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• HashBang Industries
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• Centrix.ca
• Calf Trail Software
• Watchmac

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Check out One Finger Discount for a list of all of the participants and quick note about the type(s) of software each company specializes in.

Try them all, buy what you like! It’s almost a steal!

Today we mark the end of GeoCities!

GeoCities was the premiere place to get your own personal “web space” back circa-1995.
GeoCities provide the initial playground for many of today’s web professionals (including myself).

I remember many-a-night hacking away on my GeoCities page.
Having informal feuds with others on who could do the best site with the latest and greatest web technologies of the times, like frame and guest books!

GeoCities has therefore always been, and continued to today’s closure, the ultimate place to find the worst looking webpages with the most crap and the worst code.

In honor of the closing I took it on myself to throw everything I know from doing professional web development for 12 years, out the window and come put together the following for your enjoyment.

Needless to say it is the first issue I was eagerly awaiting to show up in the mail.
(not that it’s not a good magazine normally, just not as good as with me in it)

When it finally came I was even happier to find that it was mentioned not only once, but twice in the same Months magazine!

The first was what I was expecting, a review of iDeskCal.
(If you have been following this site for a while, you will remember that several months ago Macworld had done an online review of iDeskCal)

(click image for full size version)

The second mention was smaller, but still nice…
It was in a section they did this month called “Budget Mac”.
The idea was for three Mac users to build their ultimate setup for $300.
iDeskCal showed up in the “Student’s” setup.

I took the liberty to create a little collage of the main items.
For the full text please pick up a copy of the magazine.

(click image for full size version)

I also thought I would go ahead and share that letter here, so here it is.

Dear Mr. President,
My name is Dallas Brown.
I wanted to take a minute and write you concerning the proposed health care reform.

Let me start by saying that I am not a Democrat, nor a Republican.
I personally do not like the close minded nature to the “other side” that both parties seem to show.
Instead I would consider myself a Constitutionalist or more towards a Libertarian.

As such, I am usually in favor of less government, however when it comes to health care reform I am in favor of anything that will truly fix such a important yet broken system.

If you would allow I would like to explain my circumstances to help better explain how imperative it is that something is done, and fast!

My son, Tyler, now 4 years-old, was born 3 months early at 25 weeks gestation.
He weighed under 2 pounds.
As a result of being so early, he had to have heart surgery the day after being born and he had what is called a brain bleed, which is basically a stroke.
Tyler spent the next 3 months in the hospital and running up a medical bill of around 1 Million dollars.

As a result of the brain bleed, part of the brain was killed.
It also resulted in Spinal fluid not being to drain correctly so he had to receive a Shunt, which allows the Spinal fluid to drain from his brain into his stomach.

In 4 years of life Tyler has had heart surgery, eye surgery, and about 7 brain/head surgeries including a total skull reconstructions.

Tyler has Cerebral Palsy as a result of the brain that was killed off.
He walks with a major limp, and does not talk, however he is mentally very aware and smart.
However, he is like a 1 year-old in a 4 year-old body.

All of that being said….

I am self employed as a Apple Mac and iPhone software developer, and my family and I would qualify as “Middle Class”.

With being self employed we are desperately searching for a health insurance plan, however the second any of the private health insurance companies look at my son, we are immediately rejected. Even the so called “non-profit” companies reject us, some times before even submitting an application.

Since we are middle class citizens we do not qualify for any of the current government plans because we “make too much money.”

We are willing an trying to pay upwards of $600+ a month for health insurance, yet no one will accept us.
This means that if my son gets sick we can’t take him to his pediatrician unless we can afford to pay the entire bill upfront.
If he has another shunt failure (which he has had 4 of) the hospital will only do what they are required by law to due, and “make sure he is stable”, which means he will not receive the care he desperately needs, and would most likely die.
That entire hospital visit will be billed to us and with being upwards of $10K for a shunt failure, we would be unable to pay.

(We received many bills during Tyler’s stay in the hospital, yet the kicker was a Single bill of Over $100K that we received)

So here we are, Middle Class Americans, willing to pay extreme rates if only we could get health insurance, and all because of a medical condition that my son did not ask for, and makes everyday already more difficult than normal.

I apologize for the length of this message, however I hope it helps show how desperately we need some kind of health care reform and soon.

There have been talks about things like just capping the amount someone can sue a doctor for malpractice.
The problem with something like this, is that while it may change some things, it would not help someone like me, as the health insurance companies would still refuse to give us coverage.

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this letter.
Please feel free to use Tyler’s story if you think it would help.

Sincerely,

-Dallas Brown

I have been using developer preview versions of Snow Leopard and I can say with all honesty that Snow Leopard is a wonderful update to the already amazing 10.5 (Leopard).

The speed and performance updates in 10.6 make this a release that all eligible users should upgrade too, and at only $29 USD for the single computer upgrade and $49 USD for the Family upgrade, you should not need to even give it a second thought.

The main thing to know with 10.6 is that it will only work on Intel machines, so unfortunately you are out of luck if you are still using a Power PC computer.

The second main thing to know about 10.6 is that iDeskCal runs great on Snow Leopard!
I have been running it full time on Snow Leopard without any problems.
If however you do run into any issues with running iDeskCal on Snow Leopard, come Friday, Snow Leopard has special additions behind-the-scenes that make it even easier for us to track down reported bugs.
Unfortunately this is all I can say right now as my NDA with Apple is still in effect.

I have included links to pre-order Snow Leopard today!
Currently (Monday 24th) if you order from Apple, your upgrade DVD will be delivered the day Snow Leopard is released (Friday). I am not sure how long that will be the case, so I recommend you pre-order now!

Apple Online Store 10.6 Upgrade (Single computer & Family versions)
Amazon.com 10.6 Upgrade (Single computer version)
Amazon.com 10.6 Upgrade (Family version)

I no longer work for PayPal and I am now an independent Mac and iPhone developer!

Along with this change, me and my wife have decided to move us and our son back to Utah so we can be closer to family.

We move into our new place in Utah on Sept 1 (1 1/2 weeks from now).

We are really excited about both changes.

I was a moron five years ago. Five months ago, even.

I’ve heard this from other programmers, so I don’t think I’m alone. They look back at old code they wrote and say, “What idiot wrote this crap?”

I used to wonder if this feeling would ever go away — as if I’d just get to the point where I’m super-awesome and that’s it.

But over the years I’ve learned to rely on this feeling. Were it ever to go away, then I’d be worried like hell. It would mean I’m not learning and not improving.

So, yes, I’m proud to have been such a moron so recently.

Macworld.com hash posted a writeup of iDeskCal in its “Mac Gems” column.

You can read the article at: http://www.macworld.com/article/141687/2009/07/ideskcal.html

The other day we decided to take some time and go see if we could rectify the situation.
That lead us to our new purchase….

A 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid!

Now for those that know me well, you know I have a deep issue with hippies, so you might be saying “YOU got a hybrid???”
Well I can assure you that there is ‘Nothing Hippie About It’!

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with helping the environment, but that is just a bonus for me having a hybrid.
The main reason for the hybrid is simply the gas mileage!

My round trip commute to work is 78 miles!
Getting 40 MPG instead of the 14-17 MPG in the Jeep is the reason for the hybrid!
That means the round trip commute takes 2 gallons instead of 5.2 at 15MPG!

The car has 6 disc MP3 changer in dash, bluetooth hands-free phone connection, tinted windows, and they will be coming out to install Lo-Jack in it.

To make things even better we have fixed my credit enough that I was able to finance the car alone!

This very post is delivered to your browser or news reader by the famous and fabulous WordPress blogging system. In my work as the developer of MarsEdit, I am exposed to countless blogging options, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. And yet, I stick with WordPress because it strikes a balance of power and ease of use which feels comfortable to me. Not to mention that Joseph Scott and others are tirelessly working to improve its API.

WordPress is licensed under the terms of the Gnu Public License (GPL) which, in a nutshell, stipulates that you are free to use the software however you like, but if you make changes and distribute those changes, then you must share those changes under the same terms. This simple, radical restriction means that you are prohibited from taking a GPL project and incorporating it with a closed-source project.

Violating The GPL

Violating the GPL is easy. All you have to do is write some code, intermingle it with some GPL code, distribute a changed copy of the original, and refuse to share your contributions. Bam! You’re toast. Assuming the original authors discover your violation and decide to pursue a resolution.

Once a violation occurs, it might be settled privately, or could escalate to legal court procedures. But the most obvious form of resolution is for the author of the changes to release their code to the public under the terms of the GPL.

Depending on how much code you “mixed” with the GPL code, this could mean only a small portion, or it could mean the entire source code of your project. This so-called “viral nature” of GPL is what scares the bejeezus out of companies, large and small, who fear the consequences of having to give up their own intellectual property to the public.

The terms of the GPL sound pretty simple at first read, but due in part to the epic consequences of a violation, there has been a great deal of debate and uncertainty about what legally constitutes a violation. Most of the debate seems to boil down to two questions:

1. What counts as a change to the original product?
2. What counts as distribution of those changes?

If you can legally justify that your additions to a GPL project either don’t change or derive from the original product, or haven’t technically been distributed, then you are not subject to the restrictive terms of the license.

Take GIMP, the popular GNU-licensed image editing application. The application supports plugins, analogous to the types of plugins you might find for the commercial, closed-source application Photoshop. A savvy developer may argue that a plugin doesn’t meet the criteria of changing the original application, because the original application still runs in its unaltered condition whether the plugin is there or not.

But promoters of the GPL take the position that plugins, by nature of being loaded into the same code space as other GPL code, do constitute a modification of the original, and are therefore subject to the terms of the GPL. As far as I know this is not a question that has been well-tested in courts.

Let me take a moment to make this abundantly clear: I respect the rights of authors to license their software under whatever terms they choose, including the GPL. In my opinion, all the legal mumbo jumbo ceases to matter once the original author’s intentions are made clear. So if the author of GPL-licensed code clarifies to me that it cannot be run on Sundays, then their GPL means it cannot be run on Sundays. But this is one of the problems with the GPL: its terms are not often understood, even by the authors of GPL-licensed code.

WordPress Themes & Plugins

WordPress supports two explicit forms of extension, each of which may affect the appearance and functionality of the product. Themes tend to work as a “skin” for the appearance of a blog, while plugins tend to introduce completely new features. Since plugins in WordPress are analogous to GIMP or Photoshop plugins, it would stand to reason that they would also be covered by the terms of the GPL. But what about themes?

Themes have been controversial in the WordPress community, as a few commercial business models have sprung up to take advantage of bloggers’ desires for high quality themes at an affordable price. One approach is to distribute “free” themes that contains commercial ads. So you might stumble upon the perfect theme for your blog, only to learn that the glaring “Brought to you by Hostess Cupcakes” line near the bottom of your page cannot be removed.

But the terms of the GPL, if themes are covered, would require that end users be granted the legal right to modify and redistribute their own copy of the theme. Zap the sponsorship, reupload to your site, and you’ve got a free, high quality theme with no ugly ads.

Today, Matt Mullenweg of the WordPress project announced his lawyer-supported opinion that themes are partly covered by the GPL:

I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

If you’re starting with the understanding that WordPress itself is GPL, and WordPress plugins are GPL, then it’s not so much extra hay on the camel’s back, to also clarify that its themes are to some extent GPL. But it got me thinking again about my own blog, and about the restrictions the GPL imposes on the kinds of things I can do with the software that runs it.

GPL Stifles Participation

Now for the most controversial point of this article, where I suggest that the GPL does more to harm collaborative development than it does to help it.

For the purposes of this argument, let me reduce all the source code in the world down to three rough categories. I recognize I have omitted some classes of license here, but for the sake of argument, most projects fall into these camps:

1. GPL code. Changes may be distributed only in other GPL products.
2. Liberal-licensed code. (MIT/BSD/Apache/etc). Changes may be distributed anywhere. Appropriate origin-attribution may be required.
3. Closed-source code. May be distributed only by the copyright owner and other explicit licensees.

Now, there are a few people in the world who, for political or philosophical reasons, will only participate in a GPL project. And for compariable yet opposite reasons, there are some who will only participate in commercial, closed-source projects. But I propose that the vast majority of developers will participate in any project that is advantageous to them.

So let’s imagine a representative, run-of-the-mill developer who is working on a project that falls into each of these three camps. If this developer is not radically committed to their own project’s license, they will naturally look to outside resources in order to bolster the success of their own work.

As the developer evaluates communities to participate in, they must evaluate the legal impact such participation will have on their own project. The closed source communities are, by definition uninviting to outsiders. GPL communities are open and embracing of other GPL developers, but generally off-putting to liberal-license and closed-license developers. Only the liberal-license communities are attractive to developers from all 3 camps.

I know what some of the GPL-enthusiasts are thinking now: “leeches don’t count as community.” Many GPL developers take comfort in the fact that their hard work can’t be quietly taken and incorporated into a commercial product, without any payback of time or money to the original project. But you’re piloting an open source project, and the first step of building a community is to get people in the door. Liberal licenses? Whoo-eee do they ever get people in the door.

If you operate from the presumption that great developers love to build great projects, the first step in any successful open source project is to get as many great developers in the door as possible.

It’s Your Party

Yes, this is just me and my crazy theories. I haven’t done exhaustive research to prove that liberal-license communities thrive more than GPL communities. But the anecdotal examples are staggering. The very foundation of Mac OS X, the operating system through which I’m typing, is thanks to the liberally-licensed FreeBSD operating system.

Looking over to the right of my screen, I’m watching this sentence appear in a live web preview as I type, thanks to the WebKit project, whose liberal license makes it compatible with closed source projects such as Safari, as well as open source efforts such as Google’s Chromium project.

For years, the problem of a generic HTTP client library that runs on every major platform has been addressed by libcurl, whose liberal license has caused it to be embraced by countless companies and projects.

The popular Subversion source control system’s liberal license enabled Sofa, a commercial software business to contribute value to the community with its extremely polished, award-winning client application. Meanwhile, the newly popular distributed source control systems presents three major choices: git, Mercurial, and Bazaar. All are restrcted by the GPL-license, and therefore none is likely to inspire development of a Versions-caliber client.

I’ve touched the tip of the iceberg, and yes I’ve neglected to mention some GPL success stories such as Linux, MySQL, and gcc. These communities have thrived to some extent because the passions of the GPL community are strong, but we can’t know whether their success is in spite of the restrictions their license places on participation by the broader developer community.

Speaking of GPL succeses, WordPress is itself an example of monumental success. All of its developers have something to be immensely proud of. But whenever I am reminded that WordPress is GPL, my passion for it takes a bit of a dive. I’m more comfortable with the true freedom of liberally-licensed products. If a liberally-licensed blog system of equal quality, ease of use, and popularity should appear, my loyalties to WordPress would not last long.

It’s your party, and you’re entitled to write the guest list. But take a look around the room: not as many folks as you’d hoped for? Liberally-licensed projects are booming. Speaking for myself, a developer who has been to all the parties, I’m much more likely to pass through the door that doesn’t read “GPL Only.”