A few weeks ago I posted to this group, in a discussion about real CDs versus copies of CDs on PC hard drives, this:
Here it is, for anyone that's interested:
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 22:11:04 +0000, Mike Barnes strung together this:
you've put it to shame!
Wow - had a quick look but will read it properly later, definately a labour of love.
Regards Jeff
Lurch is right, this is an awesome set up Mike, I'm seriously thinking of using some of the ideas at my gaff now!
Fantastic! Seriously though, you should look at copyrighting some of the code and the database UI as that would be really cool on the open market!
Mike
May the OSF wash you mouth out with soap !!!!!!!!!!!
A copyleft would be much more appripriate
Rick
Visitors who've used the system have said similar things. But commercial exploitation, if it was practical, would be too much like *work*. I'm retired and I intend to stay that way. No-one would be more pleased than me if commercially-available products took the job of producing a really user-friendly system more seriously, and if my setup somehow helps that process along, that's good enough for me.
Anyway the project depends crucially on the (freely contributed) work of many other people. Just look down the software price list and you'll see that almost all of it was free.
Thanks for your kind comments, and good luck with your new music system!
What are you going on about? You seriously too the time to post this? Amazing!
OSF = Open Software Foundation
Copyleft:
Most of the software the OP used is released under the GPL, or "CopyLeft" (or similar). It would be wrong for the OP to copyright what he has done. Below is a link .......
Thanks William, Rick's ramblings make sense now!
Looks like a good idea, but how would it hold up if someone wanted to steal the source and change it just enough to be declared "different"?
Yeah, got it now, William provided a link, looks quite a good concept.
You don't have to do anything to copyright original work, but sticking © Fred Bloggs 2005 somewhere reminds people that copyright exists.
Thats the whole point, you can take copyleft work, change it, and release it, but you must keep the orignal copyleft, and release it at the same level, often meaning you must provide the uncomplied program with your changes. This also means somebody and take your work change it ... the wheel turns.
This is why we get "blot ons" bits of extra stuff that you can charge for, but require an orignal copylefted program (you provide for free) to work.
Rick
Copyright exists - the holder can vary the terms as he sees fit, and some people choose to do this by making their intellectual property available under open-source terms, but it's still their IP. If a copyright holder rescinds his rights to IP by placing it in the public domain then it may be used by anyone for any reason including commercial.
Very kind of you to say so.
(Pauses to gather breath. And probably waste it.)
The majority of servers - Web, news, mail, DNS - certainly counted by traffic, probably by number too - is open-source software: Apache, sendmail, cyrus, postfix, BIND, ... So is the stuff in your firewall appliance. So is the OS these net-facing programs run on (Linux and the BSD family outnumber Windows installations for those roles: see
But until you endorsed the concept, it was just a silly idea. Now we can carry building the Net's infrastructure, safe in the knowledge it's been blessed by one such as you.
Oh for the days when September came but once a year...
Do you have to be quite so patronising? I wasn't "endorsing" it, I was commenting on something I hadn't encountered before.
People like you make asking questions and learning new things a truly unpleasent experience.
"Oh for the days when September came but once a year..."
Meaning what?
I can be a great deal more patronising if I try.
If your initial reaction to the concept of open source software had been kept private, or more modest, I wouldn't have spoken up at all.
I was provoked - against my better judgment - by your first two contributions to this thread. In the first one, you suggested the OP should copyright/commercialise their code, when the OP had already listed in full detail just how much they'd stood upon the shoulders of the open-source giants.
Your second contribution - quoted in full - on being introduced to the notion of 'copyleft' was the single IMM-like sentence,
'What are you going on about? You seriously too[k] the time to post this? Amazing!'
and in a third posting, described the two-line posting by the first contributor to clue you in to the idea of 'copyleft' as 'ramblings'; and quite clearly hadn't grasped the key concept of 'derivative works', and how markedly that distinguishes GPL from BSD-style licenses, which a few minutes' reading of the supplied reference (or anything else relevant) would have made clear.
Why do I say 'quite clearly hadn't grasped'? Because, in the same posting where you used "rambling" to describe two lines, you ask, 'but how would it hold up if someone wanted to steal the source and change it just enough to be declared "different"?' You've since had the outlines of an answer: under the GPL style of licenses, the copyright license requires you to make your own changes available under similarly 'open' terms, while the BSD-style licenses require only an acknowledgment of the shoulders you've stood on.
BSD-style licences hence permit exactly the commercial-derivative behaviour you called 'stealing'; though in practice, both social and market forces prevent small-value additions being overcharged for. 'Social' because people who do this sort of thing to excess find their requests for changes to the still-open body of software less likely to be acted on; 'market' because small-value add-ons can - by definition - be duplicated by other (commercial or no-charge) actors at low cost.
When questions are asked straightforwardly, and I have the time and knowledge to answer, I do so straightforwardly. groups.google.com will confirm I'm very rarely patronising or sarcastic. When someone blunders into a club, family, country, or other social network, and shoots their mouth off about the weird habits of the locals, the resulting enclueing is often a lot more unpleasant than my reaction to your postings.
Try
Stefek
I can well believe that, seeing you claim later not to be sarcastic normally, I must congratulate you, you have taken to it like a fish to water.
I stand by that, had Rick have made a link to the explanation in the same way that William did, then it would have made some sense. Generally people would undertand buzz words within a given topic, this, being aDIY group, I would generally not expect to understand comments about "copyleft" - which on the face of it seemed like a glib "IMM Style" facetious comment.
The ramblings comment was entirely flippant.
OK, I agree, I should have read it in more detail, but I have spent the day doing CBT, reading and absorbing anything technical was beyond me.
And the same groups.google.com will quicky reveal that I generally ask sensible questions and conribute politely when I can.
Ahh, another patronising comment likening me to a student. Nice one, I've been writing code for many years now, and met many people just like you before. I had no arguement with yu, but you just had to charge in shooting off your superiority. Well done, you are cleverer than me on this topic.
I think that even the most cursory review of Stefek's posting history (including this post, which was both witty and informative) would show that the above statement is almost the exact opposite of the truth.
Oh, the irony. My sides hurt...
microsoft. Have you considered using FLAC? FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, and is available free from
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.