" make the generator public and free software "

I think saying why the generator can't be made "public and free" would be a 
valuable contribution to this discussion.  That knowledge will impact options 1 
and 3.

" No one will ever regenerate using the closed tool again."

I've seen unmodifiable code come out of generators.  Option 2 is only viable if 
the generated code is maintainable.

"[Worst overall]"  I submit the worst overall is saying we are choosing Option 
2, but the only practical way to maintain is to re-run the generator.

John Light


-----Original Message-----
From: iotivity-dev-bounces at lists.iotivity.org 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Thiago Macieira
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2015 9:36 AM
To: iotivity-dev at lists.iotivity.org
Subject: Re: [dev] Control Manager

On Thursday 22 January 2015 16:55:03 Lankswert, Patrick wrote:
> A large portion of the code was created by a code generator. The code 
> generator currently cannot be released as open source. The concern a 
> number of people have is that this code base cannot be modified by the 
> open source community. If someone wants/needs make a change to the 
> model, they do not have access to the generator. If someone 
> wants/needs to make changes to the generated code, their changes could 
> lost the next time the code generator is run. Without a clear path to 
> code modification, there is a tension with the open source philosophy.

We have to supply the sources in the preferred form for modification, so our 
leeway is in what that form is. See the Open Source Definition[1], clause 2: 
"The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify 
the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate 
forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed."

Options are:

 1) [best overall] make the generator public and free software; commit the 
original sources

 2) [compromise] commit the generated code and they become sources. No one will 
ever regenerate using the closed tool again.

 3) [worst overall] commit only the original sources and require people to have 
the generator. This is worst because it limits adoption of IoTivity to only 
people who have the generator.

[1] http://opensource.org/osd
--
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center

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