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Programming IT Technology

New Site Makes OSS Development Easier 42

Posted by timothy from the snippets-of-gpl-joy dept.
An anonymous reader submits "OpenSnippets is a fledgling online community for OSS developers. New members are welcome to submit articles and code of interest, and everyone can view/download the code! It's blog-styled with topics for most popular languages. How useful- I only wish it'd make my coffee..."
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New Site Makes OSS Development Easier More

New Site Makes OSS Development Easier

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  • Not "Open", but GPLed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aziegler ( 201013 ) <`halostatue' `at' `gmail.com'> on Sunday July 13, 2003 @05:09PM (#6429725) Homepage
    The default licence assumed is apparently GPL, which isn't open -- it's GPL. I can't use GPLed snippets in my code that I wish to make BSD or MIT or MPL licensed.

    Great idea, lousy default licence choice.

    -a
    • I couldn't find out how they get the snippets, the site is slow for me. But couldn't they make their own license, IE sayign that if you use this snippet, You have to use some sort of open source license? Of course if these things were ripped from existing code, they couldn't do that.

      • the license you're talking about IS GPL.

        Consider if you want to use the snippet in BSD licensed code. Oops, it can't be BSD licensed, becuase BSD allows you to make a closed fork. MIT, Artistic License, and a few other "open source" licenses do allow closed forks.

      • That's the GPL essentially.

        I don't mind if they called it "GPLedsnippets.com"; I mind that they call it "opensnippets.com". As I've said many times, the GPL works most effectively against open source (e.g., non-GPL/FSF licences) projects, not closed source projects.

        I did a little bit of searching on their site and they really haven't done their homework. They say that they accept PD, GPL, or LGPL only -- but those aren't the only licences compatible with the GPL. They could have easily gone through and fo

        • Re:Not "Open", but GPLed (Score:5, Interesting)

          by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Sunday July 13, 2003 @11:50PM (#6431702) Journal
          After reading this story, I posted a GPLed snippet of my code on the site.

          If someone emailed me and said they would like to put it in their BSD licensed application, I would grant them a specific permission.

          I have a feeling most people that license their stuff under GPL would have similar feelings about small snippets of their GPL code. It can't hurt to ask, not everything has to be a huge political battle, we are all programmers here.
    • I'd really appreciate it if someone could point to an article or site which gave an overview of all the different licenses, and in which cases to use which ones, the pros and the cons, etc.. It's just getting so difficult.
    • Sure you can. There is nothing in the GPL preventing you from using GPLed snippets in your BSD (w/o ad clause) or MIT licensed code.

      Of course, the GPL snippets will remain under the GPL, so if someone else wants to take your BSD+GPL snippets and release them under the Total Proprietary Dominance License version 32.5, then they'll have to remove the GPL snippets in the code.

  • woah (Score:5, Informative)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travisNO@SPAMutk.edu> on Sunday July 13, 2003 @06:27PM (#6430161) Homepage Journal
    A friend just told me I was /.ed. Sorry that the site is on such a slow line, I'll be moving it to a faster one tomorrow.

    As for the name, it's open if you can read it. If you are trying to get code for commercial software, check out planet source code [planetsourcecode.com]. I might change the default license in the near future, but it isn't very likely. Submissions can specify their license of choice in their comments.

    Email me [mailto] with any suggestions, complaints, burning garbage, or offers of endorsement.
    • I think that's a sideways swipe at my own comment regarding the poor choice of default licence.

      I was quite specific that I prefer to source my own code BSD, MIT, or MPL -- none of which could happen if I used a single snippet from this resource. As I said: the GPL isn't "open" in the sense of most OSS licences; it is "free" in the doublespeak sense of the FSF. It's a licence that makes sense, from a perspective, but is most effective against other open source licences.

      Commercial licensors are either going
      • But I'm too busy enjoying my new found /. fame to add such a feature just yet. I'll probably add it by next weekend, or at the very least give a list of acceptable licenses. Maybe I should add a default license selection to the user settings, or a default comment header.

  • Makes development slower! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by joto ( 134244 ) on Sunday July 13, 2003 @06:38PM (#6430200)
    While the "snippets" idea is a good one, it has never really succeded before, even though people have tried.

    I suspect the reason for this, is that it simply is a too large scope to have "everything useful". Categorizing all this stuff, throwing away the 99% of junk code, it's just too much work for anyone to do. And making it into a blog isn't going to make it work better.

    Sure, let the people who want to, have some fun with it. Follow the discussions, read the code posted, learn from it... But don't ever expect to ever find something you actually need there!

  • It is a good idea, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wizs ( 532010 )
    It is a good thing that there is a site aggreagting rich code seqment examples. The code segment is not necessary too long, therefore people can catch the point more quickly. OpenSnippets may be a good start. But it seems there are too many OSS developing sites in the world. Too many premuture sites may disperse the development power of OSS.
  • I could not find an FAQ on the site explaining how Osnippets.org differs from other repositories of open source code. There are many such repositories these days. Why would I choose to spend time on Osnippets instead of one of the others? Could someone please enlighten me?

  • The FAQ (Score:2, Informative)

    by jesboat ( 64736 )
    Sortof,

    It's guidelines: Here [osnippets.org]
    Open Snippets->Misc Stuff->Official->Snippet Guidelines

  • gpl stuff (Score:5, Insightful)

    by morgajel ( 568462 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:13PM (#6435657)
    As one of the coders who has provided snippets for them, I gotta say that I the gpl licence works just fine. the purpose is to TEACH you how to do it, not just copy paste and be done with it. The gpl has a handy little clause that says you can rewrite the code and call it your own.

    If you like my code, the only thing I ask is that you figure out what what it does before using it. If you understand it, you don't have to copy/paste it and can just write your own.

    I think that gpl is perfect for this site because the snippets are small, and easy to rewrite. It's perfect for me because in order to rewrite it, you have to understand it, which is why I posted the snippets in the first place- to help people learn.

    Good job sheenmaster, but you really gotta get a different handle:)

    if you want to check out other projects I've worked on, check out morgajel.com [morgajel.com]

  • Some critique (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DukeyToo ( 681226 ) on Monday July 14, 2003 @02:26PM (#6435762) Homepage
    Took a look at the site. And I thought /. was anti-MS!

    I won't be returning to the site...I don't want social commentary, I want useful source code and coding techniques, algorythms.

    Try www.codeproject.com for a decent site.
    • Took a look at www.codeproject.com. It's all Windows-specific stuff except for a link to Perl. And no link to PHP in the scripting section? What a shock. Definitely a Windows-centric site.

      Gee, what's this? I dig a little deeper and find out that the site is nothing more than a shill for the products of it's sponsors.

      I'll take a sponsor-free site over one whoring itself out any day.
      • Yes, definitely Windows centric; there is nothing wrong with being focused on a particular area...they make no secret of it: "The Code Project is a community of Visual Studio .NET developers joined together with a common goal: To learn, to teach, to have fun programming"

        What I was trying to convey is that the site does what it does very well! Code snippets are easy to find, articles are generally well thought out and written. And the focus is on the code.

        It may be not be for everyone, but almost 1/2 mil
        • The only thing I see different from that site and the opensnippets one is (a) the interface is a lot better at "The Code Project" and (b) they push the development tools of their sponsors. Hey, we've all been whores at some point in our lives, so I don't completely blame them. Running websites isn't free.

          I'm sure those 1/2 million members (that seems like an awfully large number to me, but I have no reason to believe it's not true) are finding something of value from the site. I guess I just let my own
  • I just checked it out. (Sorry, but I'm a busy guy.) All I can say is, why do they center all the text in the snippets? Makes it harder to read the stuff and follow the code when indentation is often used as a visual assist in expressing the logical flow of code. Also, centering everything makes posting Python code rather cumbersome. (Not exactly the word I want, but it's as close as I'm going to get right now.)
    • That sounds like a browser issue; I can't seem to recreat your problem.

      Email me a screenshot and your browser info. I've specifically altered the site for lynx support; one more mod won't be that big of a deal.

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