Is there any reason why most of the development tools are closed-source on this site? As long as a suitable license is used (depending on the circumstances, either GPL (free for all uses, may be sold, but any changes must be accompanied by the source code and be released under the same license) or CC-BY-NC-SA (free for non-commercial uses, may not be sold, any changes must be accompanied by the source code and be released under the same license)), there are no disadvantages of using an open-source license, and plenty of advantages (people can fix bugs/add features that may or may not be incorporated into the official release rather than expecting developers to do it, they can more easily be ported, etc). It would be quite nice if at least all the development tools were licensed under a free license. As you all probably know, there are many companies that even give away their software, books, etc under free licenses (Mozilla, Sun, Apache, Canonical, Red Hat, SUSE, the list goes on), and still make money from it (advertising, selling support, etc), so it should be no problem when you don't even make money from the software as it is!


I hope this is taken into account, as it would be very good if they were open-source. I would like to try to get some of the tools running under Linux, or at least running better under wine.

There are sections of the source code for my BBC Micro Image Converter (a.k.a. Image2BBC) available on the internet if you know where to look, albeit old versions. On the whole though my preference is to keep my programs closed source.

Writing my BBC Micro Image Converter has been a great learning experience for me as it has taught me a lot about image processing and other areas of programming which I have never done before. As a whole it has helped me hone my software design and programming skills. If it were open-source I don't know if I would have learned as much.

Kind regards,

Francis

If it were open-source, people could let you know where the code could be improved, and you could learn even more from it. If there are any bits where you think, "I know I can do this more efficiently, but I just don't know how!", open-source is probably the answer.

If you are worried that people will claim your work to be theirs, don't worry. It never happens. Almost all licenses stop this, and even if you chose one that didn't, people who work on open-source software usually give credit to the person who originally worked on it out of gratitude to give them something to work on, and out of respect.

Finally, probably the most common problem people have with releasing their code is they think it's too messy and people will think they aren't very good at coding if they do release it. Well, almost everyone starts out coding messily, and most people code messily for life! The only way to learn to stop coding messily is to let other people clean it up and look at how they did it!



I'm not sure which of these, if any, apply to you in particular, I'm really posting it in general for anyone else who might release their tools under a free license. But please take these points into consideration.

Asking questions goes for a lot too. There are number of forums that I am on where if I do have problems I cannot solve I can ask how for ideas on how to solve them. The same goes for any code that I have that I need to get to run more efficiently, but the solution is being elusive.

Personally I get more satisfaction going through the motions of struggling with something and having to research it before getting it to work. Getting the answer handed to me just does not have the same amount of self-fulfillment.

Kind regards,

Francis

One more problem you get with closed source (and I know this doesn't apply to Francis, but has happened in the past), is that someone starts a project, leaves it closed source and then for whatever reason they vanish leaving the project pretty much unfinishable.

If it were open source someone like Murray could come along and run with it (like he is with Jet Set Miner).

If I were ever in the position where I no longer wanted to progress any of my programs further then I would consider making it open source so that the work could be carried on by someone else. I have done this with one of my programs in the past.

Kind regards,

Francis.

I will be releasing one of my Beeb tools to open source soon-ish, not Swift but my FS Manager tool. As it's been languishing without updates for some time (and I've not got the time to work on it) this seems like a good release candidate to start with. Maybe someone will actually fix the problem with large ADFS disks as well ! Plus this project has the Hex editor tool (as used in Swift) and can open multiple windows of the same disk or hex editor, so might be of interest to some.

I just want to get it compiling in Lazarus first and as it uses some components for which I know there are no Lazarus equivalents this might take a short while.

Before I waste any more time converting my much simpler FS Manager software (compared to Swift) to Lazarus is anyone interested in picking the project up. If not I'm not going to waste what little spare time I have doing it as it's not as straight forward as I'd like.

Just a thought Steve, but I'm not sure it would be a complete waste of time to convert FSManager to Lazarus for two reasons:

1) If nothing else, you'll familiarise yourself with Lazarus which can only be a good thing if you plan, say, to convert SWIFT to it at a later date.

2) FSManager is far more likely, IMHO, to get picked up by someone else eventually, if you make it available with a fairly detailed set of instructions on how to compile it using easily-available cross-platform free tools. I suspect if you just release the source and ppl are required to purchase a copy of Delphi to even compile it, it'll probably continue to languish unmaintained for a very long time.

There is a graveyard for programs that ppl have archived on the web hoping someone will take them on, but without having done much in the way of documentation or assistance. Not many of them do garner outside interest - as ppl would rather start from scratch than have to decipher someone else's old code.

It's been years since I wrote Modula-2 (Pascal-esque) but if you got a build of FSmanager working under Lazarus, I don't mind reproducing and testing the build process out, then documenting it for you (on the wiki, if you want to release it under the RS label?), if that's any incentive.

Sam.

I was certainly not rushing if there wasn't much interest. However with your positive support I will do it. Just won't be till I get my ultra-top secret game a bit more advanced. As you say documentation is the key. I've had to use so much stuff with no documentation and it's a pain.

I wouldn't expect an overwhelming response but I think FSmanager is already one of the best, if not the best, free GUI disc management tools. If we host it as open source, there is at least a chance that others may expand on it, to scratch their own itches ...

Can't hurt, anyway!

Sam.

In case anyone is interested, I have posted some of the source code for the image processing routines for my BBC Micro Image Converter here: http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?p=298274#298274

Kind regards,

Francis