Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

From the article: "One of the biggest problems with this approach, other than the fact they just pissed off a lot of people who beleive strongly in OSS, is that Growl is still broken. So you pay your $1.99 and it no workie. TESTING MOTHER FUCKERS, DO YOU DO IT?"

I happily paid for Growl from the App store, and sure enough it works fine on both my Lion Macs.

http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-insta... has instructions on how to Build 1.3 from source.

Re: Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

#5

Post by buro9 » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 9:39 AM UTC

cstuder wrote: post #3

Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:r-VuHzw...

The fork: https://bitbucket.org/pmetzger/growl/

Re: Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

#6

Post by patrickod » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 9:41 AM UTC

Personally I don't see what people are complaining about here. He took an open source project, with a licence that permitted it, and made it a commercial project by adding chances and forming a derivative work. There is no foul play here.

If someone else wants to fork the project and try and mimic the new commercial features they're free to do so. Don't expect the original developers to help you though. They're already set on their own path.

Re: Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

#7

Post by rmc » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 9:45 AM UTC

decided they should be paid for their work. There is one slight problem however. Growl is Open Source Software.

So? You can sell open source software. Just because software is GPL/BSD licenced doesn't mean you can't sell it. Open Source ≠ Non-commerical. Closed Source ≠ Commmerical. You can change for open source software. If something is open source you can't complain if someone sells it.

Obviously if the software is open source, everyone who buys a copy is allowed to sell the software themselves and they don't have to give the original author any money. They also cannot stop someone taking an older version of the code and distributing it.

Re: Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

#8

Post by benatkin » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 9:46 AM UTC

patrickod wrote: post #6

Personally I don't see what people are complaining about here. He took an open source project, with a licence that permitted it, and made it a commercial project by adding chances and forming a derivative work. There is no foul play here. If someone else wants to fork the project and try and mimic the new commercial features they're free to do so. Don't expect the original developers to help you though. They're alrea…

It became popular because it was open source and the community built the brand recognition. Now he went and took the brand recognition to do something that the community didn't expect and doesn't approve of.

Re: Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

#9

Post by elgenie » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 9:46 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #4

From the article: "One of the biggest problems with this approach, other than the fact they just pissed off a lot of people who beleive strongly in OSS, is that Growl is still broken. So you pay your $1.99 and it no workie. TESTING MOTHER FUCKERS, DO YOU DO IT? " I happily paid for Growl from the App store, and sure enough it works fine on both my Lion Macs. http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-source-inst…

There don't seem to be publicly visible commits after the 1.3 release, though. Compare http://growl.info/documentation/version_history.php with http://code.google.com/p/growl/source/list : the source of version 1.3.1, which includes some important-sounding bugfixes, is nowhere to be found.

Re: Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

#10

Post by hmottestad » Mon, Nov 07, 2011, 9:56 AM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #8

patrickod wrote: post #6

Personally I don't see what people are complaining about here. He took an open source project, with a licence that permitted it, and made it a commercial project by adding chances and forming a derivative work. There is no foul play here. If someone else wants to fork the project and try and mimic the new commercial features they're free to do so. Don't expect the original developers to help you though. They're alrea…

It became popular because it was open source and the community built the brand recognition. Now he went and took the brand recognition to do something that the community didn't expect and doesn't approve of.

So the question is. Can you make a fork and call it "Growl" or would the "new" growl try to sue the hell out of you?