3 ms·

This project might be interesting, except that there is no license specified. Thus unusable.

emteycz 6y ago
I can download it just fine, it runs too. You're not entitled to all code of the world... Play with it and be happy for the opportunity.
- slaymaker1907 6y ago
  It's really not playing nicely to create a closed frontend to Prolog implementations which are open source, particularly the GPL ones. It seems like they aren't violating the licenses of those Prologs, but just because something isn't against the law doesn't mean it is ethical.
  - teraflop 6y ago
    Out of curiosity: if somebody developed this front-end purely to satisfy their own curiosity and never released it, would you consider that to be unethical? If not, how is posting the source code without an explicit license grant worse?
    - yowlingcat 6y ago
      Could be an excuse to get it nebulously embedded and then retrofit a more restrictive license in to benefit from lockin. Bit of a reach, I suppose.
deckar01 6y ago
The author is a student and does not seem to be the one who submitted the project to HN. If you need an open source license to the work, you should give the author the benefit of the doubt and request it by opening an issue on the project.
dang 6y ago
This comment breaks the HN guidelines. It is of course fine to ask about licensing, but to use that as a reason to dismiss an entire project is not cool. Nothing that this project does with Python and Prolog gets less interesting because the author hasn't put up some license boilerplate yet. If you wouldn't mind taking the intended spirit of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html more to heart, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Early work, especially early work being discussed in public, is delicate and one should approach it with respect. Otherwise you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) end up contributing to crushing new shoots of growth and that is not an optimal strategy. (A current related thread is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836090, on pg's recent essay on Early Work.)

I can download it just fine, it runs too. You're not entitled to all code of the world... Play with it and be happy for the opportunity.

slaymaker1907 6y ago
It's really not playing nicely to create a closed frontend to Prolog implementations which are open source, particularly the GPL ones. It seems like they aren't violating the licenses of those Prologs, but just because something isn't against the law doesn't mean it is ethical.
- teraflop 6y ago
  Out of curiosity: if somebody developed this front-end purely to satisfy their own curiosity and never released it, would you consider that to be unethical? If not, how is posting the source code without an explicit license grant worse?
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    Could be an excuse to get it nebulously embedded and then retrofit a more restrictive license in to benefit from lockin. Bit of a reach, I suppose.

deckar01 6y ago

The author is a student and does not seem to be the one who submitted the project to HN. If you need an open source license to the work, you should give the author the benefit of the doubt and request it by opening an issue on the project.

dang 6y ago

This comment breaks the HN guidelines. It is of course fine to ask about licensing, but to use that as a reason to dismiss an entire project is not cool. Nothing that this project does with Python and Prolog gets less interesting because the author hasn't put up some license boilerplate yet. If you wouldn't mind taking the intended spirit of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html more to heart, we'd appreciate it. Note this one: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." Early work, especially early work being discussed in public, is delicate and one should approach it with respect. Otherwise you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) end up contributing to crushing new shoots of growth and that is not an optimal strategy. (A current related thread is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24836090, on pg's recent essay on Early Work.)