Hello, On 08/03/2002 03:05 PM, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: > Because it is a silly thread and I shouldn't be replying at all. Others > in the group either have more sense or have given up on answering > php-general questions.
I believe the point is that you always be passive when it comes to initiatives that interfere with Zend business. Where were you when Zeev publically boycotted the offer of APC author to integrate his cache extension in PHP? If you can't speak on this, we will know that you are still passively favouring Zend business. > My view on encoders is that they are unnecessary and rather evil. I would > never ever purchase a php-based application that did not come with the php That is your oppinion of course. > source code. If you want to restrict your code somehow, do it through a > license. People who choose to violate that license are the same people This is a joke right? Are you familiar with Richard Stallman? You certainly sound like him? The fact is that when you give the source of a product of your work, not only you are giving the code, but also the know-how that was envolved in the development of that code. Licensing code providing the source means that you are giving the know-how too. Anybody with that source can rebuild a new product with the know how that was learned and you hardly can demonstrate that the licensee only got the know-how because they got the source. So, licensing and giving the source is a ridiculously innefficient solution to protect the product of your work. That is why Zend closed the source of the commercial products that thay sell and you do not seem to have a problem with them today. So why do you object to people intention to protect their PHP scripts source and don't object to have Zend selling closed source products based on PHP? It seems your objections are inconsistent because you are passively admiting that Zend can make money from closed source products but other people can't. > who will hack your encoded scripts anyway. And this way the honest > customers will have the benefit of the code to customize, learn from, In the real world, many customers are not that honest and obviously can cause a great harm to software business that is based on selling products with Open Source. > build on top of. Closed source stuff stifles innovation and I personally > refuse to work on a PHP encoder for this reason. Imagine if I had never > released the source for PHP? We would not be having this discussion > today. That was your decision. It is not fair to impose it to others. The most popular language in the world is Visual Basic. The reason for that is that it made possible for many individuals to develop applications and sell them so they could make a living from that activity. Despite of that, Visual Basic is itself a closed source product. The important point of this is products are successful when they help people to survive from them. Being open or closed source has little to do with the success of software. Opening the source of a programming is a compromise. It may lead to the success of a program or not. See how many Open Source projects are rotten in Sourceforge to realize that it is not making products Open Source that will lead to their automatic success. > I know plenty of people disagree with this view, but there you have it. OTOH there are plenty of people that completely agree. You would have much more to gain to understand both sides instead of pushing for one side only. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
