
E Text Editor: Releasing the Source - bdfh42
http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2009/releasing-the-source
======
danielrhodes
I have had a lurid history with E:

Basically this was the only program I could find which was similar in workflow
to TextMate and provided in-program FTP/SVN support (with a few hacks).

However, the program was so poorly designed and so buggy that it made working
extremely tedious and dysfunctional. It made me start thinking about how
somebody could release a program so ridiculously buggy and what were the
underlying reasons. While the programmer is the first obvious target, I
realized that the Windows framework was probably to blame. It's not the
framework itself, but the way it makes you code. It was hard for me to justify
continuing to use such a flawed system, as it scared me to think that
potentially all these ill effects may be rubbing off on me. As a result, I
switched to Mac the next day.

Therefore, E texteditor made me lose enough faith in Windows and Windows
programs, which I had been using since 3.1 (even using 1.0 at one point in
1995), that I switched my entire operating system. I haven't looked back
since. It may have been coming anyways, but it was a good decision.

~~~
dchest
_While the programmer is the first obvious target, I realized that the Windows
framework was probably to blame._

It's not the _Windows_ framework, it's wxWidgets, an open-source cross-
platform framework.

To be fair, though, it's been designed to be like MFC.

------
eli
That's a very curious license.

So you have all the source, but if you build something based on it, only
licensed owners of E can use it?

edit: I take it back, you do _not_ appear to get the source to ecore.lib,
which appears to contain licensing code and perhaps other things.

~~~
rufo
Yet, there's nothing in the license keeping you from downloading it, removing
the license code yourself, and running it registration-free. (Your personal
sense of morality may differ, I suppose.)

For curiosity's sake, what would be the legality of a patch to remove said
licensing code from the code?

~~~
eli
I'd worry it might run afoul of the DMCA since it would be a tool for removing
copyright protection

~~~
mdasen
Normally I'd interpret it like you have, but the license specifically says
that only redistributions must keep the licensing in tact. I don't know if
that was an intentional thing on their part or just a mis-wording that they
didn't mean, but it definitely says that you have to keep the licensing in
tact _if_ you redistribute it.

I'm guessing that it was intentional. There are some people willing to go
through the effort to remove the licensing from the source and compile. Who
cares! The real issue (in terms of losing profits) is if one person is able to
remove the licensing and redistribute that change.

~~~
eli
A patch to remove a registration check is arguably a tool for copyright
infringement no matter what the license says (the author is still the
copyright holder after all). But I'm certainly not a lawyer.

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sr3d
I love E. In a way, with the split screen editing, it's even better than
Textmate. For windows users, E is one of the best editors out there. Releasing
E's source is an awesome move!

------
jballanc
Their "Open Company" concept is rather interesting too. Almost a sort of
e-Kibbutz.

------
eli
Actual link to source: <http://github.com/etexteditor/e/tree/master>

------
gojomo
_Edit: I initially misidentified the project-specialized clause as the key new
clause; my text below has been expanded and corrected. I thank_ almost _and_
artost _for their corrections below._

This project's eccentric worries don't justify the license proliferation.

The new elastic "do what I mean" clause -- "Any redistribution, in whole or in
part, must retain full licensing functionality, without any attempt to change,
obscure or in other ways circumvent its intent" -- just adds a new cognitive
barrier to the easy participation and mixing with other projects that's
usually the whole point of open source.

I also wonder if the new restriction is legally meaningful in any realistic
situation. There was no right to arbitrarily relicense BSD code to circumvent
its conditions before the addition.

Given that the essential conditions of the BSD license are attribution and
non-endorsement, how does this new clause add anything but confusion?

Even in the absence of the updated wording, any marketing falsely implying a
endorsement from the main project would be actionable under other principles.
Even with the updated wording, is there cause of action against someone who,
in their promotional materials, makes a factual statement about the origin of
the code?

If so strictly enforced, the BSD license itself is almost self-contradictory:
you _must_ include a "Copyright (c) 2009, Alexander Stigsen, e-texteditor.com"
in distributions and documentation... but you must not use his name or product
name to "promote" your derived product. Can you achieve both of those when the
distribution and documentation are themselves the primary "promotional"
materials of a free work? Adding the new 'anticircumvention' wording only
makes this worse; I wonder if a lawyer was even consulted in the redrafting.

And, it's not like the name "e-texteditor" or the names of the current or
future contributors are marketing gold, anyway.

~~~
almost
That's not the new clause, that's from the BSD license.

The new clause is the last one in the list, the one about not removing the
license enforcement code.

~~~
gojomo
You're right; <strike>but they've even reworded that clause.</strike> I'm
correcting my grandparent comment to reflect reality, with a note that it's
been changed.

~~~
artost
In what way have they reworded the clause? As far as I can see it is exactly
the same as in <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php>

~~~
gojomo
You're right too. I mistakenly referred to a non-parameterized generic version
of a "BSD style" license to make that statement, as here:

<http://www.debian.org/misc/bsd.license>

My initial writing was also confusing the 'simplified BSD license' used by
FreeBSD (without the "no-endorsement" clause) with the full classic BSD.

And this is another reason to hate license proliferation. Remembering all the
"BSD, except X" variations is an error-prone pain. Let's be coding and
sharing, not lawyering.

------
avinashv
I remember trying this editor out when I was looking for something good on
Windows before I switched to using Vim. It was well thought-out; very
TextMate-like.

How does this not completely kill their business? Are they really expecting
everyone to pay? Or is there only partial openness to the source?

edit: Just saw eli's comment that the core is in fact closed.

