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Last post Author Topic: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately  (Read 54786 times)

Markham

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Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« on: August 11, 2010, 11:08 AM »
Sometime on Tuesday night, my time, mouser had a telephone conversation with his server administrator regarding the availability of Circle Dock's executable files hosted by DonationCoder and he instructed his administrator to remove those files. At the same time, he amened my pinned message informing people of the latest version and providing the download links to read "All downloads suspended until further notice". However, his server administrator obviously couldn't be bothered to check which of the various files stored on the dcmembers site were publicly available or were related to the current release of Circle Dock and which files were not. He simply scrubbed my entire space clean, removing ALL files in the process.

Not only did he remove the current (1.5.6) 32-bit and 64-bit executables, he also removed the only backup copy of the source code, some private files pertinent only to "Team Circle Dock", but also two programs that I had recently written and made freely available - "CleanDesktop" and "WallpaperChanger". He also deleted the "live help" section which contains the very latest help and is automatically loaded by a constituent of Circle Dock. These, like almost all the files deleted, were my original work and my sole copyright.

Needless to say I was only informed AFTER THE EVENT. It is fortunate that both gentlemen concerned are not UK-based for if they were, I would be filing a complaint with the Police under the Computer Misuse Act, 1998.

To add insult to injury, he concludes his message to me with the following words "it's not such a horrible thing if the downloads are down for a week."

There is no excuse for way mouser or his server administrator have behaved. Had they requested me to remove those files, I would have done so immediately. Instead they have acted in a rude and overbearing manner and, I believe, it was a thinly veiled attempt to get me to continue hemorrhaging financially by simply making all future versions open source - but so long as they're not hosted by DonationCoder (they wanted the downloads off their servers, remember) - in his words "if you do decide to release the source code for all of your additions and modifications to circle dock, it would be a joyous cause for celebration and would be a happy outcome for dc users." Yes, at my expense.

I've resigned as a moderator of this site as I wish to have no further part in an operation that encourages you one minute and then pulls the rug from beneath you. I can not and will not remain a member of a site such as this which arbitrarily and without warning deletes many months of work. I've also asked/told mouser to return all $192.79 which has been donated to me since September of last year to those who so kindly donated. If you are one of those, please don't think I'm ungrateful but I don't think it is at all appropriate for me to receive those credits under the circumstances. And please, do make sure he returns the money to you - as far as I am concerned neither he nor this site should benefit from unrepaid donations.

There are some good people on this site and many of them have made themselves known in this corner of DonationCoder only quite recently and I wish to thank all of you for your input into recent threads regarding the GPL and the future of the Circle Dock program. Thank you one and all and goodbye.




Mark

Eóin

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2010, 11:10 AM »
Wow

Stoic Joker

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2010, 11:38 AM »
Wow
Yeah - Damn - Did not see that one coming.

mouser

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2010, 11:43 AM »
Not only did he remove the current (1.5.6) 32-bit and 64-bit executables, he also removed the only backup copy of the source code, some private files pertinent only to "Team Circle Dock", but also two programs that I had recently written and made freely available - "CleanDesktop" and "WallpaperChanger". He also deleted the "live help" section which contains the very latest help and is automatically loaded by a constituent of Circle Dock. These, like almost all the files deleted, were my original work and my sole copyright.

if this happened it was not on purpose -- and there should be backups of all the files which will be made available to you if they weren't just moved someplace.

the intention was not to hurt anyone.. when i talked to john (aka gothic, the dc server admin) he was extremely troubled that we had been hosting this circledock executable that had been in violation of the gpl for such a long time.  the point he made to me, which is what ultimately convinced me that i should give him the go ahead to remove that one exectuable from downloading, was simply that: eric wong went to the trouble of releasing his program as GPL, and that if dc was to be true to eric's wishes and doesn't want to be seen as hostile to open source movement, we shouldn't be hosting the executable that wasn't released with source code.

i told him to remove the exe and contacted markham and sgtevmckay immediately to let them know that the exe was now offline.

i feel horrible that this circle dock thing has become such a giant ordeal for everyone involved.  i don't assign any bad motivations to anyone.

and i blame myself for not spotting early on when markham just started submitting improved versions of CD that to comply with eric's CircleDock GPL license, the source code for the new versions should have been posted all along the way.  by the time the issue came to a head, i think markham had done so much coding and invested so much time and made so many plans that it was just out of control.

i don't know what else to do though -- circle dock is not the property of DC in any way -- and we've not charged for it, sold it, asked anyone to pay for any hosting costs, or put any ads on the circle dock pages that are hosted on dc.  it was released as open source by eric wong as part of a dc contest, and then hosted on sourceforge and wikidot as well as other pages.  dc has tried to be a good friend to everyone involved in the program.

furthermore -- dc has always tried to be supportive of the idea of authors making some money off their work, and i've tried hard to help sgtevmckay and markham find a way to recoup some money for all of the time and effort they have put into improving circle dock -- and the userbase clearly shows how much they have improved the program, and made it into something that is much loved.  but the bottom line has to be that eric wong released his code as GPL because he wanted it to be that way, and we are just trying to comply with that when we made the decision that the binary shouldn't be hosted on dc without the commensurate source code, as required by the GPL.  none of their other files should have been touched -- like i said if they were, gothi[c] will pt them back.  i don't hold any ill feelings for anyone.  there are some hard lessons here and i'm not sure yet what they all are.

markham, i am sorry you feel wronged.  my only intention in this matter is to provide a home for the programmers and users here. and i believe in my heart i have tried hard to help you and sgtevmckay.  my only desire was to help you guys succeed in your efforts to build a better program, and to remain true to eric's original intentions.  i have always viewed CircleDock as a living example of the fun things that was nurtured and encouraged by the dc community.  i felt like it was a great example of the things that our members create.  and i feel terrible that it has now ended up causing you so much pain.  if i can do something to help make things better i will try.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2010, 12:04 PM by mouser »

mouser

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #4 on: August 11, 2010, 11:55 AM »
just to reiterate a few quick points:

your files hosted on the dc member server belong to you.  the only file that should have been deleted was the exe, and that was "deleted" only so that we would stop serving the download that everyone seems to agree is in violation of the GPL license eric chose.  if other files were deleted they shouldn't be and gothic will restore them.

i never intended to "add insult to injury" -- my note to you guys immediately sent as gothic was removing the files was intended to keep you from feeling like you had to panic and rush to make a decision about whether you wanted to open source the source code to comply with the license; i think i elaborated on that, and you are welcome to post the text of any and all messages i sent you guys.  the first time the dc website went down temporarily i went through a near heart-attack panic attack from it -- since then i have learned to not stress so much about it, and i tend to remind everyone who hasn't been through such things that it's not the end of the world to have files offline temporarily -- the world doesn't come to an end.  maybe it just didn't come across right.. because look i realize this does not help things, but honestly i think this whole circle dock episode has been blown up way beyond the circumstances and that you guys may be working yourselves up to make this a bigger deal than it has to be.  i keep saying that you guys should step back a bit and just try to get some perspective on all of this and figure out how you want to move forward.  dc has always, and will continue to be here to support you guys in what you decide to do -- just don't ask us to host files that violate the legal terms of the GPL that eric licensed his code under.

i don't impart any ill will towards markham and sgtevmckay -- i think most of this is just a frustration and unfamiliarity with open source and the moral/ethical/legal entailments.  part of the painfulness of this episode has to do with the fact that DC believes very much that authors should be able to ask for and get money to support their coding efforts.  the tragedy here is that we failed so far to figure out a way for that to happen and instead ended up with hurt feelings and people feeling we have treated them wrongly.  For that failure i take my share of the blame.  :(
« Last Edit: August 11, 2010, 12:05 PM by mouser »

sgtevmckay

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #5 on: August 11, 2010, 12:23 PM »
This is a heart breaking day  :(
For all of us.  :(

I am the one that placed the various notices and locked the various posts, in order to stop and protect DC.
It would have been inappropriate to continue those discussions, but I also wanted to make sure that any potential End User did not just get met with a blank 404 url without an explanation.
So in this I am also a party that must take blame.

Eric's code and downloads can still be obtained through Source forge and I will also be restoring the wikidot page as well, as soon as I can.
I will continue to support Eric Wong's Version, as I have done, but it will not be the same, and support for any existing versions of Markham's version will not be supported here, as it would be highly inappropriate.

Assuming I will be welcome as a a DC member
I will go through and prune the Circle Dock posts as soon as I can, with approval from Mouser and or Gothc

I would also like to place a call for coders, with a full explanation of what a coder/programmer would be getting into. Bottom line everything clearly so that any future programmers will know what they are getting into and what is expected.


I feel greatly responsible for this entire situation, and I make my apologies to not only Markham, but all of the DC Community  :-[

mouser

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #6 on: August 11, 2010, 12:28 PM »
Ok I talked to gothic -- he said he did delete a few extra files that he thought were CircleDock downloads.  He has now restored all the files he deleted except for the CircleDock setup programs.  if you find that other files are still missing please let me know.

In retrospect, given that the executables had been hosted for so long i probably should have just left them there for a bit longer and asked you to remove them on your own; it's not the first time i've done something thinking it wasn't a big deal and ended up offending someone. I'm sorry for what must have felt like a purposeful disregard of your privacy.  In the heat of the moment it seemed to me after reading the long thread about the gpl and talking to gothic, that the right thing to do was to immediately remove the exe and notify you guys and take it from there.  that was a judgement call that i made, and i may have been wrong in doing so.

mouser

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #7 on: August 11, 2010, 12:33 PM »
i think one lesson for all of us coders is to read source code licenses careful and make sure we understand the restrictions.  and if we are coding something, to take more care in choosing a license for our code.

and as dc members and admins, we need to do a better job of watching out for possible license issues BEFORE they get to the point where there is a problem.  i think the truth is that if in the very beginning someone how pointed out that according to the license, source code needed to be released with each new improvement of circledock, we never would have gotten to this point and none of this bad stuff would have happened.  our poor experience with such issues is partly to blame for this whole misunderstanding/dilema.

Eóin

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #8 on: August 11, 2010, 12:43 PM »
Has anyone tried to contact Eric and ask if he'd by happy to relicense the original code, possibly just to a select set of developers such as sgtevmckay and Markham, to allow the closed source derivative? Lots of code is dual licensed under a GPL and commercial license.


40hz

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #9 on: August 11, 2010, 12:54 PM »
It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but also not completely unexpected when emotions start running as high as they seem to be running for some members. At such times, it's all too easy to misinterpret the intentions and actions of others - and occasionally burn a few too many bridges in the wake of getting upset. Not that there's anything to say new bridges can't be built afterwards. But it does take time and  certain personal willingness to get things back to where they were before.    

I'm hoping that time will provide some perspective, clear up any misunderstandings, and mend those wounded feelings.
  
« Last Edit: August 11, 2010, 01:40 PM by 40hz »

f0dder

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #10 on: August 11, 2010, 12:57 PM »
One lesson I've (hopefully) learned: when in an upset state, don't make big decisions, and don't post stuff publicly. Take a few big steps bag and breathe deeply.
- carpe noctem

tomos

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #11 on: August 11, 2010, 01:05 PM »
In the heat of the moment it seemed to me after reading the long thread about the gpl and talking to gothic, that the right thing to do was to immediately remove the exe and notify you guys and take it from there.  that was a judgement call that i made, and i may have been wrong in doing so.

It does seem pretty [unintentionally] harsh to me to do that without prior notification - also in the context that it was being openly discussed - but you've explained the hows & whys & I hope that Markham reads them as they seem fair & honest to me.

[edit] * I added 'unintentionally' cause I know mouser & I know he didnt mean to offend in any way which as said is also clear from his posts [/edit]
Tom
« Last Edit: August 11, 2010, 01:43 PM by tomos »

40hz

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #12 on: August 11, 2010, 01:17 PM »
One lesson I've (hopefully) learned: when in an upset state, don't make big decisions, and don't post stuff publicly. Take a few big steps bag and breathe deeply.

+1 Big Time!

That was something I learned the hard way many years ago.

I totally wrecked a 15+ year friendship with one angry and ill considered e-mail that day.

That's one mistake I have no intention of ever repeating.

     

wraith808

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #13 on: August 11, 2010, 01:28 PM »
One lesson I've (hopefully) learned: when in an upset state, don't make big decisions, and don't post stuff publicly. Take a few big steps bag and breathe deeply.

+1 Big Time!

+1 from me also.  I find that when I feel compelled to respond, it's best not to, for that usually means it's my emotions driving me, rather than my reason.  Once I get to the point where I could or could not respond, then I'm usually in a better state of mind.  That doesn't always work... but it's been a good rule of thumb.

sgtevmckay

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #14 on: August 11, 2010, 02:07 PM »
Has anyone tried to contact Eric and ask if he'd by happy to relicense the original code, possibly just to a select set of developers such as sgtevmckay and Markham, to allow the closed source derivative? Lots of code is dual licensed under a GPL and commercial license.



I have been e-mailing, searching, and attempting to contact VideoInPicture for well over a year and a half.
At one time I was e-mailing monthly updates.
My search continues to this day. It has become a personal issue of pride.
there have only ever been 2 people I have been unable to finds and one of them is dead.

My search continues

lotusrootstarch

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #15 on: August 11, 2010, 02:24 PM »
LOL, this is seriously hilarious!

Mark may I say your stupidity and servility truly precedes you; I just gave up trying to understand why you are still getting bogged down with petty non-issues like these. Here's a guide for ya:

1. Get the f outta here and start somewhere else... commercially.
2. Start your own forum and support, unless you wanna be a disposable dog on a tether.
3. Do not associate your software, ever, with any kind of concept like "free" (as in freedom, beer or what not). Just f remove the GPL'd code and stop thinking about it, OK?
Get my apps in Android Market! Go droids go! :)


mouser

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #16 on: August 11, 2010, 02:26 PM »
let's try to remain positive and helpful here.

lotusrootstarch

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #17 on: August 11, 2010, 03:31 PM »
Aight, on a positive note, Mark, think of popularity ensued by huge bandwidth usage as a BLESSING, think about it:

1. Even a powerful dedicate server with 3TB of traffic allowance costs less than $200/month these days, that requires less than one copy of CircleDock a day sold at $9.95. If you go for a VPS (which is less powerful but more than enough for CD site), you need to sell less than one copy in every four days at the above price.

2. Advertising is surely another way to go to make your time and effort worth the while. I've been wondering how hard have you been trying to not make dollars from your CD site with this kind of traffic stats? I know I have a site with less than one tenth of visitors in comparison and site pays for itself $20/day 7 days a week with me having to visit th url once a month to see if it's still up and running.

 :-\ :-\
Get my apps in Android Market! Go droids go! :)


Archon of Fate

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #18 on: August 11, 2010, 07:10 PM »

I feel greatly responsible for this entire situation, and I make my apologies to not only Markham, but all of the DC Community  :-[


dont blame yourself for the situation... it is not your fault at all.
this seems to me like some misunderstanding, perhaps there is a way to salvage the situation...  :tellme:

I would also like to place a call for coders, with a full explanation of what a coder/programmer would be getting into. Bottom line everything clearly so that any future programmers will know what they are getting into and what is expected.

im not a big programmer but i might be able to contribute
« Last Edit: August 11, 2010, 07:15 PM by Archon of Fate »

Archon of Fate

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #19 on: August 11, 2010, 07:17 PM »
One lesson I've (hopefully) learned: when in an upset state, don't make big decisions, and don't post stuff publicly. Take a few big steps bag and breathe deeply.

well said  :)

sgtevmckay

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #20 on: August 12, 2010, 12:05 AM »
I have removed a couple of posts as they seemed overall counter productive to this entire situation.

Post restored. Thanks to mouser  :Thmbsup:
« Last Edit: August 12, 2010, 10:59 AM by sgtevmckay »

nosh

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #21 on: August 12, 2010, 03:37 AM »
I don't have much say here but $0.02:

I don't care for over-enthusiastic moderators going around censoring stuff.

The guy who made those posts may have made his point in a crude manner but it's the best advice I've seen you guys get. It's not easy swimming against the tide and it sucks that any form of dissent is immediately censored.

While you're at it, why don't you delete tomos's post (he did use the word 'harsh'), and this one too?

tomos

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #22 on: August 12, 2010, 03:54 AM »
I have removed a couple of posts as they seemed overall counter productive to this entire situation.

I didnt like some of the posts here, but re the ones you removed:
the first post started obnoxiously but both post had good advice for the OP, personally I think it's inappropriate to delete both of them. (Posts which are not spam have not been lightly deleted here at dc in the past - I'd hate to see it become a new style)
Tom

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #23 on: August 12, 2010, 04:39 AM »
I don't believe my posts would be as obnoxious and objectionable as the deletions of the files itself. IMHO it was a casual disregard of Mark's intellectual property that he chooses to share with his users, which gave Mark no earthly reason to come back and be part of this community. It was a slap in the face, period.

My bullet points in the deleted posts were concrete, actionable, no-nonsense advices I gave to the developer of the program. I was not talking to "dc users", "dc admins", "dc mods", "dc members", "dc community" -- but just to the developer himself. Those were the things that I believe Mark should consider if he's to further the program to benefit the most number of people out there -- by making it sustainable in the long-term.

sgtevmckay, what exactly give you the impression that you are the fully authorized mouth to speak on behalf of Mark and the project? There's nothing I could see from this thread that you made any attempt to speak for the benefits of Mark, to share his feelings, or to defend his actions from his perspective. Would you realize that, without Mark willing to devote himself to the program out of his own motivation, none of your reconciliation, apologies, or the combined dc-* will mean anything at all?

Sorry but sadly software dev is not furthered by subscribing to ideology, following the tide here, being a pacifist, etc. You've got to tend to the developer's hierarchy of needs.

Think about it before deleting my post.
Get my apps in Android Market! Go droids go! :)


Markham

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Re: Goodbye all, I'm out of here effective immediately
« Reply #24 on: August 12, 2010, 06:16 AM »
I hadn't intended to post here ever again, but I do feel obliged to comment on some of the replies.

Mouser says
i blame myself for not spotting early on when markham just started submitting improved versions of CD that to comply with eric's CircleDock GPL license, the source code for the new versions should have been posted all along the way.
First of all, I want to clear-up some misunderstandings here:
  • Eric Wong issued his last update, version 0.9.2 Alpha 8.2, at the end of September 2008. The last time he posted here, his SourceForge Project page and the Circle Dock wikidot site was around the 2nd week of October 2008 since when he has not returned to either place.
  • Over the course of the next year, the Sarge has made continuous attempts to contact him to no avail.
  • From investigations that the Sarge and I have conducted, we have learned that Eric Wong was attending a Canadian University and was suddenly recalled back to China at that time. It would appear that he was denied an Exit Permit to leave China and resume his studies in Canada; also, his internet access appears to be severely restricted: he has only accessed his YouTube page and that was within the last 6 months.
  • You should have been aware, because it was posted here, that, towards the end of last year, we had discovered that certain unscrupulous individuals had taken the source code published by Eric Wong as GPL and had simply recompiled it and were selling it as if it were their own creations. In view of this, the Sarge and I took the hard decision to restrict the availability of the source code.
  • Only one person has formally requested up to date source code, namely "DrWicked", and it was provided to him towards the end of January - and that was the source code to 1.0 which we released earlier that month.
  • In removing the files from his server, Mouser has inconvenienced not only new users but also all the current ones who've downloaded and installed since version 1,0 was released. A good number of the files removed were the "live help" system which is directly accessed by Circle Dock's help program. Comments like   "it's not such a horrible thing if the downloads are down for a week" are both untrue and weasel-words, in my opinion.
My second point is that the Sarge and I have taken every precaution to preserve Eric Wong's Intellectual Property Rights. Since taking over the project, I have had to rewrite very large parts of his original code, firstly to eliminate the huge number of bugs and inconsistencies and secondly in order to be able to add new features in a structured and orderly manner. Version 1.0 contained less than 50% of Eric Wong's original code and this has since dropped to less than 10%.

Mouser goes on to say
by the time the issue came to a head, i think markham had done so much coding and invested so much time and made so many plans that it was just out of control.
What he omits to tell you is that it is he who forced the Sarge and myself to plan for Circle Dock's future. Whilst I was in the UK during the month of June, Mouser PMed me and told me to make alternative arrangements for the future hosting of the Circle Dock downloads which at the time, were being hosted on the Members' server. He had previously offered me the space to do precisely that and, with the benefit of hindsight, I foolishly accepted not knowing that he would serve an eviction notice when Circle Dock became popular. Which it did.

It is Mouser who forced us to consider "commercialising" the program to the extent that our costs would be covered. Both the Sarge and I are retired and live largely on fixed incomes. Neither of us can afford the hosting costs and certainly not for the huge bandwidth Circle Dock has been taking - measured in Terabytes per month. Coincidentally, we were both working on integrating Circle Dock with the Dexpot "Virtual Desktop Manager" at the time and we looked at their licencing arrangements. That allows individual users to use Dexpot on their own PCs providing such PCs are not used for revenue generation but charges for commercial use of the program. The Sarge and I both agreed that this was a good model since it would generate sufficient income to pay for our development and hosting costs whilst at the same time continuing to supply the product free of charge to individual users.

I posted a message to warn everyone that the licencing model would be changing with the release of Version 2 and gave an outline of the new provisions. One user, whose native language is not English, misinterpreted the post and wrote in those terms - this sparked a rash of posts, mostly from non-users but which were, in the main, supportive of the changes, once the background and rationale had been explained. However, it seems that Mouser read the thread and took it upon himself to immediately cease Circle Dock's availability and in so doing, caused the removal of every other file I had stored on the DCMember's server.

Some believe that my decision to remove myself was made in haste:
One lesson I've (hopefully) learned: when in an upset state, don't make big decisions, and don't post stuff publicly. Take a few big steps bag and breathe deeply.
It wasn't. I thought long and hard all Wednesday before coming to what I believe is the only decision I could take, given the circumstances.

Whilst I do agree with "lotusrootstarch"'s first two paragraphs, I take issue with him regarding the Sarge's involvement and spokesmanship. The Sarge is a member of "Team Circle Dock" and as well as being the designer of numerous graphic images is the marketing and public voice of the team.

--------------------------------------

As for the future, Team Circle Dock will take the program forward, as a fully non-GPL semi-commercial product, and likely to be under Microsoft's BizNet umbrella. This Forum will continue to support Eric's GPL'd version and I have already modified the download links to point to the SourceForge project where his last released version resides. The Sarge is already hard at work rolling-back the Circle Dock wikidot page to as it was when Eric Wong had sole ownership. All threads and discussions relating to versions issued by me are likely to be removed since they will not apply to the issued version and would be confusing for any user of the program.

To anyone who is considering continuing Eric Wong's legacy as a GPL'd program, I wish you the best of luck. There are many issues you'll need to resolve to get the program in a stable state to run under Windows Vista and Windows 7 - not least of these will be the mouse handler which caused me many sleepless nights. Most important, you will have to consider if it is truly worth the effort since there are no tangible rewards; the code is almost devoid of comments and very buggy. The code you'd be working with is, after all, an "alpha" release and not really intended for distribution in its current state. If you accept the challenge, good luck to you.




Mark
« Last Edit: August 12, 2010, 06:44 AM by Markham »