Re: Open Euphoria Licence
Robert Craig wrote:
>
> No, I haven't decided on a license yet,
> but thanks for all the posts. I'm learning
> a lot. The work on preparing the open source
> release is going pretty well. It might be
> ready in a week or so.
>
> 1. Regarding a closed-source (possibly for profit)
> person or group taking advantage of Public Domain source.
>
> The group could either grab pieces of the source
> for some purpose, or grab the whole thing and make a competitor
> to open source mainstream Euphoria.
>
> There aren't that many pieces that would be of much
> general value once isolated/extracated from the rest
> of the source. Maybe there are a few run-time library routines
> that would have some small value by themselves.
> More likely, someone would grab the whole source
> and then add a few proprietary closed-source
> features to it. They would then try to attract
> Euphoria users over to their "improved", partially closed-source,
> but compatible version of Euphoria. I believe they
> would have a lot of trouble attracting more than
> a handful of people. Most users would want to
> stick with the mainstream fully open source version, supported by
> RDS and many others. Users would be suspicious of
> the partially closed source nature of the new version
> of Euphoria. Will the closed-source code
> disappear and be unsupported when the developers get bored?
> Who wants to risk many long hours
> developing a program that only runs on an obscure variant of a
> programming language? If users were also required to pay anything
> for the new version, that would pretty much kill the new version
> right there. They could only be asked to pay for the value of the
> closed-source feature itself, since all the other functionality
> would be free to them if they stayed with the mainstream Euphoria.
>
> In time, open source developers would probably make their
> own version of any successful, profit making feature. Meanwhile,
> for a period of time, some Euphoria users might gain some
> benefit from the closed-source version, and be glad that they
> took the time to learn Euphoria. Is that so bad?
>
> So I think the threat from closed-source and/or for-profit
> forks of Euphoria is pretty small. The bigger threat is from
> multiple open-source forks, splitting the community into
> small pieces.
>
> 2. There's one special reason I can think of for allowing
> partially closed-source versions of Euphoria. It's
> the binding/shrouding encryption feature. Now that I'm
> taking it out, it would be useful to some people to
> insert a bit of closed-source code in the IL writer (binder)
> and IL reader (backend.exe) that will encrypt their IL
> using their own encryption algorithm. Both routines are
> written in Euphoria, so it's easy to modify them. This is actually
> better than the old system where everybody depended on the
> same algorithm never being broken. Since everyone used that algorithm,
> there was a high value to breaking it. Now everyone (who cares) could
> have his own algorithm. It's a safer system.
>
> Regards,
> Rob Craig
> Rapid Deployment Software
> <a href="http://www.RapidEuphoria.com">http://www.RapidEuphoria.com</a>
Hello Rob,
Really i couldnt have said it better myself 
I'd just like to add one small but significant point...
With everyone working on the 'public' version
i think it will be very unlikely that any private version could
become 'better' than the public one, meaning everyone everywhere
will most likely want the public version anyway.
On another topic..
My only concern is what happens to the public version once person
'A' inserts bugs 1,2,3, and 4 and person 'B' doesnt like that idea,
even though there is the appearance of more functionality.
I've seen a trend where people like to stick stuff in their
programs in order to increase apparent functionality only to
also insert bugs because they were in too much of a hurry to
get it in there. I'd like to see the 'public' version be as
bug free as the past versions released were...no rushing to get
features in there. If this cant happen i'll be forced to keep
my own version as will others im sure.
Take care,
Al
E boa sorte com sua programacao Euphoria!
My bumper sticker: "I brake for LED's"
From "Black Knight":
"I can live with losing the good fight,
but i can not live without fighting it".
"Well on second thought, maybe not."
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