Share the Source! (was Re: Very useful binary file analyser to share)

[Martin Weitzel]

Before I start:
I feel that this discussion should be moved out of this group, but I
leave my followup here because it refers to an article posted in this
group.

In article <1444 at metaphor.Metaphor.COM> tam at cronos.metaphor.com () writes:
>I had developed an utility that had been extremely useful [...]
>However I don't
>know a good way to distribute binaries (sorry, I don't want to give away
>sources).

Though I think sharing is allways a good idea, IMHO holding back the
source is somewhat "against the spirit of this network". If the binary
is given away for free, I can see few reasons to hold back the source.
(One valid reason may be to avoid that someone takes the source and sells
the binary for own profit - possibly as a part of a larger software
package - but I don't know if this really happens often.)

I'm convinced that this world-wide news conference would never exist if
the software requiered to forward and read the news were only given
away as binaries. I think all we readers here should contribute a little
of our work to give back to the community what we have received in advance.
(The very least I would expect were to make the source available in a
"shrouded" form, or with comments removed.)

One last and final point should be mentioned: Serious viruses can much
more easily be distributed in "binary only" form (though it is not quite
impossible to hide such things in complex source).

To Paul: I definatly don't suspect your software to contain viruses and I
still think that your idea of letting others benefit from your work is
honorable. But also regard that *you yourself* may benefit from distributing
the source:
  - You may not only receive bug reports, but also bug fixes.
  - You may not only receive proposuals for enhancements, you may
    receive enhancements.
  - Your software is tested on a broad variety of hardware/compiler
    platforms, such revealing potential portability bugs; this might
    also help *you* one day if you have to move your software to some
    other system: You may instantly continue to use it and have not to
    hunt for portability bugs yourself.
What you give to the net as source will often return to you with added
value, provided it is useful for some people outthere (and if no one has
use for it, giving away the source shouldn't hurt much ...)

Well, my followup has become rather long again, but I feel we all should
think about these things from time to time ...
-- 
Martin Weitzel, email: martin at mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83