We are not github and that's perfectly fine | Hacker News Reader

We are not github and that's perfectly fine

binpress.com

22 pointsadambenayoun12 comments

Hmm. I decided to take a look at the commercial licenses on Binpress, and this caught my eye:

    2.4 Including the Right to Create Derivative Works: 
    Licensee may create derivative works based on 
    Software, including amending Software’s source 
    code, modifying it, integrating it into a larger 
    work or removing portions of Software, as long as 
    no distribution of the derivative works is made

Now, a lot of the components on Binpress are things like Objective-C classes for use in iOS. But linking to such a class creates a derivative work, and it sounds like you are not then allowed to distribute your derivative work, which would make it rather useless.

Given section 2.1, it sounds like the license is intended to be used only for server-side code, not anything that will be distributed to end users.

    2.1 Limited: Licensee may use Software for the purpose of:
      2.1.1 Running Software on Licensee’s Website[s] and Server[s];
      2.1.2 Allowing 3rd Parties to run Software on Licensee’s Website[s] and 
        Server[s];
      2.1.3 Publishing Software’s output to Licensee and 3rd Parties;
      2.1.4 Distribute verbatim copies of Software’s output (including compiled 
        binaries);
      2.1.5 Modify Software to suit Licensee’s needs and specifications.

But a lot of these components are client side-components. There is either something wrong with their license, or something wrong with their curation, if they are trying to license client-side code with a license that seems to only make sense for server-side code.

There seem to be lots of other problems with the licensing, too; the license summaries will say things like "Can be distributed in 5 projects" but the actual license itself never mentions the number 5 at all (example: http://www.binpress.com/license/read/id/1225/app/1063). Or the "developers license" will say that it's "Sublicensable", but not define what that means or what restrictions there are.

Given that it seems that the core reason for Binpress to exist is to make it easy to commercially license small software components, the fact that the licenses make no sense does not make me feel very comfortable about using it.

We have a page that details the differences between the licenses type - http://www.binpress.com/content/licenses

We worked with a copyright lawyer to build those licenses, we didn't just made arbitrary decisions. I assure they are all useful in the context that they claim to be.

You didn't really respond to any of my points. I even linked to an example of a non-sensical license; a license that uses server-side language client side code, and which has things in its summary that are completely missing from the license.

You may have had your licenses reviewed by a lawyer, but that doesn't mean that the correct license is being applied to the correct product, or that there are no bugs in your license summary system.

Cool!

But, if I try to connect via GitHub, it wants:

  This app would like to be able to do the following:

    Read your public information.
    Update your user profile.
    Update your public and private repositories (Commits, Issues, etc).

That's a little worrying. I'm part of a company "organization" on GitHub with all private repos. Exposing our code would be a bad thing and these statements don't give me much to go on that that will be true. I'm not sure if the wording is GitHub's or Binpress', but some clarification would be nice.

I'd like the ability to limit Binpress to just the private repos I expose to Binpress.

Unforunately, the Github API doesn't give such fine-grained control. You can either get read access to all the repos, or write-read access to all the repos.

http://developer.github.com/v3/oauth/#scopes

Unforunately, the Github API doesn't give such fine-grained control. You can either get read access to all the repos, or write-read access to all the repos.

Actually that link you just gave says the opposite (and I know I've given this permission in the past to Travis CI for example):

public_repo

  Read/write access to public repos and organizations.*

Then just create an account on binpress and don't use your GitHub account. You're not required to use a GitHub account.

Sounds like a response to a ton of people asking them why they aren't on GitHub - in other words making excuses for ignoring customer requests. I think a much better response would have been something like, "We make sure every public license module we list is on GitHub and are working with GitHub on ways to get everything on there, as a mirror at the minimum. Thanks for the overwhelming feedback!"
Whenever I have some sample code to give out at a hackathon or workshop nowadays, the first question I get asked is if it is on GitHub. Tons of people are used to and comfortable with that and ready to go, some may not even know how to use git without it. Emailing source (often blocked) or using links to web sites or repos users are not as familiar with has not worked out as well.
Heck, even I prefer it when I use something like the Facebook library, since later on I can see their updates and port them into my branch used in my apps and see other people's fixes and comments on their bugs and updates. Sometimes the first and best fixes are unofficial. So even with a module provided direct from Facebook, the social aspect and huge forest of uncurated content around it is still helpful.

I'm surprised so many people ask this question. Isn't the intent of binpress to provide these code snippets/libraries/solutions at a cost?

Jared, We provide both free and paid components but for a different purpose from github (as outlined in the article).
We're also complementary to github since we allow developers to import their repositories to binpress and add a commercial layers on top of it.

Yea, I love the idea. I just don't see GitHub as it is today being all that similar. The comparison didn't come to mind. I think a response like this is typical from most people you mention your product or service to. The typical response is to compare it to a large product or service. I think you need to be aware of these large companies, but that in general this feedback isn't worth much.

Do you intend to support projects in other languages, like Perl?

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