On Sat, 15 Oct 2005 09:33:35 +1000 Daniel Kasak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> babbled:
> Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) wrote: > > >fact: once source is available it IS able to be stolen. the chances of being > >able to lift large chunks of useful code (eg take the image scaling routines > >or the alpha blending routines) which is where a lot of the really tight > >code is, is tirival. no one would ever know. reformat it a bit and that's > >it. there is very little you can do. you will never know its stolen. its > >part of a much larger codebase that suddenly is faster and nicer. we have > >not the resources to litigate nor the time to scour the world looking for > >code and products that may have possible used the code, disasembling their > >machnie code and hunting for patterns that might possibly indicate our code > >(and a bit of reformatting - if u loop one way or another) can even make > >this entirely pointless. theft is trivial. not getting caught is easy as > >pie. accept it. even if they dont steal the code - they can READ it and find > >the IDEAs and HOW to do it then re-implement (alomsot identically). this > >doesnt violate even the gpl. > > > > > I suppose a patent would be useful in this case :) > Joke. joke aside - thats exactly what patents are for. the fact that any smart engineer can figure out how things work - with sourcecode you have given away your most important asset - the idea, in gory details, in black and white. without source you have hidden it and made it harder to find, but anyone used to reverse engineering will nut it out sooner or later even without source. thus patents. personally i think patents are wrong in principle for almost all software. most especially because they are grossly abused and not filtered out at application time. > >now in an attempt to have an olive branch stretched out to the world that > >doesnt eat, sleep, breathe open source, we are making the barrier of entry > >lower but not REQUIRING they ship source. they have other options. shipping > >source is one way of meeting attribution clauses. others are to advertise or > >to simply tell the develoeprs about the use of it. as a matter of FACT that > >if they take code and dont give back - they bear the burdern of maintenance > >and handling a fork. they will find it hard to incorproate new improvements > >and eventually due to practical concernns will be driven back to the main > >tree and realise it is better for them to give back what they do - if > >anything, and save costs. > > > > > This argument works when dealing with smaller organisations. I know that > the KHTML people are pissed off with Apple ( who use KHTML in Safari ) > for not following the 'spirit' of the GPL and detailing their changes in > change logs, patches, etc, and actually participating in the community. > They simply make the source of their derived works available, and people > are left to wade through it and try to discover what's happened in the > meantime. So the point is that they're not particularly worried about > maintaining their own fork, and also that the GPL has at least given the > KHTML developers *something*. true. something. mind you this is a fair unusual case and i dont think you will find too many examples of that around. > I can certainly see smaller organisations being more willing to > co-operate though. i guess thats the idea :) also rememebr an application is different to a library. :) > >also note - a lot of things are LIBRARIES - they mostly will not GIVE BACK as > >they build ontop of an api. their IP is in their app, not the lib. if they > >find a bug - it helps them to submit a patch as that patch is then in > >upstream and they dont have to maintain a fork. they can concentrate on > >their own product and not worry about a slew of libraries etc. they are > >using the api of. they have much fewer license concerns. > > > >for the "open soruce world" the lbiraries are as open - if not more so, than > >most, so nothing lost there. > > > >and finally - i went with this license because frankly - i accepted long long > >long ago that peolpe will take and NOT GIVE BACK. they do it with gpl - and > >they do it in terms of download then ask for support - and support takes > >time. time costs money. thus effectively they are taking and NOT giving > >back. they will never write a single patch or a line of code. they will use > >it and ask for support/help - EVEN IF the help is IN documentation - they > >dont read it. they prefer to write an email to a developer and get a > >personalised response. dont worry about licenes - this is the WORST problem > >with open source. by FAR. companies are unlikely to just "steal". thats the > >view of those that hate anything commercial. practicality is that the > >companies need some support - will ask a bit, realise they use up your time > >and offer to PAY you for it and PAY for patches, custom code ans support > >BECAUSE the license is muchmore open. this helps you get some minimal money > >for your hard work - better than $0. note > >- we dont get paid ANYTHING to produce E related code. it's produced out of > >sheer love, sweat and tears. for all the students out there - this stuff is > >done in time on evenings and weekends after exhausting days of work. year in > >and year out. for peolpe with jobs personal time is precous and worth a lot > >to them personally - so in working on e we invest much of ourselves in it. > >we are a project with $0 funding. unlike many other projects of similar > >visibility, no company has stepped forward to seriously partner with us to > >fund its development (thus it moves very slowly). over the years there have > >been times when me, or mandrake or mej have had paid work time to work on > >things. but those have been minimal in the scheme/lifetime of E. > > > >a BSD +attribution license is a way of extending an olive branch to companies > >possibly willing to put down some hard cash. we all have principles and stick > >to them like glue. i have had a few job offers before for large sums, BUT > >they would have meant an IP agreement that would mean i no longer could work > >on E as all my coding work would belong to the company. such offers i have > >turned down, even after negotiations and big carrots. if you cant, trust us > >that we have the interests of the project at heart and will maintain that, > >but in doing so we like to "bend with the wind" a bit more than most to > >achieve the goal. > > > >so... after a bit of length there - thats the reason i have used bsd > >licenses, and almost all of the core develoeprs agree with such licenses as > >being the way to go - we may simply think alike on the topic, but that is > >one thing that definitely binds us all together. > > > > > Those are some damned good arguments. The purest in me doesn't like to > admit this, but I see your reasoning now. > > Thanks for the response :) And thanks for all those blood, sweat and > tears too :) > > Dan > > > -- > BEGIN-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS > ------------------------------------------------------If you are not the > CanIt administrator and you think this message is spam, please give the id > 15359 and magic value e143ace4815a to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to be > marked as spam. > > Teach CanIt if this mail (ID 15359) is spam: > Spam: > http://entropy.homelinux.org/canit/b.php?c=s&i=15359&m=e143ace4815a Not > spam: http://entropy.homelinux.org/canit/b.php?c=n&i=15359&m=e143ace4815a > Forget vote: > http://entropy.homelinux.org/canit/b.php?c=f&i=15359&m=e143ace4815a > ------------------------------------------------------ > END-ANTISPAM-VOTING-LINKS > -- ------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -------------- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) [EMAIL PROTECTED] 裸好多 Tokyo, Japan (東京 日本) ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
