

The dirty secret of prototip2 (javascript tooltip) - moe
http://craigsworks.com/projects/simpletip/sandbox/
See the (short) e-mail exchange for a sad little story; http://craigsworks.com/projects/simpletip/sandbox/emails.txt
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jhickner
I don't know either of these people, but Nick clearly has no concept of how
copyright actually works. The "result" of code is inherently a process, which
isn't copyrightable. Only his verbatim source code is copyrightable.

The entire concept of reverse engineering rests on this distinction.

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aarongough
Wow, that's incredibly lame on Nick's part. If the API is the same, but the
underlying code is completely different then that it not a 'port', or a
derivative, that is a different product.

That's like saying a Macbook and a Viao both have a screen, keyboard and USB
ports and so they're the same thing for licensing purposes... Unlikely.

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bluemetal
Oh wow. If you mention Simpletip in the contact form on Nick's site you get
redirected to here: <http://getafckinlife.ytmnd.com/>

Classy stuff.

(nick's site: <http://www.nickstakenburg.com/>)

EDIT: I can't seem to get it to happen again.

EDIT2: It was his site. <http://i50.tinypic.com/166nh4z.jpg>

~~~
anthonyb
Worked for me - perhaps because I capitalised it as SimpleTip. Here's the
message I sent him :>

    
    
        Interesting that you gave Craig Thompson such a hard time over SimpleTip, 
        while having NO IDEA about how copyright works when applied to code.
    
        Absolutely right about reputation, btw. If you want to be taken seriously
        you should realize that showing your ability to be a pompous blowhard 
        is the worst kind of advertising you can have for yourself.

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sperry
Nick's acting like a dick.

Craig, please continue to distribute Simpletip. I see that you seem to know
more about the licensing issues than Nick.

~~~
bshep
[deleted]

Edit: Removed my comment when I realized this story is over 1 year old...

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thinkbohemian
just realized simpletip was put back online...

<http://craigsworks.com/projects/simpletip/>

i wonder why the sandbox page was left up.

~~~
bshep
Also:

\- those letters were in jan/2009

\- there is now a project called qTip

\- Nick is in the Netherlands, Craig is in the USA <\- hard to sue someone in
another country

\- ProTip is still at version 2, apparently Nick never got around to doing v3

~~~
raganwald
I was using qTip with jQuery on the desktop and in an iPhone-specific site. It
was a pleasure to use.

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moe
See the (short) e-mail exchange for a sad little story;
<http://craigsworks.com/projects/simpletip/sandbox/emails.txt>

~~~
JeffJenkins
This is totally absurd. jhickner is right. Nick doesn't know /anything/ about
copyright or licensing. I wonder how obviously dumb something needs to be
before you don't have to pay a lot for a lawyer.

I also wonder if the Something Awful style defense would have stopped this.
Leonard J. Crabs can be pretty convincing.

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TeHCrAzY
<http://craigsworks.com/projects/simpletip/>

It seems he moved on and cut his losses.

~~~
harisenbon
I didn't realize qTip was the successor to simpleTip. I've been using it in
all my projects, and find it much better than protoTip (especially since it
runs in jquery, and is free)

~~~
mickeyben
And qtip2 is coming soon :-)

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arethuza
Having been involved in litigation over copyright where we were 100% in the
right but the other side had fundamental misconceptions about how copyright
actually works I can understand why you'd just give up when threatened with
legal action.

It took us a long time (about six months) and a considerable chunk of money in
lawyers fees just to get them to go away - even though their case was
_totally_ groundless.

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freyrs
Nice! I've been looking for a good tooltip library to use in my project. I
wouldn't have known about this otherwise. Thanks Nick!

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perezd
Free the software!

