Coder's Guild Mailing List

Re: copyright's and sugerplums....

Posted by Eian on 2000-11-09

> But still, what I did, and how things work aren't going to be obvious to
> another coder w/o me explaining the hard parts. 

I beg to differ with you on this point. By releasing the code to the
general public you aren't setting yourself up to act as personal
instructor to the masses. Also, if your algorithms are so advanced, you
should do your ego a favor and let everybody be shocked in amazement over
them! 

Think for a second. You admitted that you created the basis for your
screen saver from an example (that I assume was located in the MSDN) for a
generic framework of a screen saver. I also assume that the author of the
framework didn't sit down with you and go over every line of code
explaining it to you. Now, if he had taken the same line of thinking that
you have just taken, where would you be now? I am sure that you would have
been able to create your screen saver, but would it have been as easy or
as properly done if it weren't for that starting point? What if Lemphel
and Ziv had never released their compression algorithm? What is everything
Hauffman did was kept secret? What if Linus didn't let people have his
source trees? What if Intel didn't release their command sets? 

Don't get me wrong, I am not for the release of all source code all over
the world to the masses. I work as a developer for a R&D company and there
are many items that we work our hardest *not* to let out! My view is more
of a view of release the source code unless you have a good reason not to.

Eian