Free plans? Open source plans?

On Jan 28, 10:22*pm, 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.

Open source DEMANDS that it's a fundamental right to know how
something works.

Anybody wants to give their ideas away, fine by me.

No, I know exactly what open source means and have been a participant
in some limited areas. I am not talking about the corporate and
government worlds of super high tech development systems but general
aviation. In that realm, the developments have largely been by
experimentation based on designs and ideas gained from others. That
may not be "open source" in the strictest sense of todays software
development model but is in reality the same type of development.
Don't know of anybody that has any patents on NACA wing designs for
example.

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.

On Jan 28, 10:20*pm, wrote:
And if I ever find out open source software is running aircraft
systems I won't fly on it. But of course that will never happen.

I would sooner fly with open source software running my aircraft than
anything put out by Microsoft or Apple. *Nothing would put the fear of
flying into me more than thinking that I was dependent on anything put
out by those to companies.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I wouldn't fly with any software by them either.

In fact I don't like software controlling aircraft at all. Written by
anyone. The more software gets involved in aircraft control, the more
major crashes will be traced back to a "software glitch." It's
happened already.

I won't be surprised if the 777 at Heathrow won't be some kind of
software glitch.

F0k that.

Computers and the software that we run on them are TOOLS and should be
used to supplement the capabilities of those using them. The TOOLS
should not be in charge for the simple reason that they can not reason
and make decisions on anything not previously programmed into them.
When we allow those TOOLS to override our requests, we are at the
mercy of our lack of ability to anticipate all possible events.

On Jan 29, 10:39*am, Gig 601XL Builder
wrote:
wrote:
And if I ever find out open source software is running aircraft
systems I won't fly on it. But of course that will never happen.
I would sooner fly with open source software running my aircraft than
anything put out by Microsoft or Apple. *Nothing would put the fear of
flying into me more than thinking that I was dependent on anything put
out by those to companies.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I wouldn't fly with any software by them either.

In fact I don't like software controlling aircraft at all. Written by
anyone. The more software gets involved in aircraft control, the more
major crashes will be traced back to a "software glitch." It's
happened already.

I won't be surprised if the 777 at Heathrow won't be some kind of
software glitch.

F0k that.

Like there were no crashes before software got involved. The question is
how many accidents didn't happen because of software intervention.
Unfortunately we will never know.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Excellent point!

Like there were no crashes before software got involved. The question is
how many accidents didn't happen because of software intervention.
Unfortunately we will never know.- Hide quoted text -

Excellent point!-

If we will never know how can that be an excellent point?

On Jan 29, 11:07*am, BobR wrote:
On Jan 28, 10:22*pm, 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.

Open source DEMANDS that it's a fundamental right to know how
something works.

Anybody wants to give their ideas away, fine by me.

No, I know exactly what open source means and have been a participant
in some limited areas. *I am not talking about the corporate and
government worlds of super high tech development systems but general
aviation. *In that realm, the developments have largely been by
experimentation based on designs and ideas gained from others. *That
may not be "open source" in the strictest sense of todays software
development model but is in reality the same type of development.
Don't know of anybody that has any patents on NACA wing designs for
example.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Fair to say.

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.

Gig 601XL Builder wrote:

Like there were no crashes before software got involved. The question is
how many accidents didn't happen because of software intervention.
Unfortunately we will never know.

You could say everytime an F22 or F117 take off and land it is a crash
averted by software.

Charles

On Jan 29, 12:39*pm, wrote:
Like there were no crashes before software got involved. The question is
how many accidents didn't happen because of software intervention.
Unfortunately we will never know.- Hide quoted text -

Excellent point!-

If we will never know how can that be an excellent point?

Ever try to prove a negative? We can extrapolate on probabilities
based on the improved safety of the airlines in spite of an ever
greater number of flights with more complex aircraft. If the software
were not involved, could that safety margin have been maintained? I
seriously doubt it but we will never know.