Be warned, that code is GPLv3. I don't know the specific legal issues with using it or porting it to another language, but if you're going to use it you should check.
Less than 200 lines of code, only a couple of which aren't basically boilerplate stuff specific to ObjC/Cocoa/iOS. So who cares what the license is? Just rewrite it. I assure you:
x = (p1.x + p2.x) * 0.5;
y = (p1.y + p2.y) * 0.5;
is not now only allowed in GPLv3 code just because it appeared in this larger body of code which is GPLv3.
You can do whatever you want, really, you just need to keep it open source. I can give permission for pieces of that project in any license you need, just not the whole project. Just list the files you need and will grant you a license (no questions asked :D)
(except code not written by me, like the dropbox integration, etc)
Right. Like, for instance, I need some line smoothing code, but I don't want to use that in my closed source project because I don't know how far GPLv3 infects my project.
GPL pretty much kills closed source. But because I'm the copyright owner I can grant people any license:
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Me, J Eduardo Mourao hereby grant any reader of this comment the full rights to any source needed for line smoothing and hand drawing included in the WireframeApp project (https://github.com/eduardordm/wireframeapp/). To receive a copy of this grant just send me an email (optional)
This does not include code not written by me (which should have a header with the original authors license and contact info)
It's no more dangerous than proprietary software in that regard. Proprietary software virally infects any project that uses it, as well as even people who merely look at it, which is why "clean-room" implementations require such careful hygiene to avoid being infected. Should we have an "MIT/BSD only" policy for HN links, and call out any links to dangerous proprietary code?
What do you mean by "proprietary software virally infects any project that uses it"? You're saying nonsense.
And yes, the GPLv3 is extremely dangerous, with its patent crap, and it's anti-tivoing clause. Moreso than any other attribute of software, proprietary or free, that I can think of. For example, just imagine how devastating it would be if one bit of GPLv3 software made its way onto iOS.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes, guys. Yes, big shock, not everybody loves GPLv3, and some of us actually have legitimate reasons to do so.
>For example, just imagine how devastating it would be if one bit of GPLv3 software made its way onto iOS.
If that happens, I imagine Apple would simply commit copyright infringement on the GPLv3`ed code. The same way that they would commit copyright infringment if they include any code which they do not have the rights to.
If one bit of gpl3 code made it into iOS, it would be removed and minor damages would be paid. This is one case where the legal system is far more sane than the breathless nightmares of coders.
That's not even remotely true. Go look up what the anti-tivoing clause in the GPLv3 actually means, and think about what effect that would have on iOS.
Proprietary code has the EXACT same copyright protection as gpl3. The licensing differences are wholly irrelevant if the user never agrees to the license.
Distribution in any fashion of any GPLv3 code counts as implicit acceptance of the license, which kicks in all the nasty stuff in there, including the virality of it (so the rest of your code now must be GPLv3), the anti-tivoing clause, the patent crap, etc.
Licenses are not contracts. Although it is not nessasary for the GPL to make that point explicitly clear, it does:
You may not propagate or modify a covered work except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to propagate or modify it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License (including any patent licenses granted under the third paragraph of section 11).
In other words, if they violate the anti-tivoing clause, then they loose the rights granted to them by the GPL, so they no longer have the right to use the software in their produce. In other words, the worst a license agreement can do is make you break copyright law.
Because their customers are advertisers, and their users are people who follow Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber. It's not the same service as it was when it started, when the API was important to them.
But who wants to pay to tweet? With the business and culture they've built, they don't have a way to go back. They have to stay free for everyone, they have to show ads to make money, and they have to kill 3rd party apps to make sure the ads get seen their way.
If you want Twitter-that-was, ADN is your best bet at this point.
Years ago I made the mistake of using them. Never again. Their habit of screwing users, followed by complete opacity as to why they're screwing a particular user at a particular time, makes them evil.
Which is really too bad: they provide what could be, in other circumstances, a useful service.
I remember it well. It seemed like such a solid idea - be able to send money to anyone with only both parties responsibility for what it was, just like handing cash over. I pushed it hard at the time, figuring it was the best bet for being able to finally do transaction freely. Three years later, yeah. You can send cash to anyone. Except, you know.. anyone dealing in drugs. Or porn. Or gambling. Or potentially illegal electronics. Or hebs. But anyone else. Well, not you personally - we dislike you already so for you, no one, but other people might..
Fine. How much does it cost to build the machine that mills the case out of a block of aluminum? How much does it cost to employ the people that design the hardware, that write the software? How much does it cost to market, distribute and sell on a global scale? The cost of an iPhone, or any mass-produced product, is WAY more than the cost of each individual part from NewEgg.
Apple definitely puts a lot of money into research and development to create the software and manufacturing techniques. This estimate is more about marginal profit. To make it a bit clearer, if Apple sold zero iPhones, the R&D costs you talk about would still be incurred (and in the same amount). If Apple sells a billion iPhones, the R&D costs you talk about would be the same amount.
One could imagine a company that does $1M in R&D, has a price per unit of $650, and a cost per unit of $500. Similarly, a company could do $100M in R&D, have a price of $650, and a cost per unit of $200. At some number of units (and I'm just being lazy here since I don't want to do the math), the second company makes more money.
A statement like this isn't meant to sound like Apple isn't offering customers a good value, but rather that the cost to supply 1 additional iPhone is small compared to the revenue gained by selling 1 additional iPhone - basically, that a lot of Apple's costs are R&D, not component costs. When evaluating a company for investment, it's nice to see that they aren't running thin margins on supplying marginal units and so the more they succeed, the more the R&D costs are spread out.
Not that it is a BAD thing, or a good thing - the innovations from R&D past pays off years after, but they only spent 2.4 billion. They tried sueing Samsung for more than their total annual R&D costs.
Again, not science here, just an oberservation that they are indeed cheap with R&D.
I think it's more a case of Nokia wasting money than Apple being cheap. I lost count of all the phone OSs Nokia was developing: Maego, Meemo, multiple versions of Symbian... and in the end they had to throw everything away and license Microsoft's OS to get something competitive. That's hardly a model of good R&D spending.
Agreed to this and all other comments. There can be no criticism of how much a company spends on R&D - spend tens of billions make a profit, you're doing good, but spend a couple billion and make billions in profit, your a genius. Apple is indeed getting the better bang for their buck over their competitors, that's for sure.
Overall, I think R&D costs is really a moot point, although its always nice to see corporations going above and beyond to push the boundaries of technologies, and develop new ones.
A lot of that distinction is just accounting. Apple under Jobs believed that the best "R&D" was done by the folks working on real, shipping products. I bet Ive's salary isn't counted as R&D, but surely that's a big part of his job.
Cheap relative to their revenue, $2.4 billion is still a LOT of money.
Bell Labs in 1982 had an annual budget of $1.6 billion which in 2012 dollars comes to about $3.6 billion.
I believe Xerox PARC had a relatively petite budget of $17 million or so in 1979, so incoming dollars are probably a very imprecise measure of R&D quality.
The article is not clear as to whether the mentioned spending is only Nokia's handset department. Assuming that's not the case then I don't think it's a fair comparison because Nokia's product portfolio is way bigger than handsets. It's just like comparing Intel's and Apple's R&D spending.
Basically you're asking how much would it cost to make an iPhone from scratch, assuming we start with a hunter/gatherer level civilization. That's a pretty useless value, because that civilization cost is shared by many other things and amortized over a long history.
Prices, therefore, are only meaningful in a relative context, assuming a baseline, which is what this cost estimate is. And that baseline changes, which is why 1GB now is so cheap while 40 years ago it was very, very expensive.
There's no implication here that Apple is ripping you off. It's just a calculation of the cost of the BoM which gives industry analysts an idea of Apple's bottom line.
Indeed. For anyone who complains "Apple is ripping off consumers", I dare say we could dump the pile of parts in front of someone and they would, at best, have a terrible time assembling them - never mind the costs of setting up a supply chain going from raw materials to completed product in a matter of days.
When my wife was starting her MBA, she asked me out of the blue "what do you think of supply chain management?" Having nary a clue what she was talking about, and being a sarcastic sort, I retorted "I think it is evil and should be outlawed." Now, having for some years observed Apple's supply chain development, I realize how critically important it is and wildly overlooked it is by pundits.
To great degree, it is thanks to Apple pouring BILLIONS of dollars into suppliers & supply chain management that they can construct something as mind-blowingly Star Trek-ish as the iPhone for just $167.50 in parts. You're sure not going to wander into a well-stocked Radio Shack or Fry's and get the same parts for that price.
>>"How much does it cost to build the machine that mills the case out of a block of aluminum?"
That costs Apple nothing, it costs the manufacture a set dollar amount, which it then recoups and then some by selling cases to apple for $x.xx. So technically, the cost for building the machine to mill aluminum is already accounted for in the bill of materials.
My understanding is if Apple discovers the machinery to make their cases (or a part of their widget or whatever they want) doesn't exist, they'll pull out their checkbooks to make sure the machinery and factories get built.
"This iTunes need eliminates a large segment of technophobes."
Really? It wasn't even 3 years ago when all iPhones required iTunes syncing to load music. Every single iPod, since the very first one in 2001, have required it all along, and they've done fine with "technophobes".
You could buy music directly on the original iPhone, no need to sync music over to it, starting with the 1.1 update about 3 months after release, 5 years ago.
I'm in Canada and your site is very slow to load (over a minute). It is also very tricky to scroll vertically on an iPhone, it wants to scroll sideways instead. Just FYI.
Slow for me in NYC as well, just FYI. Also, 4.5 MB is quite large to show the first page. Amazon is 1.9 MB, and Pinterest actually comes in at under a MB by comparison.
