Are site-specific apps portable?

Todd, just a thought. In case that somebody redistribute their apps, shouldn't you add a like to the fluid-website in the SSBs about-windows?

First, Fluid is awesome so don't take this the wrong way. Second, I'm sure I'm not the first to talk about this, and won't be the last, but I will anyway.

It's one thing to not release the application as open source (I'm glad it's available for free anyway which is better than Prism^H^H^H nothing), but another to not allow users to distribute the SSBs. Yes it's an end-user app, and it's easy to use, but not easy enough for my [grand]mother and there are some interesting potential applications like generating SSBs on the fly.

Anyway maybe if you were to explain your reasoning for your licensing decision(s), bearing in mind that you are relying on a significant base of open source technology without which building this app would have been infeasible, then users like me would be less anxious about the future of Fluid and more likely to throw everything behind it.

Go Todd!

Thanks for the prompt response - I'll answer each point in turn (as a new post as comments break the layout).

- I didn't imply that you had not complied with any of the licenses - this is not the point, rather that you have built a tool on top of a stack of open source products without which it would not have been possible. I'm not drawing so many conclusions so much as making an observation; if the upstream developers cared so much about this they could use the GPL or similar.

- No, but you do care. In the about page you say 'Actually, I'd very much prefer you didn't do that' and in this very thread you say 'That should be considered for personal use. Please don't redistribute SSBs.'. OTOH Prism really don't care (http://wiki.mozilla.org/Prism#User_Co...); why can't we have the same for Fluid - user contributed SSBs with comments, ratings, etc. even hosted by you if you need for fluid itself to get its share of the limelight.

- Freeware (apparently without any license whatsoever - not even disclaimers of warranty/liability) is probably more dangerous for business users than open source or commercial software - in the former case they can fix it themselves if you get run over and in the latter they can sue the provider (actually without the disclaimers they can probably sue you personally). It's not so much nefarious as curtailing many interesting uses (like the web based autopackager for Google Apps domains I'm considering building).

- I wasn't able to find any such statements on the fluid site, except things like 'Is Fluid Open Source? Nope.' and 'Fluid is an end-user tool, not an application development or deployment platform. For the latter, check out Adobe Air.'. If that's the case then why not make a clear statement on the about page and avoid questions like this? Why not be completely transparent and explain your decision - maybe you have proprietary code you don't want to give up, or you want to keep the option of selling it to someone one day, or simply the code itself is messy... users probably won't care but knowing *why* you have made this decision could be useful.

- Suggesting people check out prism if they don't like your regime is not serious either; I'm sure Prism will get there eventually but it has its share of limitations today, especially on the Mac platform. The primary use case for an SSB (in terms of number of potential users) is to migrate from local apps to cloud-based apps, targeting users for which opening a browser and typing in a URL is too hard. I spend my days working out how to get this stuff into large enterprises without drowning technical support in trivial questions and simply getting the user to launch the app is surprisingly challenging in itself - tools like Fluid are incredibly useful for this task but the [lack of] licensing all but rules out commercial deployments (security/code audit questions aside).

Anyway I hope that one of these days this important use case will be catered for by [re]licensing of the [currently not]redistributable or the Fluid app itself.

Thanks again for your efforts with this amazing tool,

Sam

It sounds like there are some hard feelings starting to develop here, and that is too bad.

From the perspective of someone who just jumped into the conversation (someone who doesn't know all the details of the decision to license/distribute the software this way) it sounds like Thomas started the topic as a hypothetical idea designed to provoke discussion, and not necessarily to provoke a confrontation. I'm actually pretty impressed with the conversation so far. Todd, I've have had many discussions on Get Satisfaction with Thomas, and while he can admittedly be a bit sharp and pointed in his choice of words, he does often have some insightful observations that often surprise me -- or at least make me consider the alternatives.

My hope is that everyone here -- pretty smart folks as far as I can tell -- will get something useful out of the conversation while still keeping it real, if I may pull out a very tired phrase that wasn't still hip five years ago. In short, agree to disagree if you have to, but I'm actually enjoying the conversation. It may be that there is a way to mine something productive out of this topic, or at least I hope there is a way.