Brij’s One More Idea

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Brij Singh’s weblog about entrepreneurship

Jun 18, 2008

Reddit goes open source with CPAL license, probably caused major LOL in Diggnation

Reddit is releasing source code of it's news voting engine. Light weight voting utility was already available in the form of Pligg, Written in Python, this can at best be a launch pad for developers to get onto Google App Engine.

Reddit announcement can be interpreted in two ways. One is that they are letting developers look inside the engine and add value-add code. Stuff like widget, trackers, analytics plugins etc come to mind immediately. 

Second motivation, important one, is to let publishers run their own news voting site. This may appeal to many big news organizations who have passive distrust with Digg like rating sites. News rating engines are prone to manipulation. Digg is famous for it's community activism. Also there are organized (Digg-gangs) attempts  to game the system. This is where Reddit's  open source card  (CPAL license is a open source play NOT AN OPEN SOURCE CODE) can be very interesting.

For larger developer community, I doubt there will be any serious NEW project based on this codebase. Like Facebook, Reddit is also using infamous CPAL license. Though Reddit fanboys (not a single mention of CPAL in 240 odd comments) don't give a shit about CPAL license.  Every developer need to think about making money, talking to lawyers and code protection etc etc at some point. Whole process is as boring as looking at your late bills.

CPAL is a motivation killer for any serious code adventure. It's works great for marketing purpose and can even get your company into all the important open source events. 

With computing model increasingly going to cloud and SaaS, it's annoying to see interesting companies creating more confusion in the market by choosing CPAL license. 

How many attribution links can you handle in your footer? This is a license to spam your website footer. If you are thinking of distributing code in open source, stick to Mozilla, BSD, or GPL v2. Even GPL v3 is pretty exhaustive in protecting all parties.

Overall it's a positive move by Reddit and will create sufficient knowledge base for interesting apps.

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Category: Asides, CPAL, Emerging Technologies, Open source, Reddit

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Comments to “Reddit goes open source with CPAL license, probably caused major LOL in Diggnation”

  1. Sharing recent tweets with blog readers. Would appreciate feedback on tweet blogging (flow versus :: Brij’s One More Idea Says:
    June 18th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

    [...] goes open source with CPAL license, probably caused major LOL in Diggnation Reddit is releasin http://www.onemoreidea.org/reddit-goes-open-source-with-cpal-license-probably-ca…; at 06/18/2008 07:33 [...]

  2. jatupon Says:
    May 29th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

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  3. insured movers Boston Says:
    June 4th, 2009 at 9:34 pm

    good things about cpal
    1. It's one of only 3 OSS licenses that take the “network” into account (CPAL, OSL, AGPL) whereby usage can be considered distribution.
    2. It doesn't require that code be given back
    3. It enforces the brand of the developer (in this case Reddit) which actually has some benefits.

  4. Aviator Sunglasses Says:
    June 10th, 2009 at 5:23 pm

    Now I know that Facebook has been using CPAL. Thanks for sharing it.

  5. drop in grills Says:
    June 15th, 2009 at 6:58 am

    Wow very good information i think now a days all these social networking websites such as Facebook, mySpace, digg all these websites using CPAL .

  6. kitchenware Says:
    June 18th, 2009 at 10:45 pm

    competition will always be stiff in this department. thank you for sharing. now lets try it.

  7. real estate mountain lake Says:
    July 9th, 2009 at 5:39 am

    The Common Public Attribution License (”CPAL”) is a free software license approved by the Open Source Initiative in 2007. Its purpose is to be a general license for software distributed over a network. It is based on the Mozilla Public License. Thanks for using CPAL.

    Thanks

  8. taislim Says:
    July 12th, 2009 at 2:02 am

    Facebook really never stops at thinking of innovative ways of providing the best to its users. This is a very informative article. Now that Facebook is using CPAL, the social networking industry now has very stiff competition among its users. Thanks for the info!

  9. auto shippers Says:
    July 16th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    I could know that very important info about the CPAL which is very help to me. Now I know that Face book has been using CPAL. Thanks for sharing it.

  10. jaber Says:
    July 24th, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    Thanks for sharing. I know we will have fun using it.

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