20 ms·

The first part is a standard BSD license, however it has a weird extra restriction. It cannot be sold or published in printed form. That is a restriction on us

The first part is a standard BSD license, however it has a weird extra restriction. It cannot be sold or published in printed form. That is a restriction on use that almost certainly makes it not open source software. It certainly isn't a common license. Game over. But even if it was open source software, it's unreasonable for people to have to untar that file on a phone. As I posted earlier, if it's OSS, that info needs to be a lot clearer. It certainly needs to be on the front pagd. Requiring a untar is absurd for such basic information. As a piece of history, it's cool, though I think the Lyons book is more important.

JdeBP 7y ago
In years gone by, it was common practice to look inside archive files to inspect README files and suchlike. Certainly, one is quite reasonably expected to look inside an archive of a teaching operating system where reading and understanding the source tree is part of the process. I think that you are unwittingly making a strong case for your 'phone being the wrong tool for the job. (-:
- dwheeler 7y ago
  > In years gone by, it was common practice to look inside archive files to inspect README files and suchlike. That's true, I did it many times. But those years are long ago. Good riddance. Most of the time today, for most people, a smartphone is the only tool you have available at the moment. When I made that comment I was nowhere near my laptops or desktops or tablet, and I think that's true for many people today. According to Statcounter the majority of pages viewed today are viewed using a smartphone: https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mob... > Certainly, one is quite reasonably expected to look inside an archive of a teaching operating system where reading and understanding the source tree is part of the process. Not to find out the license. A license is important information that you need to know before you look at the archive. I'm don't think it's even reasonable today to ask that people unarchive just to look at some code. GitHub, GitLab, SourceForge, and many other forges/repo sites make it quite easy to look at code without having to download and look inside an archive. By all means provide a simple link to download its archive (GitHub does this automatically), but it's also important to give people an easy way to look at its individual source files using a URL. I'll note that the Linux kernel does this just fine. Things are hard enough on potential developers and potential users. Developers should work to make it easy for potential users and potential users. If nothing else, their projects are more likely to do well that well.
jeromebaek 7y ago
“This software may not be sold or published in printed form without written permission from the copyright holders.“ This is almost certainly because parts of the source code appear in the textbook, and publishing laws apply.

JdeBP 7y ago

In years gone by, it was common practice to look inside archive files to inspect README files and suchlike. Certainly, one is quite reasonably expected to look inside an archive of a teaching operating system where reading and understanding the source tree is part of the process. I think that you are unwittingly making a strong case for your 'phone being the wrong tool for the job. (-:

dwheeler 7y ago
> In years gone by, it was common practice to look inside archive files to inspect README files and suchlike. That's true, I did it many times. But those years are long ago. Good riddance. Most of the time today, for most people, a smartphone is the only tool you have available at the moment. When I made that comment I was nowhere near my laptops or desktops or tablet, and I think that's true for many people today. According to Statcounter the majority of pages viewed today are viewed using a smartphone: https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mob... > Certainly, one is quite reasonably expected to look inside an archive of a teaching operating system where reading and understanding the source tree is part of the process. Not to find out the license. A license is important information that you need to know before you look at the archive. I'm don't think it's even reasonable today to ask that people unarchive just to look at some code. GitHub, GitLab, SourceForge, and many other forges/repo sites make it quite easy to look at code without having to download and look inside an archive. By all means provide a simple link to download its archive (GitHub does this automatically), but it's also important to give people an easy way to look at its individual source files using a URL. I'll note that the Linux kernel does this just fine. Things are hard enough on potential developers and potential users. Developers should work to make it easy for potential users and potential users. If nothing else, their projects are more likely to do well that well.

jeromebaek 7y ago

“This software may not be sold or published in printed form without written permission from the copyright holders.“ This is almost certainly because parts of the source code appear in the textbook, and publishing laws apply.