Re: request to ban 'no source' contributions
Christian Cuvier wrote:
> If the modified binary is beneficial, why complain?
> If it harms, then the wrongdoings themselves are to cause prosecution and
> liability claims against the wrongdoers.
> Otherwise who cares?
> In a nutshell, there are problems as you state, but closed source generates
> problems of its own and does not alleviate what it supposedly helps
> preventing.
You seem to want to dismiss any argument about closed source.
Open source is a NEW phenomenum, 20+ years ago when I got my start,
open source was unheard of.
The argument is not weather changes to my program are beneficial, nor if
I should complain, but on my rights. I have the right as a programmer to
protect my source if I want, end of argument. Just because you and I
choose as programmers to open up our source for peer review, peer use,
peer improvement etc. does NOT remove the right for other programmers to
keep their source closed. Those programmers may be less enlightened than
you or I, or more paranoid, but we live in a world full of less
enlightened
people and paranoid people. If I spent all my time trying to stop people
from doing things I deem stupid, I would not get anything done.
>
> > No, but I know that at least I have not made it easy.
>
> If the software is largely useful, the notion of intellectual property itself
> is questionable, because things are produced to be used first; their being
> sold is kind of collateral damage.
Are they? I'm sorry, I'm a professional programmer, I put food on the
table for my wife and 3 kids by selling my software. I don't give a
rip if
my software is useful except that useful software will make me money. Now
if I were professionally doing something other than software development I
would probably still develop software, but then it would be for the fun of
it and I would not produce anything like the amount of software I produce
now. This argument of production for use and sales are collateral fails
to realize motivation. You may be motivated by the "general good", but
that is not the motivation of most workers. Do you think most people
involved in manufacturing would continue to manufacture because it is
useful if they knew they couldn't make money?
> If it is just that nobody had thought to get a patent on something already
> known, then the notion is downright illegitimate.
> Otherwise, the whole point of protecting the software appears barely relevant.
OK, then maybe I mis-spoke, maybe these programmers are not protecting
intelectual property so much as they are protecting their investment in
the time to develop thier piece of software. There may not be any new
ideas in their software, but they took the time to produce it.
If I work for a year developing a piece of software, start selling it,
then
see someone come out with a remarkably close product with a few changes
but is underselling me, I am obviously going to be upset if I find out
it's because he stole my code. Yeah I can persue legal avenues, but
that's
a long drawn out and costly process without any promise of repairations.
>
> >>Binding is a
> >>> slap in the face of programmers at large, that's all. Another Eu
> >>> misfeature...
> >
> >
> > If I bind my program, there is now only a handful of
> > files I have to distribute, so it is much easier to distribute.
>
> Did you hear about self-extracting archives? They solve this handy...
Yes, but so does binding...
> > If I
> > bind my program, I know that someone can not accidentally open one of my
> > files in notepad and break the app and then come wining to me that the
> > app is broken.
>
> Either there's an installer, and it's now common practice for it to repair an
> installation. If there's none, reextracting from archive cures it all.
Yeah, but if it's bound, I don't have to think about a repair process.
> > I may also choose to bind so that a part of the bound app
> > is not distributed as open source. This could be for a variety of reasons,
> > I may be protecting the intelectual rights of another programmer who
> > granted me permission to use his routines, but not the right to distro
> > his source.
>
> As often happens, it's just that a questionable practice comes to rescue
> another one.
Your opinion only, not mine. I CHOOSE TO HONOR the right of other
programmers to license their software however way they want. If I don't
like the license I don't have to use their software. In 20+ years of
programming though I have chosen to use others software under restrictive
licenses because I want to get my job done and not have to re-invent
their piece of the pie. You call it questionable practice, I call it
programmers all trying to make a living...
> > I may have put in a file in the bound app that is not available
> > in source so that I can tell if a bound app was bound by me, or by
> > someone with the source. Beleive it or not, that last saved me in
> > another programming environment where my customer decided to modify my
> > program, compile it and then get me to troubleshoot the problems they
> > created.
>
> Wow! A small utility to compare files was not enough? It should, as long as
> there is some official release. And a commercial product needs to have a
> factual definition to qualify as such. Just compare and see. Checksums, or any
>
> flavor of it, are good protection too, even when exposed, because fooling a
> few of them simultaneously is a lot of work.
> I'm not against distributing binaries, but not without some access to sources.
>
> There may be NDAs on such accesses for example.
Your definition of commercial seems to be shrink wrap only. I have
produced only custom "for hire" software which is commercial in that I
make money writing it. I provide the source either because that is part
of our agreement, or because I want to protect my customers so if I
drop off the face of the planet, they are not left holding the bag. Yes
a compare utility or checksum utility etc. would have done the same thing,
but are you so blinded by your dislike for binding software that you won't
accept inovation?
You say your not against distributing binaries, yet you slam the very
feature of the language that would give me the ability to distribute
binaries. I WANT the flexibility that binding gives me, even though I
distribute source.
>
> > They even went so far as to alter the date and time on the
> > compiled code to be the same as what I distro'd. It wasn't until I invoked
> > an "easter egg" function which proved that the distro was not mine that
> > the customer had to come clean that they had modified it and therefore I
> > would get paid to troubleshoot it because the customer no longer had a leg
> > to stand on that it was a bug in MY code.
>
> The problem does exist, but the recipe applied is not a cure for that problem.
>
> See above.
OK, your opinion is the recipe I applied to this problem is not a cure
for the problem. It sure cured the problem for me, I got paid to fix the
problems the customer introduced to my application. Seemed to have cured
the problem for me.
Jim
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