ReMail (YC W09) is now Open Source | Hacker News Reader

ReMail (YC W09) is now Open Source

remail.com

85 pointsvibhavs25 comments

I'm ok with Google buying and closing cool services as long as they keep open sourcing them in response to the nerdrage.

Wicked, now I can work on adding some encryption to the datastore. Most things on my Touch aren't very sensitive, but the complete copy of my e-mail archive certainly qualifies and having it just sitting there really scares me.

Another really cool thing users of jailbroken iPhones will have that most will not. Another symptom of how Apple is handicapping themselves by being so closed.

(EDIT: Okay, fanbois. Know that I have firsthand experience with both configurations of the iPhone mentioned. I also own other equipment running OS X.)

Nothing stops someone else from pushing reMail back into the app store. (Except, of course, the other ten someone elses doing the same thing.)

But this seems like a better outcome than previously, when the app just died with no recourse.

You can have an Open Source app in the App Store? I know GPL is out. I didn't know other licenses were kosher.

Yes. I'm sure there are others, but the most prominent is probably the wordpress app.

I'm pretty sure the apache license v2 is pretty liberal on what you can do with it. I think if someone were to re release it, they will make some nice change from it.

Only GPLv3. Everything else is fine; those licenses say that as long as you get the source code, the licensing obligations have been met. Being able to compile and run that source code is something only the GPLv3 guarantees.

(And in the day and age of locked hardware, I think the GPLv3 is the only sane license as a result. Free Software dies if nobody can actually run it.)

I'm pretty sure that the GPL 2 also ensures that you can compile and run the software... It just doesn't explicitly grant you any transferrable patent rights. So the issue isn't for you per se, but for anyone that you give the software to. And that's only if there is any patentable IP in the source code by the authors. Also, the GPL3 doesn't protect you from patent infringement if the authors didn't have the IP rights to begin with.

There are other open source licenses that have patent grants, Apache 2, if I remember correctly... so if you are GPL-adverse, you can still be covered by good open source licenses.

You can compile and run the source code, you just can't do so on an iPhone without buying a key. Free Software dies if nobody gives a shit about it, running it on the original hardware is completely irrelevant.

I'm sorry but the GPLv3 (and worse, the AGPL) are the shittiest passive-aggressive 'Free' software licenses yet written. They're just clickwrap EULAs, since you can't enforce the restrictions they add on top of the GPLv2 via copyright law.

It's funny to see the same people who wanked long and hard of restrictions on crypto turn around and try to impose their own restrictions on the same by ideological fiat.

I don't see anything "passive" about the AGPL. It's pretty clearly: you may use my code, but only if you release any changes you make to it when you use a modified version in any public guise at all, even on the server side.

I don't see anything wrong with a condition like that. If you don't like it, you're free to negotiate proprietary licensing terms with the author, or write your own, or find other software. It's certainly no worse than the license most startups use, "All Rights Reserved".

Is preventing someone from taking away your freedom taking away their freedom? Technically yes. But it's a worthwhile "loss".

They're just clickwrap EULAs, since you can't enforce the restrictions they add on top of the GPLv2 via copyright law.

Sure you can. Under copyright law, you can't distribute copyrighted code without permission. You also can't distribute derived works; binaries produced by your compiler. The GPLv3 grants everyone permission to copy, compile, and redistribute, as long as they give others the same permission, promise not to sue the people they give the code to, and promise not to ship the code on hardware that can't run modified versions of the code. That fits perfectly into the framework of copyright law. If you don't like the conditions of the GPLv3, you fall back to copyright law -- you can't distribute binaries or modified versions at all.

EULAs rely on a much shadier principle; that you "redistribute" a copyrighted work when you copy it from your disk into memory. Copyright law says, the lawyers reckon, that you can't make that copy unless you are given permission. You are given permission by following the EULA.

You can see that this is not quite the same as the GPL because of the scope. EULAs say copying is how your computer runs programs. The GPL says copying is making a copy for your friend. Much more solid.

Anyway, if you don't like software licenses, don't use one. I like the GPL, though, because I want people to give me back what I gave them. Nice people will do that anyway, but not everyone is nice. So the GPL clearly spells out their obligations to me, and lets them make an informed decision as to whether or not they want to modify and redistribute my software. The nice people follow the rules anyway, so the GPL makes no difference to them.

Are you a nice person?

The GPLv2 operates solely within copyright law — it hinges solely on distribution of the work itself and nothing else. The GPLv3 gets into contract-like territory, with the patent grants and restrictions on hardware.

I do think that the GPLv3's tivoization clause is operating on the same shady principles as EULAs: if it's not a contract, then they're effectively claiming that a digital signature is a derivative work!

I'm a nice person that doesn't like the implications the GPLv3 has for Freedom 0.

Thanks Gabor (et al)! This is fun to look through.

I'm loling at the BuccheitTimer.

So what's to stop someone from selling this on the app store? Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of the buyout?

From the post about the actual acquisition there was, if I recall correctly, agreed that this was more about the talent rather than the software itself.

And who knows, perhaps they had a future product coming up that Google was interested in.

Link to previous post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132712

Looks like the Google Code link found in this blog post is broken. Does it work for anyone else?

http://code.google.com/p/remail-iphone

EDIT: It works now! Before it was giving a 502.

I just successfully cloned the repo, and the video/docs load fine, so yea.

We had a problem in one of our data centers and as the service migrated we threw some 502s. It's okay now, I'm hearing. Sorry bout that!

Is anyone working on a reMail "clone" for the ipad? Could be a fun little project.

I don't undersand why google bought them only to open-source it. I get suspicious when companies are nice. Any ideas?

It was almost certainly a talent acquisition. They don't want the product: they want the people behind it. This is pretty similar to what happened with Etherpad.

Senor Gabor, Respect.

Glad to see the BuccheitTimer made it :)

Very cool!!

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