Tim Retout's www presence

Gnash from git

Gnash has moved from bzr to git, at least for the moment - Savannah's bzr setup is slow and unlikely to improve, so the choice is git or Launchpad, apparently. (Thinking selfishly, I'm a lot more familiar with git than with bzr, so I hope it stays this way.) My instructions from July have changed only slightly:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/git/gnash
cd gnash
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-renderer=agg \
            --enable-media=GST \
            --enable-gui=gtk \
            --with-plugins-install=system
make
sudo make install
sudo make install-plugins

Buried near the end of the bug reports wiki page is a useful tip for debugging - export GNASH_OPTIONS=writelauncher before starting the browser, and gnash will write out the instructions for starting a local copy.

In practise, these instructions seem to appear as a file called /tmp/gnash-debug-1.sh, and that will reference a file matching /tmp/gnash-cookies.* - so don't bother trying to dig through the debug log.

With this tip, it's possible to get the browser out of the loop, and focus on debugging gnash (which should be enough for most problems). At least, that's what I hope - I've spent the last hour or so just figuring this stuff out. Hmpf.

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 22:38 | Tags: gnash

Flattr-y will get you nowhere

Dato pointed out on my post yesterday that I had omitted to link to the Ikea catalogue. And then it hit me - I am completely failing to monetize this blog! (Sadly, Ikea aren't in a position to give me any kickbacks right now.)

Since my money would be spent on innovative Swedish design in any case, I present a new microdonations system: Flattr-pack. I'll add a "Flattr-pack this!" button to everything I write, and then you can send me furniture with one easy click.

Unlike other systems, this has the advantage that no one will be taking a 10% cut of your donations. Awesome!

Or maybe not.

For those who don't know what I'm on about, Flattr is a website that lets you donate small amounts of money to other websites. It has been proposed to use this site to support free and open source software (FOSS).

Now a quick modern anthropology lesson: in a 1998 essay titled "Homesteading the Noosphere", Eric Raymond conjectured that FOSS society is a gift economy; your reputation is proportional to how much you give away.

At first sight, microdonations drop neatly into this system; after all, the users are giving money away, right? And yet somehow, I don't think those users are gaining much in terms of reputation. Not in the same way as if they reported bugs, say; joined a localization team; or even just turned up to conferences and volunteered to sit on the front desk.

Both types of activity could be described as "donations" - but in one case, the donation benefits the whole community around the project, and in the other it goes to just a few top developers. It's a plain old exchange economy in disguise. I do hope that those users are not dissuaded from making the more generous donations just because it's more convenient to whip out a credit card. That would not be in their long-term interests, or those of the community as a whole.

I fear this scheme could also incentivize some oddly inefficient behaviour; writing blog entries purely for their donation potential, say, or even content-free search-engine optimization posts.

Speaking entirely personally, I do not plan to join in.

Posted: 03 Nov 2010 00:49 | Tags: random, foss