The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - The open source licensing war is over? (News)

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Matt Asay thinks the open source licensing war is over, LangUI is an open source Tailwind component library for your AI chat app, Ivan Kuleshov modded a Mac mini to run via PoE, Apple joins Pixar and others in the Alliance for OpenUSD & John D. Cook says sometimes you shouldn't pick the best tool for the job.

What up nerds, I'm Jared and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, August 7th, 2023. The software community was jolted over the weekend when the family of Vim creator Bram Moulinar shared the sad news of his recent passing. Quote, It is with a heavy heart that we have to inform you that Bram Mullinar passed away on the 3rd of August, 2023. Bram was suffering from a medical condition that progressed quickly over the last few weeks. Bram dedicated a large part of his life to VIM and he was very proud of the VIM community

that you are all part of. End quote. Bram's work improved countless lives, mine included. I only communicated with him once, when I was putting together our Vim episode a couple years back. He respectfully declined to be on the pod, but offered a written interview instead. The plan was to do it as a follow-up, once we shipped, but I soon forgot about it, missing a great opportunity to meet and thank someone who gifted me so much. Thank you, Bram. You'll be missed. Okay, let's get into the news. Matt A.C. in InfoWorld writes, quote, it's time for the open source Rambos to stop fighting and

agree that developers care more about software's access and ease of use than the purity of his This article, of course, prompted many, quote, open source rambos to disagree and start fighting about licenses once again. The context for Matt's article is Meta's claim that Lama 2 was open source despite its license restricting commercial use from players large enough to use it commercially. This means it's not actually open source by definition, which Matt agrees with, but his point is that it doesn't matter because nobody cares. Dodson! Dodson! We've got Dodson here! See, nobody cares. Matt continues, open source doesn't really matter anymore. Not as some countercultural raging against the corporate software machine anyway. All of this led me to conclude we're in the midst of the post-open source revolution.

A revolution in which software matters more than ever, but its licensing matters less and less. End quote. I actually think Matt's overall conclusion is on point, but the way he describes those who care about such matters as Rambos, Warriors, etc., a bit too flippant for me. Stay tuned, though. We'll be talking more about this subject on upcoming episodes.

Have you already asked ChatGPT how to design a good UI for your new AI app and gotten back Bubkiss? Well, check out LangUI, an open source tailwind library of 60 plus responsive and dark mode enabled components tailored for AI and GPT projects. What exactly does that mean? It means prompt containers, history panels, sidebars, message inputs, and all sorts of stuff that are chatbot related. So you can stop asking ChatGPT and build your own ChatGPT with a sweet UI. Hardware hacker Ivan Kuleshov modded a Mac Mini to run over power over Ethernet and documented the entire wild adventure so we can ride along.

Roads, where we're, we don't need roads. But before you get any crazy ideas, he says, quote, I think you can replicate this, but I don't think you'll want to. Keep in mind, it's quite time consuming. Something can go wrong at every step. You will void the warranty on your Mac Mini, so it's your responsibility. It was an experiment, a test of skills, a topic for discussion, and just a hardware hacking project. End quote.

Check the linked article for all of the gory details. Next up, he's thinking about adding power delivery so he can use the Mini just by connecting a monitor that supports power delivery with one cable. Have you heard about Universal Scene Description, or USD for short? I first learned all about it from NVIDIA's Guy Martin at All Things Open last year. So what is USD in its essence? Is it a language? Is it a specification? Is it a file format? It's not a specification now, and it's both a file format and a runtime. So it's a way, think about, you take the visual

effects perspective, right? You need to define a scene and you need to define everything that's part of that scene. All the objects in it, what all the materials are, what all the lighting is, all of those things. And the things that NVIDIA has been looking at... He was quite excited about this, quote, first open-source software that can robustly and scalably interchange 3D scenes. But the big open question was, and often is with up-and-coming standards,

would it be adopted by enough key players to actually become a useful standard? Enter the newly formed Alliance for OpenUSD with the likes of Apple, Adobe, and Autodesk joining Pixar and NVIDIA behind the standardization, development, evolution, and growth of this 3D modeling tech that will now surely play a role in Apple's VisionOS

and other metaversy products. Which begs the question, where's Meta? It is now time for Sponsored News. So your users are experiencing a weird bug and you wish you could just see how the operation flow went from the client to the backend and then back to the client. You need distributed tracing. Hello there, I'm Lazar from the DevRel team here at Sentry.

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Start with this video on distributed tracing, then check out what else Sentry's YouTube channel has to offer, and subscribe for more tasty snacks like this. Thanks again to Sentry for sponsoring Changelog News. John D. Cook describes a tool acquisition strategy that he picked up from Kevin Kelly. Quote, if you need a tool, buy the cheapest one you can find. If it's inadequate or breaks, John then applies that strategy in the context of software tools. End quote. I find myself doing this often. I use crude, simple, not good enough tools for as long as possible. Finally, when it's painfully obvious that the job I'm using said tools to accomplish is worth investing in long-term, I make the big investment.

The challenge with this is determining when to make that call. That is the news for now. I'll leave you with a quote from Turing Award-winning computer scientist Leslie Lamport, who will be my guest on the ChangeLog this Wednesday. If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking. Have a great week. Tell your friends about ChangeLog this Wednesday. If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.

Have a great week. Tell your friends about ChangeLog News if you dig it, and I'll talk to you again real soon.