Growl fork maintainer banned from Growl mailinglist after fixing bugs • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by dedward » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 1:39 AM UTC

rmc wrote: post #7

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 i…

Disregarding all the banter about what "open source" means -there are separate issues at hand.

One is the actual license terms the older versions were distributed under. Those matter.

Another is how the project itself was run, specifically how copyright assignment worked. If contributors were required to assign copyright to the project maintainer (or whatever) in order to commit to his main branch, as is the case with many projects, then he can likely do whatever he wants in terms of re-licensing. If that wasn't addressed clearly, there might be wiggle room for closing it off - contributors may have some kind of copyright claim if their work was taken and used under terms they didn't agree to.

Another is PR - that one is obvious.

As for the "Open source means you give back" - let's get over it - that's not what it was originally about - you have no "duty" to contribute - it's just a fantastic, common side effect that lots of people like to take advantage of.

End of story - if you are contributing code to someone elses project, be sure you understand where you sit in terms of copyright.

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

#72

Post by antiterra » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 1:26 PM UTC

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.

If you listen to the interview, Metzger actually seemed happy that there would be a paid version, thinking it meant that it would be maintained. Instead, the paid version didn't work for him and fixes didn't seem forthcoming. So he rolled his own and contributed. I'm not saying that your scenario wouldn't happen, but it doesn't apply in Metzger's case.

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

#73

Post by doki_pen » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 2:50 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #7

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 i…

You are confusing open source and free. You don't have the right to redistribute open source software. Free software guarantees this right.

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

#74

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Nov 08, 2011, 10:55 PM UTC

deno wrote: post #64

mansoor-s wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Do note that those laws don't apply to the entire world.

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

#75

Post by einhverfr » Wed, Nov 09, 2011, 12:02 AM UTC

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.

Two points:

1) To work full time on something like Linux, it really requires an external employer. So it isn't surprising that this is the case. To get involved does not, and certainly for a long time independent developers were as important as corporations there.

2) Everyone economically owns the output. I don't mean the copyrights. I mean everyone has a right to put the software to use for whatever purposes they want, whether in manufacturing, say, server appliances, or just running a web site (or even on my wife's laptop).

If the big companies stopped contributing to Linux tomorrow, would Linux die? I doubt it. So I suppose it depends on what you mean by "dependent." Certainly Linux is not dependent on corporate coding the way, say, Windows is.....