> So assuming that pirate copy = a lost sale is a ridiculous argument.
This seems like a ridiculous counter-argument to me. You are basically trying to say that because a pirated copy is not exactly equal to one lost sale, then it's not an issue at all... forgetting the fact that the ratio doesn't need to be 1:1 for money to be lost. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "100 pirate copies = a lost sale", on average. That's still a lot of lost sales in the grand scheme of things, and that's a very conservative number.
As a sidenote, your anecdotal evidence is just that-- you got lucky having a friend with connections, most people without said friend would probably bite the bullet and make the purchase if they couldn't get it online. Let me inject my own anecdotal evidence for a second: before the internet, I remember renting a lot more movies than I do now. The internet has cut down on the amount of money I give to these organizations, fact.
And finally, whether or not Joe Blow got his money's worth is irrelevant, so who cares if you wanted your "free" back? The argument about value has little to do with the economic stance, unless you're trying to say, "it's ethical to steal if what you are stealing is crappy". I'd disagree with that statement too. I think most sane people would.
Let me inject my own anecdotal evidence for a second: before the internet, I remember renting a lot more movies than I do now. The internet has cut down on the amount of money I give to these organizations, fact.
But you didn't say whether you're now downloading infringing copies of those movies, or the Internet just showed you how obsolete the concept of physically driving to a store to obtain a physical object containing digital media is when the technology exists to convey that digital media at virtually no cost. Maybe you stopped renting movies because you have better things to do with your time than wait in your car, search the shelves, wait in line, and wait in your car again.
The unfortunate reality about writing your own new Bundler is that you'll inevitably end up rewriting Bundler. Isolate is basically just a mini-Bundler with a different (arguably simpler) storage location, but the storage location is really not where the complaints about Bundler are coming from.
Rewriting things just to shed complexity or "bloat" will often just put you in a position where your library just can't do things it will need to do, and then you end up rewriting those things and adding back the complexity. It's the circle of life. Lack of SCM support in Isolate is a good example-- I'm pretty confident that Bundler's support of git is heavily used and taken for granted, but if you were to rewrite or use a simpler dependency manager, you're throwing this out.
This point feeds back into the larger issue of Rails vs. Node, I think. Rails ended up with all the complexity it has now because it was [mostly] necessary-- not all of it was, but much of it was. The idea that you're somehow liberating yourself by shedding complexity is often just the short-sighted pleasure of running faster test suites. And it's usually followed by a little bit of claustrophobia when you realize you can't do X, Y, or Z anymore. Wait until the claustrophobia kicks in, because it will. And the solution to this claustrophobia? More cowb-- complexity.
I agree. I just hate to see this ― "zomg bundler sucks at <some feature usually speed>! I hate using it! It has to be fixed for me!"
Any open source project needs help. The maintainers of Bundler have 200+ issues on the issue tracker. If people could help them replicate and confirm issues, write failing tests and if possible write patches ― it would do a world of good. But instead it's EASIER to complain and whine. So...
Is autorequire even a real problem? You can quite easily put your gems in a separate group if you want to manually require them. Installing is another issue, that is opt-out, but I don't see the install process as the real bottleneck.
Yea, why hate on people who take advantage of and mislead uninformed newcomers to the Rails community by selling them existing free software that is trivial to set up, all the while passing it off as their own?
Maybe because some people believe in honest businesses, and not ripping off end users for a quick buck. I say mislead and rip of, because the site is presented as if the work done is novel, when it is not. Why is it that links to the libraries used are conveniently omitted? Shouldn't Bootstrap, Stripe, and KISSmetrics' codebases be linked somewhere so that users can see what it is they are getting, if they want to do it themselves?
That said, I think I will take you up on that replicating challenge. You are certainly right that someone should undercut the market before they make any undeserved money off the work of others.
First, let me say that I know nothing about the authors. I'm just arguing the principle here.
Yea, why hate on people who take advantage of and mislead uninformed newcomers to the Rails community by selling them existing free software that is trivial to set up, all the while passing it off as their own?
Hmm ... I didn't get the impression that they had written Bootstrap, Stripe, or Kissmetrics. Clearly what they're selling is a tested Rails app that integrates the Stripe and Kissmetrics API libraries and provides a baseline UI based off Bootstrap.
Maybe because some people believe in honest businesses, and not ripping off end users for a quick buck.
That's where this gets destructive. Just because it's not worth the price to you doesn't mean that these people are running a dishonest, rip-off business. You ought not attack people's ethics because you don't like the value proposition of their business.
Moreover, your argument is predicated on the idea that time is worth nothing. Back in my consulting days, even if the integration of all of these things at production quality would take only one billable hour (which, incidentally, it wouldn't), the $149 would save me money.
Maybe you're a faster developer than I am or maybe you just don't bill enough. Either way, just because the price isn't justified for you, doesn't mean it couldn't be a lifesaver for someone else. Certainly doesn't mean the business is dishonest.
That said, I think I will take you up on that replicating challenge.
The only thing wrong with C-11 as it stands currently are the digital lock provisions. Everything else in the bill is rather liberal, and, frankly, some of the provisions are outright good for Canadians (limits on fines, ISP liability exemptions, educational use exemptions, "mashup" exemptions). Calling for protests against the bill in its entirety is ignorant and blaming "the majority government" for passing draconian laws is outright sensationalist and false. That's not really how we do things here in Canada. There's a better way to get things done, and it doesn't involve hyperbole.
Yes, the digital locks portions of the bill could use some reworking-- but as mentioned, the enforceability of the law as its codified now is questionable, so I wonder how big of a deal it would actually be for the law to be passed as is. Remember, as pointed out, use of VCRs is also technically illegal, but you don't see any enforcement of that. The issue surrounding digital locks may very well have the same practical effect. We should certainly try to get these provisions changed before they are codified, but IMO it's not really the end of the world.
Yes, there is going to be a lot of push from powerful lobbyists to get "SOPA-like" provisions into the bill. However that is a reason to remain vigilant, not a reason to pre-emptively black out the internet again. As it stands, those additions have yet to be added to the bill, so right now, the lobbying power hasn't done very much. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not the type to start blaming people for things that haven't happened yet. I'm going to watch and wait until there is something reminiscent of SOPA in this bill, which may or may not happen.
FYI for those who are just jumping on the bus because SOPA is in the title of this article, please read a bit on the issue before injecting your opinion or outrage. Michael Geist is a good and well respected source on this issue. He's come out (more or less) in favour of the bill, minus his open objections to the digital locks portions, which I pointed out above. However, his general approval should say something about the bill-- Geist probably knows a lot more about copyright law in Canada than anyone here does. His comments regarding C-32 (now C-11) can be found in this rather old posting: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5316/125/
I'm working on a letter to my MP and Senator to fix the digital lock issue. This is the argument I'm fleshing out. Feedback is appreciated:
Regarding digital locks, in an earlier version of the bill called C-60, they had the completely reasonable position that circumventing digital locks would only infringe if the circumvention was done to further an infringing act. If you broke the lock to exercise your fair dealing rights, that would not be infringement.
The WIPO lawyers argued that wasn't the intention of the Internet treaties we signed, but I think that's bullshit. A marketing campaign after the fact about the possible intention of the law doesn't matter; only what's written and how it would be reasonably interpreted to achieve its stated aims.
The WIPO treaties explicitly allow for fair dealing and fair use restrictions on the rights granted to copyright holders. Further, they only demand that digital locks are protected to enforce rights of the copyright holders.
However, clearly the rights of the copyright holders are limited by the fair dealing provisions (1), and therefore the digital locks don't need to be enforced where they prevent non-infringing uses.
(1) If you don't get this, it's important to remember that rights and freedoms are never unlimited. We have freedom of expression in Canada, but that is reasonably limited when that expression causes harm to society, such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre or hate speech or even reporting election results early. The full right isn't the one paragraph that grants "freedom of expression" in the Charter, but that paragraph limited by the reasonable restrictions around it.
Similarly, copyrights are not the simple paragraph descriptions like "right to control copies", but the full right as limited by fair dealing.
Therefore, when WIPO only asks for enforcement of digital locks that protect the rights of copyright holders, that requirement is limited by fair dealing.
There are two data sets, one from newrelic and one from gemstats.org. So, in short, no, it's not. It is, however, biased to the Rails community and web-apps in general, but this was mentioned. If you know a way to get a sampling of non-Rails usage, feel free to suggest.
First off, they are asking for your Gemfile, not your .gem. There is a big difference here. There is no source code in a Gemfile. Secondly, they clearly state why this is an indication of popularity-- they are getting real world usage statistics, not download counts. They ask for company info because if a company the size of 80 people uses a gem, it's going to effectively be more popular than a company of size 1. 79 more people are using it.
Pre-processed here likely means what you think it means. DRY is not really a concept meant to be applied to method definitions (IMO), but rather method bodies-- of course there are many ways to abuse the interpretation of DRY as well. As far as whether you should care about compile vs load time-- in Ruby you don't need to, but if the language had static typing, it would make a difference.
The compiler gives enormous optimizations for certain (admittedly extremely specialized) numerically intensive programs / calculations. Of course, if the compiler was developed further (it might be, actually), you'd probably see optimizations for larger sets of programs.
This seems like a ridiculous counter-argument to me. You are basically trying to say that because a pirated copy is not exactly equal to one lost sale, then it's not an issue at all... forgetting the fact that the ratio doesn't need to be 1:1 for money to be lost. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "100 pirate copies = a lost sale", on average. That's still a lot of lost sales in the grand scheme of things, and that's a very conservative number.
As a sidenote, your anecdotal evidence is just that-- you got lucky having a friend with connections, most people without said friend would probably bite the bullet and make the purchase if they couldn't get it online. Let me inject my own anecdotal evidence for a second: before the internet, I remember renting a lot more movies than I do now. The internet has cut down on the amount of money I give to these organizations, fact.
And finally, whether or not Joe Blow got his money's worth is irrelevant, so who cares if you wanted your "free" back? The argument about value has little to do with the economic stance, unless you're trying to say, "it's ethical to steal if what you are stealing is crappy". I'd disagree with that statement too. I think most sane people would.