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Comment by metachris | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for releasing it as free software. https://github.com/newsyc/newsyc

Excited to see some mobile traction for HN, but posting the same link three times a day might be frowned upon.

I agree completely. And, yet, I did exactly that.

Why? I'm not sure. A more logical choice would have been to wait a few days, choose a new title, and then try it again: maybe find something that HN would agree with the first time around. Or maybe I should have finished it completely, released it on the App Store, then posted a link to that. Who knows. But at this point it's too late, so all I can do is apologize for messing with HN like I did, and hope that this contribution offsets it. :(

I'm glad you did it! I wouldn't have seen this if you hadn't, I'm going to use it, plus you proved something I'd always believed was true-- time of posting can make the difference between a 15-point story and a 140 (and counting) point story. (Not that it's the # of points that matters, just the resulting front page viewership.)

What I find interesting is that the first two submissions got a total of 15 points over >10 hours each.

This one has 78 points in around one hour

Timing matters :)

The HN rating system could normalize for this - decreasing time decay for periods where ratings are less frequent.

On the page it says it'll probably be $4.99. So it is open source, but it may not be free.

"Free" as in speech, not as in beer.

I stand corrected.

For the uninitiated (as myself): "“Free software” does not mean “noncommercial.” A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important. You may have paid money to get copies of free software, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies. "

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

As far as I can tell, this gives anyone the freedom to purchase then give away the software. Meaning that there is no moral, ethical, or legal barrier for the original developer to charge $5 to the first purchaser and for the first purchaser to then give out free copies to everyone else.

Perhaps I also need to be initiated to comprehend this...

You are correct :)

It's free if you have an iPhone dev account. :)

And in response to the last line of the README, it loads and builds absolutely fine in Xcode 3.

It's 'Free Software' under the definition of the Free Software Foundation. It's a term that's synomonys with open source

> synomonys with open source

No. All free software is open source, but not all open source software is free software. The conditions for calling software "open source" are weaker than those for "free software".

AFAIK nearly all OSI approved licences are also FSF approved, and vice versa. Do you have an example of something that is open source, but not free software?

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