Stockfish clones in the AppStore: it's becoming a plague...

[Steve Maughan]

...I still think that selling a free GPLed open-source engine is highly unethical....

While it's not something I'd do, I don't think it's unethical (assuming he's not violating the GPL agreement).

The buyers are not forced to buy. They do so because they want to try out what looks like a quality product. And I'm sure they will happy with their purchase.

It's also not clear but the seller may be adding value to the product - for example by offering support or a guarantee. In this case I don't think he is but potentially you could sell a GPLed product and provide support.

Also the buyer may know about the free version yet prefer to pay a small fee for the product as they think it more likely to be supported and updated in the future (I never use free development components for this very reason).

At the very least the seller is making a quality product more widely available.

So where is the crime? Seems like everyone is happy. It's capitalism at it's best - no coercion anywhere!

Steve

[JuLieN]

...I still think that selling a free GPLed open-source engine is highly unethical....

While it's not something I'd do, I don't think it's unethical (assuming he's not violating the GPL agreement).

The buyers are not forced to buy. They do so because they want to try out what looks like a quality product. And I'm sure they will happy with their purchase.

It's also not clear but the seller may be adding value to the product - for example by offering support or a guarantee. In this case I don't think he is but potentially you could sell a GPLed product and provide support.

Also the buyer may know about the free version yet prefer to pay a small fee for the product as they think it more likely to be supported and updated in the future (I never use free development components for this very reason).

At the very least the seller is making a quality product more widely available.

So where is the crime? Seems like everyone is happy. It's capitalism at it's best - no coercion anywhere!

Steve

Ethics and legality are two very different things, Steve. There is obviously in those attempts to sell Stockfish under different names the will to deceive the clients into believing that those applications are original, in order to generate money in the process. Otherwise, they would mention that "their" applications are un-modified versions of the free program Stockfish that can be downloaded from the AppStore too. Had the clients known that this application could be downloaded for free instead, they wouldn't have fallen for this scam.

[Steve Maughan]

I actually argued from an ethical and legal point of view. No coercion therefore no unethical behavior.

[JuLieN]

No coercion therefore no unethical behavior.

Coercion is not an adequate criteria to asses ethics, because some coercion can be ethical.

Anyhow, here it's much more simple: will to deceive = lack of ethics.

[Steve Maughan]

Deceit is indeed wrong - but where is the deceit here?

Simply charging a higher price ($2 as opposed to $0) for the same product is not deceit. If you think it is then any merchant who charges a higher price for the same thing is acting immorally - which of course is absurd.

Steve

[JuLieN]

Deceit is indeed wrong - but where is the deceit here?

Simply charging a higher price ($2 as opposed to $0) for the same product is not deceit. If you think it is then any merchant who charges a higher price for the same thing is acting immorally - which of course is absurd.

Steve

The deceit here lies into the abuse of the user's ignorance of the original product being free. Someone selling something that is otherwise free just because they hope some clients will come that ignore they can get this for free are obviously organizing a deception by mean of lying by omission. (This, in French law is called a dol (deception), and lying by omission is considered by a constant jurisprudence as one of the characterizations of such a dol.)

I should also add that, in French commercial law, the seller must never hide to his customer any important information that could impact his decision to contract. And I wouldn't be surprised if it were the same in most of other western countries, including the USA.

Here is, by the way, a definition and an example of lying by omission given by the english wikipedia:

Lying by omission
Also known as a continuing misrepresentation, a lie by omission occurs when an important fact is left out in order to foster a misconception. Lying by omission includes failures to correct pre-existing misconceptions. When the seller of a car declares it has been serviced regularly but does not tell that a fault was reported at the last service, the seller lies by omission.

[Steve Maughan]

Your great countryman Frédéric Bastiat would turn in his grave at such (imo immoral) laws (which BTW do not exist in other western countries).

Let's leave it there. I don't like the fact that Tord doesn't get any money for his work (but that's his choice). I don't like the fact that there are many clones seeking to profit with little work. But, and it's a big but, I don't see how they can be regarded as morally wrong - they are just opportunistic.

As I say let's leave it there - I will not respond an more.

Nice chatting!

Best regards,

Steve

[JuLieN]

Your great countryman Frédéric Bastiat would turn in his grave at such (imo immoral) laws (which BTW do not exist in other western countries).

Let's leave it there. I don't like the fact that Tord doesn't get any money for his work (but that's his choice). I don't like the fact that there are many clones seeking to profit with little work. But, and it's a big but, I don't see how they can be regarded as morally wrong - they are just opportunistic.

As I say let's leave it there - I will not respond an more.

Nice chatting!

Best regards,

Steve

I'm sorry Steve, but you're pilling up misconceptions above misconceptions: fairness is at the base of the legal system here, wether it is private law or commercial law. And trying to lure potential customers into buying something by deceiving them is nowhere considered as fair.

A topical example comes to mind, given by the great roman lawyer Cicero in a manual. He describes how a rich man is trying to sell his villa in the suburbs of Roma to another rich man. Being told that this man loves fishing, he fills his property's pond with fishes. The man comes to visit, see all the fishes and buy the property. A few days later, all the fishes are dead.

This is a 2000-years old by-the-book example. I'd be surprised if the law of your country wouldn't be at least as civilized as Roma's law was 2000 years ago.

And speaking about Frédéric Bastiat, please let me quote him: "Le rôle de l'État semble être de prévenir et surtout de réprimer le dol et la fraude, c'est-à-dire de garantir la liberté et non de la violer." ("The role of the state seems to be to prevent and suppress deceit and fraud, that way guaranteeing freedom instead of perverting it.")

[mar]

I'm sorry Steve, but you're pilling up misconceptions above misconceptions: fairness is at the base of the legal system here, wether it is private law or commercial law. And trying to lure potential customers into buying something by deceiving them is nowhere considered as fair.

What bothers me more than a guy who sells open-source program is Apple. I have a device with iOS 5.1 but I can't use it to test my iOS apps anymore because i don't (and can't) have XCode 4.3.x with 5.1 SDK on Snow Leopard.
What do you think about it? I can't downgrade. I can't upgrade because Lion install fails (24Eur wasted) due to use of bootcamp and I don't want to lose that Windows/Linux partition.
Only solution: COMPLETE reinstall. What then? Repeat the same when Mountain Lion is out?
Is that ethical? Apple pushes the users somewhere without apparent reason. Like puppets.
You need new software and new hardware and we need your money! But I am no cashcow!
It's a spit in the face of developers! The reason? They can do it and we have no choice. I don't like it
Damn i am starting to think more and more of Android. Jailbreak is no solution for sure.

[JuLieN]

I'm sorry Steve, but you're pilling up misconceptions above misconceptions: fairness is at the base of the legal system here, wether it is private law or commercial law. And trying to lure potential customers into buying something by deceiving them is nowhere considered as fair.

What bothers me more than a guy who sells open-source program is Apple. I have a device with iOS 5.1 but I can't use it to test my iOS apps anymore because i don't (and can't) have XCode 4.3.x with 5.1 SDK on Snow Leopard.
What do you think about it? I can't downgrade. I can't upgrade because Lion install fails (24Eur wasted) due to use of bootcamp and I don't want to lose that Windows/Linux partition.
Only solution: COMPLETE reinstall. What then? Repeat the same when Mountain Lion is out?
Is that ethical? Apple pushes the users somewhere without apparent reason. Like puppets.
You need new software and new hardware and we need your money! But I am no cashcow!
It's a spit in the face of developers! The reason? They can do it and we have no choice. I don't like it
Damn i am starting to think more and more of Android. Jailbreak is no solution for sure.

Yes, that s*cks, I agree. There's actually a work-around:

To get Xcode 4.2 on Snow Leopard to run code on a device running 5.1 you can do this:

If you have another Mac running Lion + XCode 4.3.1 you can copy the files from:

"/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/5.1 (9B176)"

to the equivalent place on your SL Mac: probably "/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport"

and also copy 'version.plist' from the Lion machine in the iPhoneOS.platform folder to the SL machine.

Re-start XCode on the SL machine and re-connect the devices and it seems happy enough.


If you don't have access to a machine with Lion+4.3.1 you can get the files out of the 4.3.1 DMG which can be downloaded from Apple here: http://adcdownload.apple.com/Developer_ ... r_lion.dmg

then mount the DMG, Show Package Contents on the XCode icon and drill down to

/Volumes/Xcode/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport to

find the files mentioned above.

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9614 ... nd-ios-5-1

I agree, this is not handy. But I suppose that iOS 5.1's simulator makes use of some Lion APIs....