I just want to start off by saying I'm glad I use Linux, and I'm glad I got introduced to Open Source software years ago.

Anyway, as the subject says, I forgot how close minded some people can be. I also know that Linux/*BSD users are more "open source" with there work (if you can phrase it like that) than Windows or Mac users. Windows and Mac users often still believe in the "shareware" approach. eg: We will sometimes give things away free of charge, but I will not open source it. So if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, tough sh*t to all of you, my work will be lost forever. What weird mentality.

Here is a case in point. Uwe Schuster developed an Delphi IDE add-on, which he doesn't change for - gives away freely in a binary only package. Others would like to help contribute towards this efforts, and help fix some existing issues with his add-on, but was flat out told that it would NOT be open sourced - G*d only knows why! Such mentality just baffles the mind.

[Sorry Uwe, I wasn't picking on you or judging your work, I just used you as one of many similar examples]

http://www.bitcommander.de/blog/index.php/2012/01/01/oi-rev/

Anyway, I'm glad to be in the open source camp. :-)

Graeme.

Why should he reveal his source to you if he doesn't want to? He owes you nothing.
When you started benefiting from his code, were you misled that the source was available?
Because Uwe charges you nothing, is he less entitled to protect his intellectual property than say MS for the source of MS Word?

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I don't think it's an open source vs closed source mentality. It's quite possible that Uwe can't open source it; in the post you linked he even mentions that he used knowledge of the compiler internals to implement it.

Andreas Hausladen's fix packs aren't open sourced either, and I know I've seen an Embarcadero developer mention that he has a "special arrangement", implying some sort of source level access. It's possible Uwe has something similar. I've seen the source to one of his unreleased projects and it completely bypassed the OpenTools API and poked around in a lot of IDE internals to do what it did.

You're also overlooking the fact that his other project, Version Insight, is open source, but also has an optional closed source portion for similar low-level access. Maybe he just doesn't want such techniques to become common knowledge so Embarcadero doesn't have to try supporting it or so he doesn't have to spend his time answering questions about it.

Craig Peterson wrote

I don't think it's an open source vs closed source mentality. It's quite possible that Uwe can't open source it; in the post you linked he even mentions that he used knowledge of the compiler internals to implement it.

After reading the discussion, I've got this impression too. This still is "closed" mentality, but from Embarcadero, not this developer.

But that is their problems, not ours :) What may be important is that he seems to have found a bug
in Lazarus: http://www.bitcommander.de/blog/index.php/2012/01/01/oi-rev/#comment-827 Unfortunately, after a couple of tries I still can't parse what he said.

Hi guys

I think we are missing the point here. It was not so much about Uwe himself as about the difference in mindset between open source and shareware/freeware. Personally I think many "freeware" programmers first want to see how popular their component/program is with the hope of later selling it (or selling a non-free "de luxe" version) once it gets popular enough. That is why they want to keep the source closed (not saying that this is the reason behind Uwe's decision). But at the same time they loose out on the benefit of having other programmers improving their product free of charge.

I think the point was that the proprietary mindset is in general not a productive way of thinking. If you are not making money from something anyway, why not share the source code? Then others may learn from you and (especially if you hate writing documentation) understand exactly how to use your program/component and in addition, actually improve your code if they want to add extra features (that you might find useful in turn). Also, when you loose interest or don't have time for the project any more, there will be probably be somebody to continue with it.

Regards
Chavoux
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I just want to start off by saying I'm glad I use Linux, and I'm glad I got introduced to Open Source software years ago.

First of all, this topic should go into Lazarus-other.

Apart from licensing issues, which may require to keep the source closed, why should somebody ever open up his own source code? Before all, everybody has to earn his living. Only then it's possible at all to contribute to community projects for free.

GNU software was born when the previously free Unix source code was swallowed by a AT&T, and many *developers* needed a new base (OS, tools, libraries...) for their own work. These agreed to contribute to community projects, for free and by open source code, while retaining the right to live from their own programs, built for that environment by using the therefore available tools. So it's a free personal decision how to make private or company projects available to the public.

Anyway, I'm glad to be in the open source camp. :-)

...while earning your living otherwise :-]

DoDi

A not so minor historical note. Unix never was or is free. Unix was developed at Bell Labs which was the R&D arm of AT&T. At the time, as a regulated monopoly, AT&T could not sell the software and as a result, made it available to educational institutions without charge. The software was free as in free beer but the copyrights belonged to AT&T.

The University of California (at Berkley) produced a version of Unix (BSD -- Berkley Software Distribution) that eventually was free of all AT&T copyrights. AT&T Unix has never been "open Source". Just look at the recent SCO squabble over the ownership of the Unix copyrights. AT&T did licence Unix to several compainies. AIX is one example of a non free derivative. On the other hand BSD Unix and all its derivatives are "open source" being the original BSD Licence.

Additional remark:

Open Source != free of charge

So following your description AT&T open sourced by laying the source open to read for everyone but they did not give it away for nothing.

Holding rights on the source was one reason for the FreeBSD people (maybe other BSDs too) to re-write mostly anything coming from the original Berkeley source.

Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote

First of all, this topic should go into Lazarus-other.

Sorry, I forgot that list existed.

Apart from licensing issues, which may require to keep the source closed, why should somebody ever open up his own source code?

That's the whole point. He is giving his IDE add-ons away for FREE. He is *not* making money off it. If he was selling the IDE add-ons, then obviously I would understand. What he is doing is similar to GExperts. I believe it was a GExperts developer asking if his work could be merged, and he said no.

I just don't see [in such a case] what the benefit is to the developer to keep his work closed sourced.

...while earning your living otherwise :-]

You're missing my point.

Graeme.

Hi Craig,

Thanks for your informative answer... What you said could explain the reason for him keeping his work closed source.

I don't know who Uwe is, I just got to his website by following various links on the internet. Is Uwe an Embarcadero employee?

Regards,
Graeme.

Thanks Chavoux. You understood my post perfectly.

Your idea of "testing the water" could very well explain why many keep some utility apps or small products closed source... with the hopes of later selling a "delux" version [I haven't seen that word used in software in years :) ].

Thanks for your input.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

So if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, tough sh*t to all of you, my work will be lost forever. What weird mentality.

I just got hit by a very bad (for me) example for this: "FreeCommander".

Since many Years I use (a legal payed for copy of) TotalCommander (called WinCommander before), which is a program done with Delphi. I now would love to use it in Linux, as I moved most of my activities there. In fact there is a free clone of TotalCommander called FreeCommander ( http://www.freecommander.com/index.htm ). AFAIK, same also is done in Delphi and so it would be rather easy to use Lazarus to port it to Linux. But seemingly they don't provide the source code :-( .

-Michael

You can try "double commander". It is written in Lazarus. There is another one, but I cannot remember the name of it.

Michael.

Marc Santhoff wrote

Am Sonntag, den 02.09.2012, 23:48 -0400 schrieb Rolf Grunsky: Open Source != free of charge

Yeah !

There is a growing consulting business doing payed jobs producing or enhancing open source projects.

OTOH "License enforcement by obfuscation" IMHO is not a good

You can try "double commander". It is written in Lazarus. There is another one, but I cannot remember the name of it.

I did evaluate double commander. But (last time I checked) it's much less grown up than free commander. In a perfect open source world the multiple free "Commander" communities would unite to a single projects (maybe with variants managed by git trees).

-Michael

You can try "double commander". It is written in Lazarus. There is another one, but I cannot remember the name of it.

Wow, I got a bit lost there... the topic changing from coder mentality to file managers. I see the URL is quote does have a very similar name though. :) I seem to be missing Michael Schnell's email too. Weird.

@Michael Schnell
Simply use Midnight Commander - a console based file manager that even works via SSH. All distros have 'mc' in their repositories. It rocks!

Graeme.

Michael Schnell wrote

Since many Years I use (a legal payed for copy of) TotalCommander (called WinCommander before), which is a program done with Delphi. I now would love to use it in Linux,

Total Commander is "paid for" software, so I have no problem with it being a closed source application.

Don't get me wrong... I never suggested that ALL software must be open source. If that is what you thought I meant, you understood me wrong.

PS:
Total Commander works perfectly under Linux with WINE. Still the best GUI file manager out there by far.

Regards,
Graeme.

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

Simply use Midnight Commander

(Sorry, very off-topic):

That is exactly what I do (when not using KDE's "dolphin". But Total Commander and FreeCommander are a lot more versatile (e.g. they do filtering, very handy searching, ftp and digging into archives). Dolphin seems to be catching up.

-Michael

I use Double Commander in Linux and Windows: it is easier to use cross-platform apps then changing my apps for each operating system.

Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote

Apart from licensing issues, which may require to keep the source closed, why should somebody ever open up his own source code? Before all, everybody has to earn his living. Only then it's possible at all to contribute to community projects for free.

As somebody else has pointed out, a number of people make a living by supporting/enhancing their open-source codebase for specialist applications and users. Unfortunately, many more people have tried this business model and failed dismally.

However, I think two things follow on from this:

i) The ideal of open source would be if code was good enough that it didn't need the skill of the original developer to maintain it (and shipping source in obfuscated form is really /not/ playing fair).

ii) There's nothing to stop a developer abstracting ideas from feedback to his open source program, and using those to enrich the next release that might be shipped to paying customers first.

I've certainly come across free (as in beer) programs that have died with their developer, since he has made no provision for the source to be released despite having no obvious monetary value to his estate.

While Midnight Commander is nice, i'd like to see a port of FAR Manager 2 (which is now open source). FAR blows MC away by a wide margin in terms of features, stability, UI, etc.

Kostas

Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho wrote

I use Double Commander in Linux and Windows: it is easier to use cross-platform apps then changing my apps for each operating system.

I use Total Commander under Windows, Midnight Commander under Linux and FreeBSD. I can even SSH from a Windows box to any of the *nix systems I admin, and can still use MC. I also have lots of custom functions added to MC's F2 user menu, launching things like Beyond Compare 3 after tagging two items to compare, auto creating a *.desktop file for the currently selected item, etc etc. There are some cases were console apps just trump GUI apps in flexibility.

Though I must add, under Windows, you don't get better than Total Commander (though Midnight Commander for Windows does exist, but I have never tried it). There are 100's of Windows clones of Total Commander, but the original Total Commander just beats them all.

Graeme.

PS:
Double Commander has improved a lot in recent times, so it is a good contender too.

Michael Schnell wrote

But Total Commander and FreeCommander are a lot more versatile (e.g. they do filtering, very handy searching, ftp and digging into archives).

I'm not sure if this was comparing to Dolphin or Midnight Commander. If you meant the latter, then I can easily say that MC can do everything you mentioned, plus lots more... see my reply to Felipe.

Graeme.

Please create a bug report for the favorites bug and move this topic to lazarus-other.

Mattias
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Yes, very off-topic.... now moved to lazarus-other mailing list. So please only reply to the lazarus-other list.

Kostas Michalopoulos wrote

FAR blows MC away by a wide margin in terms of features, stability, UI, etc.

I have no idea how you get to that statement. I have used MC for years and it is rock solid and stable under Linux and FreeBSD. In terms of features.... do you even know of all the shortcuts in MC, and the ability to extend MC via the User Menu (F2 shortcut key)? My MC has lots and lots of features added via F2 menu.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Yes, i used Norton Commander for many years (basically until early 2000s) and i use Midnight Commander always in Linux. Compared to FAR Manager, Midnight Commander is very limited in features. I'm not sure it makes sense to go and list all the differences, you can just download and install it in a Windows box and try it yourself. You'll see how much more advanced FAR is.

Kostas

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I don't know who Uwe is, I just got to his website by following various links on the internet. Is Uwe an Embarcadero employee?

No, just a community member. In addition to the project you linked to he maintains the open source version of Delphi's Subversion Integration (Version Insight) and he's one of the two maintainers for the JEDI VCS project, as well as developer for the JCL/JVCL.

I agree. Far Manager is certainly the most advanced in its class by a wide margin.
Pity it is not portable.

How can I set the tabsheet caption font style to bold for a single tab only?

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How can I set the tabsheet caption font style to bold for a single tab only?

Please don't answer to an existing mail thread when you want to ask a new question. Your mail might not get any answers as the users which know an answer might ignore further messages in that specific thread, because they are no longer interest in the thread's topic.

Regards,
Sven

If I want to check previous list items to not duplicate a question the lazarus archives are available.
http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/pipermail/lazarus/ How can I search the archives?
thanks.

Try e.g. this alternative:
http:/

(some more indicated on the page about Lazarus mailing lists)

Presumably using a search engine with something like the term "lists.lazarus.freepascal.org" will also work well...

Groeten,
Reinier

By the way, next time you want to open a new thread, don't reply to a message in an existing thread... your message didn't appear as a new thread but as a continuation of some completely differen thread.

Thanks,
Reinier

To make things worse: the author even responded to a mail where I said exactly that...

Regards,
Sven

Reinier Olislagers wrote

> By the way, next time you want to open a new thread, don't reply to a message in an existing thread... your message didn't appear as a new

Arg! That is no annoying!! Most people here have NO Netiquette! [1][2][3]

* Top posting
* Quoting whole message with a one line replies.
* Quoting 6+ levels deep.
* Replying to existing message to start a new topic
* Multi-part HTML messages (though I can live with this I guess)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette_(technology) [2] Why it is sensible to observe the Netiquette
http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/netiquet.html
[3] Some Answers to FAQ's about Mailing Lists and List Netiquette http://dgmweb.net/MailingListFAQs.html

Graeme.

Fortunately, the whole world doesn't march to one drum. There are other cultures. Sorry if that annoys you.

I agree!

Most of my customers mainly top post (with the entire previous message there just for reference). Sometimes if we need to reply to several different sections of an email we post in context.

Blind people also like top posting a lot!

Paul Breneman wrote

I agree!

I am glad you do. But please remind me, what are you agreeing too? I was unable to find out from your mail.

Blind people also like top posting a lot!

I have heard that. And I (partly / see below) accept that. But: 1)
Would a single quoted line (such as the one I quoted here), *if* it was read out by the screen reader, really be that bad? Isn't that more about proper quoting? And top posting (in my experience) is 99% done with quoting all. Which means you still have to listen to the entire quote, since in addition to the top post there may be more reply. 2)
Should that not be fixed by the screen reader. Should the screen reader not have an option to skip the quotes?
If my mobile only supports about 30 chars per line, do I asked everyone to shortens the lines, when they send? No! I expect my mobile to word wrap or scroll.

Hijacking an already hijacked thread ?!?!?!?!?
-Michael

Paul Breneman wrote

Most of my customers mainly top post

top posting is not find such messages hardly readable.

IMHO just quoting some words where appropriate is the only polite way to answer to a forum message

-Michael

2012/9/5 Michael Schnell :

IMHO just quoting some words where appropriate is the only polite way to answer to a forum message

Exactly.

The main difference between a private email conversation between two people and a thread on a forum or a mailing list is in the 1:1 conversation both parties know the context of their entire discussion already and rarely would need any quotes at all if the sequence of messages is linear and near realtime and also in an 1:1 conversation if both parties don't have a problem with the quoting style or missing politeness or any other eccentricity or even the total absence of any rules there is simply nobody who could be annoyed by it because its only 2 people and if they are both happy with it then its fine.

In a forum thread or in a mailing list there is most often a *group* of people involved discussing a topic or its sub-topics in a very non-linear way and even more people will later read *parts* of these *archived* discussions and need to easily reconstruct the (partial) context of a particular posting. Top-posting is totally incompatible with this approach so all have agreed long ago already that top-posting is bad and needs to be avoided in threaded forum discussions..

As soon as the participation in a publicly archived discussion with other people is not only done for temporary selfish reasons (come in, quickly ask for an answer and never come back and not care about others) but instead for joining the *group* of other individuals to have a useful discussion *together* about a topic that does not end up in a total chaos it is *mandatory* to agree at least on some very basic set of protocol rules that have been found to work best in such situations, one of these rules is a reasonable context sensitive quoting style and to not do top-posting because top-posting has been proven to be totally *incompatible* with threaded forum discussions. Its totally incompatible, so anybody who has an interest in the discussion being useful (useful for all participants and not only for himself) will agree to not do it. As simple as that.

BTW: The same applies to real-world discussions (more than two people meeting in the physical world to discuss something) there they also usually agree on some minimum standards and protocol rules that have proven to be useful and will try to *avoid incompatible* protocols like for example everybody shouting as loud a he can at the same time while trying to knock down all other participants within a radius of 2m (because this protocol works only in 1:1 discussions where both participants already know beforehand what they are talking about and that they do not need to listen or change their mind)

Thank you Bernd very much for the great explanation! I now understand why forum protocol is different than what works between private parties.

Michael Schnell wrote

Hijacking an already hijacked thread ?!?!?!?!?

:-(

PS:
Just to make something clear. When I changed the subject line to "File Managers compared", I had no intent to hi-jack the "Proprietary vs Open Source mentality" thread... Read that original message again. I changed the subject, and mentioned in the message that the "File Manager compared" thread should continue in the lazarus-other mailing list. Clearly NOBODY uses lazarasu-other, so why did I even try. :-( Sorry mailing list admin, I tried my best.

I'm now trying to set the "Reply-To" header in this message. I'm not sure if it will work within the context of a mailing list.

Graeme.

This had been a different thread :-) .

And here I answered to a message from "ajf" subject "lazarus archive".

-Michael

You weren't the one who hi-jacked the thread. First the "Tabsheet font style" hijacked the thread and then "Lazarus archive" hi-jacked the hi-jacking thread...

Regards,
Sven

... [nice explanation]

Let me add the third category:

Business communications. Because that is where to posting above a fully quoted backlog of mails comes from. And that's where this type of writing really makes sense.

If one has to deal with a lot of issues around his business he will not like looking up e.g. the last question of his communication partner or other information, because it costs additional time. If the whole tail of messages is available in one mail he's got anything needed at hand immediately. Very handy, very time saving.

My 2 cents,
Marc

please insert a p here ^

quoted backlog of mails comes from. And that's where this type of writing really makes sense.

Sorry

[snip explanation]

Very true, but only for this case.

Newsgroups/mailing lists are /not/ your corporate communications, where it is obvious that the particular employee is 'on top of the issue' at all times and only needs 'new stuff on top of the old one and the whole tail'.

Everybody here is a private person whether you are a CEO, or a code monkey, there is different issues everybody deals with in their own time, and having to scroll down to remind of the context and having all the tail included is... well... Time consuming, and time usually is money too.

(and in case of visually impaired people using a screen reader - some kind of signature or geek code may make life easier for them maybe? But they usually can snip the tail of the message or the mail program does it for them).

My 2 cents, Marc

My 2p ;)
L.

Lukasz Sokol wrote

Very true, but only for this case.

Exactly what I wanted to express. I thought it would be unecessary to explicitly tell people to adapt "their tsyle" to something appropriate to the receiver(s) of the mail.

Marc

Sorry for being increasingly OT again ;) but:
the point was, when among crows (newsgroups/mailing lists), creak like they do (obey the netiquette), never mind your background.

Back in the day you'd get a link to http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt :_)

L. (I vote EOT ?)

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?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

?????????????????????????????????????????

??????????????????????????????????????????

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?

Very interesting message. Please fix mail client :-)

it actually decoded pretty much on google translate... it didn't make much sense but ;)

gotta wonder what happened there...

replied to lazarus-other

waldo kitty ha scritto:

It happened that a some random pieces of text, encoded in UTF8, has been tagged as encoded in UTF-16.
If anybody is interested (I doubt it, but you never know..) the content was the following: