Thievery!

By: Mr. Wilson on October 28, 2009
I suppose I should be flattered, but instead I just feel robbed. Several years ago I wrote a little piece of software for ExpressionEngine called Repeet. For whatever reason it really took off. I suppose the $0.00 price tag helped. The community embraced Repeet as a simple solution to a sticky problem with EE. Fast forward to today. People still use Repeet. Lots and lots of people. That's flattering, but Repeet is ... well, it's old. And not written very well. And it has a couple bugs. And its approach is far from ideal. If it weren't for its wide user base I would shove Repeet into a closet and forget about it. So I was awfully surprised when this morning I wake up to discover that little Repeet has been hacked, wrapped up into a module, and released as a new product. The deed-doers aren't claiming Repeet as their own, fortunately. But they are appropriating my work without permission and releasing it as part of their package. That's just not kosher. Nobody contacted me to get my blessing. Nobody asked me to make clear the license under which the software is available. Nobody spoke with me about working together to apply the fixes they made to the Repeet trunk. And nobody asked if they could take over Repeet and make it their own, or fork it and make a new product based off of it. Incidentally, other people have approached me about Repeet in a much more appropriate way. I have given people my blessing to manipulate Repeet in a couple interesting ways. How did they get my blessing? They asked. They wrote me an email along the lines of, "Hey Mr. Wilson, thanks for Repeet! Here's the problem...". Pretty simple, yeah? As of right now, these people do not have my permission to use Repeet in their product. Please do not use it. And not just because of that. As I said above, Repeet is getting old. If a project demands it, fine. But if you can wait ... Well, the cat is already out of the bag so here goes: I am currently writing Calendar on behalf of Solspace. It's going to rock, and Solspace is being awesome in backing the project. That's all I will say for now. A real Calendar Module is coming and it kicks the crap out of Repeet. You'll love it.

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