chris.bracken.jp

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     <title>Meta on Chris Bracken</title>
     <link>https://chris.bracken.jp/tags/meta/</link>
     <description>Recent content in Meta on Chris Bracken</description>
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     <item>
       <title>Thoughts on Licences</title>
       <link>https://chris.bracken.jp/2020/05/thoughts-on-licences/</link>
       <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2020 14:55:23 -0700</pubDate>
       
       <guid>https://chris.bracken.jp/2020/05/thoughts-on-licences/</guid>
       <description>&lt;p&gt;Software licences are probably the single most boring aspect of software
 development, but it&amp;rsquo;s important to carefully consider the terms under which the
 stuff I hack on is shared to ensure they&amp;rsquo;re consistent with my values. Despite
 my general dislike for all things legalistic, the most unambiguous way to state
 those terms is through a licence. So a couple days ago, I tossed LICENSE files
 into any of my public &lt;a href=&#34;https://chris.bracken.jp/code&#34;&gt;repos&lt;/a&gt; that didn&amp;rsquo;t already have one.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;So how did I settle on which licences to apply? Jump on into the DeLorean and
 let&amp;rsquo;s set the dial back to the late 1980s.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;It&amp;rsquo;s 1986 and I&amp;rsquo;ve got a 1200 baud modem wired up to a beat-up 286 with a steel
 case that would easily allow it to double as a boat anchor if needed.  Armed
 with a dot-matrix printout of local BBSes with names like Camelot, Tommy&amp;rsquo;s
 Holiday Camp, and Forbidden Night Castle, I fire up PC-Talk. A series of
 &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html&#34;&gt;high-pitched squeals and tones&lt;/a&gt; fill the air, then text
 flashes across the screen. I&amp;rsquo;m online.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;BBSes were a treasure trove of information, filled to the brim with zip archives
 full of downloadable programs, source code, patches for existing programs, and
 all manner of text files with names like &lt;a href=&#34;https://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html&#34;&gt;Smashing The Stack For Fun And
 Profit&lt;/a&gt;. You could find everything from how to crack copy-protected
 software, to details on phone phreaking, to how to make nitroglycerine from
 commonly-available household items. It was through BBSes that I first downloaded
 an I&amp;rsquo;m sure &lt;em&gt;totally legitimate&lt;/em&gt; copy of Borland Turbo C++ and took my first
 baby steps writing &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; programs. No more BASIC for me.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;This culture of open sharing in the online world has had a huge impact on me.
 From those early experiences with BBSes to my first forays onto the Internet a
 few years later, seeing people openly sharing code and patches and helping each
 other solve problems over Usenet seemed almost revolutionary to me at the time.
 In some ways, it still does. I feel lucky to have been a part of it from such an
 early age.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;The end result is that I try to publicly share all the work I do. So when it
 came time to chuck licences on stuff, I sat down to work out a personals ad for
 my ideal licence. Aside from enjoying long walks on the beach, it should:&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;ol&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;Allow free use, modification, and distribution both of the original
 work and any derived works.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;Require that people distributing the work or any derived work to
 give appropriate credit.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;Disallow suggesting that I in any way endorse any derived products
 or whoever produces them.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;Gently encourage a culture of open exchange and sharing of
 information and techniques.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;li&gt;Be short, clear, and easy to understand.&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ol&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;On the software side, there were lots of options, but the best matches in my
 mind are the &lt;a href=&#34;https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT&#34;&gt;MIT&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&#34;https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause&#34;&gt;BSD&lt;/a&gt; licences. The 3-clause
 &amp;rsquo;new&amp;rsquo; BSD licence has an advantage in that it required written permission from
 the author to use their name in any endorsement/promotion of a derived work.
 That happens to be what we already use for &lt;a href=&#34;https://github.com/flutter/flutter&#34;&gt;work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;On the content side, I&amp;rsquo;ve always posted my web site&amp;rsquo;s content under a &lt;a href=&#34;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/&#34;&gt;Creative
 Commons Attribution-ShareAlike&lt;/a&gt; licence.  But I don&amp;rsquo;t believe that&amp;rsquo;s
 actually the ideal match based on my priorities. Why is it that I&amp;rsquo;ve elected to
 use a licence that requires that derived works also be licensed under the same
 terms rather than under whatever terms someone feels like, so long as
 acknowledgement is given? In the end I settled on the more permissive &lt;a href=&#34;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/&#34;&gt;Creative
 Commons Attribution&lt;/a&gt; licence.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;This feels to me a bit like the difference between &lt;a href=&#34;https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause&#34;&gt;BSD&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href=&#34;https://opensource.org/licenses/GPL-3.0&#34;&gt;GPL&lt;/a&gt; terms, where the latter requires that derived works also be
 GPL-licensed. This &amp;ldquo;viral&amp;rdquo; nature has always rubbed me the wrong way: rather
 than gently promoting a culture of sharing by example, it legally &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt;
 sharing under the same terms whether or not you want to.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;Personally, I&amp;rsquo;d like for people to do the right thing and share their work for
 everyone&amp;rsquo;s benefit not because they &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; to, but because they &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to. If
 they don&amp;rsquo;t want to, why should my reaction be to disallow their use of my work?
 Isn&amp;rsquo;t that contrary to my stated goals of sharing as much and as broadly as
 possible?&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;While I &lt;em&gt;hope&lt;/em&gt; that more people share more of their work, it doesn&amp;rsquo;t bother me
 if you don&amp;rsquo;t. If anything I&amp;rsquo;ve written is somehow useful to you, I&amp;rsquo;m glad. Use
 your knowledge to help others and make the world a better place, and if you can
 find time to do so, share a bit with the rest of us.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;Got thoughts and opinions on licences? Fire an email my way at
 &lt;a href=&#34;mailto:chris@bracken.jp&#34;&gt;chris@bracken.jp&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>
     </item>
     
     <item>
       <title>Look At All The Pretty Pictures!</title>
       <link>https://chris.bracken.jp/2005/08/look-at-all-the-pretty-pictures/</link>
       <pubDate>Fri, 05 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
       
       <guid>https://chris.bracken.jp/2005/08/look-at-all-the-pretty-pictures/</guid>
       <description>&lt;p&gt;So I moved my webpage and was all of a sudden faced with a deluge of emails
 from people who I never even knew read the thing. Among those emails was a
 request from my amigo Chaffee requesting more pictures. Seeing as I&amp;rsquo;d always
 wanted to play with the &lt;a href=&#34;https://flickr.com/services/&#34;&gt;Flickr API&lt;/a&gt;, I requested an API Key and
 started hacking away at some &lt;a href=&#34;https://php.net&#34;&gt;PHP&lt;/a&gt;. The end result is that on the left side
 of this page, you now get to see whatever happens to be the latest picture I&amp;rsquo;ve
 taken on my mobile phone.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;The moment I take a picture with my cellphone, it gets emailed to the magical
 servers at &lt;a href=&#34;https://flickr.com&#34;&gt;Flickr&lt;/a&gt; and tagged with a title, some keywords, and a
 description. The next time someone loads this page, a small PHP script in the
 innards of this site makes a &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.w3.org/TR/soap/&#34;&gt;SOAP&lt;/a&gt; request to Flickr&amp;rsquo;s servers and
 retrieves an &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.w3.org/XML/&#34;&gt;XML&lt;/a&gt; response. This response is then parsed out and a URI to
 the thumbnail image on Flickr&amp;rsquo;s servers is generated which is then inserted
 into this page. To improve performance a tiny bit, I avoid the overhead of the
 SOAP call every time this page is loaded by caching the response for five
 minutes and reading the cached XML if it&amp;rsquo;s available.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;For those of you who are into &lt;a href=&#34;https://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html&#34;&gt;RSS&lt;/a&gt;, I&amp;rsquo;ve added a &lt;a href=&#34;feed://flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=37996625178@N01&amp;amp;format=atom_03&#34;&gt;Flickr
 feed&lt;/a&gt; to my pictures in the HTML headers on this site.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;My goal—and this is entirely for you, Chaffee—is to take at least one
 picture a day, which is far more ambitious a schedule than my posting to this
 page. We&amp;rsquo;ll see how that works out.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>
     </item>
     
     <item>
       <title>Site Update</title>
       <link>https://chris.bracken.jp/2003/04/site-update/</link>
       <pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
       
       <guid>https://chris.bracken.jp/2003/04/site-update/</guid>
       <description>&lt;p&gt;I finally got around to updating and re-organizing the site. It should render
 properly in everything from the latest browser to lynx or a text-based browser
 on a cell phone. All the reports from Mérida are now up, including links to
 photos at the top of each page. The trip home is still a work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;
 </description>
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