Is Showmypc.com an Open Source Pretender?

shaitand writes "When looking for a remote support application that penetrates firewalls and can be initiated by my clients with a couple of clicks, I came across Showmypc.com. It was a standalone executable but looked like it would work and best of all it was open source. The only thing I didn't like was the interface, so I went to check out the Sourceforge page. I noticed a substantial problem: CVS is empty and the source on the download page is for the 2.6 version. The version of the executable is 3.53. I mailed the developers that they needed to distribute their modified SSH client and VNC source to be in compliance with the GPL license. They said they didn't modify those programs and ignored my request for the current source code. So I ask again, if this is a GPL'ed application; where is the source?"

Comments

OT - Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

C++ user? Linus has a message for you.

I am about halfway through that thread. Linus is turning out to be a real asshole. It's tough to sit through this guy flaming the opinions of others, simply for having their opinions, with nothing more than opinion himself! He has a very serious and tragic god complex. I'm a big fan and user of the Linux OS, but Linus himself? You can keep him. What a jerk.

In any case, he is dead wrong about C++, and a complete fool. To claim one tool (his precious C) suits every job out there is just plain amateur (and surprising to hear from such an obviously brilliant computer scientist).

Maybe his wife isn't giving it up these days? The mind boggles.

Re:Theo was right.

[ajs318]

Um, no. The "freedom not to contribute changes" is rather like the freedom to own slaves (insofar as the state of having access only to a binary and not the corresponding source is comparable to a state of servitude). Please read this essay and learn the difference between freedom and power. Anybody who tries to lock up code written by you for everyone's benefit as closed-source (an exercise of power) is seeking to deny others their freedom; and if you don't try to stop that somehow, then you are to some extent complicit in that denial of freedom. Use of the GPL is one way to prevent denial of freedom. The BSD project teams have chosen a different approach (wait for someone to try to cage it up, then reproduce any improvements they made and incorporate them in a new free release) which is not less valid than using a licence which specifically forbids caging, but may turn out to be harder work in the long run. You could say that using the GPL to avoid potentially having to redo other people's work is laziness -- but surely using somebody else's code instead of writing your own from scratch is also laziness?