Kod.app is open source

https://github.com/rsms/kod

by octover • 16 years ago

160 59 16 years ago

github.com

octover• 16 years ago

The announcement with details can be found at http://groups.google.com/group/kod-app/browse_thread/thread/...

macmac• 16 years ago

I get "You cannot use this version of the application Kod with this version of Mac Os X." - ???

steveklabnik4• 16 years ago

Are you on 10.6? If not, you're out of luck.

babo• 16 years ago

Fine for a free application, a wise decision.

protomyth• 16 years ago

from the info.plist

<key>LSMinimumSystemVersion</key> <string>10.6.0</string> <key>LSMinimumSystemVersionByArchitecture</key> <dict> <key>x86_64</key> <string>10.6</string> </dict>

Rauchg• 16 years ago

If TextMate 2.0 is not released soon (or doesn't meet expectations), MacroMates is in trouble.

sjs• 16 years ago

Could be, but a lot of people who wanted more than TM 1.5 provides have already gone to Emacs or vim.

flyosity• 16 years ago

And by "MacroMates" you mean the singular developer who works on it who has probably already made a small fortune from TextMate 1.x licenses and has said a few times that TextMate development is a "hobby". I don't think he's in any sort of trouble.

frou_dh2• 16 years ago

IIRC he did get stressed out by expectation and some blog nastiness, and at another time made a somewhat rash commitment to TM2 being a free upgrade. Perhaps Duke-Nukem status is finally accepted but I don't think things have always been so chilled.

holman• 16 years ago

Kod is pretty far away from being a "usable" editor (in its current state), so TextMate 2 isn't nearing imminent doom. Besides, there was a blog post about TM2 nearing completion, which means it should ship sometime around Summer 2008. loljk

I'm pretty excited about Kod in general though; the design has a real great start, and the scripting foundations he's building seem really interesting. Open sourcing it should (hopefully) speed it along to reliability and completeness sooner rather than later, too. Will be a fun product to watch.

bnycum• 16 years ago

I really wish people would stop complaining about TextMate 2.0, just because it's been talked about doesn't mean the current version stopped working or lost features. I'm a daily TextMate user for nearly 6 years and it has never once not met my expectations. It's first app I install on a new machine/install.

Kod is a great start so far, but still has a ways to catch up. I wish the developer the best and that it works out for him. Hope it doesn't turn out like Smultron (now Fraise).

jordanlev• 16 years ago

Agreed (about textmate always meeting expectations) -- except for lack of chunked undo :)

melvinram• 16 years ago

Granted it's a one of the most used software on my laptop, it's definitely not at the "never once not met my expectations" level. I don't think I have super high expectations either... I want soft-wrap to happen properly. I could go on with list of needs but it's pointless.

I've given up hope that there will be ever an update and learnt to live with v1.x. However, that's just settling. As soon as I find something better, I'm gone. I bought Espresso with the hope that supporting that would encourage a lot of development but MacRabbit has been pretty slow on the improvement side as well (as shown by the sparsity on their blog http://macrabbit.com/blog/) so I've had to make do with TM since it feels better and more natural than Espresso for now.

Ahhrrgg <sigh>

cmelbye• 16 years ago

I totally agree with this. TextMate is the best editor I've ever used, I don't really need a 2.0. That being said, I'm interesting in seeing what exactly will be fixed/new in 2.0, but I'm doing just fine without it and so are many others.

tsycho• 16 years ago

Another good alternative is Redcar

brianm• 16 years ago

Sadly, it is a precious snowflake license (MIT + Custom term) with a very ambiguous custom term:

"The Software and/or source code cannot be copied in whole and sold without meaningful modification for a profit."

Great to see it semi-open source, and well within the rights of the author, though :-)

Zev3• 16 years ago

The intent seems clear to me; "You can't build + sell the app on its own. But, if you want to use a part of the code in your own app, go for it."

itsnotvalid2• 16 years ago

Build and use is enough for most people.

But of course things would be very ambiguous in terms of how much means "meaningful modification".

callahad• 16 years ago

As per Kod 0.0.2's changelog, the special snowflake license was inspired by this blog post: http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/1043407467/selling-open-source

vog4• 16 years ago

From that blog post:

> You might ask, what essential liberty am I excluding by adding the modification clause? Ironically, nothing.

A few sentences later he contradicts that statement by defining what he means by "nothing":

> If I charged $15, someone could ask $8 and undercut me with little effort on their part.

So he denies to others the freedom to distribute the software, which is an essential part of the Open Source term (as well as the Free Software term, which has essentially the same meaning).

Until now, this could have been a plain misunderstanding of the term Open Source. However, a few sentences later the author explains that he deliberately wants to misuse the term Open Source:

> Then I’d have to make the choice to either sell [the app on App store] or open-source the app. I wanted to do both.

So he wants to claim to do Open Source without actually doing Open Source. This is really unfair on all developers who are really doing Open Source.

Note that there is nothing wrong with that business model, but claiming the name "Open Source" for that kind of business is a clear misuse of the term. Open Source has another, well-defined meaning.

The author is perfectly right that with any Open Source license, even as restrictive as GPL or AGPL, you can't make a lot of money by selling copies. This is not an accident, but by design! That's why real Open Source developers sell services around their products, such as support, implementation of customer wishes, etc.

If he doesn't want to do business that way, it's fine! But then he shouldn't claim to do Open Source.

riffraff• 16 years ago

woudlnd it be easier to just use CC BY-NC-SA ?

vog4• 16 years ago

So by definition, this is not Open Source. Unfortunately, the author claims to have done so nevertheless:

http://groups.google.com/group/kod-app/browse_thread/thread/...

It is a very questionable practice to claim to have produced Free Software / Open Source, when in fact this isn't the case. That's misleading marketing, if not unfair competition. Such practices are especially unfair on the huge number of authors and companies who really produce Open Source software.

The terms "Open Source" as well as "Free Software" have a well-defined meaning that includes giving others the right to distribute the software and to make a buck with it. If you don't like that, it's okay. You may still claim to have switched to "more liberal license" or something like that. But you may never claim to have switched to Open Source. That's not okay, because it is a plain lie.

I find it especially strange that the reason for this unfair behavior against competitors is to receive more fairness from competitors. That's a clear case of double standards.

alextgordon2• 16 years ago

How is this not open source? This is basically an open source licence with an added restriction on commercial use. To my mind, commercial use is completely orthogonal to whether a licence is open source or not.

Note that "open source" != "under a OSI or FSF approved licence" and that at no time that I've seen does the developer claim it's "Free Software" (which it certainly isn't, although it does dynamically link a GPL'd library...).

omouse• 16 years ago

It's for a non-open-source operating system anyway, who cares ;p

savoy11• 16 years ago

I'm not quite sure how/why you think this is news. Something going open source historically means 99% death. I really hope you get to be that 1% of the lucky ones... but...

FooBarWidget• 16 years ago

Something not going open source historically also means 99% death.

99% of all software die, whether open source or closed source. Not sure what point you're trying to make. The (flawed) point that something will die because it's open source?

itsnotvalid2• 16 years ago

I need to retract my previous comments on the other HN post that the communities would just choose over other open source alternatives for Node.js stuff. Well, now this is open-sourced too!

Cheers and happy holidays~!

djacobs2• 16 years ago

Looks nice. One note: It says it requires MacPorts. You should probably say it requires the source-highlight package, regardless of how you get it. (I'm going to install via Homebrew, some might compile it manually.)

alnayyir2• 16 years ago

It's worth noting that you can just install the app binary.

Compiling it is for people that want to hack the source themselves, it's not the main distribution method.

frou_dh2• 16 years ago

==> http://kodapp.com/download/

djacobs2• 16 years ago

I meant the source-highlight dependency. Is that included with the binary?

equark• 16 years ago

Speaking of open-source programmer text editors, what's the best embeddable editor control for OSX? Sort of like a Scintilla for the OSX world.

zdw• 16 years ago

Anyone use this? Pros/cons vs Textmate/vim/emacs?

Zev3• 16 years ago

Pro: Its a new editor and shows a lot of promise.

Con: Its a new editor and needs a lot of work.

bugsy• 16 years ago

It's not comparable at all, though it could be after a few man years of work.

Crashes on quit. In C mode, hitting return doesn't indent. No preferences. No toolbars or widget menus. It does attempt to color keywords but this doesn't really work, with "in" in "int" being blue and the "t" inexplicably being white, etc.

It's a text editor with fewer features than TextEdit. No idea what the big deal is. It's description as version 0.02 seems accurate.

VMG• 16 years ago

Sad. I saw the screenshot and imagined a modern vim of sorts.

alnayyir2• 16 years ago

This 'feature', is what I was waiting for to get me away from TextMate.

I am extremely pleased.

sharednothing2• 16 years ago

I downloaded Kod.app to check it out. Great Nordic looks! But this is really not even ready for prime-time, is it?

Given the amount of work involved, I'd like to throw in the suggestion here that if you are thinking of building your own (programmer development environment -- these things are not simply "editors") on top an OSS foundation, to review and consider IDEA:

http://git.jetbrains.org/

(Not in any way associated with JetBrains).

Kod.app is open source

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