Category: software

  • Free Software vs. Gratis Software

    A lot of folks are unclear on the subtleties of free software and open source. Mike Hogan writes a blog article”Is Hybrid Licensing of OSS Hypocrisy?” to try to shed some light on this. With respect, I think he has missed part of it. We’re talking about two orthogonal things here. One is open-source versus…

  • Can I Use Example Code from Internet Q&A Sites?

    A user recently asked: Scenario: A developer is working on a project and encounters a problem. They ask a question on the internet somewhere (ie stackoverflow.com) Someone answers their question and provides a nice code snippet that just about does what they want. Where does one legally stand if the developer includes the code verbatim…

  • Is This Legal?

    A user recently asked a question about GPL compatibility with his company’s commercial software offerings: I work for a software / design firm and I recently found out that our “in house” CMS is actually [based on software] licensed under the GPL Ver 2. I would like to know if it is ethical / legal…

  • TDD lesson from Sudoku

    I am a Sudoku addict. I like to analyze the logic strategies for solving these puzzles. I even gave a presentation at OSCON 2006 about using SQL to solve Sudoku puzzles. The image I’m including is a screenshot from jigsawdoku.com, copyright 2008 by Rachel Lee and Gideon Greenspan. This is my favorite Sudoku web interface…