New Freeware from Moore Good Ideas

[David_A_Moore]

Fellow Wireworkers,

Are your bags all packed for NI Week? I'm skipping it this year, but my

employee, Robert Mortensen will be there. He's also the author of what I

think is an extremely useful new bit of freeware from Moore Good Ideas,

the Read and Write Anything VIs. They do pretty much what the OpenG Variant

config file VIs do, which MGI finds extremely useful, but can do it up

to 500x faster! That should open up a whole new range of applications

beyond just small config files. There's lots of additional info on

the MGI web site, www.mooregoodideas.com. Feel free to bug Robert at

NI Week with any questions as well.

Enjoy!

--David Moore

[rkanders]

Great job with R/W anything VIs. Just recently I was running into a speed issue while using OpenG variant config VIs while loading a config style file with 300 or so lines.

Thanks :thumbup:

[crelf]

QUOTE(David_A_Moore @ Aug 3 2007, 09:40 AM)

...an extremely useful new bit of freeware from Moore Good Ideas,

the Read and Write Anything VIs. They do pretty much what the OpenG Variant config file VIs do, but can do it up to 500x faster!

That most excellent that your pumping out new freeware :thumbup: That said, it might be even more valuable to the community if you also spent a little time improving the open source version - that's kinda what open source is about

[David_A_Moore]

QUOTE(crelf @ Aug 3 2007, 08:55 AM)

That most excellent that your pumping out new freeware :thumbup: That said, it might be even more valuable to the community if you also spent a little time improving the open source version - that's kinda what open source is about

When we started developing this we were hoping for 100% OpenG compatibility so that we could deliver it as a new rev of the OpenG VIs. That would be best for us since our existing projects, which use the OpenG VIs, wouldn't need to be modified to take advantage of the change. However,

Robert found important optimizations that required the file format to be different in some cases, so we dropped OpenG compatibility in favor of performance. Given the file incompatibility, we think that both sets of VIs need to exist with unique names, and we're only going to be using these VIs on new projects.

So, we have spent time improving the open source VIs, in this case by completely rewriting them, and the result is new open source VIs, which we have called freeware since it doesn't even include an open source license. We've also talked with Jim K. a few times to say that anything from the MGI library can get rolled into the OpenG world, but we're planning to keep putting out the freeware versions as an MGI .ogp file. Free The Software!

[crelf]

QUOTE(David_A_Moore @ Aug 4 2007, 07:44 AM)

Free The Software!

Amen brother!

[Tomi Maila]

QUOTE(David_A_Moore @ Aug 4 2007, 12:44 AM)

Which we have called freeware since it doesn't even include an open source license.

Actually not having a license means that the the code is copyrighted by the authors and the authors have full rights to the stuff unless otherwise stated. Copying or using is not permitted without permission by the authors. A license loosens these legal conditions to allow other parties extended rights to the software. I didn't take a look if you actually have some sort of license or not. If you don't I would strongly recommend you to come up with some sort of license so that it's clear what the rights of the users are. You can give full rights away but you must explicitly state that in format that is legally binding.

[David_A_Moore]

QUOTE(Tomi Maila @ Aug 3 2007, 04:02 PM)

Actually not having a license means that the the code is copyrighted by the authors and the authors have full rights to the stuff unless otherwise stated. Copying or using is not permitted without permission by the authors. A license loosens these legal conditions to allow other parties extended rights to the software. I didn't take a look if you actually have some sort of license or not. If you don't I would strongly recommend you to come up with some sort of license so that it's clear what the rights of the users are. You can give full rights away but you must explicitly state that in format that is legally binding.

Our freeware all says in the description:

Freeware from Moore Good Ideas, www.mooregoodideas.com. Do not remove this line.

No lawyers were consulted in the creation of that message as it seems to me to defeat the purpose (see Shakespeare, Henry VI).

[Tomi Maila]

QUOTE(David_A_Moore @ Aug 4 2007, 01:11 AM)

Our freeware all says in the description:

Freeware from Moore Good Ideas, www.mooregoodideas.com. Do not remove this line.

No lawyers were consulted in the creation of that message as it seems to me to defeat the purpose (see Shakespeare, Henry VI).

I'm not sure the meaning of term freeware is legally clear.

EDIT: My intention is by no means criticize your work nor your license terms. The sole purpose is to express that I'm afraid that unclear terms may actually limit the usage which may not be your intention. Using something like BSD license is clearer to the users and you don't need to consult the lawyer to come up with such.

[David_A_Moore]

QUOTE(Tomi Maila @ Aug 3 2007, 04:15 PM)

I'm not sure the meaning of term freeware is legally clear.

Me neither, but since it seems to take eight pages of text that most everyone skips to make things legally clear, I refuse to play along.

I KNOW that the phrase "Do not remove this line" isn't legally clear or binding, but it should be clear enough to those who are trying to do the right thing.

Re Edit: Not taken as being critical. I'm just taking the chance to explain my micro-license with which I've been silently defying the world of long licenses for many years.

[eaolson]

QUOTE(David_A_Moore @ Aug 3 2007, 05:24 PM)

I KNOW that the phrase "Do not remove this line" isn't legally clear or binding, but it should be clear enough to those who are trying to do the right thing.

It sounds like what you want is this: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/''>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/' target="_blank">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Just a few simple bullet points.

To be honest, I wouldn't touch these outside of a hobby project for the very reason that it's not clear if I could redistribute them. It seems to be your purpose to give these away, but five years from now, after you're bought out by Giant Conglomeracorp, their lawyers might disagree.

[crelf]

QUOTE(David_A_Moore @ Aug 4 2007, 08:24 AM)

Me neither, but since it seems to take eight pages of text that most everyone skips to make things legally clear, I refuse to play along.

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license' target="_blank">BSD License isn't 8 pages long - it's not even one (see below) and would probably suit what you're after (it's a personal favorite of mine - in fact, a lot of the OpenG stuff is now under this license).

I strongly agree with Tomi - if you don't have a valid license, it's difficult to define what freeware is, and even more difficult to prove it. Just because you write "freeware" on something, doesn't cover you if I use it and then it's proven that your code component screws something up and hurts someone, or someone's business. That means that, even thought I'm pretty clear on what you mean, I doubt our lawyers are, which means that I can't use your code in my application development. I know your heart's in the right place, but I'm afraid that I need to cover myself and my company.

QUOTE(BSD License)

Copyright © <year>, <copyright holder>

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

* Neither the name of the <organization> nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY <copyright holder> ''AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL <copyright holder> BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

[jpdrolet]

QUOTE(rkanders @ Aug 2 2007, 09:14 PM)

Great job with R/W anything VIs. Just recently I was running into a speed issue while using OpenG variant config VIs while loading a config style file with 300 or so lines.

Thanks :thumbup:

OpenG Config VIs are only a variant wraparound vi.lib's Config VIs. I've benchmarked that the latter are the real performance hog, e.g. the data handling of keys and sections. I'll admit that the variant wraparound could benefit some performance optimization itself but it would be marginal unless the data handling kernel is improved.

[David_A_Moore]

Guys,

I know that you're LEGALLY right about this topic. Sorry I'm not going to accomodate those concerns in the version that I post on my website.

On the other hand, as I've said, I'd be happy to have any or all of the MGI freeware incorporated into OpenG, using a proper open source license for that version.

--David

QUOTE(jpdrolet @ Aug 3 2007, 05:42 PM)

OpenG Config VIs are only a variant wraparound vi.lib's Config VIs. I've benchmarked that the latter are the real performance hog, e.g. the data handling of keys and sections. I'll admit that the variant wraparound could benefit some performance optimization itself but it would be marginal unless the data handling kernel is improved.

Robert noted the same thing, so to optimize the Read Anything VI he found it best to read in the whole file at once with a standard file read and do all new parsing.

[David_A_Moore]

In response to some of the comments earlier, I decided we should post a BSD version of the Read/Write Anything and support VIs so that we wouldn't be preventing anyone from using them because of licensing concerns. Robert finally got around to tweaking the documentation, so the new versions are available from a link on the following page.

http://www.mooregoodideas.com/ReadWriteAnything.htm

Enjoy,

--David Moore

[crelf]

QUOTE(David_A_Moore @ Nov 30 2007, 05:01 PM)

In response to some of the comments earlier, I decided we should post a BSD version of the Read/Write Anything and support VIs so that we wouldn't be preventing anyone from using them because of licensing concerns.

PS: I know I'm chiming in late here, but thanks for going with BSD! :thumbup: