Slashdot

Looking for good books, web sites, papers, and training opportunites regarding various types of open source licensing:

Target Audience, about 50 Programmers and Business Owners in a self-directed shop (managerial tasks are spread out throughout the shop since there are no "managers")

Willing to purchase materials, travel for training, bring trainer on site, etc. etc. At this point I wouldn't rule out the possibilty of hiring a smalltalk/Java programmer with an eXtremeProgramming background and a solid knowledge of Open Source licensing.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/16/1621244 if you want the basic thread behind this.

It's obvious Mike has failed to actually understand one of the core concepts of the bandwagon he's hopped on, which is the belief that a license is something that should be chosen, not forced on people.

It's also obvious that a huge portion of the community is more than willing to slam his ass for that lack of a clue.

But it makes for an interesting business model. It seems probably enough that threads like that generate immediate hits, which, through advertising, generates revenue. However, it also seems to me that threads like that discourage new users who came looking for something better and discourage old users who see too much of that.

So what's the tradeoff? Immediate hits vs. long term vistors.

Unfortunately, the immediate hits are easy to see. The lost visitors are much harder to measure. Which leads me to think the people in marketing will keep people like Mike.

It's also a shame. It would have been nice if the discussion was related around the news, instead of around Mike's commentary. Unfortunately, the editoral simply destroyed any hope of a decent discussion about the article.

So much for slashdot...

Watching someone erupt with ire because they don't know what thread they're in.

Sometimes I'm wishing there was a moderation for "Ignorant"

Nope. I didn't mod either of them. But I'm thinking a "WTF" +0 mod would be great to add to the system. That way I can just label the posts I see that are REALLY messed up and anyone who wants to see such fine examples of humanity can give them a +5 in their options.

Note: I wish I could see all the mods on an item when reading, since sometimes I set my levels for an extra +1 for informative or to ignore humor. I'd like to know what the "current default rating" for a post is.

Karma: Excellent (mostly affected by moderation done to your comments)

No longer do I watch my Karma dive like a rock. It's now just a number in a database, and all I get to see is some rough interpretation of that number.

Cool. It turns out that Ignorance really is Bliss.

Overrated,Troll,Insightful

Now granted, the post was probably rather pointless, but the moderator response alone is interesting. Overrated? Sure. Troll? Sure. But how do you end up with an Overrated Trolling, but Insightful post?

I'd like to figure out how to change my configuration to reflect that sort of thing. Maybe something along the line of an extra +1 for every type of moderation involved on a post. After all, I'd rather read an Insightful Interesting post than an Interesting*2 post.