Recent Posts

2651

General Software Discussion / Re: Raster to Vector imaging software

« Last post by app103 on August 19, 2010, 05:38 PM »

I just tried this out on an image that I need a vector of, and the results were so horrible that I didn't even bother to save it. I am not sure if the software or my image is to blame, so your mileage may vary.

It would have been really nice if this had worked out for me. Looks like I am going to have to do it the hard way and recreate the image from scratch, as a vector this time.

2652

Living Room / Re: I'm ready for the TV revolution to hit!

« Last post by app103 on August 19, 2010, 12:53 PM »

I think you are either forgetting something or are unaware of it...the purpose of television programming.

You assume it exists to inform and/or entertain you. Not quite true. The programs exist to draw you in and control you by keeping you seated so they can show you advertisements. Advertising is the purpose of TV. If the networks could show nothing but advertising 24/7 and make as much money, they would. But you wouldn't sit and watch, so they have to trick you somehow to get you to comply with their wishes, which is why there are programs that you enjoy. It's how they keep you seated for the commercials and how they keep you coming back for more ads.

And while you may believe you are paying a bill to view those networks, you are actually paying for the delivery service provided by your cable, phone, or dish company and not the actual stations they are delivering to you (unless it is a pay network like HBO or Showtime, which are an additional fee)

They do not want you to be in control of the viewing experience. That would mean less profits for them. The rates they charge advertisers are based on the popularity of the programs, the time slot in which they are shown, and the length of the advertising slot in which it will be inserted.

The only time you are allowed to have control over your viewing experience is when you are willing to pay extra for it. And the more control you want, the more you can expect to pay, if they decide to give you what you want.

Think about it...

Why would any network pay so much money for the production of any program, or the right to air a program, if they were not making so much more from the advertising shown during that program? You are just a set of ad watching eyeballs to them. Nothing more.

2653

Living Room / Re: Board Game Review Site Roundup

« Last post by app103 on August 18, 2010, 01:03 PM »

I have found some great reviews on Funagain Games. (Tom Vassel was a contributor till the end of 2008)

The site also gives away $100 game grants to schools, libraries, community organizations, game groups, and US military personnel deployed overseas.

2654

Living Room / Re: ultimate insult from fraudulent ebay seller tries to sell me iPhone 4

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 06:25 PM »

@app103 -- That is extremely wonky. Have you tried calling PayPal? They actually do answer the phone.

-Renegade (August 16, 2010, 05:40 PM)

No, I haven't actually called them (I hate phones) but the donor did during this "dispute" and got nowhere with them.

2655

Living Room / Re: ultimate insult from fraudulent ebay seller tries to sell me iPhone 4

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 04:04 PM »

app, don't know what to say. PayPal has always resolved things sensibly for me - so i can't really complain. it does sounds odd that you can't "donate" what are all the DC transactions classed as. maybe mouser can enlighten us more.

-nudone (August 16, 2010, 03:31 PM)

It's not every donation that is getting mislabeled this way. And so far none of the DC transactions to me have had this problem. But it is something that makes me very nervous when I cash out credits now, since the penalty fee paypal charged me was based on the amount sent to me, and it could have been a lot more if the original donation was bigger.

I lost $1.28 because some kind person tried to donate $25.00  to me. They got their $25.00 back in full, paypal made $1.28 because they kept the money they made from taking their cut of the initial transaction, and then rather than refunding that fee from their pocket, they took it out of mine. Otherwise the donor would have only got 23.72 back. I ended up with a smaller balance and a warning when it was all over. Something wrong with that...seriously wrong.

2656

Living Room / Re: How to manage large clipart collections?

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 01:27 PM »

Extensis Portfolio is worth every penny of its $99.95 price tag (single user edition).

-app103 (August 16, 2010, 12:20 AM)

I make it $199.95 for the full version with the $99.95 being for the upgrade. And prices twice as high in the UK (and nearly that in Euroland). Decent product, but definitely at the pricey end.

-Dormouse (August 16, 2010, 01:14 PM)

Yes, your are right. My mistake. I have edited my original post with the correct price.

I agree that it is pricey, but it's a buy it once thing as far as I am concerned, and I'd only consider upgrading it if it didn't want to run on whatever my current OS was, at some point down the line or they offered me support for some file type I absolutely had to have thumbnails for that the current version didn't offer. Since neither of those is likely to happen any time soon (if at all) it is likely that I will never upgrade mine.

Plus, I do create artwork of my own, and at some time in the future I will have enough of my own work to create and sell disks of my art, cataloged, with a database, and a copy of the free redistributable viewer application. This will allow the software to pay for itself.

2657

Living Room / Re: ultimate insult from fraudulent ebay seller tries to sell me iPhone 4

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 01:09 PM »

There is something really screwy going on at paypal lately.

Recently, someone I know clicked the donate button on my website and donated $25 to me. Paypal immediately flagged it (less than 60 seconds after he made the donation) and asked me to provide info as to where I had shipped the goods he had purchased.

When I explained that this was not a buyer/seller transaction and that it was a donation made through a paypal donate button on my site, and that there were no goods involved, so nothing to be shipped, that the software is there on my site and a user can download it free of charge, use it as much as they want, and donate if they feel like supporting its development...and then the donor himself called paypal and gave them hell about the whole thing for not letting me have the money he donated to me, the end result was that paypal never listened to what either of us had to say, refunded the money to the donor, and punished me with an additional fee for the whole mistake, telling me in the future not to sell goods to people without obtaining a shipping address. I have not been able to get this issue resolved and they continue to occasionally record transactions made through my donate button as purchases for goods that need to be shipped, rather than as donations.

2658

Living Room / Re: How to manage large clipart collections?

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 12:30 PM »

can I move all my clipart files to a separate hard drive, and use Extensis to create a thumbnail gallery or contact sheet that is stored on my main drive?  Meaning, i don't want it reading the thumbnails live every time I want to browse them.  I want a static thumbnail gallery always available for quick browsing.  I should probably play around with it before peppering you with preemptive questions...

-superboyac (August 16, 2010, 12:10 PM)

Yes! You can store the databases anywhere you want. In fact, because the thumbnails are stored in the database and it doesn't even need access to the originals once they have been cataloged, you could export the collections, burn them to disk, and keep a copy of the databases from the disks on your hard drive and just insert the disks when you need access to the original full sized images. (it will tell you to insert the disk)

I discovered this software through a stock photo collection I purchased about 10 years ago, containing about 7000 images. I copied the database from the disk to my hard drive, and I can browse and search it without the disk being in the drive. If I try to access the originals from the database, it tells me to insert the disk where the originals are located. Unfortunately, the database on that disk is locked and password protected by the company that created it, to prevent adding files or editing the file locations, otherwise I'd copy the images to my hard drive too, and just repair the database to point to the new location.

2659

Living Room / Re: How to manage large clipart collections?

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 12:04 PM »

I have no blu-ray experience and I don't even own any hardware for burning or reading it. It is something I have avoided because of cost. Even at $30 for 15 disks ($0.08 per gig), it's still too expensive for me. I can get 100 DVD's for $20 or less (about $0.04 per gig).

2660

Living Room / Re: How to manage large clipart collections?

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 11:27 AM »

Ummm...you might have misunderstood...it isn't for cataloging what is already burned to disk. It is for cataloging and then using their export function to create packages to burn to disk. Catalog first and then burn.

I would probably copy the disks you have to the hard drive, catalog them, export it and reburn it so you have a database on the disk linked to the photos on the disk. Then you can go ahead and delete the copy on your hard drive if you want.

You can make as many databases as you want, so if you feel like creating one just for the family photos, all your desktop wallpapers, sound effect wav files, etc. that works too. In fact, I have about 4G of photos taken by my daughter that we need to sit down and catalog together. File names are all default camera assigned names, folders only are date stamped. (that's going to be a lot of work!)

The thumbnails are stored in the database file and not loose on your hard drive, so it won't make a whole bunch of clutter mixed in with your original images.

If you have any troubles with figuring out how to use the software or how to do something in particular with it, just send me a private message and I'll try to explain it.

2661

Living Room / Re: How to manage large clipart collections?

« Last post by app103 on August 16, 2010, 12:20 AM »

I am a digital packrat and I collect a lot of the same type of files you do...tons of clipart, stock photos, vectors, icons, etc.

Extensis Portfolio is worth every penny of its $199.95 price tag (single user edition). This is software made for the pros and there are multi-user and server versions of it that are quite expensive that big companies use. It's powerful, but not bloated like Adobe products.

If you catalog everything as you acquire it, it's so much easier to deal with. And you said you wanted to burn it to DVD. Extensis makes that easy by collecting, organizing, and packaging the photos and including a copy of the database, linked to the full size images that will be on each disk.

You can include so much info for each image and assign as many keywords as you wish. And it's pretty speedy once the images have been cataloged. It creates the thumbnails or extracts them from the original (if they exist) and they become part of the database. It doesn't have to go find the original file and create a new thumbnail each time you browse or search. Browsing through 1000's of files in Portfolio is faster than waiting for Explorer to render thumbnails for a large folder full of images.

And it will make thumbnails for a lot of image, document, and audio/video formats, including AI, EPS, and a lot of RAW formats. But you aren't limited to that. You can literally catalog anything with it.

I am currently using it to collect, catalog, and organize a ton of free, public domain, and CC licensed stock photos for a friend's project, assigning keywords as I go along. When I am finished, I'll export the whole thing for burning to disk, and it will include a freeware redistributable application for viewing and searching the database. (this is provided with the software)

Screenshot:



I have the photos organized in folders according to what site they came from. In each folder I have placed a text file with the license info for use of the images. The software watches the folders for new images, and will add them to the database when I manually sync the folders (I have it set up this way to make assigning keywords easier, so I don't miss any)

If you have been as much of a maniac about renaming files and organizing them with descriptive folder names, as you said, the software can automatically assign keywords based on file and folder names to make the job much easier on you. And it's pretty customizable, too, with an assortment of different view styles and will order the view based on a ton of different information.

2662

Living Room / Re: Some initial reflections on using an ebook reader

« Last post by app103 on August 15, 2010, 02:40 PM »

A lot of what mouser said is how I feel about reading books on my old Pocket PC. It's great for novels, but not too good for looking up stuff in reference books. There can be some issues with formatting in older and poorly made PDF files, which I spoke about here.

If you can find an internet service provider that still offers service for pocket pcs (you'll need to buy the specific modem they tell you to), or you really don't need an internet connection for surfing the web, or you can be content to only having wifi access with a card that's sold separately, buying a used pocket pc might make sense, since it's cheaper than a smart phone or a dedicated ebook reader. A lot of people went and got themselves smart phones or ebook readers and decided they don't want or need their old pocket pc any more and are selling them dirt cheap.

So if you haven't bit the bullet and went the smart phone route and never bought an ebook reader and you want a cheaper device to see if you'd even like this kind of stuff, that's the way I'd go. It's a good stepping stone. Yes, the screen is smaller than an ebook reader, but not as small as most phones. You can install games and other software on it, there is plenty of freeware available, and it comes with a handful of useful apps, pre-installed (calculator, PIM, todo list, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Paint, Windows Media Player, MS Reader).

Some warnings: Make sure the one you buy isn't so old that it requires an older version of ActiveSync, because the older versions will not run on Vista/Win7. (I would recommend a more recent iPaq if you can get one)

Some of them you can upgrade the OS, some of them you can't. Research the model you are thinking of buying very thoroughly (and the OS it runs).

Stay away from any that have an SH3 CPU...it's harder to get software that runs on that.

I prefer .lit format for ebooks, when I can get them, but if I have no other choice but plain text (as with most of the books offered through Project Gutenberg) then I convert the .txt files to .lit with the free version of ReaderWorks.

2663

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: New program: ActiveHotkeys (freeware)

« Last post by app103 on August 14, 2010, 04:39 PM »

Mentioned on gHacks

http://www.ghacks.ne...hortcuts-in-windows/

2664

Living Room / Re: Pubctuation display problem

« Last post by app103 on August 14, 2010, 09:59 AM »

My post was directed at anyone that has a problem. The first thing to check is if you can display all the characters first. Once you know you can, then it's a matter of figuring out why they aren't showing.

If you don't know if you can, then this is a good way to find out.

2665

Living Room / Re: Pubctuation display problem

« Last post by app103 on August 14, 2010, 09:41 AM »

Microsoft has a page about installing language support, which should be your first stop: http://www.microsoft...user/xpintlsupp.mspx

And if that doesn't fix it, this page might help with configuring your system and browser properly: http://unicode.org/h...isplay_problems.html

And then take a look on the table on this page. Pay particular attention to what you see in the column marked "in own script" If you can't see the characters as they should be, go to the last column and look for a little black box to download the font to make it work. Install those fonts, then go back to the page and check again.

2666

Living Room / Re: On the Web: Google net neutrality stance gives Net’s future to corporations

« Last post by app103 on August 14, 2010, 12:28 AM »

Google's response convinces me even more that we are finished

So, for example, broadband providers could offer a special gaming channel, or a more secure banking service, or a home health monitoring capability – so long as such offerings are separate and apart from the public Internet

(Emphasis mine)
 

My reaction is:

WHAT THE....?

http://googlepublicp...work-neutrality.html

-rgdot (August 12, 2010, 02:39 PM)

A bunch of AOLs? 

2667

Living Room / Re: Micropayments to DonationCoder could be possible through new PayPal service

« Last post by app103 on August 13, 2010, 06:53 PM »

If they make this really easy to do, this could be huge for bloggers and potentially pay better than pay-per-click ads.

2668

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Windows countdown timer

« Last post by app103 on August 13, 2010, 11:40 AM »

So I guess right now it's modular, but will be extensible in the next version

-jaden (August 13, 2010, 11:38 AM)

Exactly. Right now the items on the menu are hard coded to the tools I included with it, and nothing more (or less).

2669

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Windows countdown timer

« Last post by app103 on August 13, 2010, 11:22 AM »

Thanks nudone, I appreciate it.

@app103 I used DClock and liked how extensible you'd made it, but it never occurred to me to have it use SnapTimer as another extension.  Great idea!

-jaden (August 13, 2010, 11:17 AM)

Well, you can't yet, because it won't show on the menu til I rewrite it. But in the next version you'll be able to do it.

2670

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Windows countdown timer

« Last post by app103 on August 13, 2010, 10:01 AM »

This is actually quite nice.

When I do my next version of DClock, I plan on keeping the same modular design with it, enhancing it to dynamically load extra tools to the popup menu (rather than hard coded to only be able to launch what I have included).

The stopwatch and timer utilities that I currently include with it were things I had planned to rewrite, but with the dynamic menus, I won't have to. I can just include a link on my app's page and recommend yours, which users will be able to just drop in the tools folder and launch it from the clock's menu.

This is great!

2671

Circle Dock / Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately

« Last post by app103 on August 12, 2010, 04:33 PM »

$150 a month for a stable connection for what? To host the Circle Dock site? I don't remember mouser charging you a dime for hosting. I remember him providing that for free.

You are crying that the users are not covering your monthly internet bill? They don't cover mine either, and mine is quite cheap and unstable. I am lucky if they cover the cost of renewing my domain names each year.

Today I received my first donation in months. And it was a whopper sized one, too...a whole $10.

Put that with the rest of the donations I received this year, none of which had anything to do with my software, and I am only about $70 short of the amount I need to renew my 4 domain names at the end of next month. Wait, make that $71, since I did donate to you, along with an explanation of why I gave you the amount I did. It's the same amount I have given plenty of others, along with the same reason. And you know what I said is 100% true.

Just so you're aware, your donation - if I were to receive it - would pay for one-fifth of one day's Internet connection charges - that's right, I have to pay the equivalent of $150 per month for a stable connection here.

I didn't give you enough? You want more from me? You want one of the domain names that I won't be able to afford to renew? Don't make me feel bad for giving you anything at all.

And I did ask sarge about the source back in May. That was when I got the "Markham decided that nobody can have it because of the Chinese" excuse. It has been bugging me ever since, and yes, bugging me more after reading your recent announcement.

I am a digital packrat and an archivist. Anyone that knows me well knows I collect stuff most people do not. I have a museum of forgotten software on my hard drive, Tons of stuff you probably never heard of and versions that are near impossible to find. I have one of the largest repositories of 3rd party code related to the WinMX network, including an MXchat Delphi component that nobody else but the developer and myself has a copy of (and I am not even sure if she has a copy any more). I have the tweet histories of the 100 most popular twitter users in CSV, along with screenshots of their profiles, a copy of the background file, and a copy of their avatar, enough to rebuild an important part of twitter for posterity should it ever disappear. Why do I collect this stuff? Because some day someone might need it or have a good use for it, even if I never will.

I didn't ask for the source because I want to make money off it. I didn't ask for the source because I want to stir up trouble. I asked for it because I want to add it to that collection before you disappear off into payware land with the code for what should be an open source project. And if bringing up the topic is stirring up trouble, it's only because you violated the GPL and didn't provide it to everyone that downloaded it. You even went so far as contacting a lawyer to discuss your chances of getting away with violating the GPL.

Don't tell me you didn't know it was a GPL project. And don't tell me that you didn't know that open source means you have to provide the source. You knew all along, and you knew that withholding the source was wrong. How could you not?

I would suggest to you that you didn't give its absence a second thought until you read of the new license provisions this week and you're now doing so to stir-up trouble and make me - and the Sarge - to be the bad guys here. It won't work.

-Markham (August 12, 2010, 02:18 PM)

Sarge is not the bad guy here. You are. And I am not trying to make you the bad guy. You succeeded in doing that yourself. And for as long as I do not have the source that I am entitled to, under a GPL compatible license, you will continue to be the bad guy in my mind, in the minds of anyone that believes in open source, and in the minds of anyone that has any respect for the original wishes of Eric Wong who released his source under a GPL license. And if I never get the source then you will be the bad guy forever. It does work. You make it work.




Clarification: When I said this year's donations didn't cover the cost of my domain names, I was not stating that I could not afford to renew them. I have enough to cover it, because I am smart enough not to spend all my donation credits foolishly, and I keep a reserve amount in there for situations like this. Combined with the generosity of a few that read this post, I have now received enough this year to cover it. Do not worry, the renewals are not a problem. Thank you very much. 

2672

Circle Dock / Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately

« Last post by app103 on August 12, 2010, 11:40 AM »

But even so (since a GPL licensed product incorporating his code has already been released) his contributed code (up to that point) is also bound by the terms of the GPL - which means there is nothing that can be done to anybody who avails themselves of sharing/selling/distributing either the source or the binaries already in their possession. Such activities are specifically allowed under the terms of the GPL - which cannot be revoked after the fact.
[/li][/list]

-40hz (August 12, 2010, 09:26 AM)

And that is where the problem is. He changed the license to Ms-PL and offered no source code to anyone that downloaded the binaries, which still contain Eric's GPL licensed code. Even if it's only very little code, it's still in there.

I downloaded it in May, it is supposed to be open source, and I still do not have a copy of the source. Instead of the source I got excuses about the Chinese violating the GPL and that's why I can't have a copy.

What is your plan with the source code if secured? Distribute it?

-lotusrootstarch (August 12, 2010, 09:48 AM)

Possibly, possibly not. Maybe I'll pass it along to someone else that would be willing to continue development on it and keep it free and open source. Maybe I'll pass it on to someone that might learn something from the code. Maybe I'll learn something from it. Maybe I'll make some changes for my own use and never distribute it....or distribute it with the source. Maybe I'll give a copy to Eric if he ever turns back up. Maybe it will just sit on my hard drive till I die of old age.  It doesn't matter what I do with the code once I have it, as long as what I do complies with the GPL. I would not expect Markham to live up to the license and then not do the same myself.

May I ask what is the point of this insistence on forcing a generous coder, who has already given so much for free to so many people at large, to give up the source code of his IP, to potentially give up this project to the many out there who are ever-ready to abuse it, to kiss good-bye to a personal pride, to relinquish a retirement hobby, to leave out a source of income, so that FSF can be satisfied with the "compliance"?

-lotusrootstarch (August 12, 2010, 09:48 AM)

Markham knew it was a GPL licensed project when he got involved with it. Nobody forced him to contribute a single line of code. He did that of his own free will, knowing he would have to supply the source. And now he wants to play victim when someone wants him to comply with the GPL and provide the source that they are entitled to.

This isn't about satisfying the FSF, it's about satisfying the wishes of the original developer, and the users, in which I am one of them. It's about having some integrity, which Markham seems to have decided to compromise for the sake of money. The support from this community isn't good enough for him. The money donated by members that don't even use CD isn't good enough for him. He really doesn't appreciate the donations of anyone that gave him money to support the project but never used it, and as someone that has supported many projects for things I do not use, I find that kind of insulting.

We responded to his generosity with our own generosity, but while we were willing to give all we could because we appreciated his contributions, he held back...held back one thing he should have been giving every step along the way...the source. He is no better than the Chinese that released closed source versions for profit. There really is no difference between himself and them, as long as one single line of GPL code is in it.

And finally, if he's working so hard on this, all by himself, it could be because he won't allow anyone else to contribute. How can they if they can't even get a copy of the source to this open source project?

And nobody knows better than me how hard it is to develop software and give it away, never receiving enough back to be able to adequately continue development. Even when my computer died and I couldn't afford to fix or replace it, and was forced to use a 12 yr old WinME machine with 64mb RAM on 33.6k dialup as my only computer for most of 2008, using an 9 yr old outdated IDE that my machine didn't even meet the min specs required to run it, trying to support OS versions I couldn't run or test on, with my stomach grumbling because I could barely afford food. Did I get bitter? Did I threaten to turn all my software into payware? Maybe privately I thought about it, maybe among friends I may have even mentioned it, but despite feeling like my situation was so hopeless that I wanted to GPL all my projects, shut down my pc and just walk away for good, I never told my users that. I may have given less as a developer during that time, but I still gave all that I could.

I am grateful to mouser, DC and the entire community, whole heatedly, because without their support, I would not have made it though that difficult time, would not have a website today, and would still be using that outdated IDE. My daughter bought me a beautiful Dell as a gift and I received as a gift from mouser and DC a copy of BDS 2006 leftover from the C++ Builder contest. It's not the latest and greatest but it's a whole lot better than the Delphi 6 I had. This is something I could never have afforded in a million years. And this year's NANY project will be my first developed entirely with that IDE.

I have seen how supportive this community can be when you let them. They will go out of their way to do whatever they can to help. Help was offered to Markham in many ways. Lots of helpful suggestions from putting the project on Sourceforge, to obtaining mirrors for hosting the binaries. Nobody had anything against him removing the GPL code and going shareware. I don't have anything against him doing that. But I still believe that the current version with the GPL code in it should have had the source available all along, and I'd still like a copy of that source.

2673

Living Room / Re: Invalid Cast: Cool Member Blog

« Last post by app103 on August 12, 2010, 09:41 AM »

incidentally i couldn't find Martin's IDE3 on the website.

-lanux128 (August 12, 2010, 09:27 AM)

He hasn't added the portfolio section yet. He's still working on it. IDE3 will be there when he's finished.

2674

Circle Dock / Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately

« Last post by app103 on August 12, 2010, 08:19 AM »

What happened is partly my fault (and I am not apologizing for it). I was the one that brought the whole issue to Gothic's attention in a private conversation on IRC.

Since he knows more about the GPL than anyone I know, I wanted to ask him a few questions.

I had downloaded and installed CD a few months ago in order to contribute artwork to the project (see here, here, here, and a work in progress here), and at the time that I originally downloaded it, I looked for the source on the site and could not find it. I was bothered by this because I knew the original version by Eric was GPL licensed. I also noticed that Markham had changed the license to something else I was unfamiliar with.

I even asked Sarge, and was given some story about the Chinese as to why I couldn't have a copy of the source.

It wasn't until I did some more digging after the post about the proposed license changes for v2, that I discovered that the change of license Markham made wasn't compatible with Eric's original GPL license.

This was one of the reasons why I warned him and told him to be careful what he does, or CD could come to an end.

Markham already made one mistake by adding to a GPL project and releasing his versions under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), which is listed as incompatible with the GPL
 
. That means Markham's license is incompatible with Eric's license, and by all rights, Markham shouldn't have the right to use Eric's GPL'd code in his version of CD.

Please proceed very carefully, or you could put the entire project in jeopardy, and then there will be no more CD for anyone, except for Eric's original version.

According to the GPL, if you are not willing to give the source to those that are entitled to it (as a person that downloaded it and installed it, I am entitled to it) then you can't offer the binaries. And if for some reason you can't offer the source because of incompatible licensing issues, you can't offer the program at all.

Gothic confirmed that everything I knew about the GPL was true.

After the announcement that CD was going closed source, and that you had planned on taking down your version and only offering Eric's version on the site, I went back to the site one more time and carefully combed every page looking for the source to v1.5.6, which I am entitled to, before you changed the site, ran off, and it was gone for good. I still could not find it. The more I read from you in this thread, the more I came to realize that you had no intention of honoring Eric's license and allowing those that were entitled to a copy of the source for v1.5.6, to have it.

Now personally, I would rather have had mouser and Gothic talk to you with the end result being that you would comply with the GPL and release the source to the current version under a GPL compatible license, so that those that were entitled to it (myself and anyone that had downloaded the binary) would have access to that source.

I am sorry if you have issues with the Chinese taking the source and modifying it and releasing it as closed source payware, but I had not done that and I had no intentions of doing that. I should not have my right to the source of an open source application denied because you have issues with someone else.

You don't correct a wrong done by someone else by committing an even bigger one yourself. It wasn't right of you to stop the Chinese from violating the GPL by violating the GPL yourself, punishing me and everyone else that downloaded CD in the process.

Now, that being said, I'd still like have a copy of the source to v1.5.6, that I am entitled to, under a GPL compatible license. If you are so worried about honoring Eric's legacy as you have stated so many times before, then do the right thing and honor his wishes and comply with the license of his code.

As I said before:

And if you don't like the GPL license, your only alternative is to not contribute to a GPL project.

But once you contribute and release a binary, you have to release the source under a GPL compatible license.

If you think you are the victim here, then consider the fact that what happened only happened because you victimized every CD user, first, the moment you changed the license to Ms-PL and stopped offering the source along with your binaries to all who downloaded CD.

2675

Living Room / Invalid Cast: Cool Member Blog

« Last post by app103 on August 11, 2010, 11:48 PM »

DC member Martin has a really nice blog about his thoughts, observations and findings from working within the software development industry.

An excerpt from his most recent post, Was Dave a Genius?:

Every company you work for always seems to have a horror story about something that happened before your arrival. Things like current production old legacy systems that used mode="SQLServer"  for session state and then stored a ton of database reads in session to cache them.

The one I remember is the story of Dave, who had recently discovered the power of document.write and took it a little too far. Why have the server do all the work when the client can do it instead? Dave decided to have the server response.write a metric ton of document.write statements which would then produce the page at runtime in the browser. It’s possible he may have been thinking too hard about what David Wheeler said about indirection.

Back when JavaScript in the browser made people as nervous as a small nun at a penguin shooting, this story was pretty funny. But with the advances of in-browser JavaScript since the days of DHTML and the widespread popularity of libraries like jQuery, perhaps (and I may be giving him too much credit here) Dave was just ahead of his time.

http://www.invalidcast.com/