> ----- Original Message ----- > From: pbreit > Sent: 12/17/10 12:52 AM > To: web2py@googlegroups.com > Subject: Re: [web2py] Re: it case you missed it... > > branko, I'm curious why permissive licensing is a problem for you. is it a > philosophical thing? what's the downside? wouldn't it be cool if your code > was widely used? cake, django & rails are permissively licensed (as are most > frameworks) and it doesn't seem to be a problem. people still seem excited > to develop for those platforms.
Yes, it's a philosophical thing. I have participated in open-source projects before, always feeling inferior for not being able to code like a pro (since I'm a designer). I still managed to find a way to contribute (editing Wikis, contributing artwork, etc). Then I started programming (Ruby and Python), and I came to learn how great it is for developers to be able to share code freely. Even though FSF was established just a few years after I was born, I learned about the history of the movement that kicked it off, because I respected and loved the kind of spirit I was discovering. And I believe that if it weren't for FSF and their stubborn insistence on free software, there would be no open-source the kind we know today. Today, people are starting to take it all for granted and say shit like BSD is better than GPL, etc, and FSF hardliners scares them. Why? Just to win the popularity award? But think about it: if it weren't for those hardliners, BSD would be worth precisly bollocks, too. The only point where I possibly differ from FSF is that there should be a difference between normal usage (usage as intended including sharing/distribution) and modification. Modification should result in new free software, distribution should result merely in notification that the base software is free software. Free software should never become closed, that's my bottom line. That fact that a bunch of people like something says precisely fuckall. Just count how many people get off using Windows. Does that tell you something about how great Windows is? I hope not. That's hardly a valid point. On the frameworks side, look at Django. So many bug-fix releases lately. And their TRUNK used to be awesome. Now you can't even trust the releases. And it's growing fatter by day, and loose coupling song is starting to get a different tune. At one time I wrote permanent redirection middleware for both Django and web.py. What took me a day to write on web.py took me a week on Django, and it was never as simple as I liked it to be, the main reason being that it involved at least 3 core components and the (then) nasty polymorphism framework called content type or something like that. Soon it'll be too bloated to support its own weight, and people will start looking for lightweight frameworks like werkzeug and node.js. But that has nothing to do with BSD. It's the price of having too many hands involved in the process without an adequate system to ensure quality. -- Branko Vukelic branko.vuke...@gmx.com http://www.brankovukelic.com/ http://flickr.com/photos/foxbunny
