4 ms·
Ask HN: FOSS that asks you not to use it on MS or Apple?
Have you ever installed an openly licensed application on your computer, only to run it the first time and get a message like this?
You appear to be running Remind on an Apple product. I'd rather that
you didn't. Remind execution will continue momentarily.
remind works fine otherwise, but you get that extra output every time you run it. I find this genuinely odd, and I'm not sure what to make of it. remind[1] is licensed under GNU GPL v2. However, it ships with a text file[2] asking users not to use it on Microsoft or Apple products, and there is a similar message on remind's website[1]. The developer admits that he can't stop people from using it on a Mac (I think he means in practical terms), but nevertheless he builds in this semi-hobble message that prints every time I run remind.
I could hack it out (the message), but I wonder what people make of this? As I say, I've never run across it before.
[1] http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind
[2] MICROSOFT-AND-APPLE (in the tarball)
- davidw 16y agoIt's free software, so you are certainly free to hack out his message, and redistribute a version without it.
- praptak 16y agoMeh. It's ok for the programmer to ask this, it's ok for you to ignore that.
- timthorn 16y agoGoing back perhaps 20 years, I seem to remember that GNU software was never provided as binaries for Macintosh, as the OS was closed. At some point, things mellowed, but I don't remember any specifc point in time when that changed.
- madhouse 16y agoI have used such software - though, it didn't affect me, since I wasn't on neither macos nor windows. As long as it's a request, and not an additional restriction on the GPL license, it's legal. Since it's free software, one can hack it out. If I'd ever write software that gets ported to a platform I massively dislike, I'd add a nagging box aswell. Or perhaps would even refuse to merge the port, since then I could be expected to support it, which I won't.