WFloyd

So all ~~(mainstream)~~ religion is a cult apart from size.

At risk of taking the bait, I'm curious of other's experiences - is it all religion that's a cult, or Christianity alone? If so, is there a divide between Catholic/Protestant?

I'm biased (a Christian myself), but the Christians I know are not violent, probably because they're at least half-decent human beings who at least try to practice what they say they believe (which doesn't include deepfry oil).

I know a handful of nuts, some claim to be Christian, some don't. Of the ones that claim to be Christian, none I know actually seem to live anything close to what they spout off. As a general trend in my circles, they're the loudest about their faith, the most political/patriotic (either side, but usually right leaning), and most likely to force their beliefs on others. The ones that don't claim to be Christians are pretty similar, just less hypocritical (opinionated, but not religious).

The issue is that anyone can claim to be a Christian, and as a Christian it's not for me to judge and say if they really are genuine or not.

All that to say, this article is a great example of not living out a good Christian faith, at all.

One of my college professors was involved in the development program for ~4 years, and said it was (one of?) the most stressful experiences of his life.

Major General Craig Olson, he (and his wife) are some of the most caring people I've met, I'm sure the weight of managing a program like that was a lot to bear. Looks like he left the program shortly after the March 2006 accident. He presented on some of the engineering challenges they faced and solved in the program (especially failure modes), but my memory is hazy.

Not an aeronautical engineer, but that's how all helicopters work in general, they change rotor pitch with constant angular velocity.

That's fair - I'd much prefer a standard license anyway, and it does come across as a bit of a PR stunt in this case.

It depends a great deal on what type of software it is I suppose. If your product is not useful to anyone but corporate entities (e.g. online auction platform), or if you're the dominant player in a market (e.g. Linux), the license has minimal benefit - either be open source or don't. If you're in a space with both personal and corporate use, and your product is disruptive, maybe it makes more sense then. But it starts to get kinda niche.

While I'd prefer just using the MIT license if at all possible, I do see a case for this when the alternative is a worse license/not open source at all.

If I'm running a software company that needs to make money to pay myself and/or employees, I need to preserve my revenue stream. No income = not eating, so the main option is it keep the software closed source.

But what if I don't like being closed? Maybe my software would be useful to hobbyists as well as my clients. But I've got commercial competitors who, if they had my software without restriction, would profit off of my work and actively eat into my earnings. Maybe they undercut my rates for providing support, so we'd be racing to the bottom. Maybe they integrate it directly into their competing product, so clients go to them and not me because they can get my solution and whatever else the (closed) competitor offers.

So this license offers a middle ground. If someone uses it in a way that doesn't impact my income, that's fine! I wasn't doing it anyway. Maybe it's a good idea though - if I start doing the same thing, the competitor is allowed to continue using versions of the software released up to the date that I begin competing with them. From there on, they are free to modify the software themselves, but no longer use updates to the software - they will need to further develop it themselves, the same way I do. We're on equal footing now. They will be able to take any updates to the software 2 years after I release them, so they're not entirely stuck. If my software moves slowly, this may not even be a big deal. It gives me incentive to develop and maintain my software better than the competitors, rather than resting on my laurels.

Basically, it's a protection against the greed of other companies who could use your work in competition with you without contributing back, while still (eventually) making the code open source. If your project grows to be primarily community driven, I don't think it's a good license at all, as you'd be benefiting from other people's work, and it isn't fair to them to claim business rights. But if a company pays for the vast majority of the work on the software (like, 90%+), I feel like it's a decent option.

You always know politicians are crooked, but this is just staggeringly incompetent.