Rip Off? YouSoftware: Desktops
Status: Alpha
Brought to you by:
richwareham
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Hi All!
Have a look at this: http://www.yousoftware.com/desktops/
Somehow I think I've seen those features already somewhere, but where....? 8 transitions, one of them "warp" (just look at the animated pic near the bottom).
okay, they have some additional nice features, but still.
If they give the app away for free, it may be okay, but even then they should stand to from where they got most of their code (if my assupmtions are right...)
What's your thought about it?
The transition features uses existing mechanism in OS X (which fast user switching also uses). It also has feature that wsmanager does not have (like per-workspace desktop items). That said, it is still possible that they used wsmanager's code without permission, although unless you have more evidence it is silly to make such a claim.
I'm playing with it (You Control Desktops) - it's got a heck of a lot of features to be the code from Desktop Manager... lets see in addition to Desktop Manager features: the menubar pagers are in color, the pull-down menu for them lets you drag and drop items from one workspace to another, and the transitions seem a whole lot faster.
Lots of these ARE on the feature list/requests for an update to Desktop Manger - but not available yet that I know of.
If they stole the software they'll have a problem because Richard released DesktopManager as GPL, so they can't redistribute it as closed source AND make money on it.
The GPL doesn't prevent anyone from charging for GPL'd code. What the license states is that if you modify the code and distribute that application (or whatever), you need to provide the source code as well. Think Linux when you think GPL: RedHat sells their own version of Linux & they provide the source code to all the changes they do.