OAR -was Re: FC4 or FC5 <TID>

[Ric Moore]

On Tue, 2006-06-20 at 23:48 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-06-20 at 23:09, Ric Moore wrote:
> 
> > My original point is that if something is broken and someone can fix
> > it... it may help others, in unforeseen ways, to try to improve things a
> > bit which may come full circle back to you to improve your own life.
> 
> If you really believe that, why apply the GPL restrictions?  Let
> people reuse it and improve it any way they can.  X probably
> wouldn't exist as a GPL'd work - or NFS, yet they now are
> available for everyone.
> 

So no one can take the work, rip it, stamp their name on it and demand
money for no effort or even slap a copyright on it. You know there are
people who would do that. I don't want to be looking for get-back, I
have had to acquire interventions to short circuit losing my temper. 

> >  I
> > have no problem with the GPL on that basis. For me, it keeps it free and
> > Bill Gates can't get his hands on it. <evil grin> Ric
> 
> Even Bill Gates sometimes does charity work...  

Bill is a master poker player. It takes a degree of objectification in
someone in order to take another's money away from them, because they
are bold enough to step up to the plate and play odds against each
other. It's the winners and losers thing all over. IMHO, there is a
degree of bad juju going on when two people call it entertainment to try
to chump each other off, take money from the undeserving (loser) and
call the experience enjoyable. There is charity and there is charity
work... there is a difference. One is writing a check, which in itself
is not a bad thing, while the other is ladling the soup.  

> The more interesting issue is what happens when the 2 idealistic
> pursuits you've mentioned clash?  That is, do you deprive the
> people you would like to help with this software by making a system
> that cannot use technologies under different licensing (mp3/mpeg
> and many others) because of the GPL restrictions or will you
> condescend to something like perl's dual license to allow it to
> be improved in any way someone would like?  

Why use the word condescend, Les?
 
With the $100 laptop, we will not be dealing with rocket science nor
need anything proprietary... that's the point of that device. It's how
RedHat / MIT designed it. The game will be fairly primitive... sprites,
etc. Streaming video and wireless networking will consume a chunk of cpu
and memory to process, given the device's limitations. There will be no
frills past that. As far as anyone improving it, the system has a live
co-dependency between server and client. You can't dink with only one of
the two, without wrecking the other. It's not a single-user console
game, it is a network system. The game by itself would be fairly mundane
without the video content carried by it. We have people working on the
video content now. I have only one developer working on the game and
he's pretty much all we need at this point, just to have a proof of
concept. 

The thing to develop and improve, that will take a lot of people, is the
videos, the content and the progression of game based events based on
individual test scores that each client is processed through in the
beginning and followups periodically occur to track the client's
progress. That last part is best left between the behaviorists (we have
6 of them already) and the clients. Without the inmates reality checks,
the whole thing will come off as totally irrelevant, so much duck-quacks
and ineffective. 

So, what would the average individual hacker contribute to the program
without being involved in the development of it and having a full
understanding of the elements involved? Not a lot I would suspect.
Practically everyone involved at this point is approved by NC DOC to
enter their facilities, for program purposes. That's a pretty involved
and lengthy process the casual potential contributor just might not
subscribe to, although I invite anyone to go to their state DOC to do
so, if they are interested. Please contact me off list if you feel that
you are really serious about contributing and feel you have some manner
of dog in this fight. Later on the client can be improved for public use
connected to servers on the net. 

My point is that the game is open source. The server guts is all open
source. It is off-the-shelf Fedora and already GPL'd. The development is
seemingly closed as it's a royal pain to get on the other side of the
razor wire where the action takes place. County jails are easier to get
access to, but that population is always in transition and may not be
there the next time you go to interview them for context. Without
knowledge of that arena, it's next to impossible to contribute with any
degree of understanding of what needs to take place. Condescend in there
and some gorilla will rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.
<g> Relate to the circumstance and a miracle takes place... you find a
human being sitting across from you, that got into a pickle and really
wants to learn about getting out and staying out of the brine. I know
many personally and I respect them very much. A few are like family for
me.  

I am sponsored by an ex-felon, who is my mentor, founder of Community
Success Initiative (CSI) and best friend. We have similar stories. 

As I mentioned, what you hear/see on TV are the pathological cases who
are most likely to never get out. There is nothing sadder... as they
cannot be allowed to create any more victims, and they know it. So, they
have been discarded and the value of life becomes reduced to the most
primitive. On a positive note, they are a very small minority yet they
are all you hear about. Yes, we do live in a fear-based society, IMHO. 

That's where the relevant testing comes in. That will be huge and I know
next to nothing about behavioral modeling. I'm trying to get in touch
with SAS and get some interest from them. The MMPI test is kinda old and
not always as fair a model as is needed, from what I've been told by
behaviorists. So, I'm shopping for the best and hope to see if they will
participate. 

There's a degree of social blackmail involved... don't participate and
just maybe someone without treatment may wreck your house if you're
lucky, or wreck you if you are not. Participate and maybe the treated
individual will decide to stop/switch and walk by. It always comes down
to individual choices and better choices are made with enough good
information, new perceptions and some acquired empathy added in to salt
the stew. The whole thing is fairly simple on the surface. So simple
that I boggle at our society that hasn't demanded it be done in the
past. I mean, damn! Most inmates/convicts get out! I took a penology
course from UNC which basically said what we have don't work. Just write
that down on the final exam for a 4.0.  

Why would it take a pile of ex-cons, ghetto ministries, halfway houses
and case workers to get this crate on the road? Oh yeah, and some middle
class parents who get the shock of their lives when junior was locked up
and are appalled at what they have seen. We had a couple at the round
table today in that circumstance. It could be any of you. They did their
best... and failed. They've stepped up, admitted it and are willing to
do whatever they can. That took guts... raw guts. He's getting out soon
and they asked questions and sought guidance. Sometimes it does take a
tribe to raise a child. Sometimes it takes a tribe to raise a parent,
too. 

Getting all of this into a computer will be a large challenge. The GPL?
No challenge at all, it's an answer to a prayer, -according to my
perceptions-. Ric