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Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs

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

#61

Post by drivebyacct2 »

bradleyland wrote: post #58

It strikes me that if Growl were to disappear, there would be a chorus of users chiming in that they'd "happily pay for the software" as we usually see with popular free utilities that disappear. Here we have someone who finally decided they wanted to profit from their effort, and we see the flip side. A definitive lose-lose situation.

How? An open source project goes commercial and someone forks it to keep an open source derivative going. The system works. I don't see how this is a lose-lose. If the Growl dev loses users then it just goes to show that it's not worth paying for. I won't offer my opinion on whether it's worth $2, especially at this point in the project lifecycle, but you might be able to guess it.

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

#62

Post by celticjames »

peteforde wrote: post #18

As is so often the case with these sorts of posts, there are several issues being conflated here: 1. Growl authors want to ca$h in 2. Widely reported issues under Lion 3. Legitimate conjecture over rights and ethics for pmetzger's fork and whether it can be called Growl I'd be more than happy to donate (more) to Growl, although I admit that the "suggested upgrade" made me pause. It felt like it crossed that slim line…

3. It's like the Mozilla Firefox vs Debian Iceweasel controversy. Or Redhat vs Centos. The code is open, but the trademarks are copyrighted. If Growl is a trademark and the brand artwork is non-free, then forks can't use it without permission.

I kind of respect the choice of Mozilla and Redhat to defend their trademarks because it's partly an issue of quality control and reputation. But I do prefer projects that put branding under a creative commons license. It's closer to the spirit of free software. I suggest the forked Growl choose a new name and put the branding under a free license.

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

#63

Post by celticjames »

jbellis wrote: post #44
cousin_it wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds uncharitable and is that really true? Linux, Mozilla or Python don't seem to mostly rely on manpower provided by for-profit companies...

Linux is written almost entirely by employees of for-profit companies: http://lwn.net/Articles/451243/ Many core Python contributors including Guido are employed by companies like Google to work on it. Mozilla is, technically, an exception: almost everyone is employed by the Mozilla corporation, a non-profit by virtue of its lucrative search deal with Google. Few projects have that luxury.

Something like 40% of Mozilla code is written by community contributors, which is quite remarkable. How many of those non-employees are paid by someone else specifically to work on Mozilla I don't know. i.e. I don't know if IBM pays people to work on Firefox they way they pay people to work on Linux.

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

#64

Post by deno »

mansoor-s wrote: post #56
castewart wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to develop for iOS you have to use a Mac.

no, you don't. You can use a VM

You can’t legally run OS X under VM, unless the host is OS X on Apple’s hardware as well (and I think even that is only for server edition).

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

#65

Post by masklinn »

masklinn wrote: post #17
_ak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge, the source to the 1.3.x release isn't public. I wonder whether it's a complete rewrite from scratch or whether 1.3.x still contains patches from external contributors and whether they agreed that their work be sold for money.

Your knowledge is incorrect. The 1.3.0 source is available[0], and 1.3.1 should be soon[1], they have not dumped them in the public repository is all. > I wonder whether it's a complete rewrite from scratch or whether 1.3.x still contains patches from external contributors and whether they agreed that their work be sold for money. I'm not sure that has any relevance. It would if Growl had changed its license (they ha…

And the 1.3.1 source has now been added to the public repository.

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

sp332 wrote: post #55
dlikhten wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source philosophy: - If you are given the binaries, you are also given the source. - You may modify the source to your liking. - You may distribute the source or a compiled version of it at will. Note it says nothing about licensing of mods and even the distribution. Each license is actually tackling how modifications and dependencies are treated. Nothing in the philosophy says you cannot sell it. At all. Nor in…

That's the free software philosophy, not the open source philosophy. Stallman makes a big deal about separating them so that people won't confuse the two, as apparently you have. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm...

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by bradleyland »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #61
bradleyland wrote: post #58

It strikes me that if Growl were to disappear, there would be a chorus of users chiming in that they'd "happily pay for the software" as we usually see with popular free utilities that disappear. Here we have someone who finally decided they wanted to profit from their effort, and we see the flip side. A definitive lose-lose situation.

How? An open source project goes commercial and someone forks it to keep an open source derivative going. The system works. I don't see how this is a lose-lose. If the Growl dev loses users then it just goes to show that it's not worth paying for. I won't offer my opinion on whether it's worth $2, especially at this point in the project lifecycle, but you might be able to guess it.

I'm speaking from the perspective of community response. If the developer grows tired of maintaining the application and decides to abandon it, the community reacts negatively. If the developer grows tired of maintaining the application, but decides that being paid to do so is sufficient incentive, the community reacts negatively.

That's negative-negative, or lose-lose from a community response perspective.

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

#68

Post by rick888 »

sp332 wrote: post #55
dlikhten wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source philosophy: - If you are given the binaries, you are also given the source. - You may modify the source to your liking. - You may distribute the source or a compiled version of it at will. Note it says nothing about licensing of mods and even the distribution. Each license is actually tackling how modifications and dependencies are treated. Nothing in the philosophy says you cannot sell it. At all. Nor in…

That's the free software philosophy, not the open source philosophy. Stallman makes a big deal about separating them so that people won't confuse the two, as apparently you have. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm...

"not the open source philosophy"

It doesn't matter what the philosophy is, it matters what the laws says and what it allows you to do. Many companies don't want you to resell their products on ebay (their philosophy). However, the first sale doctrine says something different (the law).

So while you may not like someone re-packaging and re-selling open source software, as long as they are following the license, there isn't much you can do about it.

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

#69

Post by sp332 »

rick888 wrote: post #68
sp332 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the free software philosophy, not the open source philosophy. Stallman makes a big deal about separating them so that people won't confuse the two, as apparently you have. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm...

"not the open source philosophy" It doesn't matter what the philosophy is, it matters what the laws says and what it allows you to do. Many companies don't want you to resell their products on ebay (their philosophy). However, the first sale doctrine says something different (the law). So while you may not like someone re-packaging and re-selling open source software, as long as they are following the license, there…

Your main point is true, but I'd like to point out that copyright circumvents the first-sale doctrine. You're not allowed to copy and distribute works that you own, if you don't have a copyright license for the material.

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

#70

Post by ricardobeat »

castewart wrote: post #43
mansoor-s wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"other than the fact they just pissed off a lot of people who beleive strongly in OSS" If they believe so strongly in OSS, they wouldn't use macintosh would they? Nope they don't want to pony up and take out their wallets.

If you want to develop for iOS you have to use a Mac.

Technically not true. If you want to publish for iOS you have to use a Mac, and there's an exception to that (PhoneGap Build).
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