[Discussioni]FYI: code swapping

[Alessandro Rubini]

> Ho molto apprezzato l'articolo, ma sinceramente non capisco dove siano
> le discussioni sui "massimi sistemi".

Forse su altre liste. Per esempio adesso su discussion@ per le
licenze, e fsb@ per sta storia qui. E sulla disinformazione non
ricordo dove (forse qui?).

> Capire che tipo di licenza
> applichera' Microsoft a questo codice (se la applichera') e' a mio
> parere rilevante, soprattutto alla luce delle ultime strategie di
> marketing di casa Redmond (.NET, shared source, etc).

Ecco un messaggio passato su fsb@ . Credo che gli archivi siano
pubblici (non lo so, non uso web, sono paleolitico), ma preferisco
togliere il mittente per evitare possibili problemi.

> They are using a third-party application from Vertigo Software, and
> Microsoft may have wanted to distance themselves from it somewhat. (See
> my comments below for a possible explanation why :-) However the
> CodeSwap site was personally endorsed by Bill Gates, so they're not
> distancing themselves too far.
>
>
>> Even more
>> interesting: what sort of license do the code snippets have,
> 
> Unclear. Microsoft doesn't appear to have thought about the licensing
> issue. But we can probably assume that it's not the GPL :-)
> 
>> and who owns them?
> 
> Microsoft doesn't appear to have thought about the copyright issue
> either. Typically the copyright holder for the published code is going
> to be either the developers' employers (if the developers are employed
> under a work-for-hire arrangement) or the developers themselves (if the
> developers are working independently). (Note that the technology allows
> developers to contribute whole source files, so we're not just talking
> about 5-line code fragments here.) The CodeSwap site doesn't mention
> anything about asking your employer's permission before you contribute
> source code.
> 
>> Nonetheless, it's a pretty neat concept... wouldn't it be neat to have
>> a repository of code that could be accessed via emacs or vi? ;-)
> 
> Incidentally, note that CodeSwap actually appears to be a form of
> peer-to-peer application. The code snippets don't appear to be published
> on the CodeSwap site, they appear to be stored in a folder on the
> developer's hard drive and accessed from there. Quoting from the
> vscodeswap.com home page: "Developers have the option of choosing the
> folder where they download code to, as well as the option of choosing a
> specific folder where they want to publish code from.  All the code in
> the shared folder will be available for other developers to search or
> share whenever they are connected to the CodeSwap network." (Note that
> one of the system requirements is having an "always on" Internet
> connection.)
> 
> The CodeSwap site itself works on the Napster model, and appears to
> maintain only a central index. Again quoting from the vscodeswap.com
> home page: "Developers simply type in keywords for what they are looking
> for.  The search will scan the file names, descriptions and the content
> of the files to find exact matches in the centralized CodeSwap index. 
> When users find the code that they are looking for, they simply download
> it." (Like Napster, the download is presumably from the system of the
> developer who contributed the code.)
> 
> <irony>
> Frankly, I'm stunned: In order to promote its .NET initiative, Microsoft
> is encouraging software developers to use a Napster-like technology to
> steal precious intellectual property from their employers and give it
> away to anybody who wants it, thereby threatening the foundations of the
> information economy and indeed our very security as a nation. I think
> Congress and the American people need to know about this!
> </irony>
> 
> Of course, the lead sentence in the original InfoWorld story did say
> that Microsoft was "taking a page from the habits of the underground
> developer communities" :-)