Fred's ImageMagick Scripts | Hacker News Reader

Fred's ImageMagick Scripts

fmwconcepts.com

132 pointsof13 comments

I get that the author wants a portion of whatever money you make with his scripts, but I wonder if they are aware of the ambiguity in "noncommercial" licenses. I feel like this precludes the use of these scripts anywhere but hobbyist projects that you never intend to profit from. And I think that's sad because the author could be probably make more of a name for themselves by using a more permissive license like the GPL.

Maybe he doesn't care about 'making a name for himself' and just wants to eat?

If you use software for a commercial purpose and the price is lower than what it would cost you to make it yourself then buy don't make is where it's at.

If he wants a 'portion of whatever money you make with his scripts' (that's called a profit share) then I think he's over-estimating that cost by a considerable margin, also he's building this on top of ImageMagick which is a very extensive suite of programs doing all the heavy lifting and these scripts tie those programs together.

If you don't know ImageMagick enough to string together 6 commands then this might be a useful resource, if you can then it might serve you as inspiration just by looking at title and documentation and never downloading the script.

Either way, it's out there without any obligation on your part, for hobbyists it's a boon.

"Don't know enuf to string 6 commands together..."

I don't know who you are, but your rude comments are distracting. Any goodwill is lost.

> I don't know who you are

Info on my profile page.

> but your rude comments are distracting

That wasn't a rude comment, but yours certainly is. The typical format of these scripts is a bunch of documentation, a bunch of setup and then between 2 and 10 imagemagick calls to do the actual work.

I don't disagree, but I would point out that for those who are new to the industry, making a name for yourself can be a very good way of feeding yourself in the long term. Perhaps I should have instead framed it as building his portfolio.

But everyone needs to eat in the short-term too. :)

I think Fred has enough to eat

http://www.fmwconcepts.com/fmw/fmw.html

I've seen these before but I've always stayed away because the costs for commercial licensing aren't spelled out or even estimated at all. I just never liked to anticipate the friction involved if I were to incorporate these into a project that would become a commercial endeavor.

"noncommercial" is impossibly vague to enforce.

If a not-for-profit entity like a library used one of these to make a T-shirt that is sold at a profit (but the profit goes to the non-profit) is that commercial use?

What if the design is done by a for-profit design firm for the non-profit library?

What if the non-profit library installs it on it's computers, and they get used by someone on a for-profit project?

Anytime you put a "profit" based limit on a license, you're probably doing it wrong. I'd much rather have a GPL style copyleft than this - it's less invasive.

It's not clear to me that "non-commercial" would permit any for-profit or not-for-profit use. Both are commercial.

Easy to stay away from when the server has been done for the last couple of hours.

I agree. Clearly the author is a communist.

I tend to agree that people who write software should -- where possible -- licence it so that people using it for commercial purposes either need to release the source code (GPL) or in terms similar to Fred's ImageMagick scripts.

The reason for this is that there is a very active competition between OSS (open source software) and non-free software and if OSS can access libraries which non-free software cannot, it gives OSS a very much needed advantage.

That being said, these scripts look incredible! We shouldn't focus so much on the licence but rather in the incredible effort the author has put in, and the knowledge he displays (I think it's pretty impressive!)

I see that the license prohibits rewriting or copying the scripts into other software. Is there a GUI image editor that works by running modular CL scripts (such as these) on an image in a simple UX window? I imagine that would not be against this license.

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