Open Source ?

[Rob F]

Gandalf posted....

So, robo-tank v6 is a standalone software that doesn't require reef-pi ?

It's a shame not being open source.

[Rob F]

Sorry gandalf, I accidently deleted your thread. Lately I've been getting a lot of spam posts and I selected your message to delete by mistake.

Yeah v6 is standalone, if there was an open source license that prohibited commercial use I would use it but they don't cover that. Maybe down the road I will change it.

[gandalf]

you can write your own license ...

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anyway CC BY-NC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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this one is even better
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

[Rob F]

Thanks, in the past I've gone through all those but none of them are considered open-source. If there's any restriction of any kind it's not open source. That's the problem, but yeah basically those two licenses you linked is the deal.

[gandalf]

well, not exactly. open source doesn't mean free and doesn't mean commercial. open source is when you have the full source code to customize.

as PHP developer, i'll be interested in making the a custom interface for Robo Tank, with Laravel, VueJS and so on

[Rob F]

Hmm, interesting. Maybe the problem is because I only want it run on my hardware or a complete DIY system someone does from scratch, in other words I don't like the idea of other hardware being sold and using my app. If people don't buy my controller I have no way of getting income which means I can't do this. This obviously makes the sharing aspect not so useful. The grand idea is the app is special to the controller giving people more of a reason to buy but people do get full source code and can customize to their liking. If they feel like sharing and I like I could incorporate. If you run my app when it installs there's a poorly written license agreement that basically says this. At some point I will write a better one, those prewritten ones don't really fit.

A good example of my fear coming true, just yesterday someone managed to get some hardware working from another commercial controller with my app. That does scare me, if those mods were contributed and shared freely whos to say down the road people start buying the nice commercial product and use my app, obviously the other company comes out on top. Likely for years to come my stuff will always be 3D printed cases and not a commercial feel. If you could buy my AC power bar or a fully approved power bar and use with the app which one are going to choose? This is what I'm getting at.

The closest thing I see to what I'm doing is 3D printers. Imagine reef-pi is Marlin, once proven successful anyone and everyone can throw some hardware together and be in business. Tomorrow I could start selling 3D printers. If my app becomes what I vision and hope I can definitely see people doing this just like reef-pi. At one point there were about 4 people selling hardware, at this point in life that's the last thing I would want to happen with mine. If I came across others using my app this way it would be devastating as I'm starving here lol.

Another thing that scares me a bit, lets say you or someone else created an interface and shared it or it was incorporated into the app, I would likely be lost as I'm not the greatest programmer, if later I went to add new features maybe I can't navigate or understand the contributed code, Laravel and VueJS I've never even heard of. I get the logic and use basic functions of a language. If you look though the code you'll notice it's all very simple, thankfully that's all it needs. When I look though the reef-pi code I don't know what's going on, this works because I wrote it.

So yeah as you can see I struggle with this, it's a lot more complex then people think or maybe I'm just overthinking everything. To get where I would love to be it's a lot of baby steps, once the app is nearing complete I would love to hire outside help to give it that smooth look which just isn't my thing and then get hardware professionally designed and ideally approved.

[gandalf]

well, except the connector disposition (i don't like having tons of connector on top, would be much better to have on a side, like all devices) i like robo-tank.....

which is the commercial product are you referring to ? (in private if you like)

[JFReyes]

Hmm, interesting. Maybe the problem is because I only want it run on my hardware or a complete DIY system someone does from scratch, in other words I don't like the idea of other hardware being sold and using my app. If people don't buy my controller I have no way of getting income which means I can't do this. This obviously makes the sharing aspect not so useful. The grand idea is the app is special to the controller giving people more of a reason to buy but people do get full source code and can customize to their liking. If they feel like sharing and I like I could incorporate. If you run my app when it installs there's a poorly written license agreement that basically says this. At some point I will write a better one, those prewritten ones don't really fit.

A good example of my fear coming true, just yesterday someone managed to get some hardware working from another commercial controller with my app. That does scare me, if those mods were contributed and shared freely whos to say down the road people start buying the nice commercial product and use my app, obviously the other company comes out on top. Likely for years to come my stuff will always be 3D printed cases and not a commercial feel. If you could buy my AC power bar or a fully approved power bar and use with the app which one are going to choose? This is what I'm getting at.

Rob:

One way I would approach that dilemma is to incorporate a chip on the controller that can be custom coded so that the app would look for it and decode it and if it passes then it would work fully and not in demo mode, whatever that could be. For earlier versions of the hardware a little plug in could be sold for a nominal cost. Of course, you would have to decide on its cost vs. benefits. Just my 2 cents...

Cheers,

[Rob F]

Hi Jose, thanks for the idea, I've thought of this but it would be costly to add to controllers already out there. Currently the software is generating a unique ID for everyone so I could use that for a one time activation process, using that an activation code could be generated from my website and entered in, I could even tie it to a unique number from the Pi itself. A person could also purchase an activation code if they don't have the controller. I don't know if I want to do this but good chance it could happen.