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The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

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Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#31

Post by alextgordon »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #13

When HATETRIS reached Hacker News, someone posted some JavaScript which would modify the game to have gravity. I believe this is in response to the diff I posted. I'm sorry if I infringed upon any stated or implied licence in posting that. I will of course remove it if you feel that is appropriate. Personally I feel what I posted, given the readership of this website, was directly equivalent to simply saying "Wow, wo…

Please don't apologise. It is not the right of an author to stop people from discussing changes to their works.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#34

Post by Dysiode »

derefr wrote: post #5

The author has inadvertantly stumbled upon a part of hacker culture with wide-ranging implications, that is almost never discussed—and that is that people expect that you publish code because you want it to be changed , and not simply read . This stems from a deeply-rooted tradition in programming of not reading a codebase until you have a problem with it that you must fix . People don't "read for pleasure" in the pr…

It's interesting that you mention fan-fiction. I imagine the reason people overlook forking" fiction stems from the fact you're consuming the story, remixing it and spitting out something new. On the other hand, forking code is more like tacking on a paragraph here or there.

Also, while you did touch on the hacker culture I think that's the most important factor. As hackers we're practically born to tinker. When we tinker with hardware ,say a remote controlled car, no one confronts us and asks "Hey, man, why are you tinkering with that car?" More often than not you'll get people saying "Hey, that's really cool!"

Furthmore, it's easier to take a get tangible changes from tinkering with a program than with a piece of literature. You can't miss the impact of gravity on gameplay in a game like HATETRIS but very few people will pick up on the significance of a new piece of text in the middle of a novel.

I really like how jsankey put it when he said "If you put something out there, you should be flattered that people take enough interest to tinker with it."

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#35

Post by jsyedidia »

It seems to me that the author may be interested in the license Donald Knuth used for the Stanford GraphBase, which looks like this:

The Stanford GraphBase is copyright 1993 by Stanford University

These files may be freely copied and distributed, provided that no changes whatsoever are made. All users are asked to help keep the Stanford GraphBase sources consistent and "uncorrupted," identical everywhere in the world. Changes are permissible only if the changed file is given a new name, different from the names of existing files listed below, and only if the changed file is clearly identified as not being part of the Stanford GraphBase. The author has tried his best to produce correct and useful programs, in order to help promote computer science research, but no warranty of any kind should be assumed.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#36

Post by aaronblohowiak »

derefr wrote: post #7
mattyb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't "read for pleasure" in the programming world; they don't even read To learn—have you ever had a school assignment that charged you with reading more than 1KSLOC? The only reason, as a programmer, I will ever "cd src/", is that I am on a mission to fix a problem. Seriously? As a programmer , the problem I'm often on a mission to fix in /src is that I haven't learned enough.

Yes: you are in a minority within a minority. Of the programmers who read to further their education after school is done with (an already-small number), most will be complacent to read books, or blogs, or at the most journal articles. The number who dive into a foreign codebase—that is, one they have no association with and don't rely on for anything—without the expectation of eventually contributing something (i.e.…

Random rails and jquery plugins tend to be terribly documented and frequently make easy to fix design errors. I read code all the time -- if I am committing it to the repo, I want to be sure I know how it works. For "black box" things I usually won't delve that deep, but if it really needs to integrate, I usually end up reading it sooner or later.

My only regret is not pushing more changes back upstream

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#37

Post by aaronblohowiak »

derefr wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read code to learn, not just to fix. And it is surprising how much you can learn from reading code, the most humbling thing I learned from reading other people's code is that I'm not nearly as good a programmer as I thought I was. I haven't read a program yet that didn't teach me something. Reading programs is hard work though, it can tire you out pretty quickly, especially in the stage before things start clicking…

I'm definitely not saying it's not a good idea to read code—it's just something that almost nobody does, because, as you've said, it's very hard work; much harder than having the "story of the code" told to you in a book or a blog post. It's also work no one knows you did; unlike reading a book or a blog post, you can't really reference or quote a codebase to prove you know what you're talking about, because you can'…

Getting good at reading code helps with debugging. I like teams where every commit is reviewed by somebody else -- keeps you honest, you learn new tricks and you reduce bus factor

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#38

Post by GHFigs »

abeppu wrote: post #18
philh wrote: post #10

I would guess the majority of source code available online is explicitly open source. So it's reasonable to assume that this particular bit of source code available online is also (intended to be) open source, if there's no indication otherwise. Fiction is not the same, for various reasons: a work of fiction posted online is probably not "open source" (creative commons or similar), so that's not the default assumptio…

I think it's a bit more than a culture clash. The issue is not only that the majority of source code readable online is open source; it's that making code readable is the only thing you need to do to allow people to copy and modify it. It's a bit like a failed Searlian speech act where an actor running lines or a student practicing French is overheard and presumed to be saying something to someone in particular. The…

I understand where you're coming from, but the only reason the source is available here is that he wrote in client-side JavaScript. There is no link to the source, no download, no indication that the source is meant to be available, and the explicit invitation to interact with it is to play the game, not monkey with the source. You make it sound like he was exhibiting the code just because he didn't make it impossible to see.

Re: The arrangement with my code is the same as with my text. I create, you consume.

#39

Post by btilly »

jsyedidia wrote: post #35

It seems to me that the author may be interested in the license Donald Knuth used for the Stanford GraphBase, which looks like this: The Stanford GraphBase is copyright 1993 by Stanford University These files may be freely copied and distributed, provided that no changes whatsoever are made. All users are asked to help keep the Stanford GraphBase sources consistent and "uncorrupted," identical everywhere in the world…

That is very similar to the license that Knuth used for TeX as well.

However in both cases Knuth made it clear that he is OK with people reusing the TeX source code as long as they make it clear that it isn't TeX. And again his reason is that he wants people to be able to rely on perfectly consistent behavior from anything that is called TeX.

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