export offsets? Check. Bad boyfriend offsets? (I'll take a dozen of those.)

Open Source Flash

Tlogmer — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 20:08:20 -0800

Open Source Flash

"A Contrarian View of Open Source" -

GriffX — Fri, 09 Aug 2002 10:48:34 -0800

"A Contrarian View of Open Source" - Bruce Sterling on the open source attitutude: "Don't like it? Hey, just reconfigure it yourself, don't bother me!" It's the Hippie Squat Model of software architecture. "If I want to paint the doors and floors bright blue and put the toilet right into the kitchen, why not?"