Tim Salo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Has an authoritative opinion (e.g., by a court) ever been expressed
Do you really want to invite lawyers in to stifle innovation? Do you
want to stick it to another member of our fraternity that badly?
Yes, Bob is a "personality" and has some whacky ideas that go against
the grain of our particular geek religion, but I think it's better to
preach the religion and win him over with examples of why it is good
than to threaten to violate the spirit of his claims irrespective
of the technical legality of them. There is a great deal of fear among
some people that their good ideas will be usurped by others who will
reap all the benefits of their work so they try to protect themselves.
I have problems with limiting access to software and even bigger
problems for doing so with protocols. My APRS-related software
(Tiger->Dos map generation, digipeater, "telnet" monitor) is all GPL'd
and I've extoled the virtues of free software to Bob. So has Dale. I
even made a few hundred dollars running my mapping program for a few
people who didn't want to install Linux and go find the Census CDs at
their local university library. But they could always get my source
code and do it themselves.
And, yes, I think the example of the Sprouls having claimed ownership
of the X version of APRS and having shown a demo of it at Dayton several
years ago is a true example of the bad way that these attitudes have
limited the development of more APRS programs. And Steve Dimse should
get a black mark for this attitude too as he refused to share the
source code to javAPRS to a potential budding java programmer who
wanted to see how it's done by reading the code. My programs are ugly
and I am embarrased to show them to people sometimes, but good
programmers learn as much from seeing bad programs as they do from
seeing good ones, so I persist in giving mine away:-)
But, hey, look at how much APRS there is out there right now, and a
Mic-Encoder actually was used two weeks ago to beacon a real emergency
(highway accident) and the state PD were called and the system worked.
And this Kenwood HT I have really does have a working TNC built in
thanks to Bob. I don't have to carry a Z80 around with me anymore to
do really slow data over the airwaves:-)
So, let them keep their implementations closed if they want -- it's
their code after all, and try to convince them to change their
attitudes about the protocol in a friendly non-threating way and maybe
they'll come around some day. It's not all that elegant a protocol
anyway, and the true innovation is in the application software. I'm
sure someone could come up with a better protocol. I would add the
translator for it to aprsdigi. After all, that's a legitimate
transmission-only use of the APRS protocol:-)
Oh, and here's a non-sequitor if I ever heard one: My club's
repeater-to-APRS Mic-Encoder gateway is built from two TAPR TNC-2
clones (Paccomm) running free software that I have the source code to
-- even if I can't compile it because I don't want to buy a commercial
cross-compiler. (X1J4 in one, KISS v7 in the other).
And how come nobody ever complains about how all this proprietary
closed-source hardware we use is a bad thing? I want the source code
to my TH-D7 and my Chevy, darnit! As if I could figure out what to do
with it:-)
73 de Alan N2YGK
