Open Source Development for MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV

DXLab is free; it is not open source.

MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV are also free; they are now open source.

DXLab interoperates with MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV.

 

I didn't imply it was Open Source software but you mentioned it was free software which is not
the same as Open Source software but still provides access to the code. I'm talking about software
freedom. Just because you don't charge for it doesn't make it free as in freedom (see www.fsf.org).

But classy move to tout your own product (same goes for HRD) when the news item is about another
one.

 

You asked for a link to its source code.

I did't says "DXLab is free as in freedom", I said "DXLab is completely free", meaning there are no license fees, no annual subscription fees, no support fees, no requests for donations, and no embedded advertising.

In this thread, G8KTX asked if MMSSTV could be used to replace HRD's poor implementation of SSTV. An owner of HRD replied that this could be done in the future. I pointed out that DXLab interoperates with MMSSTV now, and has for years.

Why is any of that inappropriate?

73,

Dave, AA6YQ

 

Can't say how many times I asked for this it was always the same answer NO! Now its possible? Is this because of Mako or your programming change? Well once you figure it out I might finally think about purchasing HRD.

Dave

 

That may be the case, Dave, and good luck to those who use it, but I use HRD and have paid for it, so I don't intend to change to another package now or at any time in the future.

 

Why not make it open source?

 

Completely free as in free software would be something else. But that's ok. Just say it's free of charge then. Now to second K3NG's question, if
you do not charge anything for the software and make it available free of charge, why not release it as open source software project thus really
contributing to the community in a much larger way than just giving something away for free. You immediately would increase the amount of people
who could help improve the software, port it to other platforms thus helping you to achieve World Domination(tm) with DXLab in a very good way.
Did I mention the karma points you'd gain?

73 Mike K5TRI

 

Because doing so would reduce my productivity and agility, and would be less personally enjoyable.

73,

Dave, AA6YQ

 

A standard definition of "free" is "not costing or charging anything".

Having led Product Development at Rational Software from 1981 until its acquisition by IBM in 2003, I have extensive experience in developing software. Having setup and launched the Eclipse Foundation in 2004, I also have significant experience with open source software development. I personally design, implement, test, and document DXLab because in my judgement, this is the most effective approach to making this product available. To see what users think, read the reviews, or join the DXLab Yahoo Group and ask.

DXLab has long provided a comprehensive set of open programmatic interfaces. As a result, it interoperates with MultiPSK, FLDigi, MMTTY, MMVARI, MMSSTV, JT65-HF, WSJT-X, N1MM, TURBO HAMLOG, HAMSKED, LP StepLink, MIXW, DM780, CWGET, and CWSkimmer.

With more than 100,000 users worldwide and a development process that averages 4 new feature-bearing releases each month and keeps the backlog of reported but uncorrected defects at 0, my karma is doing just fine.

73,

Dave, AA6YQ

 

Dave, we know all that. If you put your ego aside for a second and re-read my post you will see that I didn't question your
abilities but merely made a suggestion. And yeah as an IBMer I'm somewhat familiar with Rational and Eclipse . I use it in
a different packaging (Data Studio).

It was a question, for me personally free software/ freedom also means the freedom to decide what to do with it. So if you say
hey I don't want the stress of dealing with daily commits or whatnot .. fair enough. But let's keep the ego out of this. Not very
productive. You don't have to prove anything here. We just asked/ wondered .. and no, the standard definition of free does not
automatically allude to monetary concerns. Maybe for you. But that's a mere issue with the English language hence the creation of
FLOSS as a better term for Free/Libre Open Source software to make the point of freedom.

The whole thread however started on the notion of Open Source software which would also leave some room to suggest that free
was meant as in freedom.

Either way, I'll leave it at that to not further take away from the original topic which is the contribution of software to the open source
community. Feel free to drop me an email for further discussion.

73 Mike K5TRI

 

Neither productivity nor agility is an "ego issue", Mike. Some projects are a good fit for open source development: TrustedQSL (Logbook of the World's TQSL), MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV are all examples. Some projects are not; DXLab is one of those.

73,

Dave, AA6YQ

 

I think you're conflating open source software and collaborative development. You can offer open source software without doing collaborative development. If someone wants to port the software to another operating system, they can do that with open source and the main project can continue on the same direction without incorporating any code from any derivative projects or the extra work that comes with managing all that.

I'm glad you acknowledge DXLab is freeware and not open source. One of the popular freeware contest programs claims to be open source but you can't download the code anywhere and the few who have the source aren't allowed to freely distribute it. That's clearly not open source. But I digress.

 

Asking Dave again..

 

You could do that if you weren't concerned with helping end users be successful in their use of the product.

Abandoning coordination can succeed with operating systems or compilers or other tools where highly-technical end users can successfully handle variances among forks and derivative products. Abandoning coordination of a product aimed at non-technical users whose success requires the preservation of many invariants (architecture, user interface, APIs, distribution infrastructure, etc.) would be fatal. Note that MM-Open's governance model provides for coordination.

Open source is a technique. As with any technique, there are appropriate applications, and inappropriate applications.

 

Anyone who has the knowledge and skills necessary to create a derivative work really isn't the same as a typical end user. Any derivative product should be supported by whoever created it.

It depends on what you consider open source to mean. For example, QRP technically means low power. To many it also means simple equipment and homebrewing. Those often go along with QRP, but QRP still means just low power. Open source in its strictest sense means making the source code freely available for modification, education, and derivative works. Whether one wants to build a community and ecosystem around that source code and supply support is up to them, and certainly not required. If one sets specific guidelines on support for the code, I can't think of a reason why anyone wouldn't open source freeware, unless there were plans to commercialize it later.