Top all-time · #3394
Dirk Riehle
Personal blog · dirkriehle.com · on HN as dirkriehleprogrammingbusiness
Dirk Riehle's personal blog at dirkriehle.com covers programming and business. Since 2009, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 27 times, most often “The Java IP Story ”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-17, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Dirk Riehle's posts and papers on open source money, paid versus volunteer contributions, commercial open source business models, and the Java IP story. Most comments cite them as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Best of open source, inner source, and product strategy
Most-linked posts?
- The Java IP Story 4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-07-04
What Hacker News says?
- hp · 2019-05-23
I'd argue that money's been in OSS since its inception. To try to put a number on it, here's a random study that 50% of oss is people at their paid job: https://dirkriehle.com/2013/08/22/paid-vs-volunteer-work-in-... But anecdotally that number is consistent with my experience. When we created the GNOME Foundation in 2000, it was in part to manage the commercial vendors and money involved (Compaq, Eazel, Helix Code,…
Comment linking /2013/08/22/paid-vs-volunteer-work-in-open-source/
on “GitHub Sponsors” Submitted The Parser that Cracked the MediaWiki Code as a story · 92 points
HN discussionLet's be clear, this isn't left-pad we are talking about - these are MASSIVE projects which are in some cases 16+ years old. Personally, I find the fastest way to get up to speed is on projects of this size is to usually jump into IRC, find a mentor and start sending in documentation patches. Here the engineers for the runtime, framework, compiler teams are hanging out in Gitter and engaging with the community out i…
Comment linking /publications/2014-2/the-five-stages-of-open-source-volunteering/
on “Xamarin Open-Sourced”Submitted Why the use of GPL is declining as a story · 33 points
HN discussionI hope single-vendor commercial open source business model would be more common. http://dirkriehle.com/publications/2009-2/the-commercial-ope... GPL + Commercial dual licensing seems to be really good option for small and midsize business where ake the code and take the business is real possibility. GPL is widely known and quite clear. GPL establishes open source genealogy, not just one point in time event like BSD…
Comment linking /publications/2009-2/the-commercial-open-source-business-model/
on “Understanding the “GPL is a Contract” court case”Submitted Commenting Practices in Open Source as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIt's back up at http://dirkriehle.com - the project site is actually http://sweble.org where under Crystalball Demo you can play with the parser without having to install anything.
Comment linking /
on “The Parser that Cracked the MediaWiki Code”Submitted The Single-Vendor Commercial Open Source Business Model as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt can't be called Java unless it passes the TCK. Even so, it only gets a limited trademark license unless you're a paying customer of Oracle. Well fine, without licensing then passing the TCK, you can't call it Java, so what? Well, since you're foregoing certification, even if you're deriving substantially from the OpenJDK, you're also foregoing the automatic patent grants. And since it's GPLv2, not GPLv3, Oracle o…
Comment linking /2011/06/30/the-java-ip-story/
on “Show HN: Java 7 Features Backported to Android”Submitted The Java IP Story as a story · 3 points
HN discussion#5 seems like a very poor reason, but it depends on what your goals are. I liked this story a lot: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2728167 (or, direct link: http://dirkriehle.com/2011/06/30/the-java-ip-story/ ) If you're fine with using a tightly-controlled, patent-littered language environment, then yeah, Java is great! :D
Comment linking /2011/06/30/the-java-ip-story/
on “Seven reasons you should use Java again”Submitted The Future of the Open Source Definition as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Should open source projects denounce users who aren't donating money? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Let's Celebrate Relicensing from an Open Source to a Proprietary License as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Obfuscating Document Stylometry to Preserve Author Anonymity [pdf] as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Will Open Source Become the Default Way of Developing Software? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Java IP Story as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lessons Learned from Using Design Patterns in Industry Projects as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Commercial Open Source Business Model as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to talk about open source without making a mess as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Open source licenses increase or curtail reach of the software as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Innovations of Open Source as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Open Source and the Hyphen as a story · 1 points
HN discussion- mo · 2015-08-25
Submitted The Open Source Software Developer Career and Its Benefits as a story · 1 points
HN discussion Submitted Developer Belief vs. Reality: The Case of the Commit Size Distribution as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Control Points and Steering Mechanisms in Open Source Software Projects as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Total Growth of Open Source as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
