Recent Blog Posts:
Category Mobile - Web - Media
Date Friday, Aug 03, 2007 8:49:17 AM
If You Use Open Source, Leave the License and Credit

What percentage of Web developers and site owners are cool? Have you ever stopped to wonder? We're talking about a population that designs and builds the foundation of our digital existence. The people who provide the sites, the services, and the means for everyone to explore and experience this "World Wide Web."

Personally, I've judged it all based on my experiences, which have mostly been very positive. Fortunately, I got on this train back in 1996, back when the Web was battleship grey, and developers were hard to come by. Eleven years later, I'm now in a sea of developers and site owners, and yes, my experiences have remained very positive... until recently.

About two weeks ago, I rolled out a new version of my AddToBookmarks script, which is an easy to use solution for adding social bookmarking buttons to your pages or posts. I released the script with an open source license, and some credit/info in the files.

I wanted to see how many sites were using my script, so I do a search at Google that would locate my script: "Del.icio.us Digg Google Spurl Blink Furl Simpy Y! MyWeb," out of the first 25 results, 16 of these sites had stripped out the license and my credit/info from the script, and only 9 had left the license and credit.

Wow - Apparently, only 36% of developers and site owners are cool?!?

Actually, that's not true, as you can't conclude much from a 25 person study, although, these results are not very positive. It seems a lot of people either don't understand or don't care about open source licensing and giving people credit.

It's all very simple, if you use someone's work, and that work has a license and/or credit listed, you leave it. If you create a variation of the item, most likely the license and credit must stay with the variation.



Here are the results from my search:

Has License/Credit: 9

http://www.israelnewsradio.net/the-marty-roberts-show.html
http://www.watch4jobs.co.uk/blog/
http://www.brazil-travelnet.com/index.html
http://www.soccer-game-information.com/soccer-video.html
http://news.stepforth.com/blog/
http://www.onestopwebsupport.com/weblog/weblog.html
http://www.evolvingdoor.ca/zodiac/signsindex.htm
http://www.tophosts.com/articles/?002404.html
http://www.leadership-tools.com/advanced-site-search.html


Removed License/Credit: 16

http://forums.seochat.com/seo-scripts-10/coldfusion-optimization-3214.html
http://starrynightlights.com/blog/?m=200604
http://www.thegnuru.com/
http://ngeorgia.com/blueandgray/
http://www.europeanexperts.org/disp_zone.html?id_zone=33&lazone=VBA+(Office)
http://www.setfocus.com/aboutdotnet/default.aspx
http://rdoctor.com/symptoms_disease/content/blogsection/11/9/
http://www.roseindia.net/tutorialhelp/comment/6225
http://www.evictstop.com/bisf-mortgages.shtml
http://forums.devshed.com/business-news-124/google-to-bid-for-u-s-airwaves-if-condition-added-461312.html
http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/ASP.NET/Working-with-Parameters-with-Crystal-Reports-and-ASP-NET-2-0/
http://www.ddj.com/dept/architect/184406031
http://forums.devarticles.com/technology-news-57/effect-of-google-cookie-policy-unclear-ap-107583.html
http://www.scripts.com/remotely-hosted-scripts/web-traffic-scripts/free-google-pagerank-checker-webmaster-tools/
http://starrynightlights.com/blog/?p=19
http://www.vakaruge.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=173



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Category Mobile - Web - Media
Date Tuesday, Aug 02, 2005 11:15:53 AM
All I Need to Know About Open Source I 'probably' Learned in Kindergarten

I've borrowed a commonly used title for this post, which goes like this: "All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"  but with the twist of Open Source added in.  I'm sure you can see where this is going, I don't even need to say the word and most of you are thinking it right now. It's something we attempt to drill into kids minds (at least many do).

"Joey, please share your blocks with Alex.  Maybe you two can build something together - wouldn't that be fun!"
Those little 4-6yr old minds are always hearing about 'sharing,' 'waiting in line,' 'being polite,' or being given a means to explore the world and create.

If we look at those concepts - we see a foundation for Open Source.  

- there's the sharing
- the acknowledgement of others
- the consideration of many over one
- the support and encouragement of creating

But then we somehow mutate into adults and most of us forget about 'the formula.'  It worked great when we were kids - maybe we should give it a go as adults?  But how can we all use this formula - we aren't all developers and we all aren't interested in moving to Linux.

Open Source isn't even about software, code or computers.  It's more of a framework you can apply to many systems.  For example - people who like gardening with succulents are usually practicing "Open Source Gardening."  A person with a succulent garden will often offer you some succulents, offer you advice on how to take care of them - and hope that you to will enjoy succulents as they do.  If you look over the bullets above, you'll see that this was indeed an Open Source situation.

Thinking about what you do - or where your skills are, is there anything you can Open Source? Is there anything you've already provided as Open Source? What is being Open Sourced to you?

Before I close, I wanted to swing the attention here back to software and point out a parallel.  Open Source software displaces commercial software just as the machine has displaced many jobs. It's a fractal relationship - showing a self-similarity pattern.  That leaves people with two choices - they can either try to fight it and loose, or they can participate and take on the challenge of technological evolution.  The arguements against Open Source are the equivelent to picketing factories that layoff workers due to new machines.  On a social level - it's always very sad to hear about layoffs - but on a larger scale, it's just nature pushing for us to keep pushing.

With that said, you could almost consider Open Source as nature's way of dealing with evil corporations that actually slow down progress.  It's as if nature said, "Look - I gave you guys the keys and figured you'd work it out - but... look at this mess - your operating systems are horrible - and look at that word processor, it's mutated into a chubby monster!"

I think Open Source provides opportunities for higher levels of progress in the evolution of what it's being applied to - and the reason is all very simple - because under the hood, Open Source is Kindergarten.

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Gideon Marken
Web Technologist & Electronic Artist

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