Comments on: New Annoyance: Intermittent Internet Connections

By: Narc

Narc — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:17:31 +0000

@romerican — Honestly, I’m not sure what relevance the question has. What I’m advocating is simply the use of wget as a purely external pre-requisite. Particularly since there are versions of it for pretty much any platform, including Macs, and it’s a purely command-line tool which is designed, if not precisely for being called in the background, then at least with that use case in mind.

This is one of the GNU tools that have been done very well indeed (and by no means the only one, either), so why not include it? But then, I suppose a lot of programmers are still working under the “not invented here” paradigm. Y’know, if it’s not invented here, it can’t be any good.

By: Romer!can

Romer!can — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:58:49 +0000

@narc – Is it perhaps because the more popular IDE’s make use of wget? Or could be an issue of a compiled C app doesn’t want to include Perl? I’m asking because I don’t know.

@Apu – You can include wget with your proprietary software. There’s no conflict. GPL specifies you must 1.) Notify the user of the license, 2.) Provide the source, and 3.) Share your modifications with the original project.

So, if you aren’t modifying wget, then you’re in compliance. If your software includes either the source code for wget or a note offering to provide said source upon request (translation: link to the wget site in a text file), then you’re in compliance. Continuing in reverse order, you need to include a copy of the GPL license text.

Share modifications. Offer source. Include license.

It’s easy!

By: Narc

Narc — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:08:39 +0000

@Apu — Well, I was thinking more along the lines of listing wget as a dependency — for Linux software, at least — and either using it if available, or just refusing to work without it. gPodder and (a bunch of) others could do this, for example.

For closed-source software, I’m not sure what the GPL would say about this kind of usage. In my mind, wget would be used purely as an external program to be called when a download is happening, so my suspicion is the GPL would allow it (it’s not a modification of wget, whose source is widely available), but I don’t honestly know and haven’t had reason to look into it.

By: Apu Illapu

Apu Illapu — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:09:54 +0000

I once needed something to handle a bunch of downloads over an unreliable and slow network, under Windows. Let me tell you, wget for windows works just like the real thing. What are the rules exactly, can you bundle free software such as wget with applications you develop?

By: Narc

Narc — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:05:56 +0000

@Darryl – Glad you like it. Assuming you’re not a spambot, that is

Hard to tell on that front, actually — wordpress initially assumed yes, but maybe not.

By: Darryl Coleman

Darryl Coleman — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:01:16 +0000

Great Blog post. I am going to bookmark and read more often. I love the Blog template

By: Darryl Coleman

Darryl Coleman — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:45:13 +0000

Nice site. There