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Open Sourcing Windows Based Project
metasynth asks: "The company I work for has developed a timer system in Delphi for Windows machines. I'm currently trying to convince my boss to open source it as the program is to be used to help develop a community around it. I'm looking for good arguments to open source the system, and details (or links to details) of how to go about it. What type of license should we use to allow us to keep reasonable control over the project, e.g. a license where anyone can download and work on the code and distribute it as much as they want, but have them send us back the modifications that they have done for us to decide whether or not to include them in the offical release. One other question is: What sort of interest is there in the Slashdot comunity for a windows based open source project?"
Hmm...open source with windows..
Well you could tell your boss that it would be like having a LOT of experienced programmers working for him, but without having to pay them!
Delphi @ Home ??
There's lots of interest in any open source project... especially if windows itself becomes open-source(!). But what is your project specifically, and how will it benefit others?
Chances are, if you do it right, you'll get a lot of free coverage in the media. I don't know too many companies where that doesn't carry some weight. The fact that it would be positive coverage is even better 8^) It will certainly give you a public forum for being responsive to your customers/user group.
Please, just use GPL. You don't lose the software, you gain improvements. There's really nothing in trying to "force" people into sending their enchantments to you; at least nothing warranting using anything but the GPL. GPL has been tested and analyzed so many times it's proven to be pulletproof. You also gain everyone's respect.
Sounds to me that you are describing the GPL. Isn't that exactly that Linus does with Linux - other people view the source, make changes, send it back to Linus, and then he decides whether it will be in the kernel or not.
:)
Looks like GPL is your only man. And we like it too, which is all the better
T.
I am guessing that you think that they are talking about making a open source clone of windows, though such project exists, it is not what they are talking about here! They are talking about open source projects on the windows platform.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Please, not flames. I think this would be a great idea, not just for the /. community but for the open source movement overall. There is the obvious us and them mentality from both the M$ contingent and the open source community. Open Source folks preach this is the way to go and the M$ community cries we can't be profitable with GPL. This could be a great oppurtunity to prove that open source relating to the M$ and Windows environments can/is profitable if done correctly.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Not open-sourcing windows, an open source project for the win32 platform instead of *nix.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
personally I would love to see windows as a whole be open source ;)
As per a program being open sourced for the windows environment I am sure it would help begin the process towards it becomming more common, as more examples of programs becomming open sourced more and more will tend to follow that path (if my fore sight is working correctly this morning)
Did not Netscape become open sourced?
as well as Doom?
or was that Quake 1?
Every program I write for windows is open source.
IMHO close source software is for greedy igmo's and if more demand is made for it I am sure it will be a big step in a good direction for that hacker in all of us who wants to learn things the easy way and not have to reverse engineer something...
Don't you all think that?
Computers save man alot of guesswork, but so does the bikini
These are the exact terms used in the Netscape
licenses.
Just make sure you continue to lead the
development. Learn from the early lessons that
the Mozilla project teaches us - don't expect a
public license to mean that a ton of developers
will magically develop things - there needs to be
a leader who does a majority of the code (exactly
how Linux was in the early days).
Mark
The fact of the matter is, however, that if you are the primary contributor to the project, and/or are in the position of the "maintainer," you should have no problems with the project pretty much following your intended direction. If there is enough dissension among your contributors, there is always the possibility a fork will form, but nothing anybody can do can remove anything from your project.
As for making sure that modifications are propagated back to you: This isn't possible under the GPL (which is what you want to use), and isn't really enforceable even if a license did provide for it. However, if you are the maintainer/principal contributor, people will be pretty likely to try to get their code included in the release, and if you use the GPL they will have to use it, and so, for example, they couldn't (legally) distribute their own binary without source.
One more thing : you would have to be responsible (unless you copyright the code to the FSF) for prosecuting anybody who violated the license. I don't think it happens often, but it is something to keep in mind.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Here's an interesting project for someone with a little bit of time:
Make a website listing, detailing, and comparing all the current open source licenses that are being used. Set-up a nice clean web-site which is devoted to the different open source licenses that people have written up, perhaps with some sort of arguments for and against each one? Try to make it relatively impartial. Perhaps even try to get some of the OpenLaw people to contribute some time to analyze them in relation to various legal structures around the planet.
Heck, here's even a starter just off the top of my head and Yahoo:
I looked around a bit, but can't seem to find any site that really does this already cleanly and clearly. Any takers?
He is very much not describing the GPL. He said that they want to have all changes go through the maintainer, and the GPL allows for anyone to make alternative version/patch- the general stuff he said that he wanted to avoid. I am not much of a license guru, but I believe that Mozilla has a license like he might be after (though it is flawed).
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
You couldn't use the GPL, because your project would involve some part of the VCL most likely (TForm comes to mind), and that's copyrighted. What's worse, is if your project relies on using a unit that's only distributed with different versions of Delphi. Math.dcu and the NT Service wizard come to mind. Consider any other copyrighted units you might be using that you can't distribute.
You could try the Artistic license, or XFree86, or hang it all out and go BSD, which would likely have no problems with the VCL copyrights, or any other component copyrights for that matter, but then you lose any possibility of control.
Is the GPL actually proven? I don't believe it has been tested in a court yet. Wasn't there an article about our friend John Carmak in Id software thinking about bringing someone to court over the GPL?
Chances are the GPL will be proven once (if?) that happens, but until then you can't really say, from a legal perspective, that it is proven. The GPL is an excellent license, however, and recommended for use. The fact that it is used on so many projects indicates that a lot of people trust it, and believe that, should it ever have it's time in court, it will win. I personally believe that it would.
From an open-source project point of view, then yes, GPL has been proven to work successfully.
T.
but M$ product sucks.
that is the real brain boggler.
Computers save man alot of guesswork, but so does the bikini
Based on the terms you describe, the something similar to Sun's Community Source License maybe what you are looking for. It is the only license I know of that will allow you to force that modifications be returned to you. Neither the BSDL or the GPL will do this.
However, if it is not that important that the code be returned, please use the least restrictive license possible, something like the BSDL or the X Windows License.
unfortunely, Delphi is crap when it come to concurrent developments on internet or patch sharing.
you don't have cvs, no patch, no diff, etc
I've tryed with my components, but is a pain in the ass everytime to incorporate changes of others, because there is no simple mechanism found in delphi.
Mac developers face many of the same issues. Similar suggestions appreciated.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
What kind of project are you working on? You say it's a timer system but that doesn't ring any bells for me. The best would be if it is something extensible. If users can add "mods" or "skins" to add functionality or merge it with other programms it would be ideal. You could tell your boss about the wide user base you would get by allowing others to expand your work. People tend to stick to software if there own code is in it.
Shop around at Netscape and Sun for a license.
You asked what sort of license to use on Slashdot? You must be a glutton for punishment...
It looks to me like the GPL will do what you need it to. There's nothing that forces anyone to send modifications back to you, but people do have to make source available for any modified versions they distribute. Most people will voluntarily send changes back to you, anyway. (But how do you diff a some of the file types Delphi uses?) You might also want to consider the LGPL if this is just a Delphi component. I suspect GPLed components would still scare away a lot of businesses. <sigh>
Regardless of the license you pick, please, please try to use an already established one. At the very least, it allows people to have a general understanding of what they can do with your software without having to read Yet Another (Free)|(Open Source) License. You also get the benefit of code sharing with a greater number of projects (not that this is a huge pool for Delphi programs right now). Most free licenses are only really compatible with themselves (the notable exception being BSD-style licensing, but that allows people to make proprietary derivatives of your work, which it doesn't sound like you want).
--Phil (Challenge: let's see if we can have a license discussion without flaming.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
a licence where anyone can download and work on the code and distribute it as much as they want, but have them send us back the modifications that they have done for us to decide whether or not to include them in the offical release.
I don't think it's in your best interest to try to force this with a license clause. In other words, don't try to force people to send you their modifications or not distribute them on their own.
For one thing, most people will do what you want anyway. Maintaining software can be a lot of work, and, if I have a modification I make to some code, it's a lot simpler and easier for me to just send it to you for inclusion than to maintain it myself or to start a parallel distribution. It just doesn't make sense to do that.
So, since it doesn't make sense for me to not do what you want, you don't have to legally mandate it in a license. Mandating that patches be sent to you would make your code non-free, using the open source definition, so, that would put off a lot of potential developers.
The GPL would probably serve you well and probably much better than anything you could cook up yourself.
Well, Red Hat recently announced that they sold 12 copies of Red Hat Linux 6.1, "significantly" more than expected. 12 * $40 = $480. Also, passerbys saw Red Hat president Bob Young standing in the street and gave him $5.32, thinking he was a bum. That's $485.32! What's hard to justify about that?
I wouldn't call a bunch of rabid zealots a community. It would be equally absurd to talk about a "ZDnet community" or a "MacSurfer community". This is a commercial site that attracts many casual readers with different backgrounds and interests. The term "community" is a gross misnomer.
You foul being, you don't give up your rights with GPL.
I'm also writing windows software that I'm debating whether or not to go GPL with. The reason I restrain is that my source code might be worth a lot of money someday. If I GPL it then people can get it free. Isn't there a lot of profit lost in open sourcing?
The stereotypical Windows users don't seem to trust anything that they're given for free. I think Perl had this problem. Nobody was interested unless they had to pay for it.
The only solution is to releaase it at a very high price with the source code, but release it under an open source licence. Also allow free downloads. (Strangley enough, most open source licences don't stop you from doing this).
There's no reason why an open source project developed for Windows wouldn't interest people interested in Open Source -- plenty of people have to deal with Windows. For myself, augmenting Windows with as much GNU software as possible makes me happy.
That is, if you're doing something useful, that doesn't already exist in open source, people will be interested. If in addition it does not tie you excessively to the platform (say for example, a pretty-printer for the DOS "DIR" command probably wouldn't interest anyone who didn't use Windows), than you would of course broaden that interest considerably, even if you don't even worry about portability at this point.
just finished Raymond's 'The Catherdral & the Bazaar' The Magic Cauldron essay in particular makes a very good rational / conventional economics value case for Open Source in many cases, & sensibly discusses when it does & does not make sense -
I realize this is off topic, but there are a lot of people crying for MS to release the Windows source code and that is not likely so I give you this. There is a little website at www.reactos.com that is working under the GPL to make a free windows system (kernel, api, dll's, drivers, etc). I have never tried it, but the idea is cool and I am sure that they need developers if you consider the magnitude of such a project.
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
Do they suck 75 million dollars worth in 3 months? I wish I sucked that much.
trolling is good
Thank you. I've just open sourced my ass. But how do I go about distributing it for the benefit of the open source community?
From my observation, open-source works best for software in maintainence mode; other programmers introduce feature changes and/or bug fixes while maintainer decides what to incorporate and what to reject. For initial development it is usually inappropriate, you may have deadlines to met but others don't, and they don't get paid for it. case in point, linux, perl, emacs.
The timer system may be a good candidate especially if it is a utility library, i.e. it is something you base your work on but it is not the final product your company makes money on. LGPL/BSD will be appropriate here.
If you want to get started, look in Delphi for Linux and see if the code is portable to the Windows environment. The reason is, open-source software usually needs a foothold in an open-source platform; open-source community within a closed-source platform users are smaller. Hence, developing open-source software mainly for a closed-source platform is a real challenge. Case in point, netscape. Focus on main development on open-source platform, and adapt the changes to the closed-source port (which you may have to pay for).
My unchargable 2 cents worth.
Hasdi
I read some other posts, and was reminded that the NPL and MPL kind of give first priority to the copyright holder. Somebody mentioned the SCSL, although I don't know much about that.
Also, they're probably more suit friendly than the GPL.
Sorry for the innaccuracy.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
I prefer running freeware or open source on 'doze - the quality is much better, period. Check out the O-reilly book, as suggested, Brian Behlendorf's essay will give you some pointers on how to get it off the ground, and business cases for your boss. Try to consider your infrastructure first - CVS, web site, mailing lists and make sure you back it up with *actual code* when released. There are plenty of open source wannabees out there who have no code base that's worth a crap.
Please elaborate.
It's early for me, but if you are trying to judge the favor for a windows-based OSS project, you don't have to look much farther than the Borg Icon that this story got! Hmm Rob may have to get a windows logo for announcements like this. It would start to confuse people if OSS annoucements for Win start appearing more.
The GPL is actually a license (i.e. granting you additional rights to the ones that you already have) as opposed to most other "licenses" which are really restrictions on rights you have. Most jurisdictions allow someone to grant you additional rights without requiring your permission, but you must explicitly agree (i.e. sign something) to give up rights. Therefore, "shrink wrap licenses" are not enforceable in most jurisdictions.
Here's where UCITA comes in. Everyone knows that it's evil because it will put teeth in those "shrink wrap licenses." To those of us who do not use shrink wrap software, this is no big deal. The flip side is that it would give razor-sharp piranha teeth to the GPL, and if you could actually prove that someone was distributing software in violation of the GPL (i.e. I take GNU Emacs, hack it a little bit, and sell it without releasing source code), then they can be not only sued, but also charged with a crime! Chances are if you can prove they did, they'll be convicted or found liable for damages.
If you think about it, UCITA is our friend. It could have the effect of driving people away from the ridiculous and uncertain "licenses" of shrink wrap, commercial software providers towards Open Source, GPL software.
So, that's my new mantra: "UCITA is your friend."
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I'm gonna choke in approximately 1.5 seconds
To a certain extent.
Part of a distributed development process is distributed designing and distributed control. The more control you give up to the other developers you're courting, the more likely you are to gain more developers. Visibility is also important, of course, but people want to work on a project where they know they aren't just doing some corporation's work for free. So opensourcing the project means gaining momentum, noteriety, and more features in exchange of less control and giving up some intellectual property.
The more free your code is, the more free other people will be with their code in response.
The guy just bashes delphi and doesn't even know how to type.
^^^
Here's a site for Open Source Delphi projects:
http://delphree.clexpert.com/pages/default.htm
One thing I forgot to mention in my post about UCITA above is that the GPL is enforceable (in the U.S. at least) under current law. Because the GPL grants you additional rights than those you are allowed under Copyright, you may bring copyright infringement charges against anyone who attempts to assert those additional rights without following the conditions as outlined in the license. There's no signature required for this, because if you refuse to abide by the GPL, then you are bound by copyright law, which in the United States, does not grant you the right to redistribute the code in any form.
Of course, the standard disclaimer about the above not constituting legal advice applies. If you're in legal trouble or contemplating doing something that requires legal assistance, don't ask for advice here, hire a lawyer.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Bear in mind that the open source world is pretty much a meritocracy. The only way to guarantee control over the de-facto official release is to be responsive to your user community as a whole.
If you don't respond to their needs and wishes then *no* license will help you.
If you have a liberal license, a more responsive group of contributors may fork and provide what the community cries out for.
If you have some sort of hand crafted and restrictive license then a lack of responsiveness will probably mean you lose users as well as contributors.
It's a scary thought but I suppose you ought to consider it now - one day your company might not be the best stewards for this software.
Your reaction to that idea will greatly influence your choice of license.
I hope it works out for you.
Trevor
Here are arguments against it (although I'd love it): :)
:wq! DOH!
1) No freeware/universal compiler, we all know that Borland C++ is different from Visual C++ and from Turbo C++ for Windows, (in your case, Turbo Pascal and Delphi). And they cost big bucks and big hard drive.
2) Not many people care about the source, they just want it so they can compile it. Compiling the source cuts any library inconsistancies, other than that I don't care what you do with it.
3) The windows community is different, they are more into downloading shareware and cracking it. Seriously, I can find plenty of VMWare cracks for NT, but not Linux.
If you do go open source, good for you.
Roy Miller
--Roy
Speaking personally, and probably for a lot of other people, I can't get excited about a project which is /only/ for Windows.
:)
There's nothing wrong with open source code for Windows, but it would be better if your work was cross-platform, or at the very least easy to port after-the-fact.
Note that most of the GNU projects are available for Windows, as are things like Samba, Perl, etc.
A Delphi module though? Good luck.
A lot of the benefits (to the author) of releasing code open source is somewhat proportional to the size of the community that uses it (and therefore eyeballs the code). If the userbase is small, you're unlikely to reap the benefits.
Sorry to be so negative. Release it anyway, just because it makes you feel good
--
Opening the source of a project can only be a good idea (yes,Windows is included :) ). Opening the source of a project destined to a mainly closed-source market is even better.
However, there are other interesting consequences to add :
Later this year, Borland is supposed to release both Delphi and C++Builder for Linux. I salute this, since I consider their tools the best I've ever seen. Releasing now the sources of a Windows project written in Delphi will be the first step in filling a gap beteween Windows and Linux programmers. Think about it : if there are similar libraries (i.e. VCL) couldn't this mean that Linux will gain thousands of programmers over night ? Furthermore, the actual Linux programmers will find easier to learn a new (and funny) way of doing a part of their job
Again, an open source program also means reliability (and sometimes the old-fashioned trustworthness). Wouldn't this be a benefit for the Windows world ? After all, I really would like to see some fair and honest competition between operating systems and that could start from here. Because, just as many others I am not against Windows per se, but against the way it's promoted, the way M$ tries to bury everything else - in a few words : against Billy
As far as licence is concerned : GPL would be great but I know how the average manager think, so I wouldn't go that far and recommend this. you could even create your own open-source license, or adopt one of the existing. Really, I think this hase to be your choice.
Choosing a good license model is important. According to this article you can make decisions on this, which won't be appreciated. Choose a license, and be clear what you want with open source.
You want complete control? Do you want control like Linus Thorvalds has? Do you want control like Sun has?
What do you want to give to the community? What do you expect to get back (i.e. customers?
Is it a project with a couple of sequal projects (like MS-Office can be seen as a sequal for Windows, Windows is step 1, Office is step 2)
I think you can only think of arguments for or against the choice of going open source when it is fully clear what you want, and what you don't want.
Bizar technology?
Open Source has nothing to do with the platform. There are plenty of Windows programs that have the source code available, but they tend to be low-key things like lcc and such, and not the big moneymakers behind Windows' popularity (Word, Quicken, Delphi, most games). Then again, Linux doesn't have programs that that fit into that class at the moment.
Any license would do. Start with the GPL. You can always change the license for the code that you've written in a later version, if there is a later version. You still own that code.
Contributions from other people will become problematic if you decide to change the license. So you may not want to change the license after all.
--
IIO
-- Weiqi Gao weiqigao@speakeasy.net
See http://www.delphi-jedi.org/
The Joint Endevour of Delphi Inovators (in thier own way they see themseles as fighting the evil empire) is an umbrella organisation of various open-source Delphi code library projects (starting with windows API headers).
They favour the mozilla public licence http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/annotated.html
If you use this licence, your code would be easily compatible with thiers.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
http://ceps.sourceforge.net/index.shtml
Yeah!! Posix makes platform independancy possible, yeah!!
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
I don't know if I'm representative of the Slashdot community, but my view of Windows is something like this: a) I will never put critical/production software on Windows; b) I profoundly dislike Windows both as a working and as a development platform - I went through great pains to tailor myself a job where I almost never need to do anything in Windows and c) I will never touch Windows unless absolutely necessary for customer to buy my products, and then never as a server - I'd rather not have a customer using Windows as a server because I know I'll spend a lot of time working around Windows to get it to work properly with my Linux-based products, plus I won't get paid to do that, plus I can't expect any help from the MSP who maintains the Windows box.
That put, I have to say any new aditions to the open source base is welcome, but you'll probably have to spend some time/money on convincing Windows users to use anything open source seriously because they're the guys who'll use it if anyone will and they don't trust open source.
Most GPL'd software originated as a project that
someone wrote for their own needs. The original
programmer isn't in marketing, and isn't
interested in building "production" quality code
and going through all of the effort it takes to
sell software. Plus it is a big risk.
If you want to make millions, you will need to
handle marketing, distribution, and support. You
will need to give kickbacks to distributors, and
buy advertising from magazines, and do all of the
things that most programmers hate.
If you release some cool free software, and you're
lucky, you'll build a large community and end up
with users who will hire you to do things that
they need.
Mark
Open source is an utopian economical idea, as manifested by Eric S. Raymond.
This is the first time a Slashdot post ever caused me to laugh out loud!
There are a lot of good documents that could anser your questions, e. g. the business case which gives you arguments for convincing your boss. There is also a list of licenses, although it doesn't compare them. I think many people here at /. would recommend the GPL.
By doing a Google search for open source licenses, I also found this, but there is probably more out in the net.
Many open source projects work like you describe your wishes, including the Linux kernel itself. Linux is under the GPL.
And for your last question: although I don't use Windoze and other micros~1 products, I would really be happy if there were an increasing number of Win open source projects! I think this way more people would get aware of the open source philosophy and then perhaps would consider doing there own software development as open source. And perhaps we would see less proprietary or shareware (yuck) software.
--Carpe diem!
Some of us wouldn't recognise irony even if it came in a large, red, blinking font saying "THIS IS IRONIC!", now would we?
"You're one of those condescending UNIX computer users!" - "Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself a better computer." (Di
Perhaps you'd want to contact the maintainers of this project for a perspective on your own: Michael Haller wrote a Win32 MUA called Phoenix Mail with Delphi 3. The project has been moving by fits and starts, but has actually been moving. Currently the project is doomed because of internal squabbling and the project lead is looking for someone to take over the project. The MUA is actually pretty decent and with the right team behind it, it could be one of the better mail clients around. Go take a look at the Phoenix Mail Development Group . If you are interested in taking over the project go have a look at their mailing list , it's like a messy scene in a sci-fi movie where the rescuers find the colonists dead having killed each other with their bare hands.
You need to give a company a very good reason to open source anything.
:) There are many arguments for open sourcing however unless there are some clearly visable benifits (visable by the boss not by you) you are facing an uphill battle.. but if your up to it... fight on :)
:)
Far to many see open sourcing as "giving it away" and in short it is...
They see binary only as a way to control the program (this is a flawed idea.. any cracker can decompile binarys and examin the results for flaws.. or any coder could do same and see how it was done)
They also give up the right to slap down anyone who trys to distribute the source and/or binarys.. All they can do is go after anyone who distributes binarys and no source.
There are a lot of neat market modles that work well but thats asking a bit of a radical change. Let it stay as long as they feel they can compeate the old way... and right now open sourcing dose not automaticly open up any markets.
Question: Dose the code to be openned enhance/premote an existing product by the same company...
If this is the case then openning the source just makes it better and better. The company still has a closed source product and everyone is happy
Question: Is there a proffit made from the product?
If a company is losing money on a product they can chouse to fight it out and hope for the best or they can open source the product and get some publicity for other products.
Question: Is the program free anyway...
Premotional closed source isn't nearly as effective as premotional open source...
It dose mean you'll never terminate the premotional piriod but it also means no one can terminate the premotion.
Even better.. if a compeditor makes a commertal copy (eyeball and rewrite) of your premotional code.. normally you'll just get pushed into obscurity while the comeditor rakes it in... with open source everyone supports you for being the inovator and you get even more premotion as the guys who did it first and "did it better" (even if you didn't.... open source bies is THICK some times.. thats a good thing BTW.. it needs to be.. open source as a premotional tool needs to be better than TV ads.. and right now it's better than that big football event thingy.. the supper somthing... the super troll???)
Basicly anything you "Give away" has your name attached and as a result is premotional...
So what if they can not benifit from open source (in a way that is easy to understand)
You could try anyway
You can allways go for liccensed source...
This is something that has been around for a very long time... You ask that they sign a simi-restrictive non-disclosure.
I stress simi-restrictive.... You WANT your custummers to distribute upgrades and patches...
As well as just document tricks and tecniques...
and the occasional bugfix is allways a good thing...
I don't actually exist.
i'm currently trying to convince my boss to open source his pants, as the community around him would like to pour hot bowls of grits into it. thank you.
One of the major (IMO) problems for GPL'ed software still exist under this dreamy picture of the UCITA. That is the problem of who's going to do the suing?
For instance, you put together a neat little GPL'ed widget, and put it out there every one to use. Six months later you get an email from a friend of yours commenting that the latest Windows beta (or to be fair MacOS X DR) has a suspiciously similar widget in it. What are you going to do? Take on the hords of corporate lawyers?
Even with UCITA to back up your claim, you still have to be able to afford the expense of the lawyers and the time necessary to pursue your claim.
Besides the UCITA places so many other unfair restrictions on the user as to be unacceptable on it's own anyway. We should not even begin to accept the bad to get the good. Bad Software has the info on why UCITA is a bad idea.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
Hypothetical situation -- let's say a company has a product that they'd like to open source and allow free non-commercial use, but require payment for commercial use?
Are there licenses in existence to cover this?
Anyone wanna start a website that covers things like this? Maybe a segment of one of the already-existing code/source sites?
63,000 + known bugs?
sucks.
closed source
sucks.
high price on all software.
sucks
are they #1 because they have a winning product ?
no
are they #1 because they were in the right place at the right time and 95% of the human race is ignorant?
yes
do you care?
no
do i care?
yes.
to the world ignorance is bliss, if it costs a lot of money it has to be a good, it is a status symbol like a rolls royce or a porsche.
is a dodge challenger or a viper as good as a porche? yeah
will a ford pinto get you from point a to point b?
yes
and probably with less traffic tickets than your lamborghini.
does Mr. rich idiot care?
nop
buying a name
and linux is making it's name
M$ sucks.
but it's dominant through ignorance.
Computers save man alot of guesswork, but so does the bikini
There are already tons of Windows based OpenSource projects. Many of them released under the GPL. The ones I have heard the most about are the ones where a Linux/UNIX program has been ported to windows (Apache, PHP, Gimp) or the software is inherently platform independent (Java, PHP projects) . The most important consideration should be if opening the software will benefit your company or help you produce a better product.
You said it's a timer. Kind of sounds like a niche product. If it were a game or desktop office tool you would probably have a higher profile. This goes for the amount of support you may get from developers also. Most OpenSource developers either are interrested in the software or need the software themselves. Myself I fall into the latter category most of the time.
As far as what license to use. This is a tough question. Coming from the closed source market you tend to shy away from the notion that someone could grab your source, modify it and become a competitor. The fact is that this is very unlikely and in the real world, uncommon. Especially if the product is already reasonably developed (say >4000 lines of code).
The primary reason for this I think is because the competitor will not only have to worry about developing and differentiating their product, they will also have to track the origional and keep up with those improvements/modifications/changes. And in the end, even if they make a killer improvement to the app you have access to the new source code. Stick with the GPL.
If you think about it, there is no requirement to enforce that people have to send changes to the maintainer of the project (i.e. You). If you think about it the reason changes propegate back is thus.
A. Coder downloads the source from OS.com
A. Coder gets an itch and codes up a little scratch.
P.H. Boss does not want that code to go back up
Now what happens is this the source gets updated as many eyes are fixing bugs and a new version goes onto OS.com
A. Coder has to download the source again from OS.com as the product is more stable, more features rich
A. Coder has to now reapply the scratch as the this was not in the original codebase, if the codebase has changed sometimes this might take a lot of time to reimpliment.
P.H. Boss see's that he is spending money again on getting that code put in.
The cycle repeats until someone visits the clue tree and sees that the cost of reapplying patches to the code base they have to download is costing more than the value of keeping that code to themselves.
Therefore when you make a change it is in your self interest to make sure that change goes into the base codebase as it benfits you to do this rather than not bothering to get the change back upstream.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
i've got open sores in my pants. fortunately a bowl of hot grits will do the trick. thank you.
The system library exception in the GPL should cover these cases, as long as the libraries in question are distributed separately from the project itself.
This means no DLL games like the big boys like to play. Personally, I think that's a good idea; as a sysadmin, DLL games are my biggest headache.
I don't think there is any way of enforcing these terms (on people giving back changes and feedback), but at least it's there in the license. Since we do not profit from these projects (at least not initially), we are interested in the feedback mostly for academic purposes anyway, so enforcement in our case is not much of a concern.
You can read the license for the AAFID project (my main project now) here.
--Diego
Although other OSI project for Delphi exist (most notably, Winshoes (an internet component suit), most of the projects current adopted by JEDI deal with conversion of Microsoft Windows API headers into forms usable by Delphi developers.
As a side note, Kylix (Delphi on Linux) has been demonstrated in Spain (early betas). Supposedly, the demo compiled 45K lnes of X-VCL in 2 seconds.
Please moderate the above post up. Very funny!
Sig goes here
Well, actually it's most prolly cause I love VC++ and couldn't think of using anything else ;), but why not port KDevelop to Windows? I mean all the unix tools needed by KDevelop are available in one form or another (either a direct port or with cygwin).
:).
:).
As for the general idea of Windows based open source projects, I think it's a great idea. One thing I noticed about SourceForge last time I looked was that it lacked areas for windows projects...yeah, VA is a Linux company, but hey...you know
Someone said that most people don't know of gcc for windows etc, and that's so true. Hell, most people don't realise that just about everything on Unix is avilable on windows as well, you just gotta know where to look
At the Tcl/Tk Conference, Brent Welch of Scriptics presented a paper on TEA. From the abstract:
"The goal of TEA is to create a standard for Tcl extensions that makes it easier to build, install, and share Tcl extensions. In its current form, TEA specifies a standard compilation environment for Tcl and its extensions. The standard uses autoconf, configure and make on UNIX and Windows."
Specifically, the standard uses Cygwin on Windows. More info is available at: http://dev.scriptics.com/doc/tea/
One huge advantage to using TEA is that you won't need to recompile your extensions for each new version of Tcl/Tk (as long as you only call the public APIs).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
So you want to open source your product, have people work on it for free, and then retain control over whether those changes get placed in the "official" product? Why not just hire volunteers or interns to do the work then? It sounds like you want free labor.
I could be wrong, but I don't believe any of these concerns apply to Delphi. Isn't Delphi a proprietary Inprise/Borland language with only one implementation? I could be all wrong here, but if memory serves that is the case... I also seem to remember reading they were considering porting it to linux at some point in the future.
If I am right then none of these concerns really apply, the source will only be useful to folks with Delphi but there is no worry of multiple versions. The main thing I would think about would be what might you gain/lose by open sourcing it. You gain, at least potentially, more people poking through your code and finding (and fixing) bugs. You lose, well, probably very little, but then again I don't really know your business situation.
If you have competitors that might gain a significant advantage over you through your release of the code, then I would seriously consider not releasing it. However, if that is not a huge concern, releasing it would probably be a good thing - at least it could be expected to increase the number of eyeballs reviewing it for problems. Don't expect miracles though - the number of open source windows developers is probably pretty small, the number who use Delphi would be a subset, and the number that would be interested in your particular project can only be a subset of that. Now if that linux port ever happens the potential audience should grow quite a bit... so such a release could be viewed as a low risk investment which *might* really pay off later.
However, there is the fact that if you do release it will be unders a pseudo-open license (ala Netscape or Sun - NOT GPL or BSD.) This means you will be reserving the right to hamstring or kill the code at any point - you aren't allowing forking. Open source developers will tend to work on projects with the sort of license you mention only if they have a strong interest in the functionality and/or (preferably and) the company that controls the code has a good reputation for supporting the community. Even then it may not be enough - in the long run we're better off reimplimenting code from scratch and placing it under a truly open source license than contributing countless hours to building on a half-open project only to see the owner kill it later. So releasing this while you have no immediate expectation of substantial return might help build a little of that sort of reputation for you, which *could* lay the groundwork for substantial returns in the future - but again, no guarantees. I would consider it a longshot.
If you don't see any way that the release can cause your company substantial harm, I would say go for it. But if the release would expose you to significant risk, I couldn't recommend it - the gain is all potential, with no guarantees.
(These comments may or may not reflect the posters own opinions after he has another cup of coffee.)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Theft: ALL your IP will be stolen by your competitors. If you think it wont happen, you deserve it.
Open Source: likes to hate Microsoft. You are using Windows. You will be evil because you dont have a Linux version.
Delphi's Not Kewl; face it, its not. Since only a microscopic few make money with Open Source, Its All About The Karma Baby(TM). It's Delphi and Windows. There is no Karma. You wont get the army of slave labor that other projects get.
You'll lose Control; Its no longer your project, its a Community Project. That means it will splinter and you will have people telling you you are evil because you make money, use Delpi, have a job, make money etc.
Its like herding Cats: Or so said Bruce Perens when he pissed off the entire Kommunity some time back.
In short. Open the source. Your competitors would like the free code.
There are a number of open source projects popping up on the Mac, too...my current fave is "PhatIRC", an IRC client written in RealBasic, with the entire project code and resourced bundled with the distribution under the GPL.
The problem is, as another poster pointed out, the lack of free software development tools. Mac users like fresh and innovative programing envrionments: they like life easy. RealBASIC and FutureBASIC (Mature and -powerful- OOP IDEs...no comparison to the rip-off Visual Basic) are very popular with beginners and lightweight programmers, and CodeWarrior rocks everyone's world at the top end. But these aren;t -free-...while Apple does give away the Macintosh Programmer's Workbench, MPW isn't easy to learn, implement, or use.
While someone could concieveably port the GNU tools to the classic MacOS, unless it's as fresh and friendly as RealBasic or Hypercard (now sadly defunct), the mac community isn't going to bite.
MacOS X has some kewl NeXT dev tools (based on GNU tools, believe it or not), but it's unclear if these is going to be bundled with every copy of X.
SoupIsGood Food
I've written a project (20,000 lines of Delphi code) that's been pretty well received; and I can tell you that if your company's product, whatever it is, is something I end up using under an open license, I would love to submit bugfixes and such, time permitting. Thus one potential big benefit of open-sourcing a project: more robust code.
No guarantees of course. The product would have to appeal to developers (not just your ordinary users) somehow, because they're the ones who would want to "scratch an itch" and have the wherewithal (sp?) to do so.
Your company should also have a system, an infrastructure in place, so that the eventual code contributions result in some positive feedback to the contributors. I.e., you should treat your code contributors as part of a "community", whatever that means.
As to the question "how to make sure the contributions get back to the company" for inclusion in future releases, the answer IMHO would be: gratify the ego of your contributors. The section on code forks in The Cathedral and the Bazar is also good reading.
In fact, all of The Cathedral and the Bazaar is recommended reading for your bosses. Good luck.
First of all, in many cases you are forced to gloss over some serious problems regarding the freedom of your tools, and rely on making a good-faith effort to be obviously 'open' to the porting of your code to _really_ free languages. I use REALbasic (which is indeed a phenomenal RAD language). A _lot_ of Windows coders use Visual Basic. These are totally closed languages, in the same sense that if you're making Win32 API calls or Mac Toolbox calls they are closed calls. When you're working on a nonfree platform there's almost always _some_ point at which you're forced to interact with just the sort of 'black box' that you're just plain not allowed to use in your own GPLed code.
At the same time, it's usually possible to make a good faith effort to show that you are writing open code: for instance, the REALbasic 'code' is a single, compact file that makes no effort to be readable outside RB: but there's an option to export all the source as text, so I use that and take pains to offer both forms. This remains a problem, as REALbasic has a sophisticated interface builder, and the information for 'default' controls does _not_ get exported: only if you write actual code into the events of a control does it get exported. So the 'export as source' does not actually produce _all_ the information, it omits window object positioning information. However, there is a new RB third party tool called Project Cuisinart which _can_ produce every last detail in a text format- and so it goes, now that Project Cuisinart (which is not itself open) exists, my notion of 'open source' for REALbasic projects is the Cuisinart view of the total project file, complete with 'pushbutton 1' and a long list of properties- which itself is not open.
It can be very frustrating and disheartening. Some of the best tools aren't open. In many cases in order for them to be open, even if the tool itself thrived, there would be a team of good people out of work. Which leads me to...
Hostility. The problem with open source on Windows or Mac is partly that you can expect to be at war with your peers half the time. The best thing you can do is try to help newbies, share information both in the community and as GPLed source, and try to remember 'many enemies, much honor'. This is particularly relevant for me right now. REALbasic has an O'Reilly book, and the author is prone to give page numbers in answer to questions, and not bother answering the questions. You wouldn't believe how much hostility you'd get for objecting to, even questioning, this state of affairs, even if you spend an hour revising your messages to tone them down. Right now I am being publically humiliated on the REALbasic mailing list, with virtually no support except from a few people such as one fellow who asked me to let it lie so the argument would cool down, for this crime: I suggested that many O'Reilly books were the redistillation of community knowledge, and sell on convenience rather than being proprietary information to be withheld from people who haven't bought the book. I also suggested that Tim O'Reilly understood this and approved of his authors being active and helpful in their communities. And I'm being _crucified_ for having the gall to claim these things!
*sigh* If you write OSS for Windows, you can expect to put up with the same nonsense. You can expect to see everything from personal abuse to piles of FUD, you will be accused of wanting to destroy the livelihoods of your peers (to which my response is usually 'maybe' ;) ), and you might even end up in some ugly little tangle like claiming Apache (for instance) is open source, with your 'developer community' tearing you a new one and insisting there are bits you don't get to see, otherwise it wouldn't be secure! That may sound ridiculous, but I'd have thought "O'Reilly doesn't need to care about the community, it provides proprietary information in books and should be supported for doing it" was equally ridiculous, yet I'm sitting by letting myself be _roasted_ and my (such as it is) reputation savaged over just such a ridiculous distortion of what O'Reilly is about.
Best thing I can do is let 'em, and the next time some newbie asks a question I can answer, answer it helpfully while others give page numbers of their books or offer example projects that are proprietary or classes/plugins that are closed. Doing that makes the newbies want to cooperate, because they see some people freely helping them and others leaving strings attached and pontificating about how there's no free lunch. Well- cooperation _is_ a free lunch, it's just that you're giving it as well as getting it. And it would be a poor world if nobody could ever use open source software unless they were willing to use nothing but. Small pockets of cooperators can survive even in the midst of total hostility, and if you're a pocket of one, you're an ambassador. It's my job as such an ambassador to soak up the abuse, even when it's just unfair, and try to look like somebody to emulate. And the code I do release is licensed with the GPL: one thing about closed-land is that people don't seem to act like they get to 'rip off' open code. Instead they freak out at the requirements, and flame you to a crisp for _daring_ to require that they GPL derivative works, never mind that if they had a derivative work it's only by copying big chunks of the original work verbatim. But at least they _are_ freaking out, as it'd be worse if they just took whatever they wanted without asking.
Sometimes it's a real pain writing open on closed tools on a closed platform. Unfortunately, if nobody ever does, the closedness will never change. In that light, I have to encourage anyone trying to write open on Windows, in VB, or whatever. You'll get blasted from both sides- and you should try to set an example, _and_ take extra pains to make sure what you're doing _is_ as open as you possibly can make it- but it's worthwhile to do it.
I haven't used Delphi since high school (graduated 1996), but their licence of that era IIRC prevents open sourcing and/or copyleft, because any code will rely on their component library.
pulletproof?
I like that.
Does it mean they can't peck holes in the license?
Or perhaps you could pirate the code if you weren't chicken?
But seriously re the original question:
I think you could accomplish what you want by GPLing the code and distributing your "official" release under a trademarked name.
Whatever you do, try to find a license that is widely known and understood. If you try to roll your own nobody will be bothered to figure it out.
-----------------------------------
"You must reinstall Windows [OK]"
-W98 alert box.
I could of course be wrong, but I don't think the free ("as in beer") Borland C++ 5.5 download includes source.
;^) is certainly *not* free in either sense of the word.
And that's their *old* system; C++ Builder ("Delphi, but with uglier syntax"
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Microsoft already has an open source license for their research groups: http://www.vworlds.org/license.asp
Go to www.sourceforge.net and set yourself up an account.
/.'ers but the sooner we all realize that the faster the whole concept will take off.
The enemy of open source isn't Microsoft, it's the closed source software model. I know that's a hard pill to swallow for most
But so what; it means relatively fewer people will be able to participate in development (i.e, only those who have bought Delphi) than would be in a gcc project on Linux, but that's all. And FWIW, I think the Delphi community is among the most open-source-friendly bunches of folks you can find in the Windows world. Hey, you've got this guy asking here...
The future is NOW!Well, depends on what you mean by "porting": it isn't quite here *yet* (neither the port nor, thus, the future), but they *are* busy porting it right at this moment. Expected release some time mid-year.
That reminds me: In stead of wasting my time here at work, surfing Slashdot after hours, I should go home and install Linux on my new PC so I can try to wheedle on to the beta program... :-)
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
The very fact that the above posting was moderated down proves that point.
--
You are almost right about Delphi. Delphi is not a language. Delphi is an IDE for Object Pascal, Borland's mutilated child of Pascal. There are open-source Pascal environments that support many of Delphi's features.
GNU pascal starts from a POSIX standard pascal base and tacks on some OO features from Borland Pascal, the ancestor of Object Pascal.
free pascal aims to be a replacement for Object Pascal, supporting exceptions, Objects, ansistrings, etc. When I have had to use Delphi at work, I have often used FreePascal at home to hammer out the algorithm. Delphi is a nice tool for slapping together a UI, but it really gets in the way for designing deeply involved programs.
Golly...Litestep has been open source for years, and it's entirely Win32 based. How quickly people forget!
"Microlith" writes:
What are you babbling about?!?
He doesn't have to distribute the source of TForm or other VCL objects! The developers who could be eligible to participate -- those who have Delphi -- already have that. And each of them linking that into their projects when compiling is perfectly legal too: We can already give away source-less "free-as-in-beer" apps built on the VCL -- that freedom is basically what we pay for when we buy Delphi. And the source code we write from scratch, that only refers to Borland's VCL units (i.e, tells the IDE to link them in), is of course ours to do whatever we like with; how the heck could Borland's copyrights cover that?
Huh?!?
If including Borland's VCL were a problem with the somewhat-restricted GPL, how the heck could it be any less of a problem with the totally free-for-all BSD licenses? And what would be the benefit of his "hang[ing] it all out and go[ing] BSD" -- except that that would make it perfectly legal for some sleazeball "entrepreneur" to hijack his code base, close it off, and start selling a "competing" copy of his work?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
This is the third time today I've seen somebody use "xxx based" and it interrupts my reading every time. When I went to school, things were "xxx-based". Are they actually teaching you young'uns to omit hyphens these days, or do they just never get around to talking about such trival things as grammar and syntax given all the political/ecological/cultural/pychological crap that seems to be on the minds of the teachers I've heard recently.
he wants to open source the project but is looking for helping coming up with a "good argument" for his boss?! man, open source is not the end all and be all... how could you decide that open sourcing would be a good idea if you can't even come up with one single reason on your own as to why it would be advantageous?
I don't think you'll get anywhere unless you let the source be "out there" and pick from that what you want. Indeed, the "capital" which folks gain when they make contributions is the source itself. Also, trying to control the plethora of source versions is likely to be an expensive thing, although it has and is being done in places.
Jan Theodore Galkowski, (Oo) http://www.smalltalkidiom.net/ MySQL,PHP,ETL,SQL,MinGW C, and plucking the Web
And people who don't have Delphi at all couldn't, of course, participate in his project. Too bad, but that's just the way it is.
Fortunately, what you can do is run -- don't walk, run! -- out and buy this month's issue of British mag PC Plus: It has Delphi 3 Professional on the cover CD! An unbelievable value, at just $16 (or was it $14?) US. Their Web site is at http://www.pcplus.co.uk IIRC.
Sure, it has one of those freebie trial licenses (Borland are just being generous, they're not completely crazy!
But that's actually not too big a problem, if you're getting it just to participate in projects like this: If I remember correctly, the license doesn't say anything about distributing source code you've built in it... ("Distributing" it back to the maintainers of Open Source projects, for instance, who presumably have fully-licensed commercial copies of Delphi, and thus can distribute whatever they like however they like!
But that has nothing to do with the open-source nature of this project, per se.
I'm sure there are many thousands of pirated copies of, say, Microsoft "Visual" (Ha!) C++ in use, too -- among commercial, as well as free- and shareware authors. But that is not in any way an issue that has anything to do with the advantages and disadvantages of their respective business models.
That would also be utterly idiotic.
Your "no VCL" requirement is totally bogus and superfluous. Linking the object framework into your applications is perfectly legal, no matter how you distribute them or whether you're being paid for them or not. (OK, distributing those applications is not, if you're using a magazine-freebie copy of the IDE.) That's what it's for, you know.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
I'm in a similar situation pondering just how to leverage our product by making it or some of it open source. It's a client/server system and the product is the service that the server system serves over the internet (not the software). There is talk about making the client open source, even as the technology is being patented in whole. Our concern, however, is that we don't want to lose control of the application/implementation of the patent. Our approach is to create a hybrid GPL, one that excludes certain software components from the GPL. I hope we succeed in crafting such a license. If we do, we can loosen the knot gradually. That is, we can take the cautious approach: we open source the outer layers of the software first (e.g. the view and control subsystems of the GUI), and if the strategy is successful, we extend the open source license to deeper layers.
Check out the tsmApi Public License. It is essentially the Mozilla PL with a few more guarantees as far as extension of patent rights by developer, notification of the original developer, and API compatibility.
We have not as yet sought OSI certification, but it definitely conforms to the Open Source Definition.
Usually, that would mean if you have bought a license for Visual Basic... (In practice, I think Microsoft lets anyone distribute its run-time DLLs; they reckon that can only help VB's market penetration, I suppose.) But, my point is, that's their decision -- it has nothing to do with what you are charging for anything.
I don't think that has anything to do with it.
The issue of whether you can distribute VBRUNxxx.DLL or not is between you, the developer, and the copyright holder of the run-time library; i.e, Microsoft. It has nothing to do with what kind of payment, if any, is transferred between you and your clients / customers. Aren't you saying, in effect, that there could be no legal sold-for-money programs written in Visual Basic ??? I'm fairly sure there are...
Well, no, that does not "ease my mind". Sigh... Don't you think you ought to find out what the heck you're talking about, before you go running off at the mouth?
OK, here goes: Delphi is a commercial compiler-and-IDE package from Borland; the great-great(-great-great...)-grandchild of Turbo Pascal. The language, now called Object Pascal, is considerably extended beyond ANSI- and ISO-Standard Pascal, and absolutely on a par with C++. The IDE is at least as easy and powerful as Visual Basic, and the powerful Visual Component Library is what makes it all work.
A few years ago, Borland used the slogan "As easy as Visual Basic, as powerful as C++!" -- and it was actually true!
So if I break into a warehouse and steal a hundred VCRs and sell them, that's illegal -- but if I give them away for free, that's OK??? Sure, I liked reading about Robin Hood and his merry men in the Sherwood Forest when I was a kid, too... But still, whether it is legal for me to sell or give something away depends not so much on which of those it is I'm doing, as on whether it was mine to give away (or sell) in the first place.
And, just to make it perfectly clear: In this context, that means I can not give away copies of Delphi (including VCL source code), because Borland owns the rights to that. But I can give away the applications I write in it, because that's my source code (and Borland grants me the right to link objects from its VCL library into my apps; that's a large part of what I pay my license for).
OK, done. Hope it helps...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
a delphi project depends on closed/propietary source to even compile
It's a bit tricky. Source is included as are libraries, but there are restrictions on what and how you redistribute it (I've never had any problems w/ it though). There is also a Pascal limitation that makes it very difficult to customize/rebuild the VCL (their standard Delphi object library plus the RTL) and the license makes it almost impossible to redistribute, though there are a few work arounds to both of these and their object heirarchy is designed well enough that this rarely ever comes up.
Open source is not new to the Delphi world, but Delphi's licensing restrictions make it tricky (if not impossible) to distribute under the GPL. I honestly wouldn't know, but Project JEDI might be a good place to start!
I'm a bit confused, there's actually quite a wealth of open source software available on Windows.
:(
The intel community has really had open source software since at least the time Ward Christensen released Modem7 back in '78 or so. It hasn't changed, it's just that they've also adopted shareware and other forms of delivery as well.
Even more shocking to those of you who seem to have a bucket over your head... Microsoft releases a lot of open source stuff. They've created a lot of stuff for the development community, and if you go to msdn.microsoft.com you'll find thousands of utilities or apps, etc. with source that can be extended to your needs.
I think it's disappointing the Linux community can't take the time to understand the rest of the world before commenting on it.
The Mozilla Public License does allow forking; that was one of the points jwz made repeatedly in the early part of the project. - Mark
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
...as in, "used IN a commercial distribution" of THIS PROJECT -- not "used ON a commercial distribution of the operating system".
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Sure, you can't distribute the VCL source code they give you -- but then you don't have to, because you only use it; you don't modify it. And the people you distribute your source code to -- the ones that particiapte in the development, that is -- have their own copies of the VCL source (or just the compiled and ready-to-link object code, if they have the cheapest version of Delphi). So they can use your source that refers to the VCL, even without your distributing any VCL source.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
the license makes it almost impossible to redistribute
this should have read "the license makes it almost impossible to redistribute a recompiled VCL".
As for JEDI, don't let the mention of APIs and SDKs make you paranoid. I think just about everything there has source included (I really haven't browsed to much, but looks open to me). The API thing they talk about sounds like it has to do primarily with porting a VCL written around Windows to X (and eventually other GUI system) - basically so all Delphi source can work the same.
You're asking two distinct questions, so I'll address them one at a time.
:-) That's like asking Jazz fans with they think about Rock music. They're not going to be your community.
First, as to license, you want to retain control/ownership while making it open source. This is a balancing act. It helps to know exactly what community who want involved with your project. Some communities are ideologically oriented and won't work with any project that doesn't have their license. Other communities are content having less control than the author if it is software that they use (they want to make it better). You also need to think about whether you want the community to help you create the software, or just enhance and maintain it once it's done.
The popular commercial OSS license would be good to look at. I hate to state any specific license because that's sure to start a war, but both the MPL and QPL are good for what you want.
As for your second question, you should care less what the Slashdot community thinks about Windows
But Windows certainly needs to get an Open Source community started! I don't mind commercial or closed-source programs, but in the Windows world, every two bit piece of trash written in VB ends up as shareware! But it's not necessarily their fault since Microsoft has increasingly ignored and insulted the small developer and hobbyist. When you have to spend several hundred dollars for a somewhat complete development environment, you want to get your money back.
But all it takes is the realization that "freeware" doesn't have to be crappy before the community changes. And availability of the Windows SDK wouldn't hurt either.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The description for Dia is below: It's basically a Dia-gram program
Dia is a gtk+ based diagram creation program released under the GPL license. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.All you Windows Hackers looking to get into Linux, GTK programming go check it out. It's a sweet program. http://hans.breuer.org/dia/
There's also an Ada 95 implementation of GTK for windows at http://gtkada.eu.orgThe other alternative is the mingw32 project (minimal GNU on Win32). Programs compiled with this compiler link against the standard C RTL that ships with Windows.
If you don't give everybody write-access to your code, (i.e. not allow distribution of modified versions of your code) it's not really open source by any standard definition. And as an example, Sun's license, which is similar to what you're apparently considering, was NOT generally accepted by the community.
However, as other posters said here, if the project has originated in your company and you continue to be involved you're likely to be the one deciding anyhow. So I'd say releasing it as a non-Open-Source license would sacrifice full community acceptance for benefits which are mostly imaginary.
Use the GPL.
The biggest annoyance is that people *expect* the VC++ "ide" files. In fltk's case these are approximately TEN times larger than all the Win32-specific code (and this is an entire GUI library)!!! This is absolutely insane but that's the way it is. Borland and cygwin are supported with normal makefiles (though autoconf does not work).
I would also expect you to see a Linux port as one of the first contributions you get from the OSS community. This should be considered a free gift, there is no need to even test it if your boss refuses to pay for a Linux machine, but put the porting into the official code set and then you will start to see the real bug fixes and improvements roll in.
Like many others here, I agree that you should NOT "force" people to send you their fixes. This will not change the actions of anybody, and just antagonizes the people who would send you fixes (the vast majority). Most software engineers writing for free want to see their stuff publicized, and the way to do that is to put their stuff back into the official version.
I'd rather be rich than stupid.
If you don't like the GPL you could ask the creator of project X to license his own code to you under different terms. This would not conflict with the GPL. He could even license you to release your derived work anyway you please. But if you were thinking of selling the derived program he might want some money for it.
When he released X under the GPL he gave you limited rights for free. You have no right to complain if he doesn't want to give you additional rights for free also.
i will never ever start coding with something that's GPL, because no matter what, i can never make my work free. see my sig, thanx.
sh_mmer
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A simple search (e.g., "free compilers for windows"), yields a lot of pertinent hits, including this one http://www.thefreecountry.com/d evelopercity/cc.html which lists several C/C++ compilers for windows.
(And that's just C/C++).
You didn't research point #1 very hard, now did you?
Please open source it that way we can go through it and find a way to port it to Linux.
why don't they let you write fake scores anymore... was it confusing somebody?
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The Mozilla Public License is the way to go. It's morally wrong to use the GPL.
As for arguments in favor of open sourcing your project, I'd say "why not?" If it's not a piece of software you're trying to sell, you can't lose anything by releasing it as open source. Not many open source projects draw significant assistance from outside, but most get at least one or two contributions and maybe a few bug fixes. In exchange, releasing the source costs you nothing.
>Supposedly, the demo compiled 45K lnes of X-VCL
>in 2 seconds.
On my Windoze box Delphi compiles and links at around 300Kloc/s, I certainly hope that demo compiler was the pre-tuned version.
Mind you it probably still impresses C++ developers.
I discussed this with a few people at lunch today, and we unanamously decided that the BPL would be best. It gets the point across who owns the project, yet keeps it public.
Help us build a better map!
I'm convincing our developers to come up with an alternative to the Quickbooks timer. it's just a fancy text file, and quickbooks crashes about 4 machines per week. Anyone have anything?
I like music
The link is WinShoes. These are open-source Winsock plug-in components for Delphi
He's written about making the open source decision in this case study. His reasoning for open-sourcing was that developer components are a tough market to sell into, and that it was better to just release them open source and make money as a consultant/contractor based on his reputation as a coder. He hasn't regretted his choice.
I hope this answers some of your questions!
Lansdowne
> Delphi is a nice tool for slapping together a UI, but it really gets in the way for designing deeply involved programs.
:)
/. account!)
I beg to differ, but Delphi is an extremely powerful tool limited only by the user's understanding of the tool (as is the case with most tools). Just about anything that can be done with VC++ can be done in Delphi, usually in less time.
And for the die-hard C++ coders, there's C++ Builder. Borland's award-winning C++ compiler with the Delphi IDE/VCL. BCB can compile OWL and MFC projects, use ATL with or without the VCL, and compile existing Delphi code/components.
Just wanted to give the viewpoint from someone who has been using Borland's tools for over ten years as opposed to someone just using it because they were forced to.
Jon Robertson
(I already have too many accounts, I don't want a
Sure, it's mutated quite a lot from Wirth's original. But remember, mutations are what drives evolution forward!
Yes, there are. And I'm sure they're fine languages.
But does the fact that they don't support all of Delphi's features somehow make them better? Less "mutilated"?!?
Huh?!?
Why? How? Is it just that you don't know how to use it, or what?
If you don't like the IDE and/or its editor, you could always use Notepad and the command-line compiler, you know... If that is what you see as "not getting in the way".
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
It's voodoo programming. :) My native language is Finnish, I'm not an illiterate. (I'm that AC with the comment)
Which is what I said he should do: Distribute his source code that refers to the VCL, and his application where it is linked in. The latter is obviously legal because that is what the Delphi license is for, and the former is obviously legal because it is HIS source code. Or are you saying that the words "uses Forms, Controls, StdCtls;" automatically make every file they occur in owned by Borland?!? (And people say the GPL is "viral"...
Which is exactly what he would do. That's covered by his license (if he has one; i.e, unless he's using a cover CD freebie). His distributing HIS source code to HIS application has nothing to do with that. Not with Borland's license -- but it would allow him to use the GPL.
No it doesn't. This is just plain not so -- and if you don't want to take my word for it, it seems Charlie Calvert (and Borland in general) agree with my reading.
That's just plain wrong.
So is that...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
You can always give your code out with a different license.
The MPL license does (now, I think it had to be revised) qualify as an open source license, allowing forking among other things. The NPL did not - there was a flap about that if you will recall...