[sarcasm]Yep! We must do anything we can to avoid paying money to people who develop high quality software. When a company offers a good software product at a fair price, we have to immediately start looking for free alternatives.
Remember, if we all work together, we can drive small, innovative companies like the one that produces Opera out of business. If we really try hard, we might even be able to increase unemployment and drive down wages in the software engineering field![/sarcasm]
Why should I pay $39.00 for something that can be obtained for free?
So that software engineers who produce quality products can earn a living.
The majority of people on Slashdot are either paid by the software industry or want to be -- yet they think software should be free. You don't need a PHD in economics to see the flaw with that line of reasoning.
The "you" in the licence refers to the intended recipient of the software: Each licensee is addressed as "you".
That is complete bull. The GPL makes no stipulations about "intended" recipients and, in fact, is based on the premise that anyone who comes into posession of the source code may redistribute it without limitations (other than those stipulated by the GPL.) "You" refers to the reader of the license, regardless of how he obtained the source code which contains said license. If you disagree, prove me wrong with quotes, court cases, etc. rather than just asserting that you are right.
"You" would not apply to someone who violates his employment contract - and quite possibly various and asundry "data trespass" laws - to obtain a copy, any more than if I stole disks with proprietry software and a licence for "you" out of your mailbox.
Wrong. See above.
Give it a rest. Besides, if your company gives you GPL code to work on, the GPL license stipulates that you may distribute the source code to anyone you want. From the GPL Copyleft license:
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.
If your firm's GPL code shows up at a competitor's site, there's not a damned thing that your firm can do about it. Period. End of story.
(You really should read entire documents for context before quoting something in support of your argument.)
I read the entire GPL license on several occasions. You should take a few business law courses or talk to an attorney instead of getting on Slashdot and spreading misinformation based on your own ignorance of the law.
Or, you could just write to gnu@gnu.org and get them to explain these (obviously) vexing matters to you.
So what? Every original piece of software, whether a general word processor or a company-specific program is custom at the time it is created.
But then you started to mis-interpret what open source / free software requires. That's all that I've been trying to correct you about, and I hope you're a little clearer on it now.
You've only gone on to show how little you understand it, as I will show later in this message.
However, to adress that point: releasing software under the GPL does provide a "big picture" advantage in the sense that it encourages others to do the same.
No it does not. Companies make decisions based on profit and loss analysis, not out of some feeling of community with other companies. If HP gave away free PCs until they drove themselves into bankruptcy, Dell and other PC vendors would not be likely to repeat the mistake out of a feeling of solidarity.
When everyone has the freedom to use, modify, and share software, we all benefit.
Not if your company makes money by selling software packages. Look at Microsoft's financial condition and compare that to the financial condition of Linux vendors. Microsoft can command prices of well over $100 for their OS while Linux goes for an average price of $30-$40 (when not downloaded for free). Microsoft has over $40 billion dollars in their rainy day fund while many Linux vendors are struggling to stay in business.
Sprint is footing the bill. Yet that software will be owned by IBM, and IBM will possibly sell it to others too.
And for more money, Sprint could have bought the exclusive rights. They obviously felt that the incremental cost did not justify the purchase.
They could still make plenty of money, of course, though they would have to change their fee structure to accomidate a GPL-ing.
The arrogance of open source proponents is, frankly, astounding. You make these proclamations about how major, successful, multi-national corporations should give away their intellectual property (which is owned in no small part by shareholders) and change their entire business model to accomodate GPL based on your unproven idea of how it could work. You want to risk the jobs of thousands of people so that you can test your ideas about open source software.
You want IBM and its shareholders to assume all of the risk of testing your ideas. Your business plan for IBM seems to be that they pay you a handsome fee to write software and then they put it under GPL, thus making it available, for free, to the entire world. I've got another idea: You stop charging IBM when you write the software and you put it into the GPL directly. Instead of them giving away their intellectual property, you give away yours.
...IBM is slowly seeing the free software light...
No, IBM is realizing that they can take free software that other people wrote and sell it to customers. That's a lot different than IBM spending large sums of money to develop software that they, themselves, will make GPL.
But what if, in some sort of multi-way exchange for GPLing our software, we got the guys who provide our speech recognition software to GPL their stuff?
Or they could use a much more logical and proven arrangement of cross-licensing their products, thus keeping control of the software, legal rights to the software, and protecting the software's market value. IBM would be a lot better off providing the source code to a few strategic partners than they would be to give it away to anyone who wants it.
Would Verizon or SBC get to use our software for free if it were GPLed? No way. IBM isn't going to put it up on a web site for download. Sprint isn't going to give them a copy. And if somehow someone slipped them a bootleg CD, the support required to use the software is considerable. (Not to mention the potential legal issues - Sprint would have the right to share, use, and modify the software, but I don't think that entitles a disgruntled employee, or someone to whom he sends an "unauthorized" CD, to do the same.)
You need to read the GPL (that you claim to know so much about). Here is the section from the GPL that covers that:
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
There are no exceptions for disgruntled employees supplying it to competitors. Anyone can give anyone else any GPL source code. Period.
The conclusion is simple: If you can identify any individual or group that you wish to prevent from having, using, modifying, or distributing your software, you should not make the software GPL. Further, if you want to make money selling the software, you should not make it GPL.
Check this guy out "Well they can just not give it to anyone". Yeah, that's SUCH a rock solid legal plan. Let's remove any ability for our company to prosecute others for having our software and then just pray to god that nobody here gives it to them out of spite.
The stupidity on Slashdot is enough to give a rational man a splitting migraine. Half of the people on here don't comprehend basic business principles.
Here are some clues for the most rabid open source proponents:
1. Corporations are in business to make money. Period.
2. As a general rule, corporations don't give a rat's ass about the open source movement.
3. Corporations don't feel some moral obligation to "give back to the community" when they use open source software.
4. Corporations want to get advantages over their competitors. They don't want to develop software at their expense and then let their competitors use it for free.
5. Making something "open source" does not mean that anyone else will have an interest in maintaining or upgrading it. Just look at the countless dead projects on Sourceforge if you need proof.
6. Intellectual property is just that: property. The average company is no more likely to give away intellectual property than they are to give away their office equipment, furniture, and computers.
7. If a company is publically held, the intellectual property that you are encouraging them to give away isn't theirs to give. It belongs to the stockholders.
I probably just wasted a lot of keystrokes trying to clue these people in, but so be it...
The author can choose to only make source available TO PEOPLE WHO'VE BOUGHT BINARIES.
And they can make the source, and executable, available to anyone else that they chose. From The Open Source Definition:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
(Of course, under the GPL or similar schemes, the author can't prevent those people from making the source available to others; however, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, the customer is unlikely to give the source (or binaries) away to their competitors.
So someone else will give (or sell) the source and binaries to the competitor. Use some common sense!
And when you're doing a custom job for a customer, their competitors probably wouldn't have much use for it as-is, anyway.
That's simply an absurd generalization when you know nothing of the business or the software. For all you know, he's developing a general purpose inventory control system that the customer intends to offer for retail sale. Or maybe he's developing something that includes company proprietary techniques and information.
you wouldn't make such fundamental errors.
Your claiming that something is an "error" does not make it so.
Your reasoning is flawed:
1. You have not shown me any examples of any open source projects where the source is not readily available nor have you given any examples of such a license. So now you want the customer to hire an attorney to draw up a whole new type of open source license than any that already exist?
2. My original argument was that making a piece of custom software "open source" does not provide an advantage to a business. And you apparently can't show any advantage to a client to contractually obligate themselves to give source away that they could simply choose to own.
You are wasting my time. Go away to your imaginary world of open-source-land where every project is open source and every company pays to develop software for which they give the source away.
You must be aware that the right of ownership for code is not inherited by either party. You can not simply assume you own the code unless you have this documented and signed by the other party.
Barring contractual language to the contrary, the copyright to the source code will lie with the client if the author was an employee and will lie with the author if the author was an independent contractor.
That said, most firms are smart enough to specify that code created by independent contractors are "works for hire" and that the firm retains all rights to the product of the labors.
As an ethical aside, I think that a consultant has a moral obligation to make certain that the ownership of the code is contractually spelled out and that the client fully understands it. Pulling a fast one by preying on a client's naivete is extremely unethical and certainly not an example of bargaining in good faith.
And that's exactly what i'm saying. You need to convince the _client_ to use GPL
No you do not. It is normally not in the client's best interests to put his custom software under the GPL license. It is much smarter, and more advantageous for the client, if he specifies that the products of your labor are "work for hire" and that he, the client, will own the rights to them. The client can then provide the source code only to those people he chooses to. He can have them sign non-disclosures and protect his investment.
Let's use an example. Suppose you write part of an inventory control system that your client markets. Why would it be in your clients' best interests to have your portion, and thus, the entire project, under GPL? Then his competitors could demand source code. People could give the product away. It would be a financial disaster.
Even on an in-house package, the same applies. Businesses want to get advantages on each other. If UPS finds a better way to track packages, they don't want to have to give it to FedEx. They want the competitive advantage that the software offers.
No one has yet given me a plausible reason why a typical business would be served by making their custom software (that they paid to develop) open source.
There's nothing there that requires source code or binaries be made available to the general public
Then in what way would it be considered "open"? How the hell can you have "open source" software where the source is not freely available?
Using your assertions, I could claim to have an open source copy of Windows. It's just that Microsoft has chosen not to make the source available to the general public. But it's open source. It's just like Linux except that they don't make the source available to the public.
Do you see how idiotic your position is now?
Show me a project considered "open source" where the source code is not readily available.
In fact, you are displaying such willful ignorance on this topic I begin to wonder if you're trolling.
If you find that you disagree with me, there's a much more likely explanation: You don't know what you are talking about.
Either that, or you've bought so deeply into proprietary software ideas that you're having psychological difficulty in understanding the ideas behind the "free software" and "open source" movements.
I was releasing open source software (into the public domain) in the early 1980's, so I'm well versed in what constitutes "free software" and "open source."
They will get it from sourceforge or wherever it is mirrored.
Making software free, or even open source, doesn't mean you can't sell it, and doesn't mean you have to give it to anyone who asks.
By your definition, Windows could be considered open source. Microsoft could just call it that, sell it, and then refuse to give the source to anyone.
Since you clearly don't understand the term "open source", I suggest that you click here to get the definition.
Excerpt:
there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost-preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge.
It's not a "flame." It's a point. Someone with extensive coding experience probably does not make that many typos.
20 years in embedded systems is not broad
So what do you think is "broad"? I've written code for everything from digitizing tablets to satellite communications to printers. I've created programs that do statistical analysis of spectrophotometric data. The software I've written runs on everything from small embedded CPUs to standalone PCs that are part of larger systems. What's your definition of "broad" experience? Someone who's spent their entire career creating Windows GUI applications?
Unless otherwise specified in the contract as a "work for hire," the default ownership goes to the creator not the client.
Most companies have lawyers and those lawyers are smart enough to specify that the consultant is creating a "work for hire."
For someone doing "+20 years" of software consulting you seem amazingly unaware of IP law.
I clearly know much more about it than you do, as will be made clear if you read on.
his customer does not more own the code more than you will if you buy a copy of Microsoft Word!
The former is normally stipulated by contract to be a "work for hire" while the latter is a purchase of a "license to use." Your ignorance of IP law is showing.
I have NEVER EVER given my customer the IP right for my work, only the license to use my work in the capacity to solve the problem I was originaly hired in to solve.
Most software professionals are not hired to "solve [a] problem." They are hired to produce all or part of a software product (either in-house or commercial). Do you think that the consultants who helped write Microsoft Word retained all IP rights to their work and simply gave Microsoft a license to use it? Absurd.
if you disagree then i suggest you read up on some IP law, you might get suprised. We (coders) do in fact got some rights!
No, we do not have "rights." We have contracts and most firms have the foresight to require that a consultant developing custom software for them provide the source code and assign ownership to them of the "work for hire" that the consultant creates.
Pretty simple. So that they are not locked to your solution. If you ever go nuts they have a way out. So it is not YOU that make it GPL, is the client forcing you to make it GPL (if he has brains).
The client owns the source code in almost all contracts. If I "go nuts", he can hire anyone he wants to work on it without giving it to the whole world as an open source gift. Your lack of logic is astounding.
And, of course, if you start with GPL, the end result must be GPL. However, the questioner wanted to know how to convince his customer to release the code as open source once the project was over.
Now if he wanted to argue that the customer would be much better off financially or schedule-wise to start with a GPL program and modify it, that's fine. But to pretend that there is some big advantage for the client to pay for the entire development and then turn the code into open source is a much tougher argument to make with honesty and logic.
Many companies - mine included - build their businesses on the backs of open source software. Samba. Apache. Perl. The list goes on. Make the client aware of the contributions of others, and they'll be more receptive to making their own contributions.
Companies exist to make money, not to be part of some big, happy, open source community. They use free software because it is often more cost-effective than commercial software. I'm sure that they would be happy to use free paper if someone wanted to give it away. But don't expect them to open a paper mill any time soon to pay back the free paper community.
It seems rather simplistic to assume that all clients will want support.
Perhaps you should try reading the story before posting:
I do not intend to stick around for incremental development after I've delivered it,
That sounds like he intends to split, not that his client wants no ongoing support.
We develop software for clients, and we are considerign open sourcing it. The choice is ours.
Not if it is a work for hire like most contracts.
It soudns like your 20 years have been 20 years with narrow perspective.
No, my career has been broad, spanning the development of everything from Near Infrared Spectrophotometers to automated mail sorting equipment to satellites.
By the way, I can't imagine that you've developed much code given your numerous typos in your one short response.
If the client agrees to make the work open source, then their competitors will be able to use it at no cost. How is that in your client's interest after they paid you to develop it?
What makes you think that the open source community has any interest in supporting the custom application that your client is paying you to write?
Your client will already own the code, so they can give it to whomever they want. Why would it be in their interest to obligate themselves to give it to any more people than absolutely necessary?
I've been doing software consulting for 20+ years and, forgive me for being blunt, but you sound like some kid on one of his first consulting jobs. You seem to have this naive view that you can write code, throw it over the wall, and run. You can -- once or twice. Then the word will get around that you don't support your clients and the work will dry up.
If you want to participate in the open source movement, do it on your own time. What you're trying to do is like someone who volunteers with Meals On Wheels and then expects to make the delivery runs while he's on the clock at his job.
I'm assuming that your math is correct as you clearly know what you're talking about and I'll agree that the voltage drop and current limiting is necessary when your battery voltage does not match your LED's rated drop.
But the more efficient approach is to choose your voltage carefully and to string LEDs in series to get the desired voltage. If you are going to convert the energy into something, light is a far better choice than heat.
Alternatively, one could use 555 timer chips to create pulse-width-modulation to control the brightness. Also much more efficient than resistors.
A variable resistor is all you'd need to make a dimmer switch.
When a resistor drops the voltage, it does so by using turning current into heat. The entire purpose of using LEDs in this project is to make high-efficiency lighting to run off of batteries charged by people-powered generators. Using series resistance to reduce brightness is no better than putting a smoked lens in front of the LED array.
Dude, he skewered you! He shot down everything you said, made you look like a fool, and this was the best you could do? That's pathetic! You are seriously out of your league here.
You're wasting your time. He'll never admit to his mistakes. He'll just lash out at anyone who dares to point out that he has been passing off flawed logic and personal opinions as facts.
You are a CS major at WIU. I did a look-up. I know the tuition rates.
you're arguments aren't persuasive at all and are based upon your person beliefs
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! You didn't see me making up stuff about how many people used Opera, how many used it as their primary browser, how many thought the UI was superior, etc. That was you that used your personal opinion of it, combined with flawed logic (e.g, website logs of browser identity), to make your arguments.
I'm not attacking you ... and the rest of us will continue living in reality..
then shut up and keep living in your dream world.. the rest of us will stick with living in reality.
Not very good at this debating stuff, are you? When you can't counter rationale arguments, you resort to ad hominem attacks. As you've just learned, there's more to intelligent debate than making s*** up and passing it off as fact.
As to reality, I'm a successful, professional software engineer/consultant with 20+ years of paid experience. I had a real career before you were even born! You, on the other hand, are a CS student at some budget college in Wisconsin -- probably still being supported by mommy and daddy. You've got a lot to learn before you can start lecturing me about reality.
Slashdot Mirror
...or go to Netscape or Mozilla...
[sarcasm]Yep! We must do anything we can to avoid paying money to people who develop high quality software. When a company offers a good software product at a fair price, we have to immediately start looking for free alternatives.
Remember, if we all work together, we can drive small, innovative companies like the one that produces Opera out of business. If we really try hard, we might even be able to increase unemployment and drive down wages in the software engineering field![/sarcasm]
Why should I pay $39.00 for something that can be obtained for free?
So that software engineers who produce quality products can earn a living.
The majority of people on Slashdot are either paid by the software industry or want to be -- yet they think software should be free. You don't need a PHD in economics to see the flaw with that line of reasoning.
You can block the ads by adding these lines to your hosts file. You can also add these servers to the Junkbuster block file.
Or you could just pay the reasonable registration fee instead of trying to find some technological means to cheat the people that wrote Opera.
It's ad-sponsored or user-sponsored. Either put up with the ads or register the browser.
The "you" in the licence refers to the intended recipient of the software: Each licensee is addressed as "you".
That is complete bull. The GPL makes no stipulations about "intended" recipients and, in fact, is based on the premise that anyone who comes into posession of the source code may redistribute it without limitations (other than those stipulated by the GPL.) "You" refers to the reader of the license, regardless of how he obtained the source code which contains said license. If you disagree, prove me wrong with quotes, court cases, etc. rather than just asserting that you are right.
"You" would not apply to someone who violates his employment contract - and quite possibly various and asundry "data trespass" laws - to obtain a copy, any more than if I stole disks with proprietry software and a licence for "you" out of your mailbox.
Wrong. See above.
Give it a rest. Besides, if your company gives you GPL code to work on, the GPL license stipulates that you may distribute the source code to anyone you want. From the GPL Copyleft license:
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License.
If your firm's GPL code shows up at a competitor's site, there's not a damned thing that your firm can do about it. Period. End of story.
(You really should read entire documents for context before quoting something in support of your argument.)
I read the entire GPL license on several occasions. You should take a few business law courses or talk to an attorney instead of getting on Slashdot and spreading misinformation based on your own ignorance of the law.
Or, you could just write to gnu@gnu.org and get them to explain these (obviously) vexing matters to you.
We're talking about custom jobs here
...IBM is slowly seeing the free software light...
So what? Every original piece of software, whether a general word processor or a company-specific program is custom at the time it is created.
But then you started to mis-interpret what open source / free software requires. That's all that I've been trying to correct you about, and I hope you're a little clearer on it now.
You've only gone on to show how little you understand it, as I will show later in this message.
However, to adress that point: releasing software under the GPL does provide a "big picture" advantage in the sense that it encourages others to do the same.
No it does not. Companies make decisions based on profit and loss analysis, not out of some feeling of community with other companies. If HP gave away free PCs until they drove themselves into bankruptcy, Dell and other PC vendors would not be likely to repeat the mistake out of a feeling of solidarity.
When everyone has the freedom to use, modify, and share software, we all benefit.
Not if your company makes money by selling software packages. Look at Microsoft's financial condition and compare that to the financial condition of Linux vendors. Microsoft can command prices of well over $100 for their OS while Linux goes for an average price of $30-$40 (when not downloaded for free). Microsoft has over $40 billion dollars in their rainy day fund while many Linux vendors are struggling to stay in business.
Sprint is footing the bill. Yet that software will be owned by IBM, and IBM will possibly sell it to others too.
And for more money, Sprint could have bought the exclusive rights. They obviously felt that the incremental cost did not justify the purchase.
They could still make plenty of money, of course, though they would have to change their fee structure to accomidate a GPL-ing.
The arrogance of open source proponents is, frankly, astounding. You make these proclamations about how major, successful, multi-national corporations should give away their intellectual property (which is owned in no small part by shareholders) and change their entire business model to accomodate GPL based on your unproven idea of how it could work. You want to risk the jobs of thousands of people so that you can test your ideas about open source software.
You want IBM and its shareholders to assume all of the risk of testing your ideas. Your business plan for IBM seems to be that they pay you a handsome fee to write software and then they put it under GPL, thus making it available, for free, to the entire world. I've got another idea: You stop charging IBM when you write the software and you put it into the GPL directly. Instead of them giving away their intellectual property, you give away yours.
No, IBM is realizing that they can take free software that other people wrote and sell it to customers. That's a lot different than IBM spending large sums of money to develop software that they, themselves, will make GPL.
But what if, in some sort of multi-way exchange for GPLing our software, we got the guys who provide our speech recognition software to GPL their stuff?
Or they could use a much more logical and proven arrangement of cross-licensing their products, thus keeping control of the software, legal rights to the software, and protecting the software's market value. IBM would be a lot better off providing the source code to a few strategic partners than they would be to give it away to anyone who wants it.
Would Verizon or SBC get to use our software for free if it were GPLed? No way. IBM isn't going to put it up on a web site for download. Sprint isn't going to give them a copy. And if somehow someone slipped them a bootleg CD, the support required to use the software is considerable. (Not to mention the potential legal issues - Sprint would have the right to share, use, and modify the software, but I don't think that entitles a disgruntled employee, or someone to whom he sends an "unauthorized" CD, to do the same.)
You need to read the GPL (that you claim to know so much about). Here is the section from the GPL that covers that:
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
There are no exceptions for disgruntled employees supplying it to competitors. Anyone can give anyone else any GPL source code. Period.
The conclusion is simple: If you can identify any individual or group that you wish to prevent from having, using, modifying, or distributing your software, you should not make the software GPL. Further, if you want to make money selling the software, you should not make it GPL.
Check this guy out "Well they can just not give it to anyone". Yeah, that's SUCH a rock solid legal plan. Let's remove any ability for our company to prosecute others for having our software and then just pray to god that nobody here gives it to them out of spite.
The stupidity on Slashdot is enough to give a rational man a splitting migraine. Half of the people on here don't comprehend basic business principles.
Here are some clues for the most rabid open source proponents:
1. Corporations are in business to make money. Period.
2. As a general rule, corporations don't give a rat's ass about the open source movement.
3. Corporations don't feel some moral obligation to "give back to the community" when they use open source software.
4. Corporations want to get advantages over their competitors. They don't want to develop software at their expense and then let their competitors use it for free.
5. Making something "open source" does not mean that anyone else will have an interest in maintaining or upgrading it. Just look at the countless dead projects on Sourceforge if you need proof.
6. Intellectual property is just that: property. The average company is no more likely to give away intellectual property than they are to give away their office equipment, furniture, and computers.
7. If a company is publically held, the intellectual property that you are encouraging them to give away isn't theirs to give. It belongs to the stockholders.
I probably just wasted a lot of keystrokes trying to clue these people in, but so be it...
The author can choose to only make source available TO PEOPLE WHO'VE BOUGHT BINARIES .
And they can make the source, and executable, available to anyone else that they chose. From The Open Source Definition:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
(Of course, under the GPL or similar schemes, the author can't prevent those people from making the source available to others; however, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, the customer is unlikely to give the source (or binaries) away to their competitors.
So someone else will give (or sell) the source and binaries to the competitor. Use some common sense!
And when you're doing a custom job for a customer, their competitors probably wouldn't have much use for it as-is, anyway.
That's simply an absurd generalization when you know nothing of the business or the software. For all you know, he's developing a general purpose inventory control system that the customer intends to offer for retail sale. Or maybe he's developing something that includes company proprietary techniques and information.
you wouldn't make such fundamental errors.
Your claiming that something is an "error" does not make it so.
Your reasoning is flawed:
1. You have not shown me any examples of any open source projects where the source is not readily available nor have you given any examples of such a license. So now you want the customer to hire an attorney to draw up a whole new type of open source license than any that already exist?
2. My original argument was that making a piece of custom software "open source" does not provide an advantage to a business. And you apparently can't show any advantage to a client to contractually obligate themselves to give source away that they could simply choose to own.
You are wasting my time. Go away to your imaginary world of open-source-land where every project is open source and every company pays to develop software for which they give the source away.
State your precedent for implying copyright law adheres to what you have claimed in the above.
I suggest that you read the Library of Congress Works Made for Hire under the 1976 Copyright Act.
If you still don't believe me, then you suck and I am right because I said so.
You must be aware that the right of ownership for code is not inherited by either party. You can not simply assume you own the code unless you have this documented and signed by the other party.
Barring contractual language to the contrary, the copyright to the source code will lie with the client if the author was an employee and will lie with the author if the author was an independent contractor.
That said, most firms are smart enough to specify that code created by independent contractors are "works for hire" and that the firm retains all rights to the product of the labors.
As an ethical aside, I think that a consultant has a moral obligation to make certain that the ownership of the code is contractually spelled out and that the client fully understands it. Pulling a fast one by preying on a client's naivete is extremely unethical and certainly not an example of bargaining in good faith.
And that's exactly what i'm saying. You need to convince the _client_ to use GPL
No you do not. It is normally not in the client's best interests to put his custom software under the GPL license. It is much smarter, and more advantageous for the client, if he specifies that the products of your labor are "work for hire" and that he, the client, will own the rights to them. The client can then provide the source code only to those people he chooses to. He can have them sign non-disclosures and protect his investment.
Let's use an example. Suppose you write part of an inventory control system that your client markets. Why would it be in your clients' best interests to have your portion, and thus, the entire project, under GPL? Then his competitors could demand source code. People could give the product away. It would be a financial disaster.
Even on an in-house package, the same applies. Businesses want to get advantages on each other. If UPS finds a better way to track packages, they don't want to have to give it to FedEx. They want the competitive advantage that the software offers.
No one has yet given me a plausible reason why a typical business would be served by making their custom software (that they paid to develop) open source.
There's nothing there that requires source code or binaries be made available to the general public
Then in what way would it be considered "open"? How the hell can you have "open source" software where the source is not freely available?
Using your assertions, I could claim to have an open source copy of Windows. It's just that Microsoft has chosen not to make the source available to the general public. But it's open source. It's just like Linux except that they don't make the source available to the public.
Do you see how idiotic your position is now?
Show me a project considered "open source" where the source code is not readily available.
In fact, you are displaying such willful ignorance on this topic I begin to wonder if you're trolling.
If you find that you disagree with me, there's a much more likely explanation: You don't know what you are talking about.
Either that, or you've bought so deeply into proprietary software ideas that you're having psychological difficulty in understanding the ideas behind the "free software" and "open source" movements.
I was releasing open source software (into the public domain) in the early 1980's, so I'm well versed in what constitutes "free software" and "open source."
Who's going to give the competitor a copy?
They will get it from sourceforge or wherever it is mirrored.
Making software free, or even open source, doesn't mean you can't sell it, and doesn't mean you have to give it to anyone who asks.
By your definition, Windows could be considered open source. Microsoft could just call it that, sell it, and then refuse to give the source to anyone.
Since you clearly don't understand the term "open source", I suggest that you click here to get the definition.
Excerpt:
there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost-preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge.
Spelling flames don't help your point
It's not a "flame." It's a point. Someone with extensive coding experience probably does not make that many typos.
20 years in embedded systems is not broad
So what do you think is "broad"? I've written code for everything from digitizing tablets to satellite communications to printers. I've created programs that do statistical analysis of spectrophotometric data. The software I've written runs on everything from small embedded CPUs to standalone PCs that are part of larger systems. What's your definition of "broad" experience? Someone who's spent their entire career creating Windows GUI applications?
Unless otherwise specified in the contract as a "work for hire," the default ownership goes to the creator not the client.
Most companies have lawyers and those lawyers are smart enough to specify that the consultant is creating a "work for hire."
For someone doing "+20 years" of software consulting you seem amazingly unaware of IP law.
I clearly know much more about it than you do, as will be made clear if you read on.
his customer does not more own the code more than you will if you buy a copy of Microsoft Word!
The former is normally stipulated by contract to be a "work for hire" while the latter is a purchase of a "license to use." Your ignorance of IP law is showing.
I have NEVER EVER given my customer the IP right for my work, only the license to use my work in the capacity to solve the problem I was originaly hired in to solve.
Most software professionals are not hired to "solve [a] problem." They are hired to produce all or part of a software product (either in-house or commercial). Do you think that the consultants who helped write Microsoft Word retained all IP rights to their work and simply gave Microsoft a license to use it? Absurd.
if you disagree then i suggest you read up on some IP law, you might get suprised. We (coders) do in fact got some rights!
No, we do not have "rights." We have contracts and most firms have the foresight to require that a consultant developing custom software for them provide the source code and assign ownership to them of the "work for hire" that the consultant creates.
Pretty simple. So that they are not locked to your solution. If you ever go nuts they have a way out. So it is not YOU that make it GPL, is the client forcing you to make it GPL (if he has brains).
The client owns the source code in almost all contracts. If I "go nuts", he can hire anyone he wants to work on it without giving it to the whole world as an open source gift. Your lack of logic is astounding.
And, of course, if you start with GPL, the end result must be GPL. However, the questioner wanted to know how to convince his customer to release the code as open source once the project was over.
Now if he wanted to argue that the customer would be much better off financially or schedule-wise to start with a GPL program and modify it, that's fine. But to pretend that there is some big advantage for the client to pay for the entire development and then turn the code into open source is a much tougher argument to make with honesty and logic.
Many companies - mine included - build their businesses on the backs of open source software. Samba. Apache. Perl. The list goes on. Make the client aware of the contributions of others, and they'll be more receptive to making their own contributions.
Companies exist to make money, not to be part of some big, happy, open source community. They use free software because it is often more cost-effective than commercial software. I'm sure that they would be happy to use free paper if someone wanted to give it away. But don't expect them to open a paper mill any time soon to pay back the free paper community.
It seems rather simplistic to assume that all clients will want support.
Perhaps you should try reading the story before posting:
I do not intend to stick around for incremental development after I've delivered it,
That sounds like he intends to split, not that his client wants no ongoing support.
We develop software for clients, and we are considerign open sourcing it.
The choice is ours.
Not if it is a work for hire like most contracts.
It soudns like your 20 years have been 20 years with narrow perspective.
No, my career has been broad, spanning the development of everything from Near Infrared Spectrophotometers to automated mail sorting equipment to satellites.
By the way, I can't imagine that you've developed much code given your numerous typos in your one short response.
If the client agrees to make the work open source, then their competitors will be able to use it at no cost. How is that in your client's interest after they paid you to develop it?
What makes you think that the open source community has any interest in supporting the custom application that your client is paying you to write?
Your client will already own the code, so they can give it to whomever they want. Why would it be in their interest to obligate themselves to give it to any more people than absolutely necessary?
I've been doing software consulting for 20+ years and, forgive me for being blunt, but you sound like some kid on one of his first consulting jobs. You seem to have this naive view that you can write code, throw it over the wall, and run. You can -- once or twice. Then the word will get around that you don't support your clients and the work will dry up.
If you want to participate in the open source movement, do it on your own time. What you're trying to do is like someone who volunteers with Meals On Wheels and then expects to make the delivery runs while he's on the clock at his job.
I'm assuming that your math is correct as you clearly know what you're talking about and I'll agree that the voltage drop and current limiting is necessary when your battery voltage does not match your LED's rated drop.
But the more efficient approach is to choose your voltage carefully and to string LEDs in series to get the desired voltage. If you are going to convert the energy into something, light is a far better choice than heat.
Alternatively, one could use 555 timer chips to create pulse-width-modulation to control the brightness. Also much more efficient than resistors.
A variable resistor is all you'd need to make a dimmer switch.
When a resistor drops the voltage, it does so by using turning current into heat. The entire purpose of using LEDs in this project is to make high-efficiency lighting to run off of batteries charged by people-powered generators. Using series resistance to reduce brightness is no better than putting a smoked lens in front of the LED array.
just let it go
Dude, he skewered you! He shot down everything you said, made you look like a fool, and this was the best you could do? That's pathetic! You are seriously out of your league here.
You're wasting your time. He'll never admit to his mistakes. He'll just lash out at anyone who dares to point out that he has been passing off flawed logic and personal opinions as facts.
You are a CS major at WIU. I did a look-up. I know the tuition rates.
you're arguments aren't persuasive at all and are based upon your person beliefs
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! You didn't see me making up stuff about how many people used Opera, how many used it as their primary browser, how many thought the UI was superior, etc. That was you that used your personal opinion of it, combined with flawed logic (e.g, website logs of browser identity), to make your arguments.
I'm not attacking you
...
and the rest of us will continue living in reality..
I think that quote speaks for itself.
then shut up and keep living in your dream world.. the rest of us will stick with living in reality.
Not very good at this debating stuff, are you? When you can't counter rationale arguments, you resort to ad hominem attacks. As you've just learned, there's more to intelligent debate than making s*** up and passing it off as fact.
As to reality, I'm a successful, professional software engineer/consultant with 20+ years of paid experience. I had a real career before you were even born! You, on the other hand, are a CS student at some budget college in Wisconsin -- probably still being supported by mommy and daddy. You've got a lot to learn before you can start lecturing me about reality.