this is also what i thought

Neil's right. If you're selling using the GPL software as a service where you're hosting the servers you don't need to release the source code.

Normal GPL mandates that you provide source code along with binaries, should you distribute them. It also mandates any modified versions be also covered by the same GPL. There are no restrictions on selling. Yes, you could indeed take a GPL product, fix a bug and charge $1000 for your fixed copy, just as long as you provide the source also covered by GPL. I'm sure there are examples of this.

You can take a GPL software, modify it (or not), run it on your own server and charge for access with no requirement to reveal your modifications, since you are not distributing anything.

Exactly. When you run the code on your own server, you're not distributing the software, so you don't have to distribute sources.

We use fpdb primarily as an API for parsing and storing hand histories and the rest of Pokeit, including the web interface and the client application, is custom. The production version of fpdb that we run on Pokeit is published on Github - https://github.com/ChazDazzle/fpdb-chaz/tree/pokeit

thanks for the clarifications guys

another question

suppose a derivative product uses just the HH parser in a desktop application that will be distributed as a binary to customers. is it sufficient to just distribute/publish the HH parser code or does your entire app need to be open sourced?

Wikipedia seems to have some discussion on that issue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Gen..._derived_works

+1 on it being fine to use GPL software on the server for commercial projects.

If you're going to do this, I think it is safest to keep the parser in a separate dll so that it is (theoretically) trivial to swap out the parser with a different one. It can then easily be argued that your product is not a derivative work so there is no need to release your code.

Also, my (admittedly poor) understanding is that you are free to sell GPL software, but you also have to provide the end user with the source code and they are free to distribute to whoever they like. So some guy can just buy one copy and put you out of business by distributing it himself for free.

If you're going to be an open source software business, you usually end up selling support rather than charging for software.

Yeah GNU GPL has no bars on how you use it. Business or not. Just limits on distribution.

Again, I suspect the earlier misunderstanding was a confusion between the GNU GPL and the Affero GPL.

One of the key things Chaz does is keep his web application looking only at the db schema.

GPL doesn't require you to release code only run on a server. I've worked on many projects, that legally, never had to release their GPL code. AGPL, however, is a license that requires even servers to release their code.

FPDB is AGPL

Here's some screenshots of the redesign. It's not uploaded to the servers yet.

Hopefully you all like it better. Though I bounced back and forth between using black or white, I'm fairly pleased with the work + how much I completed within a few hours.









Another message was clear: Poor flexibility. I pondered pretty hard about this one and after some consideration, I like the idea presented by txpstwx. Dude... I the first one you had up was better, IMO. I'm glad I remember it, so I'll use a variation closer to that.

Basically, there will be the default view w/ buttons like "add employer" on the left and extra fields to extend the duties. The default will be 3 duties, but I'll let it pump to 7 duties for each employer. I don't really want to go to 7, but I can't think how even the most verbose would feel ripped off with this count. I'm also going to change the higher-ed default to one and let the user extend it with a button that says "add education."

I also changed the state field in the employer area to be typed it so there can be no controversy about American cities only. As I said, I didn't like that, so I'm glad to change it. Since it can be typed in, the user can of course type in the country on the state field.

With this plan, I can now create the denormalized database and built up the routes I need. Very exciting.

Words cannot describe how much better that design is! I am SERIOUSLY impressed! Congrats!

Absolutely this.

Yeah if bootstrap wasn't free this could be the before after commercial for it

Dave, are you using compojure+ring+hiccup, noir or something else?

It could still be the before and after commercial for using libraries/frameworks.

I'm using Noir, which is Leinengen + Composure + Ring + Hiccup by default. Setting up the server stack is going to be Leinengen + Composure + Ring anyways and you can always use whatever other HTML lib you want, so I see no good reason not to use Noir. The file system is a suggestion, not really a framework.

Edit to add: I know there are alternatives to Hiccup like Enlive which uses straight HTML and you manipulate the HTML with path expressions in Clojure. I never used it but the logic is that you can hire a designer to do the markup who doesn't know Clojure. I'm not sure how much this matters, since it is hard for me to believe that a good HTML person would struggle with Hiccup. Adding in path expressions makes me feel like there is double-programming. This is probably all unfair since I haven't used it. In my case, I generate a ton of HTML from functions, so it's basically moot.

If you don't like the thought of using Leinengen, you can be 37337 and use straight-up Apache Maven, which is the gold-standard of Java server bases (from what I've read). I don't see any good reason to do it, since in Leinengen, you can add the dependencies you need and it builds the POM files for you.

Thanks for the kind words, guys. I used one of the free prefab templates from http://bootswatch.com/. I had to change a few things. Like for some stupid reason, they decided to make the forms grey text on a gray background. But yeah, once I got how it worked, it was super flexible and easy to work with. I think I learned more about CSS from using bootstrap than I could in months of study. Truly brilliant effort.

Very nice! I'm impressed.

I actually really like that it doesn't look like a standard bootstrapped site. That's definitely something that our site suffers from.

Nothing wrong with Leinengen. I would definitely use it. I've only done minor researching on a clojure web stack. So far I've just been using the repl with LT to learn but I think I'm getting to a point where I need to make a few toy web projects before reading more. Hiccup looked really cool.

I like the idea of clojurescript too (unlike coffeescript). With clojurescript you can do much less context switching between the server and client.

Not sure if anyone is following along with my working through the Big Nerd Ranch book thread but I'm thinking of switching over to the OS X specific book and not doing too much more with it. Is there any value in starting a new thread for the new book? That thread gets a couple dozen views between updates but I don't really need it for motivation anymore... Any thoughts on way or the other?