| Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Jayhawk | It's hard to believe, but in about six months, our friends at ticalc.org will celebrate being online for ten years. Some of us have been in active in the community for ten years or even longer. And back in 1996 the community was led by some humble calculator enthusiasts and had a small following of gamers. In some respects, it's not very different from the community now. But the community has taken an interesting road to get where we are today.
Back in 1996, the TI-85 was the calculator most enthusiasts had with the TI-92 having hit the market not long ago. Neither of these calculators is in production and neither has much development done for them anymore. The first shell for any calculator was Zshell. Through a few hacks, Zshell allowed execution of assembly language programs stored in strings. Assembly language games ran far faster than their TI-BASIC counterparts and many programmers took up authoring games for Zshell. Over the next few years, the community exploded with new games and new calculators to program for. And with it sprang up several sites such as Ti-Files, Dimension-TI, Ti-News, and a multitude of programming groups.
Unfortunately, sometime after the turn of the century, the community started to become stagnant. There was already a large assortment of software created and most of the new calculators were rather unimpressive. Every high-end TI calculator, even now, is an enhanced version of the TI-83, TI-85, TI-89, or TI-92 Plus. There have been almost no radical changes in calculators such as what went on during the late 1990s. And with the lack of new calculators and new games, many programming groups and sites closed up and were forgotten. And they weren't replaced with new programmers and new sites. There are as many gamers as there has ever been in the community, but the sites and programmers have dwindled.
When ticalc.org, Ti-Files, and Dimension-TI were at their height, programmers typically submitted their work to archives on all three sites. Three separate file archives were maintained, all of which had a different look and feel. And all of these archives were of a high quality. Ti-Files is gone, never to return. Dimension-TI is a shadow of its former self and its future looks bleak. That leaves ticalc.org as the lone file archive with programs remaining from that era.
In the case of both Ti-Files and Dimension-TI, the creators and management of the sites moved on to other things and left their sites to others who didn't keep the sites running to their previous high standards. And one day it's likely that the staff at ticalc.org will move on as well and turn the site over to others. Despite ticalc.org's longevity, it's absurd to think that ticalc.org will be around forever. And should ticalc.org ever decide to close its doors, many of the programs in their archives will be lost permanently.
It might seem easy enough for someone to create a backup of the files in ticalc.org's archives and create their own repository for calculator software. And such a thing might be a good service to the community. Unfortunately, this will never happen. Many programmers get offended when a site puts a program in their archives without the consent of the programmer. And because of copyright laws, they have the legal authority to force the site to remove the programs. Because of this, it is unreasonable to expect that any site will ever be able to make a backup of the programs in ticalc.org's archives.
We've licensed ourselves into dependence on a single site which thankfully has stayed open for ten years and is in no danger of closing. But should the unthinkable ever happen and ticalc.org's staff move on like the staff of just about every other site in the history of the community, a large volume of software will be lost forever. It might seem reasonable to a programmer to protect his or her work and restrict who can distribute it. But this very attitude might cause the work of a lot of programmers to be permanently lost. | | 2 Jan 2006, 18:27 GMT |
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 | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Andy | | Very nice read. To be expected of his articles. :) | | 2 Jan 2006, 18:35 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | allynfolksjr | | That's an interesting scenario you've proposed, and certainly one to be taken into consideration. Why are authors being offended and fighting if their programs (complete with readme's and all due credit given to the authors) are put on other sites? While the program being modified and distributed without respecting the authors original work is certainly an issue, unmodified packages ( the de facto zip file that contains the program along with source, if needed, and documentation) being kept on other sites (mirrors, as it were) shouldn't be any problem, and if anything, the author should be glad that their work is being kept for posterity. | | 2 Jan 2006, 18:59 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Andy | | It makes it harder to distribute updates, especially bugfixes. Say site A has the version 1 of the program, and site B takes version 1 of the program and hosts it. Let's pretend version 1 had a major bug, which the author fixes and uploads to site A (version 2). Site B doesn't know about version 2 and continues hosting version 1. Gamer alpha downloads version 1 from site B and experiences the bug, which casues his calculator to crash. Gamer alpha goes to yell at the programmer, who has fixed this bug days, weeks, months, or even years in the past and uploaded version 2 to site A.
Do you see the problem? | | 2 Jan 2006, 19:36 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | allynfolksjr | | Yes, of course that's a concern, but only a minor one at worse, a file upload form is rather generic, after all, and a file description won't change from one site to the next, so the extra amount of time needed to update will be small and insignificant to all but the laziest of programmers. | | 2 Jan 2006, 20:24 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Digital | | You are underestimating the current programmers. One main reason why you see no others is because most are too lazy to put forth the time to make quality programs. | | 2 Jan 2006, 21:33 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Andy | | Not if the programmer doesn't even KNOW site B took the file from site A. In that case, site B will have version 1 forever, or until some third party I decides to let site B know they need to update. | | 3 Jan 2006, 04:36 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | CoffmanRunner | you have to ask yourself a question
which is better having a prgm with a bug that COULD be fixed if someone took the time to look at the prgming or no prgm at all? I think that mirrors for TI-Calc should be considered or at least a back-up of all there files. If Ti-calc distributed all it's files to a few other web sites to host and then those websites distribute to there users AND other websites then yes a few prgms would slip though the cracks but...
Are we allowed to take prgms from ti-calc and post them here if we take no credit but give it all to the author (provided a readme is inculded)?
my main point - What if site A quits all calc-related stuff? then site B is left with the bugg prgm but that is better than nothing is it not?
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Never gonna let you down... | | 3 Jan 2006, 06:14 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Andy | | Not if the source isn't included. Then no one but the original author (who may be long gone by this time) would be able to fix it. | | 3 Jan 2006, 10:38 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | TI Freak | | Bah, that is why I try to get permission from the author. If the author replies, then great! :) But if they don't I have to assume that they have moved on and I doubt they would be too upset by placing it on the site. And besides, I make sure the program works before placing it on the site anyways... | | 3 Jan 2006, 10:57 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | quarter | | I really don't care if another site distributes my programs w/out my consent because thats just more publicity for my files. I just want to be recognized for my work. | | 3 Jan 2006, 17:14 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | threefingeredguy | Why do you think ticalc will not last forever. Michael V is still participating in many calculator related activities with no sign of slowing down. Plus, it is obvious that he cares enough about the community that if he left, he would probably pass down the admin access to a worthy member. I haven't even been part of the community for a year yet and I am already tired of these OMG TI ARMAGEDDON posts. However, I can see your point and am willing to back up every file on there and store them, erm, secretly. As a back-up, not as a host. I've seen people leave the community, but I think that it still has life in it yet.
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Someone call for an exterminator? | | 6 Jan 2006, 18:00 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Andy | | MV is NOT the root admin at ticalc. Magnus Hagander is. Without going into a history lesson, if he decides to stop running the server and providing the network connection, ticalc will exist no more.
Get your facts straight next time, please. | | 9 Jan 2006, 08:41 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | spencerdubya | | So ticalc.org and calcgames.org should issue a statute of limitations. After two years on our site, we consider your program no longer under consideration of further development, and we allow other sites to host it, author's wish or not.
Then again, why do we need more than one site hosting all these files? Like what was said above, ticalc's not going to die any time soon.
Also, in Timerize, I made sure to throw in where you can always get the latest version in the readme (I think), so that users can download the latest and greatest. | | 8 Jan 2006, 16:48 GMT |
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| | | Re: Editorial: Licensing Ourselves into a Corner | Jayhawk | | For those who think ticalc.org will be around forever, I wonder if you're aware of the internal structure of ticalc.org. While I'm somewhat out of the loop, I have an idea of how the site works. Michael Vincent is almost certainly the most visible personality on the site, but he is certainly not the only one. How many of you know who Isaac, Magnus and Chris are? Probably you don't know much about them. They've been around since the beginning of ticalc.org and are responsible for a lot of maintenance of the site behind the scenes. It's the stuff you don't see but is very important to making the site run. We have people who serve the same role here at CG. I don't know the ages of the three people I mentioned but I do know they are older than most of us. They're very detached from the community these days. But yet they're very important in keeping ticalc.org up and running. Who would take over for them if they decided to move on?
There's no reason that ticalc.org should be the only big site or should be the only one with a really large archive. There was a time when we at Ti-Files had over 8,000 programs in our archives and had the largest archives online. Yes, ours were larger than ticalc.org's. And Dimension-TI maintained a good archive as well. If a site started up today and wanted to create a new file archive system, their archives would be inferior to ticalc.org's because they would be lacking several thousand files from the last ten years or so. And because of this, many programmers wouldn't consider submitting their work to this archive. The barrier to entry in creating new sites is very high. And I'm not convinced it's beneficial to the community.
When there were three major sites in the community, each site had a unique look and feel. Each site offered unique content. Each site had a distinct community of users. Each site had its own IRC channel. Anyone who wonders why #ti is of importance probably doesn't remember when several ticalc.org staff members used to frequently visit that channel. And #ti-files was the official channel for Ti-Files. There was a smaller #dim-ti for Dimension-TI. While several people including myself visited all the channels, each channel was also unique and had a very different tone to the typical conversation. Don't ask me to elaborate because the content of one of those channels was often not appropriate for this site. I won't say which channel that was. :-)
I hope that clarifies my position somewhat.
Anyways, with that said, I'd like to thank everyone for reading my articles and for their thoughts. It's always enjoyable to read what people have to say. I'd like to think that even if you don't agree with me, what I say is well-written enough and insightful enough to make you think and consider another point of view. The users of this site are tremendous and I'm happy to have been a part of this site. This is probably the last editorial I'll be writing for this site. I've talked to a number of people about starting up my own tech blog or maybe a site about calculators but with a different feel from this site and ticalc.org. I've even thought about using the Ti-Files name since it's a part of our community's past and a site I'm very proud to have once been a part of. | | 8 Jan 2006, 22:25 GMT |
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