Please, this is not a troll. It's a serious question that isn't meant to 
imply the answer is "no."

What are some other cool open-source projects that didn't take their design 
from existing products?  I.e., ones where the open source software was the 
first thing to do things that way?

The ones I can think of offhand are Ruby, Python, CouchDB, maybe VFS file 
system, Singularity (if you count that as open source)...  I think there was 
another cool large-scale database system I'm forgetting, and probably a PL 
or two...

I don't count the Linux kernel, GNOME or KDE, Emacs, GCC, MySQL, Hadoop, 
etc., because all these things look and act (from the outside) significantly 
like that which they're based on. While some of the stuff the "cloud" folks 
are doing is very cool, I don't think it counts as Open Source.

Any other innovative languages, databases, etc? Something that one could 
learn cool new ideas from by just reading the documentation (assuming 
documentation exists ;-)?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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On Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:40:45 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Any other innovative languages, databases, etc? Something that one could
> learn cool new ideas from by just reading the documentation (assuming
> documentation exists ;-)?

Well, it didn't start as open source, but now under the GPL (well, dual-
licensed) is Novell's FLAIM database.  I don't know of any other database 
like it.

http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?flaim

The successor, x-flaim is something of a hybrid of XML and the older 
FLAIM engine.  Very high scalability and fast searches; it's used as the 
backend data store for eDirectory, GroupWise, and iFolder (iFolder being 
open sourced is why FLAIM was).

There aren't many people who understand it very thoroughly (and I'm not 
one of them).

Jim

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Darren New escreveu:
> Please, this is not a troll. It's a serious question that isn't meant to 
> imply the answer is "no."

Yes, I know.

> What are some other cool open-source projects that didn't take their 
> design from existing products?

Not many I can think of.  Certainly a lot of cool ideas come from 
academic research projects, like in language design.  But truthfully, 
most open-source contributors are really more interested in 
reimplementing existing ideas.  You know, it's much easier when people 
already elaborated and a design and thought out all the details.

I think it'll never stop.  It's like the wine and mono guys trying 
desperately to implement Microsoft things, always one step behind.

> Any other innovative languages, databases, etc? Something that one could 
> learn cool new ideas from by just reading the documentation (assuming 
> documentation exists ;-)?

Man, slow down on the coffee.  You're trying to learn 
C++/Haskell/Lisp/Tcl all at the same time!  I won't give you more rope... ;)

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Well, it didn't start as open source, but now under the GPL (well, dual-
> licensed) is Novell's FLAIM database.  I don't know of any other database 
> like it.

There was one a few years ago for doing XML searches. Called Verity or 
something, I think. Sounds like this:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/6.1/htmldocs/mkvdk22.htm
but maybe I'm seeing something else called verity.

Used it for giant XML databases (like, all the US patents, all the SEC 
filings, etc). FLAIM looks much nicer.  I'd have to study it closely to see 
if it has surprisingly new features or something, but it's good to know it's 
out there.

> There aren't many people who understand it very thoroughly (and I'm not 
> one of them).

Looks useful to know about, yes. Thanks!

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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nemesis wrote:
> C++/Haskell/Lisp/Tcl all at the same time! 

I know Tcl. I'm trying to learn Python. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New wrote:

> What are some other cool open-source projects that didn't take their 
> design from existing products?  I.e., ones where the open source 
> software was the first thing to do things that way?
> 
> The ones I can think of offhand are Ruby, Python, CouchDB.
> 
> I don't count the Linux kernel, GNOME or KDE, Emacs, GCC, MySQL, Hadoop, 
> etc., because all these things look and act (from the outside) 
> significantly like that which they're based on.

And you don't count Haskell as open-source because it's vaguely based on 
Miranda (plus four-dozen other proprietry pure-functional languages)?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:21:38 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Well, it didn't start as open source, but now under the GPL (well,
>> dual- licensed) is Novell's FLAIM database.  I don't know of any other
>> database like it.
> 
> There was one a few years ago for doing XML searches. Called Verity or
> something, I think. Sounds like this:
> http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/6.1/htmldocs/mkvdk22.htm but maybe
> I'm seeing something else called verity.

Interesting.

> Used it for giant XML databases (like, all the US patents, all the SEC
> filings, etc). FLAIM looks much nicer.  I'd have to study it closely to
> see if it has surprisingly new features or something, but it's good to
> know it's out there.

At Novell, marketing isn't exactly our strong point - even the coolest 
technology we have is virtually unknown. :-)

The history of FLAIM goes back to the LDS Church as I understand it; it 
was originally developed for genealogical database structures, so it 
scales extremely well with structured hierarchical data.

That it moved into the directory service space was almost a totally 
natural thing for it.  The technology came to Novell when we acquired 
WordPerfect.

>> There aren't many people who understand it very thoroughly (and I'm not
>> one of them).
> 
> Looks useful to know about, yes. Thanks!

No problem. :-)

Jim

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On Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:16:44 -0300, nemesis wrote:

> Not many I can think of.  Certainly a lot of cool ideas come from
> academic research projects, like in language design.  But truthfully,
> most open-source contributors are really more interested in
> reimplementing existing ideas.  You know, it's much easier when people
> already elaborated and a design and thought out all the details.
> 
> I think it'll never stop.  It's like the wine and mono guys trying
> desperately to implement Microsoft things, always one step behind.

Well, reimplementation of ideas is a cyclic theme in IT and software 
development - period.

I think what you describe isn't "most open-source contributors" but most 
developers.

There has been some really innovative work done in the OSS development 
circles around virtualization, but the idea of virtualization goes back 
to mainframes and systems like VMS.  That doesn't mean there's no 
innovation going on in XEN or KVM in Linux, for example.

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> And you don't count Haskell as open-source because it's vaguely based on 
> Miranda (plus four-dozen other proprietry pure-functional languages)?

After I posted, I realized I'd left out Haskell. :)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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On 3-4-2009 18:40, Darren New wrote:
> Please, this is not a troll. It's a serious question that isn't meant to 
> imply the answer is "no."

'No' would be a strange answer to your question anyway.

> What are some other cool open-source projects that didn't take their 
> design from existing products?  I.e., ones where the open source 
> software was the first thing to do things that way?

POV and Blender?

> The ones I can think of offhand are Ruby, Python, CouchDB, maybe VFS 
> file system, Singularity (if you count that as open source)...  I think 
> there was another cool large-scale database system I'm forgetting, and 
> probably a PL or two...
> 
> I don't count the Linux kernel, GNOME or KDE, Emacs, GCC, MySQL, Hadoop, 
> etc., because all these things look and act (from the outside) 
> significantly like that which they're based on. While some of the stuff 
> the "cloud" folks are doing is very cool, I don't think it counts as 
> Open Source.
> 
> Any other innovative languages, databases, etc? Something that one could 
> learn cool new ideas from by just reading the documentation (assuming 
> documentation exists ;-)?

Check out the works of Don Knuth. E.g. TeX and Metafont are fully 
documented and source is available as books.

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