Mike & Chris have very different opinions on how interview tests should be conducted & this week they try to come to some common ground. Plus the real reasons to develop software on Linux are not the ones often cited, bit more on Google’s fair use & the master plan to get Mike to move to the west coast.

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— Show Notes: —

Hoopla

Hiring a programmer? Ditch the coding interview and get back to basics

So before we go any further, let’s establish one very simple truth: coding interviews are worthless.

Why Develop Software On Linux

From my point of view, Linux is indeed a superior platform for developers, and that is becoming increasingly so due to a number of critical factors that have improved in the last ten years. Every year, our toolset srengthens, and does so at an exponential rate in comparison to the relatively stagnant Apple and Microsoft ecosystems.

Flatpak is gaining momentum

The Xdg App project has been renamed to Flatpak to get an easy-to-remember name and reflect that after almost two years of development it’s finally ready for broader adoption.

Google’s fair use victory is good for open source

Hurst is wrong in asserting that Google’s fair use victory means that anyone can freely appropriate whatever they want from open source and other programs. All that the jury verdict means is that Google made fair use of the Java API packages. Anyone else who appropriates elements from another firm’s software would have to defend a legal challenge on much the same grounds that Google did: either by claiming that the elements appropriated were not within the scope of protection that copyright law provides to software developers or that the appropriation of those elements was fair use.

The Google/Oracle decision was bad for copyright and bad for software

Though Android shares important elements with Java, Android is not a Java platform; it does not pass the tests that Sun and Oracle developed, and it is not designed to do so. Google deliberately chose to reject elements of Java’s design that it didn’t like, leaving a hodge-podge that is Java in some places but not-Java in others.

That lack of interest in interoperability means, in my view, that Google’s use of the Java APIs should not qualify as fair use.

Mike Moves to the West?

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