Goodbye to SMSBuddy [zombie post]
It is very sad to announce SMSBuddy will be no more available. I went through the “Terms and Conditions” agreement of Way2SMS.com.
Please see the agreement: http://wwwg.way2sms.com/content/Terms%20&%20Conditions.html
The agreement states that users should not make derivative work based on this proprietary service. So I am sadfully saying good bye to SMSBuddy.
SMSBuddy came up as interesting project with lots of feedback in the recent days. It expected it to come up as yet another interesting open source projects. Not only I coded for SMSBuddy, I also received contributions on code and UI.
Hiran has contributed on UI and Icon.
Anoop (gnuanu) has written a frontend in wxWidgets. He mainly wrote it for his colleagues to use on Windows boxes :P. He has sent me some screenshots of the UI he wrote, which works on Windows 7. I am posting the screen shots here:
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| From life.blog |
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| From life.blog |
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| From life.blog |
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| From life.blog |
Again we have to make the same statement “Proprietary software sucks” When we talk a lot about Free Software philosophy, people ask sometime questions that they haven’t encountered any problems with it. I am talking to those people. Hey guys, you have found this “SMSBuddy” interesting right ?. But are not able to use it and distribute. Why ? We are restricted with our freedom. It is restricted not with technology. But by license agreement. Which is the worst part of proprietary software. If they restrict us to provide another interface by intelligently blocking such applications which uses them as backend. It is truly a technological attempt. We have to respect their technology and we will have curiosity to know how it is done. But here, they are just putting restrictions on us for use of technology. We are restricted with our freedom.
Proprietary software puts locks on our creativity. It was a creative idea to write such an application. But we are not allowed. Freedom is valuable in the case of software too.
Free software gives us the following four freedoms: * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
So use free software. Spread free software. Be muft and mukt with software.