I am not charging for the API because I, as a poor, frugal student, hate having to pay for products and don't want to be a hypocrit by charging for my own. At the same time, however, I don't want to release soure because I want to keep control of my work and who uses it, just like most other freeware developers who don't release source. Also, if I released source, spyware/malware developers could capitolize on it, as other have pointed out.
It's a good point, but if someone really wants to write spyware for Google Desktop, they would do it regardless of whether there is an API. Also, any developer with any common sense will realize that the APIs as I have them on the web site... a) cannot legally be redistributed b) have a number of pesky dependencies built in that make it harder to redistribute and increase the file size. c) To actually work, the API must show a wizard to configure it. This is almost certainly not sneaky enough for spyware or a virus... a user can just click exit
Of course, any developer who actually wants to use them for a good purpose can just contact me for the redistibutable, that fixes the above problems.
First of all, even though this is self-promotion, it is still news, no matter who says it. That's the whole idea of press releases! If the slashdot editors thought it was inappropriate to post this because it was self-promotion, they wouldn't have posted it. It's that simple. Plus, the API is freeware, so I'm not making money on this.
Who would use this API? I devloped this API mainly because a handful of developers asked me to. They want to use this API to extend Google Desktop farther than I did. Plus, even if the next version of GDS does change their HTML formatting, I will be only one step behind and update the API and gdSuite to work ASAP.
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I am not charging for the API because I, as a poor, frugal student, hate having to pay for products and don't want to be a hypocrit by charging for my own. At the same time, however, I don't want to release soure because I want to keep control of my work and who uses it, just like most other freeware developers who don't release source. Also, if I released source, spyware/malware developers could capitolize on it, as other have pointed out.
It's a good point, but if someone really wants to write spyware for Google Desktop, they would do it regardless of whether there is an API. ...
Also, any developer with any common sense will realize that the APIs as I have them on the web site
a) cannot legally be redistributed
b) have a number of pesky dependencies built in that make it harder to redistribute and increase the file size.
c) To actually work, the API must show a wizard to configure it. This is almost certainly not sneaky enough for spyware or a virus... a user can just click exit
Of course, any developer who actually wants to use them for a good purpose can just contact me for the redistibutable, that fixes the above problems.
That would be the whole point of Google Desktop and the API: to let users and now developers search emails, files, etc. instantly.
First of all, even though this is self-promotion, it is still news, no matter who says it. That's the whole idea of press releases! If the slashdot editors thought it was inappropriate to post this because it was self-promotion, they wouldn't have posted it. It's that simple. Plus, the API is freeware, so I'm not making money on this.
Who would use this API? I devloped this API mainly because a handful of developers asked me to. They want to use this API to extend Google Desktop farther than I did. Plus, even if the next version of GDS does change their HTML formatting, I will be only one step behind and update the API and gdSuite to work ASAP.