

Kod.app is open source - octover
https://github.com/rsms/kod

======
brianm
Sadly, it is a precious snowflake license (MIT + Custom term) with a very
ambiguous custom term:

"The Software and/or source code cannot be copied in whole and sold without
meaningful modification for a profit."

Great to see it semi-open source, and well within the rights of the author,
though :-)

~~~
vog
So by definition, this is _not_ Open Source. Unfortunately, the author claims
to have done so nevertheless:

[http://groups.google.com/group/kod-
app/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/kod-
app/browse_thread/thread/8bc80d18932f5e99)

It is a very questionable practice to claim to have produced Free Software /
Open Source, when in fact this isn't the case. That's misleading marketing, if
not unfair competition. Such practices are especially unfair on the huge
number of authors and companies who _really_ produce Open Source software.

The terms "Open Source" as well as "Free Software" have a well-defined meaning
that includes giving others the right to distribute the software and to make a
buck with it. If you don't like that, it's okay. You may still claim to have
switched to "more liberal license" or something like that. But you may _never_
claim to have switched to Open Source. That's not okay, because it is a plain
lie.

I find it especially strange that the reason for this unfair behavior against
competitors is to receive more fairness from competitors. That's a clear case
of double standards.

~~~
alextgordon
How is this not open source? This is basically an open source licence with an
added restriction on commercial use. To my mind, commercial use is completely
orthogonal to whether a licence is open source or not.

Note that "open source" != "under a OSI or FSF approved licence" and that at
_no_ time that I've seen does the developer claim it's "Free Software" (which
it certainly isn't, although it does dynamically link a GPL'd library...).

~~~
vog
_> This is basically an open source licence with an added restriction on
commercial use._

Adding that kind of restriction will make any license a non-OpenSource
license. This is not orthogonal but an important aspect.

Maybe a failing analogy helps here. From a linguistic point of view, the above
is like saying: "Belarus is a democracy, with an added restriction regarding
elections."

 _> Note that "open source" != "under a OSI or FSF approved licence"_

This statement is plain wrong. OSI defined the term Open Source very
precisely, so using it to describe non-compliant licenses is a _clear misuse_
of that term. Even Microsoft doesn't do that, despite their power! Instead,
they coined an own term to describe their less-restrictive activities: "Shared
Source". (And yes, a small minority of Microsoft's Shared Source projects are
also Open Source.)

So although there are different opinions about which term to prefer, "Open
Source" has technically the same meaning as "Free Software". This has been
clearly stated by the Open Source movement from the very beginning. In other
words, the term Open Source _has been designed_ to be a byword for Free
Software. You can find that in the early articles of ESR:

<http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html>

Finally, note that this license won't ever be approved by neither OSI nor FSF,
because it violates an essential freedom. Of course you can always say: "I
don't care about that certain kind of freedom". That's okay. But then you
should neither claim to do "Open Source" nor to do "Free Software". That's
unfair on all real Open Source developers who grant that freedom.

~~~
alextgordon
_This statement is plain wrong. OSI defined the term Open Source very
precisely, so using it to describe non-compliant licenses is a clear misuse of
that term._

They may have given a definition but that does not give them a monopoly over
usage of the term. Language does not have a One Definition Rule! For example,
my dictionary states:

    
    
        open-source: Computing denoting software for which the
        original source code is made freely available and may be
        redistributed with or without modification.
    

Under _that_ definition the licence is most certainly open source. Indeed,
this definition is more in line with what many people think when they hear
"open source".

I understand there are political reasons to have open source exactly
equivalent with the OSI definition. However, this does not seem to have
happened.

~~~
vog
_Language does not have a One Definition Rule!_

This is only true for day-to-day words. However, legal words and technical
terms need strict, stable definitions that are equally understood at least by
all experts in that field. Otherwise, serious communication would become next
to impossible, let alone serious discussions.

 _> For example, my dictionary states:_

Dictionaries don't provide exact definitions. However, your quoted description
seems to be the best you can get out of three lines. If you care to read 4-6
lines, you'll get the quite accurate FSF definition. If you care to read even
10+ lines, you'll get the detailed OSI definition.

 _> Indeed, this definition is more in line with what many people think when
they hear "open source"._

That's an important issue. Neither the term Free Software nor the term Open
Source are completely self-explanatory. So people will inevitably have
misconceptions about those if they've neither read a proper definition, nor
had someone explaining it well enough to them.

The concrete issue with the term "Free Software" is that people might think:
Oh, this software is free (no cost), so it must be Free Software. Eric S.
Raymond and others tried to solve that problem by inventing a new synonym,
"Open Source".

However, the term "Open Source" has issues as well, because people might
think: Oh, the source code lies open in front of me, so it must be Open
Source.

Note that this is a general problem. Hardly any technical term is totally
self-evident to ordinary people. Just because a technical term is not self-
explanatory doesn't mean you can simply ignore its exact definition.

~~~
veidr
I think the point he was trying to make is that he rejects your definition of
the term. As do I; notwithstanding what some foundation or some famous hacker
thinks, you need a fairly broad consensus to really define a term.

I don't think that your definition of "open source" (or even "Open Source")
meets that test. I think most people probably still think of it meaning that
all of the source code is available to you to read/modify/compile.

What set of legal restrictions govern that is another can of worms. The
software might be illegal, patented, or otherwise restricted, but those issues
are independent of whether the source code is available or not.

------
djacobs
Looks nice. One note: It says it requires MacPorts. You should probably say it
requires the source-highlight package, regardless of how you get it. (I'm
going to install via Homebrew, some might compile it manually.)

~~~
alnayyir
It's worth noting that you can just install the app binary.

Compiling it is for people that want to hack the source themselves, it's not
the main distribution method.

~~~
frou_dh
==> <http://kodapp.com/download/>

------
octover
The announcement with details can be found at
[http://groups.google.com/group/kod-
app/browse_thread/thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/kod-
app/browse_thread/thread/8bc80d18932f5e99)

------
Rauchg
If TextMate 2.0 is not released soon (or doesn't meet expectations),
MacroMates is in trouble.

~~~
bnycum
I really wish people would stop complaining about TextMate 2.0, just because
it's been talked about doesn't mean the current version stopped working or
lost features. I'm a daily TextMate user for nearly 6 years and it has never
once not met my expectations. It's first app I install on a new
machine/install.

Kod is a great start so far, but still has a ways to catch up. I wish the
developer the best and that it works out for him. Hope it doesn't turn out
like Smultron (now Fraise).

~~~
melvinram
Granted it's a one of the most used software on my laptop, it's definitely not
at the "never once not met my expectations" level. I don't think I have super
high expectations either... I want soft-wrap to happen properly. I could go on
with list of needs but it's pointless.

I've given up hope that there will be ever an update and learnt to live with
v1.x. However, that's just settling. As soon as I find something better, I'm
gone. I bought Espresso with the hope that supporting that would encourage a
lot of development but MacRabbit has been pretty slow on the improvement side
as well (as shown by the sparsity on their blog <http://macrabbit.com/blog/>)
so I've had to make do with TM since it feels better and more natural than
Espresso for now.

Ahhrrgg <sigh>

~~~
mynameisraj
Unfortunately, MacRabbit won't be updating Espresso until the first half of
2011 (probably 4-5 months).

See: <http://twitter.com/#!/espressoapp/status/18041354806370304>

~~~
juddlyon
Yuck! I really like Espresso but the lack of momentum and Sugars forced me to
TM.

If Panic could create a TM to Coda migration path for those of us not
interested in Emacs or Vim, they could snag a ton of customers. A way to port
bundles and to turn off the dreamweaveresque portions of the app and they'll
have my money. They actually ship software or at least keep people in the
loop.

------
itsnotvalid
I need to retract my previous comments on the other HN post that the
communities would just choose over other open source alternatives for Node.js
stuff. Well, now this is open-sourced too!

Cheers and happy holidays~!

------
equark
Speaking of open-source programmer text editors, what's the best embeddable
editor control for OSX? Sort of like a Scintilla for the OSX world.

------
macmac
I get "You cannot use this version of the application Kod with this version of
Mac Os X." - ???

~~~
steveklabnik
Are you on 10.6? If not, you're out of luck.

~~~
babo
Fine for a free application, a wise decision.

~~~
steveklabnik
Fine for any application; nobody can dictate which platforms anyone must
support and which they can't.

10.6 is much nicer than 10.5 on a bunch of levels. It's slightly annoying now,
but will pay off in the future.

~~~
meric
If you say so. :( That it will be worth the wait till I skip 10.6 and upgrade
straight to Lion. Was looking forward to using something shiny.

~~~
steveklabnik
Why'd you skip 10.6? It was $30.

~~~
getsat
And also a HUGE improvement in a lot of different areas! Speed, especially.

~~~
Stormbringer
It is much buggier, frequent crashes of Safari, iTunes and Mail for instance

~~~
sharednothing
Not sure why you are getting down-voted. I have 2 MBPs. One is s ~3 year old
running 10.5 and his baby sister running 10.6.

This is _entirely subjective_ per my experience:

\- the 10.5 'feels' more responsive.

\- the beachball is a very frequent event in the 10.6, specially Safari,
sometimes even when switching tabs which is quite annoying.

\- I haven't rebooted the old MBP in months. Sitting pretty on my desk. The
new one has frozen few times and occasionally I feel the need to put it out of
its misery myself.

------
zdw
Anyone use this? Pros/cons vs Textmate/vim/emacs?

~~~
bugsy
It's not comparable at all, though it could be after a few man years of work.

Crashes on quit. In C mode, hitting return doesn't indent. No preferences. No
toolbars or widget menus. It does attempt to color keywords but this doesn't
really work, with "in" in "int" being blue and the "t" inexplicably being
white, etc.

It's a text editor with fewer features than TextEdit. No idea what the big
deal is. It's description as version 0.02 seems accurate.

~~~
VMG
Sad. I saw the screenshot and imagined a modern vim of sorts.

------
sharednothing
I downloaded Kod.app to check it out. Great Nordic looks! But this is really
not even ready for prime-time, is it?

Given the amount of work involved, I'd like to throw in the suggestion here
that if you are thinking of building your own (programmer development
environment -- these things are not simply "editors") on top an OSS
foundation, to review and consider IDEA:

<http://git.jetbrains.org/>

(Not in any way associated with JetBrains).

------
alnayyir
This 'feature', is what I was waiting for to get me away from TextMate.

I am extremely pleased.

------
savoy11
I'm not quite sure how/why you think this is news. Something going open source
historically means 99% death. I really hope you get to be that 1% of the lucky
ones... but...

~~~
FooBarWidget
Something _not_ going open source historically _also_ means 99% death.

99% of all software die, whether open source or closed source. Not sure what
point you're trying to make. The (flawed) point that something will die
_because_ it's open source?

