4 ms·

Once again the dangers of proprietary software in the businesplace raise their heads. I wish people with the ability would work on contributing more to the open

Once again the dangers of proprietary software in the businesplace raise their heads. I wish people with the ability would work on contributing more to the open source cad projects, because at one point suffering under autodesks draconionan and expensive licensing I tried to get a business to start switching but the open source stuff simply isn't up to snuff in most cases.

gaius 10y ago
How do you mean danger?? The body of the article is considerably less hysterical than the title.
- macmac 10y ago
  What is hysterical about the title i.e. "When is the output of a copyright-protected software program itself protected by copyright?" ?. Seems very appropriated and balanced.
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  I mean you won't find GNU projects doing stuff like this, but only in proprietary land do you find companies who think it's ok to copyright output. (which is a symptom of the bigger issue of culture around non-free software in general) http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLOutput http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLOutput
  - E6300 10y ago
    Actually, the output of Bison is GPL'd on the same grounds as presented in this case, that a significant portion of it includes code from Bison itself. You can't link and distribute a Bison-generated parser with a non-GPL parser generator (for other kinds of programs, the license contains an exception that allows linking).
    - wtetzner 10y ago
      That was the case, but now there's an exception: http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Condition...
      - E6300 10y ago
        Yeah... I mentioned that exception in the parenthetical statement.
alkonaut 10y ago
There are thousands of CAD packages out there and most are proprietary because they do proprietary stuff for a niche market. All the open source CAD packages are general purpose cad (i.e. Basically "drawing") software. I make a package with 100 man years of dev time that might have a total global market of 2000 users. It's not exactly something that would reach critical mass on github. Even if we based our software on one of the open source packages we'd still be a huge chunk of proprietary software written as an extension. CAD isn't just drawing lines.
dade_ 10y ago
I use FreeCAD for my 3D printing designs. It works great on Windows and Ubuntu (not so great on Mac), but for designing enclosures for electronics projects and printing them, it has met my needs. I think it takes longer to learn than AutoCAD's maker apps, but I know i will always have access to my designs. It will be a shame if all of this open hardware for 3D printing, and CNC routers doesn't result in a feature rich CAD application. From what I can see, AutoDesk saw the risk and has inserted themselves with "fun and easy" web based and cloud apps.

gaius 10y ago

How do you mean danger?? The body of the article is considerably less hysterical than the title.

macmac 10y ago
What is hysterical about the title i.e. "When is the output of a copyright-protected software program itself protected by copyright?" ?. Seems very appropriated and balanced.
arca_vorago 10y ago
I mean you won't find GNU projects doing stuff like this, but only in proprietary land do you find companies who think it's ok to copyright output. (which is a symptom of the bigger issue of culture around non-free software in general) http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLOutput http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLOutput
- E6300 10y ago
  Actually, the output of Bison is GPL'd on the same grounds as presented in this case, that a significant portion of it includes code from Bison itself. You can't link and distribute a Bison-generated parser with a non-GPL parser generator (for other kinds of programs, the license contains an exception that allows linking).
  - wtetzner 10y ago
    That was the case, but now there's an exception: http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Condition...
    - E6300 10y ago
      Yeah... I mentioned that exception in the parenthetical statement.

alkonaut 10y ago

There are thousands of CAD packages out there and most are proprietary because they do proprietary stuff for a niche market. All the open source CAD packages are general purpose cad (i.e. Basically "drawing") software. I make a package with 100 man years of dev time that might have a total global market of 2000 users. It's not exactly something that would reach critical mass on github. Even if we based our software on one of the open source packages we'd still be a huge chunk of proprietary software written as an extension. CAD isn't just drawing lines.

dade_ 10y ago

I use FreeCAD for my 3D printing designs. It works great on Windows and Ubuntu (not so great on Mac), but for designing enclosures for electronics projects and printing them, it has met my needs. I think it takes longer to learn than AutoCAD's maker apps, but I know i will always have access to my designs. It will be a shame if all of this open hardware for 3D printing, and CNC routers doesn't result in a feature rich CAD application. From what I can see, AutoDesk saw the risk and has inserted themselves with "fun and easy" web based and cloud apps.