It is worth remembering that The Federalist Papers were written under pseudonym Publius. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay believed in the importance of anonymity as a tool for public discussion. A surveillance state can destroy this tool as well.
Pseudonymity was a common practice at the time. Also, the Federalist Papers were written before the First Amendment. Indeed freedom of the press was proposed in No. 84.
It is worth reminding that the freedom of speech was understood at the time as one of our unalienable rights as individuals. Notice the phrasing of the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging _the_ freedom of speech
The article "the" before "freedom" was deliberate. "The" freedom of speech is an absolute given. And it is not that Congress authorizes or allows freedom of speech. It is "Congress shall make no law".
Part of the debate on writing the Bill of Rights was not that rights needed to be granted to the people and the states, but that it was not necessary because it was understood that these rights already exist and come from our humanity and cannot be denied. A document like the Bill of Rights could be misconstrued and abused to flip the tables and make people assume their rights are granted as a privilege of the ruling government, instead of a truth that it is inherently in every person and they delegate their powers to the government.
If you're saying that freedom of speech implicitly and only implicitly existed as a Right of Man before the First Amendment was ratified, that would be mistaken. There was a Bill of Rights passed in the English Parliament after the overthrow of James II. Our Bill of Rights was a descendent of their Bill of Rights.
As for unalienable, we 'aliened' those rights by limiting who they applied to. Whenever you hear States' Rights, that's just a dog whistle translation of aliening some people's rights.
> As for unalienable, we 'aliened' those rights by limiting who they applied to.
Not quite. The "who" was always citizens. The catch, rather, was limiting whom the restrictions on limiting applied to. Under the original, pre-14th Amendment interepretation of the Bill of Rights, it only placed restrictions on the federal government (indeed, the First makes it explicit, with its "Congress shall make no law").
States could still do whatever they wanted - the check there was supposed to be the corresponding state constitution, and, indeed, most of them had some checks, in many cases with verbiage directly derived from BoR.
As for "states rights", while it is more often a dog whistle for allowing states to infringe on someone's right, this is not necessarily always the case. It can also be about allowing states to protect someone's right against an encroachment by the federal government. "Sanctuary cities" are a canonical example of how some states exercise their states' rights (in this case, the right to not cooperate with the federal government) to protect someone.
Thanks. I'd add that Sanctuary Cities are expressly disobedient. They're saying we won't enforce these Federal laws here and they're not relying on a mis-reading of the 10th to do that.
My opinion on the 10th is that, while "sovereign citizens" and other similar movements distort it to the point of meaninglessness, the standing mainstream judicial interpretation (that it basically means nothing at all) is also a heavy distortion of the original intent, and is harmful to the stability of our federal system of government.
But then, I am a states' rights liberal - a species so rare as to be considered mythical by many.
While they certainly enjoyed the conventions English law afforded them, it was always understood that these rights are natural rights born with their humanity. To lead a revolution and form a new government, they understood that this could not be justified if they had to appeal to the King's law. Instead they argued based on the natural rights of man and drew upon bodies of political philosophy and thinking such as John Locke which gave the legal basis.
These ideas are all over the Declaration of Independence:
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth,"
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government"
The bottom 2/3's of the Declaration of Independence are a list of specific grievances against the King and how "He" violated their rights. While most school children are only introduced the preamble to the Declaration, the drafters felt that the actual important part was the list at the bottom because this was considered both a moral and legal document, justifying revolution. Trying to argue in only technical legal terms within the King's law would give them neither which is why the political philosophy of natural rights is embraced.
As somebody who has written to companies about bugs in their products (and almost always ignored), I would really appreciate a response even if it was some form letter thing to the effect of "I just make a small component that happens to be used in your car, kind of like the people who make the screws in your car. Please contact your car manufacturer directly."
I personally just like knowing somebody read my letter instead of going into a black hole. And I kind of expect these things to go into black holes, so it's actually kind of heart warming when I receive any kind of response.
And this response would at least tell me to try a different contact. (I know in this case who Daniel Stenberg is and know what curl is so I wouldn't make this specific mistake, but sometimes hunting for support contact information returns things that are vague.)
If the customer gets angry at the response, it's fine because it just means they don't understand, which means they are just getting angrier at the car company. The car company deserves that since they made it so hard to contact them.
It's easy to say that if you don't have experience from the receiving end...
For a very long time I ran publicly accessible NTP servers. Usually this required little to no maintenance, sometimes we'd get hammered (like when a large ISP rebooted all of their customers boxes at the same time). But usually it wasn't a big deal.
Now, when you have hundreds of thousands of people using your services, it doesn't take many people who have decided you are going to fix their problem, as a percentage to get overwhelmed. Mostly users were great, but there were a few...
My company provided Linux support, and our support number included an option users could select that was prefaced with "If you are an existing customer and are having a service impacting emergency, press 1 to receive a call back from a technician within 15 minutes."
This system would allow them to leave a voicemail and then would log a bug in our tracking system and would start calling our senior on-call tech and their backup, 24 hours a day. It was either the second or third time in a week this happened, and I replied with a "You are not a customer, this is not a service impacting outage, and you are reporting our servers replying to your computer's requests for time service."
The level of vitriol I received in return convinced me it was time to stop offering NTP as a public service.
Most people will spend some time understanding what is going on before reaching out to someone they've never heard of before, expecting them to fix the problem. But if you have enough people using something you provide, you will run across people who have huge expectations of you and get pissed off if you don't fix their problem.
>and our support number included an option users could select //
Did you charge callers. I wonder if "you will be billed £20 for this call [or $30 or whatever]; current customers will have this cost refunded" would be enough (even if you never charged) to put people off.
In our case, implementing a pay for call, or even an account number would have been fairly hard, as an 8 person company. MOST people respected it, and on top of it there were a few cases where people used it to our benefit.
So, it was definitely a judgment call about if we should add something requiring a special code for access, charging, etc... In this case, we had to make the judgment call about implementing something like this, or stopping public NTP service.
Part of the equation also included that pool.ntp.org was now available and fairly well populated, when we started offering NTP service it wasn't a thing.
It is what Microsoft does. Even with a support contract, you have to provide them with a credit card number before they will accept a support case. When Microsoft agrees you've found a genuine bug in their software, they won't charge you.
But there are, presumably, tens if not hundreds of millions of cars with curl in them now. While I'm sure you would appreciate a response, imagine the time it would take to reply to these questions? I mean it's not like it's a bug in curl...
As for "if the customer gets angry at the response, it's fine...", well, what if you're taking the time to reply and then getting angry responses? What a waste of emotional energy.
Personally I'd agree that the correct thing to do is not to reply, there's only so many hours in the day, and there's really _nothing_ he can do to fix anything.
The Poindexter in me thinks he needs a mail relay with a whitelist. Everything in the whitelist gets through (plus some keyword), everything else gets a reply with "If you saw my email in $DEVICE, please contact the manufacturer, if you really want to talk to me, place $VERB in the subject of your email.
> If you saw my email in $DEVICE, please contact the manufacturer, if you really want to talk to me, place $VERB in the subject of your email.
Never underestimate desperate people's selective deafness; when you want to solve a problem, you will filter out everything between you and it, and will see only "place $VERB in the subject of your email". The false positives from this method will be the most desperate, and probably the least congenial.
I'm in a roughly similar (if lower in scale) situation. I maintain a popular iOS app that frequently gets emails from people confusing my email address with the official support email from the service my app is a third-party tool for. I get emails on the order of maybe 3-4 a week.
I have a TextExpander snippet auto-reply. Takes me maybe 10 seconds to reply to a given email. It's hard to give advice without knowing the rough volume of the emails the author deals with; I can imagine situations where this would be a perfectly viable strategy, or times when even that would be an unreasonable amount of work.
So what's the point in putting your e-mail address at the end of the license/about/readme ?
If you don't want to receive e-mails, don't put your e-mail.
If you just want to receive some kind of e-mails (like just congrats but not bugs), add that information in the end. Of course some people won't comply, but that's just human behavoir.
Now, just putting your e-mail and letting the black hole eat them without an answer is very disappointing to those who took their time to read the license/about/readme, find your e-mail, put their hope that you're able to help them in some problem, and then... nothing.
Edit
Yes, I did read the thread, the original post, and so on. I'm just putting myself in the position of the average costumer, or not-so-average, that took time to read the available documentation and tried to fix something, or to ask for a new feature, or anything else. He isn't receiving spam. I'm not suggesting, either, that he should address the problem or even find out who's the correct person to blame inside the company X that did the GUI of the radio for the company Y that finaly sold it to DENSO that will sell it to Toyota...
One way to fix would be, for example, changing the license in any future version to read "If you're using this software inside any component that will be used in a car, you should display the Copyright_automotive.txt contents instead of this one".
Edit 2
As far as I could find (in https://curl.haxx.se/docs/copyright.html), I would never blame regular car users, not even some tech users, if they couldn't find what Daniel is responsible for. The license just says:
---
COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSION NOTICE
Copyright (c) 1996 - 2016, Daniel Stenberg, daniel@haxx.se, and many contributors, see the THANKS file.
All rights reserved.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization of the copyright holder.
---
If you read that and can find where it says that it's not about the GPS, the mapping of the Electronic Fuel Injection, the windshield wipers, or something else, or even that it's about some specific piece of software, please, just point it out.
> Now, just putting your e-mail and letting the black hole eat them without an answer is very disappointing to those who took their time to read the license/about/readme, find your e-mail, put their hope that you're able to help them in some problem, and then... nothing.
He is not obligated to answer every email he receives.
He is certainly not obligated to play first-tier tech support for anyone who happens to purchase a product that uses curl.
Trust me, that wouldn't fix it. As someone who works for a company whose name resembles a popular Microsoft product, putting in disclaimers (in our case on our support contact form) doesn't help one bit. They don't care.
People forever confused the company I work for, Shadowcat, with a london hosting provider called Black Cat and with Sleepycat (i.e. the berkeleydb company). Even once both of those ceased to exist, it was a couple years before the effect trailed off entirely.
I used to work for a defense contractor whose name had the word microwave in it (we made radar components and such). Occasionally someone would contact us to ask about getting their microwave oven fixed. I have no idea where they heard of us.
Yes. Exactly. And then I argued (some levels up in this thread) that it isn't easy for some user to know what he e-mails refers to (curl?) in the way that it's displayed. Or that he could have a different copyright notice in future versions, preventing his emails from appearing on Multimedia Car Console...
I understand it's frustrating, but the license is there for an entirely different purpose, same with the email. Not to be heartless, but if they took the time to read the license, I would hope they understand then what the license is actually for any why emailing the person at the end is not a good idea for solving a problem related to a product that is not the licensed product. They're building up hope for themselves and then just getting themselves frustrated when it turns out they made a mistake, and that's not really fair on the licensee's part, especially when service manuals in the car are usually pretty clear on the means for support.
My last job was managing the support for a smaller university, and every so often we'd get people who just searched "Help Desk" and somehow stumbled onto our University Help Desk phone number. They'd get insanely frustrated when, rather often, we were completely unable to help them because the product was too niche or specific for my technicians to even begin to know how to troubleshoot; we had low enough call volume that the free publicity for the school after helping strangers more than offset the time spent solving a problem that wasn't ours to solve. But when the callers would get really upset and disgruntled, I'm not entirely sure what they expected, especially since my technicians would make it perfectly clear that we weren't a generic Help Desk, we were specific to a university. I have plenty of sympathy for them not being able to get good support through the correct channels, but when you know you're not at the right place and just hoping, it doesn't seem fair to peg blame on the people you know are the wrong people to contact.
Edit to reflect your edit:
I would imagine that the part that reads "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,..." should give away that this is not for support. Also that it doesn't read like a support document at all, and that it's not included in the car's support manual, and that the email doesn't mention Toyota at all. If they email that address from that page, they're not reading the file, they're just scanning for an email address. I'm not saying people who do this are idiots or anything of the sort - as someone who loves helping with tech issues, I sympathize and even empathize after having crap service from many companies. But the people are creating their own disappointment.
If you can't get GPS working in your car so your plan to fix it is sending an email to an address you found in a random open source license file, an "I don't have anything to do with your GPS" email is probably not going to satisfy you.
It's obviously just people that have no clue what cURL is and when it's appropriate to contact the author of the software. The email is there to report cURL related stuff, not ask for car usage advise.
>"I just make a small component that happens to be used in your car, kind of like the people who make the screws in your car. Please contact your car manufacturer directly."
Have you ever had a customer service or tech support job? This line would just be used as a further launching point for an angry and argumentative person. Expect replies as "Thanks asshole" or "Surely you must know someone there who can help, instead you collect your big six figure salary while us working joes get stiffed," etc.
When I did tech support for $electronics_company, you would not believe the negatively you're on the receiving end of. The author is clearly making the correct move. Why be on the receiving end of negativity when you don't need to be? Yes, maybe there are people like you out there who would appreciate a short response, but you're maybe 1% of the population in regards to this. Argubaly, if you don't know what a FOSS copyright statement is and start emailing any email you find, more than likely you're not going to be the tech wizard who is thankful for a reply. You'll be the pissed off guy with a radio that doesn't work and see any reply as a smug 'piss off.'
I think one of life's tough lessons is that you can't help everyone and that discriminating who you let into your life is very important.
Heh, after a dealership misdiagnosed my car's issue, I emailed their HQ. They said they don't overturn dealership diagnosis decisions. I replied that I won't be overturning my decision to not buy their cars again.
(I already ruled out the spark plugs and coils by swapping them around, and told them of this in writing, but they still told me that was the problem without running a compression test...)
The problem is asymmetry of work involved. Where do you draw the line between somebody who's technically challenged or somebody who's very lazy or entitled and simply spams the first email they see hoping the other person will oblige in helping them?
I mean, a single web search would reveal that the person probably doesn't work for <insert brand>. Would you email somebody about a Toyota car if their address wasn't "bob@toyota.com" or something? Besides, if they had bothered to read the license, it's clear it comes "WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND".
Also, many companies make it intentionally hard to find a contact address. Mr. Stenberg shouldn't be disadvantages because some company which doesn't care about customer relations has decided to use his excellent piece of open source software.
> I’ve learned over the years that just trying to explain how I have nothing to do with the product they’re using is often just too time consuming and energy draining to be worth it.
Responding to emails can be way more draining than you'd expect.
> If the customer gets angry at the response, it's fine because it just means they don't understand, which means they are just getting angrier at the car company.
I think it's easy to say that "it's fine" without stepping into Daniel's shoes, but the responder still has to carry some of the emotional weight of that interaction through the rest of his day. I don't blame him one bit for wanting not part of that.
Remember, this is customer service. You and many others may be nice and have reasonable expectations, but it's the outliers that sour the whole experience. I also would not opt-in to wasting my time and energy on these responses.
>I would really appreciate a response even if it was some form letter thing to the effect of "I just make a small component that happens to be used in your car, kind of like the people who make the screws in your car. Please contact your car manufacturer directly."
I work for a small company whose name is reminiscent of a popular Microsoft product. We get a non-trivial amount of tech support-type questions pertaining to it. At first you either help them or politely explain to them that they have the wrong company ... after a while it's just noise.
Sure, but you also (I'm assuming) would not confuse an open source/individual email for a corporate representative email. And would subsequently not email a Toyota related bug to joe@lovesopensource.org.
When someone randomly throws an email in a direction completely irrelevant to their issue, they are just grasping at straws. It would not be unreasonable to assume they've tried 20 other emails before or after this one, where most are likely to be more relevant to their issue.
If that person doesn't know the difference, any response you could send them would be of no help nor comfort, and the risks of continued questioning once you've opened that box is simply not worth it.
But then they know someone is on the other end of that email address. For you, a reasonable person, that is a nice thing to know and you'll move on. For other people, they'll do anything form keep emailing more harassing things and escalating the language, to posting that email address on every spam signup form they can find.
One of my favorite games when I was a kid was Captain Goodnight by Broderbund. Apple II game. I loved the musical score to the intro so much that I wrote a (snail mail) letter to their HQ asking for the musical score to the intro music. Pretty random! I was a random kid.
They wrote me back! Not with the music, but an apology saying they didn't have the music score to send out. As an adult, I get it.. and I also have to say as a kid I was elated to receive a response back from the company. I didn't really expect to hear back from them at all.
I'm conflicted about this but I realize the bigger company has limitations. And a small shop has even more limitations. I get both sides.
It's not that far-fetched to imagine a wacky legal situation where you are exposed to some sort of liability for answering. He's doing the best thing in the circumstance.
Yeah you would, but you're on Hacker News and not stupid, like 99.999999999% of users are.
To them a reply and it doesn't matter what's in the reply as they're not reading it anyway, means they have somebody to vent to. And if Daniel doesn't solve it. T-mobile is a bad company. DO NOT ever understimate the stupidity of people. No reply is best reply in cases like this!
That 99.99...% out of all human population rounds up to leave no-one "not stupid".
By simple exaggeration you just included yourself with the rest of us.
No. 99.999999999% of users are not "stupid." They are just not educated or interested in technical arcana like you possibly are. I could say more but that's probably sufficient. Grow up.
Have you ever worked support? Of course the percentage is an exaggeration, but seriously, many people are idiots and won't take no or "that's not our product" for an answer.
Interesting. Now you got me thinking more about what things might change with self-driving cars.
Will cars offer an "orbiting" mode where they keep driving in a circle until you are ready to be picked up.
Will stores offer a driving ring where cars can drive around in circles off the main street in the case where no parking slots are available?
Will cars be able to drop you off, and park themselves when a space becomes available? Will the cars notify you where they parked, or will they always come to your location? (And what if you are standing in an area that is impossible to drive to...where does the car go?)
I can't wait for self-driving cars. This will be a lot of fun to see how the world changes in both the large and small.
Cars moving take up more space that stationary parked cars. What you've stumbled on is actually a concern for transit planners - more traffic because self driving cars are circling without any passengers.
Well, I think this is probably a case where a bit of number crunching will save the day - considering a world in which driverless cars are the norm and fully embraced by the city, the coordination system can likely determine based on historical data and also current queue request pressure how many cars to launch into traffic at any given time to satisfy demand for a summon in less than 5 minutes or whatever target they want. When not summoned or being sent to meet demand, the cars return to an enclosure outside the city for maintenance.
Admittedly, there is a lot of planning that needs to happen for even a prototype of this to happen, as well as some major cultural shifts, but when it does happen, I think it will run pretty smoothly. The biggest issue in my mind isn't the logistics as much as the cultural attitude that will need to happen - right now everyone seems to assume ownership of driverless cars, but the more reasonable approach seems to be summoned fleets instead. I can envision something like the city owning the control infrastructure and leasing slots to competing companies, or even just competing companies and leaving the city controller out of the picture.
"Orbiting" seems like a great way to add unnecessary wear and tear. I imagine an alternative is cars that travel to parking then come and pick you up when summoned.
There is also the possibility of having your car work for hire to help you afford to buy a new one sooner :D
Driving in a circle still isn't free it either costs gas or electricity. When you park your car you are constrained to park it relatively nearby. Logically your car lacking a parking spot at your location will seek one nearby until it has traveled far enough that it is logical for it to turn around and drive back to you.
In some cases perhaps it will rejoin the pool of available cars and you will picked up by a different car.
Perhaps retailers will be yet more likely to offer to ship selected large or awkward items directly to your home after you have picked them out.
Yes they'll be happy to pay a premium for delivery trucks that require no drivers. Time-of-day flexibility will enable serving more customers with the same size fleet. Many customers will be more willing to use delivery when they can plan around working hours and don't have to worry about tipping. Service levels won't be subject to mistakes in shift planning.
Hopefully enough by-the-trip rental that you don't need to own one, and that they are used by somebody else while you don't need it, so less need for parking.
Sort of what we do with airplanes. You never really think of until you need them to be all grounded:
All of your hypotheticals seem to still assume individually-used cars. This is much nearer term thinking than the real interesting stuff. Cars wouldn't need to circle or park themselves. They would just go pick somebody else up. When you're done, some other car would come pick you up.
Many people will prefer to keep individually used cars. Cars is not only transportation, but storage too. From children seats to umbrella to things you bought at previous stop.
The random self-driving car is pretty much the same as public transport. Individual cars seem to be still a thing, even though we have buses, taxis etc. Having random car pick you up is not some totally new idea that wasn't tried ever before.
Future humans will laugh at this quaint preference for one's own generic auto. Perhaps there will still be a point to owning specialized vehicles that e.g. go over difficult terrain or have extra comfort amenities. The idea that one Hyundai Sonata could be preferred to another Hyundai Sonata, however, is very odd.
People already laugh at people who love their vehicles to death. They don't drive a generic car though. Those people can usually explain why they drive that specific vehicle with those specific addons in no less than an hour.
For the record, I drive a stock car. I like few extra comfort bits I got, but many cars got that these days. I'm fine with people having fun in a way I don't get though.
It would be new: the price could be much lower, perhaps closer to public transportation, while the privacy and directness of pickup and drop-off would be like taxis.
The point about storage and kids is definitely interesting. Seems like potential for business opportunities if we ever find ourselves in this world.
They'd drive quite a lot of junk miles, which is virtually non-existant for public transit. And wouldn't have several passengers either. Taxis don't have economy of scale passengers-wise either, but they try to minimise junk miles a lot. Sometimes event rejecting travels to certain destinations or charging 2x to cover return.
I guess bottom line would end up ~ the same as current car sharing services. Cheaper if you want occasional use, but more expensive as daily driver. And availability issues at peak times.
I don't follow your logic here. Why would they need to drive more "junk miles" than taxis? It seems to me that there would be quite a bit more opportunities for optimization. How does the bottom line end up about the same as current car sharing services when you have removed one of the largest costs? Availability also seems easier to manage than with a fleet of people driving...
Over there, taxis refuse going out of city limits or even to remote parts of town where they know they won't have a passenger back. They have reserved spots for parking in many areas (just idle in grey-legal spots). There would be many autonomous cars and they'd follow rules more strictly I guess. So they'd have to drive off to find some parking. Then come back to pick up next customer. They'd drive a shitload of junk miles to pick up/drop off people to suburbs. Taxis either refuse such trips or charge $$$.
Current car sharing service (e.g. zipcar) is virtually the same as autonomous car sharing. You're not removing any large costs. Fleet balance is arguably the only cost removed. But it seems to be more or less solved problem even without autonomous cars. At least in my city, they no longer require to return (most) cars to the same lot. Wether car is autonomous or not, you still have to purchase the vehicle, pay insurance, gas, maintenance... Same price. The only change would be paying for idle car, it could drive back by itself. But user would have to pay for those junk miles. Which may be the same as paying for idling in the long run.
If car sharing service would want to have good availability at any time, they'd have a lot of overhead cars. Which would increase the cost. Otherwise they'd have to have reservations. And we get into a whole can of worms..
I knew a guy in college who rented a house that didn't have any outlets with a ground plug.
This became such a problem, he made his own ground by using a big metal pipe outside the house that was already deep in the earth, and running a wire from it to where he kept all his equipment.
Then he used stuff like in that picture to make sure he could ground all his equipment.
I am now a victim of the adage, "Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it".
I hated Flash. I either avoided installing it or used a Flash blocker. So I always managed to avoid the auto-playing problem when the Internet primarily used Flash for everything annoying.
Now that Flash is about dead and everything is HTML5 now, neither of these techniques work any more to avoid auto-playing.
I too long for the good old days, when web garbage was mostly confined to Flash and popups (and punch-the-monkey GIFs). Now it's all an HTML5 wasteland full of warring JavaScript. Good job, W3C!
The only thing that has doubled down here is the marketing of the fact they are contributing to open source. They have both been large users and contributors to open source since the switch to OS X (NeXT acquisition).
Just off the top of my head, projects they have had a large hand in: WebKit & JavaScriptCore, Objective-C, CUPS, LLVM, Clang, Bonjour/Zeroconf, Darwin, launchd, libdispatch, CoreFoundation, dtrace.
And more recently Apple Lossless Encoder, LZFSE compression, and of course Swift.
And this is only a tiny fraction of what they are users of.
It would be nice if some of their contributions were less "throw it over the wall once or twice a year".
It would be nicer still if they stopped thinking their browser only needs to get new features once per year. Safari is rapidly getting a reputation as the new IE6. Fully supporting ES6 means nothing when everything is being transpiled and minified anyway, and the (arguably) dominant mobile browser your (kinda) forced to target doesn't support features that shipped in every other browser years ago, heck many missing features have even stabilised in other browsers years ago. The dev builds on desktop are just a token gesture that further displays how far behind the times WebKit/Safari/MobileSafari are falling.
Here are just a few things not supported in any Apple browser, Including the "Technology Preview" on desktop:
CSS Motion Path;
CSS Device Adaptation;
Client Hints: DPR, Width, Viewport-Width;
inputmode attribute;
MediaRecorder API;
Network Information API;
Web Animations API;
Pointer events;
Web App Manifest;
seamless attribute for iframes;
Payment Request API;
Credential Management API;
Push API;
FIDO U2F API;
Permissions API;
Screen Orientation;
Object RTC (ORTC) API for WebRTC;
Proximity API;
Ambient Light API;
Battery Status API;
Vibration API;
Web MIDI API;
getUserMedia/Stream API;
WebAssembly;
'SameSite' cookie attribute;
Public Key Pinning;
XHTML+SMIL animation;
This looked like a pretty long list of unsupported APIs, so I decided to do some research:
- CSS motion path is not an official standard; it is implemented only in Blink (Chrome/Opera).
- CSS device adaptation is a W3C working draft. It is available prefixed in IE/Edge and Opera Mini, but is unprefixed in 0% of shipping browsers.
- Client Hints: DPR, Width, Viewport-Width is an IETF working draft implemented only in Blink (Chrome/Opera).
- inputmode is supported in 0% of shipping browsers.
- MediaRecorder API is a W3C working draft supported in Blink (Chrome/Opera) and Firefox but not IE/Edge or Safari.
- Network Information API is not an official standard; it is supported only in Chrome for Android.
(Source: caniuse.com)
I stopped going through the list at this point. At least from the top of your list, none of these features are "shipped in every other browser" and some are shipped in no browsers at all. I'm not sure how it shows that Safari is "far behind the times."
If anything, the list seems to show that Chrome implements many non-standard APIs not available elsewhere. Combined with its mindshare (if not marketshare), this suggests that Chrome--not Safari--is in some ways the new IE6.
This is exactly what tons of WebKit/Safari haters do — troll through the literally 100s of proposed standards (admittedly sometimes W3C but still) and rile up comment sections w/this false trope astroturfing for half-baked technologies.
It's usually because they had some pet project / approach relying on the "standard" that they couldn't run right in MobileSafari, even though it had no adoption whatsoever, Cupertino is DESTROYING the web for not including it, battery life, privacy, reasonable userspace restrictions, etc BE DAMNED.
I'd edit my post to remove the items that aren't standard or even working drafts yet, but unfortunately the time window has passed so I can't now.
But I can't agree that Chrome is in any way the new IE6. Chrome is actively participating in the public view in the process of web standards. Apple seems to 'participate' insofar as they are on lists of participating companies. Apple pretty much adds just one batch of features per year, and does so through a completely opaque process that outside developers are almost completely irrelevant to. Chrome at least listens to outside opinions, while one of the defining traits of the IE6 years was having to work under the umbrella of a "we don't care, just use what we gave you" attitude from the IE6 developers.
Also, the fact I had to open chrome in order to post this comment to HN is an amusing addition to this little "how broken is the web" discussion.
I suspect the reason gp included the IE6 comparison at all was in response to yours, after looking into ES6 support across browsers for features you specifically called out, which I think is fair to do.
As for opening Chrome to post your comment, are you having issues with other browsers when you do so? I generally use Safari in Mac OS X and iOS without a problem.
Web Developers use common lowest denominator with is IE8-IE9 for public facing projects and IE11 for internal...
Your Safari will work just fine, but it is still behind Firefox or Chrome [0]. I am not saying that Safari is new IE because we will struggle with IE11 for years to come.
Before Safari 10 ES6 was supported in 54% then in Safari 10 is 100%. This is wrong approach to web, it is the same approach that MS had in the past. Ignore standards and make some improvement with new version for bragging rights.
> Before Safari 10 ES6 was supported in 54% then in Safari 10 is 100%. This is wrong approach to web, it is the same approach that MS had in the past. Ignore standards and make some improvement with new version for bragging rights.
How is implementing some of a standard, and then completing work to implement 100% of that standard "ignoring standards"?
ggp: Also, the fact I had to open chrome in order to post this comment to HN is an amusing addition to this little "how broken is the web" discussion.
gp: As for opening Chrome to post your comment, are you having issues with other browsers when you do so? I generally use Safari in Mac OS X and iOS without a problem.
My comment on using Safari is in response to ggp saying Chrome was necessary to post to HN, not about general use or for development. Or am I misreading ggp?
"Safari is rapidly getting a reputation as the new IE6."
And that is just a ridiculous comparison done by people who have never witnessed that period or are having a different agenda.
One of my first jobs (more then a decade ago) as a young developer was being a web developer for an American/Belgian e-commerce site. One of the things that was very important - because every customer counts - that the site displayed and worked perfectly in any browser (IE6, FF/Mozilla, Safari and Opera at the time)
That was a situation that wasn't a lot of fun because you had standard HTML that more or less worked in any browser with the exception of IE6. There where a lot of moments that I really hated my job because of the frustrations that IE6 often brought to the table. That is in no way comparable with Safari today.
And while I would like to have Apple more rapidly implementing new API's, with IE we could only dream of having an IE version that got new features every year. Years have we have witnessed the fallout of IE6, that will never be the case with Safari to this day.
IE6 was a vehicle to create an internet that only worked with Microsoft standards so that others couldn't be a valid alternative hence the IE6 markup vs the rest. You can't do that by dragging your feet when implementing API's, you only price yourself out of the market in that way.
I have lived through those awful IE6 times and imho Safari is the new PITA of web development. Nowadays you don't have to create workarounds for CSS problems or same JS incompatibilities, Safari sucks at implementing even the most basic HTML5 APIs.
It is like with CSS 10 years ago. This nice new CSS feature (HTML5 API) which would perfectly solve your problem? Sorry you can't use it because IE (Safari) does not support it (maybe never will).
> Safari sucks at implementing even the most basic HTML5 APIs
Would you care to give some examples?
The last time this played out on HN, the list of unsupported things was not HTML5, and many were unfinished/unstable, or listed as in-progress by the WebKit team.
It was never enabled in any of the Apple-owned ports of WebKit, IIRC it was enabled in the GTK and Qt ports, but I could be wrong there. So Apple killing it isn't really true—they're just deleting code that was already gone at compile-time for them.
It would be nicer still if they stopped thinking their browser only needs to get new features once per year. Safari is rapidly getting a reputation as the new IE6.
-----------------
To be fair, they had a 9.1 release this year, which included:
Picture element support
So if they do this again, we're looking more at 6 month cycles.
The whole safari is the new IE6 stuff is hyperbole which I don't actually hear that many developers saying..
IE6 was bad because it didn't follow any standards, not because it updated slower than the competition.
All the ones I listed are the ones where they are significant contributors.
The much larger set of where they are mostly users, like the BSD userland tools, curl, Python, Perl, Tcl, Ruby, and so forth, I omitted. There are just too many.
LLVM/Clang and Grand Central Dispatch comes to mind. The MAC framwork is also a shared effort, but I don't know who is doing the heavy lifting. It's something.
And which of these are actually developed with an open source model instead of merely throwing code over the wall months after the official binaries have been released?
I know from personal experience that at least LLVM, Clang, Swift, and WebKit/JavaScriptCore have daily activity and also include non-Apple commit reviewers.
I also suspect CUPS remains pretty active. CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) started a long time ago and is used by pretty much all the Unix platforms. Apple bought the project in 2007. The license remains GPL2/LGPL2 and all the platforms still use it as far as I know.
The open sourcing of Swift was very beneficial. The project moved extremely fast the last years with lots of outside input and interest. I think this shows when OS works best: When it is not done out of obligation (or ideology), but because it can be useful as a tool.
You are using a disingenuous interpretation of what he said.
His quote is:
"tie all of our products together, so we further lock customers into our ecosystem"
Yes, he uses the word "lock", but not in the same context we are talking about here.
He is talking about leveraging the connection between their products so say that a person with an iPhone may not want to leave the Mac for a PC because the customer may miss the interoperability/integration features available.
For example, Apple provides their "Continuity" APIs for things like Handoff between iOS and Mac. This is something that Apple can do to make their ecosystem more attractive to customers and discourage them from leaving because it is less likely developers are going to write apps that go to this level of coordination between say your Windows desktop, your Android phone, Pebble watch, and Roku TV.
This strategy does not automatically imply that Mac must be locked down so nobody is allowed to distribute apps outside the Mac App Store.
I am not being disingenuous at all. Let's examine the quote a little closer, shall we?
It says "further lock customers into our ecosystem". Obviously, "locking customers into their ecosystem" is a primary goal here and "tying all of our products together" is just one way of achieving that.
It is a way to do it "further" than what they've done already.
> This strategy does not automatically imply that Mac must be locked down...
OK, but we already established that the goal here is to "lock customers into our ecosystem". In light of that statement, do you really think Apple wouldn't jump at the chance to make the Mac OS just like iOS? Odds are that they would love to do such a thing, but they can't for one of the reasons that `belorn` stated above.
Why do you think they didn't make iOS so that anybody could deploy apps to it? Do you really, truly think it was for the purpose of security?
EDIT: I guess my main question for you is, what reason do you have to think that Apple wouldn't want to lock down the Mac OS? That's essentially what `belorn` was asking above.
I personally think they go overboard in the name of security on iOS, for example the banning of JIT and (formerly) dynamic libraries combined with the App review process is overkill. You don't need both.
BUT...context of where this all stems from is important to remember. On the Mac side before the iPhone, the Windows world was getting hammered with security problems and the perception of this was having negative repercussions throughout the PC world. Average users were scared to touch their PCs and especially afraid to try installing new applications. Mac users were the complete opposite of this and their market was dominated by consumers who loved getting (buying) the latest OS updates and buying the latest, coolest apps. Money flowed in the Mac world. But as Mac started getting more attention, lots of different press coverage wondered if Mac could be vulnerable to the same kind of vulnerabilities Windows users were constantly dealing with now that it is a bigger target. So keeping Mac secure for the benefit of their users became a profit incentive for Apple.
On the iPhone side, remember, Apple was walking a tightrope with the phone carrier (AT&T) when they first got started. They didn't have the leverage they have now. Remember that mobile carriers have been obstinate about updates in the name of (their own) "security". They didn't want a bad update, that they couldn't test, somehow bring down the entire cellphone network. Nor did the carriers want nefarious apps that would secretly make expensive phone calls to pay-per-minute numbers. It's no surprise that when Jobs finally was convinced to open the platform to 3rd party native apps, there was some kind of vetting system introduced to appease the mobile carriers from saying 'no'. This is not to say that security was the only thing on their mind and there are other reasons they would like the model they have, but it was a factor. (Consistent user experience is another factor, which is something the App Review process could help enforce since the iPhone was new. Mac has less of this problem because there had been many years of conventions laid down which developers were very good about following in the eco-system already, which is another key difference between the iPhone and Mac ecosystems.)
As for why Apple doesn't lock down the Mac as they do now, the simple answer is that it doesn't help their bottom line in any way. Mac and iOS have very different use cases and heritages. And Apple has been successful with their current Mac carrot/stick trade-off. Most Mac developers I've talked with say that while dealing with the Mac App Store is annoying, they do get a lot more visibility and sales than by not being on the store. Users are no longer confused about how to "install" their apps which saves them customer support costs. (Yes, the open DMG, drag-and-drop to Applications thing is confusing for people.) For indie developers, building a store front and dealing with a payment processor doesn't save them a huge amount of money for what Apple provides for their 30% cut. And remember, sales seem to be better on MAS for most developers so this ends up paying for itself. (And if you are a game developer, you see basically the same arrangement with Steam/Value.)
For those who can't get on the Mac App Store, perhaps due to the technical restrictions, Developer ID for GateKeeper is one option. Apple still gets $99/year for this. And it is worth pointing out, if Apple was truly only obsessed about their 30% cut for MAS, they wouldn't have these technical restrictions and would let anybody do anything on MAS so they could get their cut.
So if Apple decided to lock down the Mac entirely, what does it get them? Most developers are already voluntarily using Mac App Store and Developer ID. Those developers who are not already participating in those systems and not giving Apple money, locking down the system isn't likely going to get any of these developers to hand over any more money.
A lot of these developers are probably making software for their own in-house purposes, developing web sites, or developing for Android. Apple locking down these use cases would only result in people moving back to the PC. And internally, this would probably break all of Apple engineering as they all work on operating system components which don't fit the lock down model either.
And most importantly, remember that Apple's gross margins on hardware is like 40%. If we're talking about chasing customers away, that's a lot of money to lose. Who cares about the cut on a freebie flashlight app, website, or command line tool, which isn't going to make any money, compared to the profit on selling all those $2000 Macs.
It's obvious to me that Apple won't lock down the Mac OS at this time for the reasons that you and `belorn` mentioned.
That doesn't mean that Apple wouldn't jump at the chance if things changed though. They most certainly would. That's because the primary goal is to lock customers into their ecosystem.
Some Apple fans won't acknowledge that goal and they seem to take offense at that very notion or they start telling you that you're "being disingenuous" for even suggesting it.
Since all the posts here seem pretty negative about Slack's response, I'm genuinely curious...how do you think a smaller company should respond when a huge company decides to enter their competitive space?
I ask because I've been an employee at multiple start ups before and seen this kind of situation happen multiple times. I have not yet seen a response that gets received well. And silence gets perceived by existing customers as weakness or fear.
