ANN: Twisted 0.16.0

[Michal Wallace]

Hi Itamar,

Thanks for trying to answer my question. I'm afraid I still
don't follow the logic of the registrations though.

(I'm BCC'ing glyph because I really want to understand this.)

On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Itamar Shtull-Trauring wrote:

> bin/twistd can load license files, yes. If you don't have
> one it prints a nice long error message (which I removed
> in CVS, so it won't be in 0.16.1).

So registration will *not* be required in the future?

> Glyph has some insane reason he wants it to be in (rumor
> has it a rogue Pavlovian has linked the registration form
> to a Certain Person's cage, giving him a food pellet every
> time someone registers. Try not to overfeed him.)

:) I can see that registration is a great way to track the
growth of the user base, and I understand the extra benefits
mentioned on the how to register page:

  http://www.twistedmatrix.com/documents/howto/register

But I *dont* understand how it has anything whatsoever to do
with stopping piracy. There's just a huge mental gap.

If you want to track the popularity, great! Then say that,
but why tag it as a "help fight piracy" issue when you don't
present an actual argument for how it will lead to reduced
piracy. :)


>  > If so, why? How can piracy be a problem for an open source
>  > project?  How does this licensing scheme prevent it?
> 
> Well, let's quote one the BSA's latest press release:
> 
> """
> Washington, DC (March 21) ?In its ongoing effort to protect consumers
> from Internet software pirates and support a safe, secure and legal
> online community, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) announced that
> last month it executed three unannounced court-ordered seizures on
> individuals whom BSA investigated for selling unlicensed software out of
> their homes in Kentucky, Missouri and Pennsylvania. Under the
> supervision of the U.S. Marshals, BSA carried away computers, equipment
> and CDs used in the mail-order operations.


Um, okay, but I read this to mean that they were taking
closed-source software and selling it, thus stealing money
from the original creators.

Twisted is a free and open source product, isn't it? The
version I have comes with a copy of the GNU LGPL, which
explicity grants me permission to distribute copies. The
first clause even says I can charge for the distribution:

-- You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring
-- a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty
-- protection in exchange for a fee.

How can I possibly pirate it?


> Now, you wouldn't want any Sikrit PSU Agents showing up at
> your house, asking to see *your* Twisted license, and not
> being able to show one, now would you? And do you really
> trust a bunch of people giving away software for FREE?

:) But I can show them the license. It's in a file called
"LICENSE", and it contains the GNU LGPL.

I'm not opposed to asking people to register, if its
beneficial... I just don't understand your logic, or see how
it relates to the closed-source concept of piracy.

The arguments I've read so far just makes me think that
Twisted is going closed source, and that I should therefore
stop trying to learning it... That would be a big
disappointment for me, because so far everything I've seen
in twisted looks great.

Is twisted going commercial?

Cheers,

- Michal   http://www.sabren.net/   sabren at manifestation.com 
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