Topic: JBidwatcher Tips and Tricks / Open Source Development (The SnipeIt Issue)

Hi Morgan,

are we talking about stealing software or about selling it?

Selling free and open source software (FOSS) is of course allowed. That’s one of the basic freedom of FOSS licenses. Every FOSS license allowes it. A license that forbids selling is a non-free license in the scope of the FOSS idea.

There is nothing wrong with selling FOSS software as long as it is done under the terms of the license. One term is that the copyright notice of the original author must be intact. Stealing software means that the license is violated. E.g. the copyright notice was removed, replaced with a different one and someone else has published the software as his own work. That’s stealing. You mentioned that this was the case and my mail was based on this information.

But selling is a standard procedure and a basic freedom of FOSS licenses. Many Linux distributions are doing it and many hardware manufacturers are doing it, too. Look at your internet router, telephone system, mobile phone, satellite receiver … there is FOSS running on many of such devices and sold together with the hardware. The hardware is useless without the FOSS.

Nobody who is selling FOSS software is breaking the social contract to respect the intent and preferences of the author. The freedom to sell the software is part of the social contract. Nobody is stealing the software just because he is selling it. Selling the software under the terms of the FOSS license is a respect testifying to the author of the software and his great work.

If you think about free software think about the freedom it provides for you and everyone else and think about the freedom that you can provide to everyone else if you return something to the free and open source community. Do not think with the limited possibilities of the non-free software world, many of their rules don’t work outside.

JBidWatcher is your hobby project and as every hobby you do it because you have fun. Don’t let others spoil your hobby and fun and don’t let yourself spoil it by applying unsuitable rules of the proprietary software world to your hobby project.

Best wishes and a Happy New Year!

Andreas

Topic: JBidwatcher Tips and Tricks / Open Source Development (The SnipeIt Issue)

moldor wrote:

> One option could be a dual-licenced version. One, that is open source, that
> contains pretty much the functionality in version 1.0 or slightly before.
> Everything else is in a licenced version, for a minimal fee.

Thanks for your comment, but your suggestion has unfortunately nothing to do with dual-licensing. Dual-licensing means that the same version of the software is available under two licenses and the user can choose which license he would like to use. But your suggestion is to stop developing the open source version and release every new version under a proprietary license. That has nothing to do with dual-licensing. It is a step to switch an open source project into a closed source one.

Also everything that is already available under the LGPL license, including the 1.0 version and the current CVS snapshot, is already open source. You can change the license but since the source is already open source it will have no effect. Everyone who has already downloaded it under the LGPL license is allowed to share it under the same license. And I think that’s good so.

> Securing the program binary could be done in many ways, and while I’m not a
> Java programmer, here are a few suggestions;

So you are suggesting to spend man and developing power to “secure” an application because of a few idiots, making the application more complex and harder maintainable and restricting all honesty users, instead of using the same man and developing power for usefull developing steps like adding new features and fixing bugs?

And you think this few idiots are worth to spend time for them?

Andreas

Topic: JBidwatcher Tips and Tricks / Open Source Development (The SnipeIt Issue)

Auction 270065880344 ended on 18.12.06.

Topic: JBidwatcher Tips and Tricks / Open Source Development (The SnipeIt Issue)

Hi Morgan,

I am writing this on the Open Discussion forum since I would like to have an open discussion about this issue and my comments.

I like JBidWatcher very much and I appreciate your great work! One of the reasons why I like and use JBidWatcher is because of his free software license.

Your consideration to switch to a closed source license doesn’t make me happy. Switching to a closed source license is a big step and affects all your users. Do you really think that this is an appropriate step, just because one of your users was doing someting wrong with your software?

You wrote that courts are not comfortable with open source. But it has nothing to do with open source if someone is renaming your program and selling it as his own work. It has to do with your copyright and you are still the copyright holder. An open source license does not change your copyright.

If you look at the GPL violations page at http://gpl-violations.org/ you will see that courts are comfortable with free software.

I fully understand that you are angry because of the occurrence but please think about all your honesty users. Is it worth to change your development just because of a few idiots?

I vote for an open source development of JBidWatcher!

I wish you and all readers a Merry Christmas!

Andreas Stempfhuber

Topic: JBidwatcher Help / My eBay Synchronization

Hi Brent,

no, that’s unfortunately not possible. Deleting of items are not synchronized from My eBay to JBidWatcher and also not from JBidWatcher to My eBay.

Greetings,
Andi