Since when has distributing software free of charge, or freeware, amounted to forfeiting the copyright of said freeware? When it's open source? Because the code was given away for free, thorny questions emerge when a violation has been discovered and someone is found to have shoved the code into their own for-profit products without giving anything back, in the form of attribution and disclosure of the alterations they made. ... Read full entry
Is freeware free of copyright?
Posted by John Lampard on Monday, 18 August, 2008 to the technology subset
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How to improve freeware’s poor usability
Posted by John Lampard on Tuesday, 5 August, 2008 to the technology subset
15 ways in which the usability of free software can be improved. The easiest way of getting volunteers to contribute to a program is to make it open source. And while thousands of people are now employed in developing Free Software, most of its developers are volunteers. So it's in Free Software that we see volunteer software's usability problems most often. Also read John Gruber's thoughts on making improvements... ... Read full entry
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Open source vs proprietary: turf of the new browser wars?
Posted by John Lampard on Friday, 4 July, 2008 to the technology subset
Despite being downloaded in record breaking numbers on Download Day, not everyone is overjoyed with the latest release of Firefox. Andrew Brown for one has decided to adopt the latest Opera browser as his default, and draws some interesting distinctions between open and closed source software development when comparing the browsers. The contrast between Opera and Firefox is an interesting example of the contrasting strengths of open and closed ... Read full entry
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