Free plans? Open source plans?

On Jan 29, 12:02*am, Charles Vincent wrote:
wrote:
When you get right down to it....the aviation industry has been open
source since it began. *All the advancements in aviation design have
been largely improvements on prior designs. *Hell, even Rutans designs
are throwbacks to the Wright Brothers.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I don't think you know what open source means.

Most aviation advances have been held strictly secret, either by
companies or by governments. Nobody advertises their advances to their
potential adversaries.

The Wright brothers took to the air on wings that had an airfoil that
had evolved from the experiments of Otto Lilienthal, which they read
about from Lilienthal's own writings. *Their wire and strut braced wing
evolved from early experiments and designs of Octave Chanute, who not
only freely shared his discoveries with the Wrights, he visited them at
least once. *In fact, Chanute organized an international conference to
share information on aeronautics. *The Wright brothers were keen to
patent their advancements, not keep them secret. *It is pretty hard to
keep something secret when it is in plain sight for all to see, like for
example Bleriot's modern tractor design which quickly eclipsed flying
bedsteads like the Curtiss and the Wright flyer. *After World War one,
when the US realized any lead they had in aviation was not only history
but they were now way outclassed, people like Gugenheim and the US
government (through NACA), went out of their way to foster open sharing
of information. *Guggenheim did it by bringing top flight theorists to
the US (students of Rankine, Prandtl and Froude) to teach and NACA did
it by systematic experimentation and dissemination of the results. *This
pretty much continued up until WWII. * * *In fact, I have papers and
books from US efforts during WWII that not only reference the pre war
work of Japanese researchers, but laud them.

Charles

Was NACA and Guggenheim paying these people to collaborate?

If so, how is that open source like the open source software movement?
No one is getting paid to share their knowledge in open source. You
have to share your knowledge without compensation -- that's how it
works. You don't sell your hard won knowledge. You give it away so
others can benefit from it.

What about WWII and after? Sharing open source super sonic secrets?

Anyway that's a lot of ******** and besides the point.

Open source software projects are often poorly tested pieces of half
working junk written ad hoc and often by very immature, inexperience
developers. The Linux kernel is an exception. Apache is an exception.
For each of these there are 10 thousand pieces of crap.

You're free to share and collaborate all you want. Go for it.

wrote:
Was NACA and Guggenheim paying these people to collaborate?

If so, how is that open source like the open source software movement?
No one is getting paid to share their knowledge in open source. You
have to share your knowledge without compensation -- that's how it
works. You don't sell your hard won knowledge. You give it away so
others can benefit from it.

IBM, HP and Sun are a few corporate contributors to open source efforts.
Their employees do get paid. For that matter, so do the employees of
Redhat and Xandros.


What about WWII and after? Sharing open source super sonic secrets?

Stanford, and other benefactors of Guggenheim are still publishing their
work as well, and much of it can be accessed for free through libraries,
and sometimes the universities themselves. NASA is still publishing
materials and they are still free. Much of the post WWII material
covers supersonic flight and the engineering challenges it presents. Do
you know of many super sonic homebuilts?


Anyway that's a lot of ******** and besides the point.

Inconvenient facts is a better description.


Open source software projects are often poorly tested pieces of half
working junk written ad hoc and often by very immature, inexperience
developers. The Linux kernel is an exception. Apache is an exception.
For each of these there are 10 thousand pieces of crap.

Homebuilt aircraft are often poorly tested pieces of half
working junk designed ad hoc and often by very immature, inexperience
builders. So what. There are plenty of exceptions there too.


You're free to share and collaborate all you want. Go for it.

Isn't that the purpose of this group? And the EAA for that matter.


Charles

On 2008-01-29, wrote:
If so, how is that open source like the open source software movement?
No one is getting paid to share their knowledge in open source.

Wrong. There are lots of folks getting paid to work on open source software.
I've occasionally even been one of them.

Open source software projects are often poorly tested pieces of half
working junk written ad hoc and often by very immature, inexperience
developers. The Linux kernel is an exception. Apache is an exception.
For each of these there are 10 thousand pieces of crap.

That 99% of everything is crap doesn't make the stuff that isn't any less
good. Some of the best software available today is open source. Don't reject
any software because it's open source (or not). Pick, or reject, it because
of how good it is.

(Yeah, I'm biased a bit, as I'm the project manager of a piece of open
source software that's a leader in its field. I'll proudly stand Hercules up
against anything else.)
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC http://www.conmicro.com
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com http://www.tronguy.net
http://www.hercules-390.org (Yes, that's me!)
Buy Hercules stuff at http://www.cafepress.com/hercules-390

That 99% of everything is crap doesn't make the stuff that isn't any less
good. Some of the best software available today is open source. Don't reject
any software because it's open source (or not). Pick, or reject, it because
of how good it is.

I don't. I use some open source products.

Wrong. There are lots of folks getting paid to work on open source software.
I've occasionally even been one of them.


I should clarify: most of the bad experience I've had with open source
is a result of people NOT being paid to work on it. Therefore there is
no motivation to create a really good product, generally.

I have objections to copyleft.

I have no objections to collaboration.

I don't like bad software. I don't like software running aircraft.

I'd prefer a live human being to make mistakes than a software program
to run an airplane into the ground. Which has happened before and will
happen again.

On Jan 29, 12:54*pm, wrote:
Wrong. There are lots of folks getting paid to work on open source software.
I've occasionally even been one of them.

I should clarify: most of the bad experience I've had with open source
is a result of people NOT being paid to work on it. Therefore there is
no motivation to create a really good product, generally.

I have objections to copyleft.

I have no objections to collaboration.

I don't like bad software. I don't like software running aircraft.

I'd prefer a live human being to make mistakes than a software program
to run an airplane into the ground. Which has happened before and will
happen again.

As I said elsewhere, computers and software are tools for the Pilot
and should be used accordingly. Either by themselves may have flaws
that in combination could be eliminated.

As I said elsewhere, computers and software are tools for the Pilot
and should be used accordingly. *Either by themselves may have flaws
that in combination could be eliminated.-

Fair to say.

The space shuttle can't be landed without software. There are modern
bombers/fighters that are apparently too difficult to control without
software making minor corrections to flight inputs (I've read. I
haven't flow, so I don't know but from heresay and magazine articles).

My prejudice is working 10 years in software and seeing for myself how
small flaws can be missed by even extraordinary testing regimes and
not detected by even the best of developers.

For experimental aircraft and small GA aircraft in particular I prefer
cables and pulleys and turnbuckles to software activated electric
motors.

I wouldn't have thought that an offhand crude comment about open
source software could have so thoroughly hijacked this thread.

On Jan 29, 8:21*pm, wrote:
As I said elsewhere, computers and software are tools for the Pilot
and should be used accordingly. *Either by themselves may have flaws
that in combination could be eliminated.-

Fair to say.

The space shuttle can't be landed without software. There are modern
bombers/fighters that are apparently too difficult to control without
software making minor corrections to flight inputs (I've read. I
haven't flow, so I don't know but from heresay and magazine articles).

My prejudice is working 10 years in software and seeing for myself how
small flaws can be missed by even extraordinary testing regimes and
not detected by even the best of developers.

For experimental aircraft and small GA aircraft in particular I prefer
cables and pulleys and turnbuckles to software activated electric
motors.

I wouldn't have thought that an offhand crude comment about open
source software could have so thoroughly hijacked this thread.

I have over 43 years of developing software and would consider myself
among the best in my field but even I have been known to miss the
occasional bug. BFG Software development and testing have come a
long long way in the last 40 years but as long as man is doing the
development, there will be things that we never anticipated.

The beauty of open source, be it software or aviation is the
combination of knowledge and forsight from multiple inputs. Those
billion dollar military fighters that require software to make them
controlable required the input of many developers and testers along
with years of refinement. Even then, there will eventually come a
combination of events that everybody thought to be impossible and the
software will fail. Hopefully, there will be someone at the controls
who despite the imperfections of man will find a way to overcome the
problem.

On Jan 29, 12:19*am, wrote:
On Jan 29, 12:02*am, Charles Vincent wrote:





wrote:
When you get right down to it....the aviation industry has been open
source since it began. *All the advancements in aviation design have
been largely improvements on prior designs. *Hell, even Rutans designs
are throwbacks to the Wright Brothers.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I don't think you know what open source means.

Most aviation advances have been held strictly secret, either by
companies or by governments. Nobody advertises their advances to their
potential adversaries.

The Wright brothers took to the air on wings that had an airfoil that
had evolved from the experiments of Otto Lilienthal, which they read
about from Lilienthal's own writings. *Their wire and strut braced wing
evolved from early experiments and designs of Octave Chanute, who not
only freely shared his discoveries with the Wrights, he visited them at
least once. *In fact, Chanute organized an international conference to
share information on aeronautics. *The Wright brothers were keen to
patent their advancements, not keep them secret. *It is pretty hard to
keep something secret when it is in plain sight for all to see, like for
example Bleriot's modern tractor design which quickly eclipsed flying
bedsteads like the Curtiss and the Wright flyer. *After World War one,
when the US realized any lead they had in aviation was not only history
but they were now way outclassed, people like Gugenheim and the US
government (through NACA), went out of their way to foster open sharing
of information. *Guggenheim did it by bringing top flight theorists to
the US (students of Rankine, Prandtl and Froude) to teach and NACA did
it by systematic experimentation and dissemination of the results. *This
pretty much continued up until WWII. * * *In fact, I have papers and
books from US efforts during WWII that not only reference the pre war
work of Japanese researchers, but laud them.

Charles

Was NACA and Guggenheim paying these people to collaborate?

If so, how is that open source like the open source software movement?
No one is getting paid to share their knowledge in open source. You
have to share your knowledge without compensation -- that's how it
works. You don't sell your hard won knowledge. You give it away so
others can benefit from it.

What about WWII and after? Sharing open source super sonic secrets?

Anyway that's a lot of ******** and besides the point.

Open source software projects are often poorly tested pieces of half
working junk written ad hoc and often by very immature, inexperience
developers. The Linux kernel is an exception. Apache is an exception.
For each of these there are 10 thousand pieces of crap.

You're free to share and collaborate all you want. Go for it.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

So you are telling us that ALL SOFTWARE on the market today is open
source? Nobody has said that all aviation advances were open source
either. That does not mean that open source has not played a large
part in the advances in aviation. The fact is that even open source
is being supported by companies who have paid staff contributing to
the product.