Category: Uncategorized

Well, I did end up looking at Greymatter again and after a few minutes remembered how poorly written the code was, and remembered why I never used it. Still, it might work for you if security and reliability aren’t high on your list…

Here’s the link I should have had previously, it’s by Eric Raymond from The Magic Cauldron:

First, code written for sale is only the tip of the programming iceberg. …we’ll see shortly that there is empirical evidence that approximately 95% of code is still written in-house…

Most such in-house code is integrated with its environment in ways that make reusing or copying it very difficult. (This is true whether the environment is a business office’s set of procedures or the fuel-injection system of a combine harvester.) Thus, as the environment changes, work is continually needed to keep the software in step.

This is called `maintenance’, and any software engineer or systems analyst will tell you that it makes up the vast majority (more than 75%) of what programmers get paid to do. Accordingly, most programmer-hours are spent (and most programmer salaries are paid for) writing or maintaining in-house code that has no sale value at all-a fact the reader may readily check by examining the listings of programming jobs in any newspaper with a ‘Help Wanted’ section.

I knew I didn’t make it up ;)

You might have noticed a search box show up on this page, or perhaps noticed the Search page has changed. Yes, we’ve slapped ht://Dig in place. Though we’ve still got some customizing and templatizing to do, things seem to be working. There’s even an experimental beta ‘results in RSS‘ feature that is being tested, as well as a Mycroft/Sherlock plug-in on the way… we’re just wacky, ain’t we?

Now that there is a real live search, I find weird things… Like on this day, when I mentioned Greymatter and more importantly, how Microsoft uses fictitious examples in their materials… I could have used that a week ago…

I had (somewhat) forgotten about Greymatter, from what I remember about it, it was abandoned by it’s author, but not exactly given up on, or set free. foshdawg.net claims to be THE place for Greymatter. I dug around a bit and managed to find this bit which is as close as I can find for a license:

You may freely modify and redistribute this program, so long as every copyright notice (including in this manual and in the Greymatter code) remains fully intact. Finally, you may not sell or in any way make a financial profit from this program, either in original or modified form.

The you may not sell part makes sense, it sounds like the GPL, but the whole ‘make a profit’ thing makes me back away from it. It’s sort of open-source, but sort of not really… The whole line in any way make a financial profit is the deal breaker. What if Apache had that in it’s license? Argh…

Funny that the next section mentioned how Greymatter is a completely free program. Free as in beer I guess… I have no problem with people using open-source software and somehow making a profit off of it. The company I work for uses open-source software, and we certainly make a profit. So did the last company I worked for. So do a zillion companies. And not just Red Hat and Apple, but ordinary everyday comanies as well. So as an individual can you use Greymatter? Not if you have a donate button on your site. Though an Amazon Wish List might be ok, since that’s not technically a ‘financial profit’ then. And again, is there a certain measurable ‘financial profit’ that might be allowed? I don’t know…

Update: I must have missed this section:

“…you are hereby free to do whatever you wish with Greymatter and its code for any personal or commercial purposes…”

So maybe I’m wrong about the whole thing… Still, I’d like to see an ‘official’ license of some sort. Or maybe this is it…

Anyway, this is my plan. I’m going to write some sort of ‘weblog type’ software, using perl, that uses a templating system, and writes out static files. It might suck, it might not have any good features, but it will be open-source, most likely licensed under the GPL, though BSD is an option as well. I need this for myself and people I do work for. Yes, I do work for other people and they pay me, so this tool will be valuable to me. And if others can use it and make a profit, yay for them. I do not wish to restrict other people’s rights…

By the way, this won’t be the first time I’ve written something like this. The first ‘news page’ web app I wrote was probably written in 1998, back before the whole ‘weblog/blog’ craze took off. This time I’ll rewrite it and (try to) do it right.

See nf0’s life and inluminent/weblog for some comments on yesterday’s Movable Type piece…

This piece on GPL Blog Engines struck a real chord with me. First I should say that I think Movable Type is an incredibly well built application, I really can’t find a single thing wrong with the code or design decisions that went into building it. And as for support and community involvement, the Trotts seem to do an excellent job. So what chord has been struck? I’ve never been comfortable with the licensing. Sure there’s the commercial license, which I believe is $150, and for a business that seems dirt cheap, but for the individual, who hosts a personal site, they won’t get the commercial license in most cases. Should they? Perhaps…

There is personal or non-profit use and there is business or a for-profit site. Now, if you’re a typical weblogging type person, and you start your personal site and later add something like a Donate via PayPay button do you violate the license? What about if you write a book, and mention it on your site? Or write articles and sell them from your site? Or just link to sites that paid you to write articles for their site? If you get a freelance gig from your weblog, do you need to get a commercial license immediately? I didn’t make these examples up. They’re out there. Though I don’t know if people have commercial licenses or are knowingly breaking their licensing agreements. I suppose it’s up to the Trott’s to determine how they would wish to pursue people in violation of the license. IT’s nted in the license that they [the Trott’s] can terminate it at any time, and demand that you delete your installation of Movable Type. Yes, your data is still available, though possibly a little harder to get at.

I honestly am not writing this to stir up trouble, I’m writing it to get my thoughts out there. I don’t expect the Trott’s to start playing hardball tomorrow and going after violators. I don’t expect that because they seem to be good people. Some might say it would be bad for business to start going after the violators, and while that’s probably true, I think in the Trott’s case it really is because they are good people.
As for me, I’ve not implemented Movable Type on this site, partly because of the reasons listed above. I’m 1/2 tempted to write my own system, but honestly I don’t have the time. I’m not even concerned about making it 1/10 as good as Movable Type, I’d be happy with a system that was written in perl, rendered out static files, and had a good templating system – and that I had control over, be it GPL’d or whatever… I’ve written systems like that, though not weblog-centric, and it’s a lot of work to do it right. As for the other systems out there, none really seem to come close enough to what I’d like, with the terms/licensing that I’m comfortable with.

Whew, take a breath…