Subject:
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Re: Why aren't LDRAW tools Open Source?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Fri, 16 Apr 2004 15:25:08 GMT
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Viewed:
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1209 times
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Bill Fitzgerald wrote:
>
> As a programmer for some 28+ years I have extreme reservations about Open source
> or as i call it "socialized" programming.
I spent a bit of time working out how to reply to this mail without coming
across as an open source zealot :)
> The entire concept of open source flies in the face of intellectual property
> rights. That being who owns the rights to distrubute the software as they see
> fit, to control how it works, to control what is done with it.
I always thought open source relied on the concept of copyright (one of the
3 major concepts in intellectual property). It is copyright that allows an
open source programmer to say.
'I wrote this code, you can do with it as you wish' (placing it in the public
domain)
or
'I wrote this code, you can reditribute/modify/whatever this code, providing
you
adhere to this license' (GPL, BSD, Mozilla, most of the licences that are
considered open source licences work like this)
This is exactly the same laws that allow commercial software companies to say
'I wrote this code, don't copy it without our permission' (This final line is
the default state of any created work, and as such doesn't have to be
explicitly
stated.
</copyright 101>
> I have written in excess of a million lines of code over the years on everything
> from giant mainframes to laptops, so i have a pretty good idea of how the world
> works when it comes to programming. Every line of code i have written as part of
> my employment belongs legally and completely to the company I was working for at
> the time I wrote it or the client it was written for.
This is fairly standard, and is written into my contract too.
> The code that I have
> written for personal use, and there is a lot of it, is mine to do as i see fit.
> I own it. I have from time to time given programs to others for their use, but
> under the agreement that it will always remain under my control.
This is your absolute right under the Berne convention, and the decades of
copyright law that have been written since. Just as in those same laws you
are allowed to give some/all of your rights away.
> I suppose one of the reservations i have with open source, expecially Linux is
> that is almost a cult type of mentality. All pray at the alter of Linux or be
> ground into the dust, flamed, spammed, hacked, abused.
I certainly realise where you are coming from on this, but I suspect there is
only a small minority of people involved in this misbehaviour, even if they
are
very active. My best advice is 'don't take slashdot to seriously' :)
> Now I am not saying that all open source is bad, or that giving away programs
> for use is bad. What I am saying is that the open source community believes that
> they have the right to modify, re-write, used, abuse, and violate ownership
> rights on every program, ever file type, every interface that they seem to like.
> and anyone that stands in their way is evil, hence the way they treat Bill
> Gates.
Open source as such wouldn't allow you to modify/copy/mangle etc the code to
that
which you do not have the rights too. Although there is a tendency amongst
open source advocates and users too *wish* that all code was open to them in
the
same way as their open source apps.
> Let the flaming, hacking, and denial of service attacks begin.
I'm a very lazy hacker, could you please send me your credit card number
to my email address and I'll see what I can arrange :)
My experiences of using, writing and contributing too open source projects
have been very positive.
I would publicly like to thank Leonardo Zide (who wrote Leocad) and
Don Heyse (who wrote ldglite) for making their programs open source.
And to all the other lego programmers whose programs are open source that
I haven't had a play with yet :)
Hopefully this hasn't come across as an OpenSource rant :)
Peter
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Why aren't LDRAW tools Open Source?
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| (...) And I would like to publicly like to thank Don Heyse for LDGLite and Travis Cobbs for LDView. Special thanks go to Don Heyse since his application is basically the father of all Mac OS LDraw editors (except one that isn't being worked on and (...) (21 years ago, 17-Apr-04, to lugnet.cad)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Why aren't LDRAW tools Open Source?
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| As a programmer for some 28+ years I have extreme reservations about Open source or as i call it "socialized" programming. The entire concept of open source flies in the face of intellectual property rights. That being who owns the rights to (...) (21 years ago, 16-Apr-04, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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