Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
What the hell is OpenCandy?
Eóin:
I should be able to compile an exact copy and when you toss in the OC dll, that isn't possible. I should also be able to change any of it any way I see fit and redistribute those changes, and if I am not allowed to change and redistribute the OC dll, then it has no business being placed on my system, without that right, along with an open source application.
-app103 (March 31, 2011, 09:20 PM)
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No, not in the slightest do you have that automatic right. Only if the developers wants to let you do that then you should be allowed to and not all OS licenses do grant that right. GPL developers tend to want to allow to that, but even the GPL is very clear that the license doesn't extend to other software bundled with the GPL'd application.
mouser:
App I have to disagree with you on the point about the installer needing to be open source for an open source project.
It would of course make sense that someone philosophically drawn to the open source movement would want an open source installer, but i don't see any reason anyone distributing their open source software should have to avoid using a closed source installer or shouldn't be able to show advertisements during their installer setup, etc. if that's what they want to do.
wraith808:
But it doesn't *install* the dll.
-wraith808 (March 31, 2011, 08:55 PM)
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What is the purpose of an installer? I thought the purpose was to install software. And software consists of many types of files, not just .exe executables.
If one of my applications comes with xml and wav files, I am not going to argue that they are not "installed" with my application...they are.
The big issue with the OC .dll being installed along with open source software is that it is compiled code in which the source is not available.
-app103 (March 31, 2011, 09:20 PM)
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But the dll isn't *left* on your machine. It is to facilitate the installation. That's the same as saying that NSIS is installed on your machine just because certain supporting dlls have to be extracted to be loaded into memory. That is *not* installation. It assists in installation of the requested software.
mouser:
Whether the dll is left as part of the installer/uninstaller or not, i don't see the problem.
Now if using the installer permanently put some background process that was running even after you installed your program of choice, that would be a completely different matter and i would be up in arms, but otherwise this seems much ado about nothing to me.
Eóin:
As much as I tend to defend OC (for some reason) I do think the term 'installation' is confusing both apps and 40hz's real points.
The issue is that even if you run the installer and say no to everything, at some stage the OC DLL gets loaded and executed. So if you are of the opinion that you don't trust OC, then there is just no way you can install the original application.
This is the no opt-out issue, you can't opt out of OC getting to run on your PC and doing whatever it does, benign though that may be.
To me it's a non issue, I don't know the authors of most of the software on my PC, and for none of the opensource programs did I go and compile the code myself, or even glance over it, so I'm already placing a great deal of trust in complete strangers.
Personally, if anything OC have earned my trust from what I've read in this thread, so if a DLL wants to run I don't really care.
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