Yeah I'm as big of a FOSS fan as the next guy on here but you really can't complain about how someone uses your code if you used the MIT License...one of the most permissive licenses in existence.
If someone wants attribution or something then they should use a license that requires that thing.
There’s a gap between what is legally required and what is common courtesy.
I’m under no obligation to thank someone for holding a door for me; if I fail to do so it does not mean that person should switch to a different door-holding license in the future. It just means I’m a bit of a jerk.
When lifting an entire (permissive licensed) implementation it’s good form to say thanks.
You're not wrong. But the door-holding example isn't really a good one because there's no such thing as a license for door-holding.
For FOSS, on the other hand, licenses are a well-established thing. And developers have free reign to pick a license for their code and they very commonly pick MIT...totally on their own volition. Which strips them of all privileges. It's like writing a book and explicitly setting it into the public domain. If that's what you want to do, that's great, but very commonly I don't think it's what developers actually want to do.
In the world of copyright, the long-standing legal default is for the author to own their work for a certain amount of time, whether or not the copyright is explicitly claimed. Because making public domain the legal default would be utterly insane.
I guess what I'm saying here is my beef isn't with entities that choose to be jerks—that's annoying and always gonna happen to some extent—it's more with the all-too-common decision to use the MIT License. And when I see people complain about it...I understand the sentiment but I also can't help but think that the folks complaining had it coming and it was totally avoidable.
I knew door holding was weak, but I think the principle holds. To me, it is reasonable to release under MIT with expectation of helping lots of people, and also to expect (not require) some credit if a notable company adopts kit and kaboodle.
I guess I kind of disagree. Some projects might pull in 50-800 deps, and then they will run on servers with utilities written by folks. Who are you supposed to thank and who not? You could literally thank thousands of people after writing a ten-line Python script.
I like that the Kagi folks stepped up and thanked you when you requested it, and I like that you wrote this code and made it available. But going around the internet trying to get explicit thanks seems more like the norm breaking here.
You can if they don't include the copyright header: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."
Which, as far as I can tell they haven't done. Their MIT licence claims their own copyright. No reference to the library used in readme.
Usually when using apps that use MIT licensed libs they also implement a notice in a user-facing way. Google maps for instance has a (albeit hidden) section in their settings menu referencing at least one MIT licensed library.
There's a "Show Required" button in the bottom-left of the gameplay screen (i.e., the screen with the timer) that shows the original text with the required terms underlined. Do you see that button?
> 4.
That's weird, because I only use Linux and mostly test in Firefox. If you happen to see any console errors or other clues, feel free to post them.
> 5.
Totally agree. I might establish a forum to make this more feasible, not sure yet.
> 6.
I can understand that notion from the consumer side, but as a maker, I've never had any luck with small voluntary payments. For this particular venture, a major component of the value-add is uncapped access to real human feedback, and this cannot be scaled. Because of that, I can't justify charging anything lower.
To come at it from another angle, I think $100 (or even $300) to learn a life skill that can drastically improve your personal and professional life is a great deal. Especially since the cost of many professional writing courses can be several times higher, in spite of being (in my opinion) much less effective.
If you're hesitant to spend the money, that's fair...consider joining the email list to stay in the loop. Or spend the money, and I'll just give it back to you if you have any regrets :D
> 7.
Interesting, haven't thought about such a thing. Maybe I'll consider it!
> That's weird, because I only use Linux and mostly test in Firefox. If you happen to see any console errors or other clues, feel free to post them.
OK, I can now reliably repro!
At the first screen, _click_ play. Then press enter 5 times.
Every time I do that, I get a stopped timer and no starting text. Same when extensions are disabled. I don't see any obvious errors in the console, other than "Autoplay is only allowed when approved by the user, the site is activated by the user, or media is muted". Which I'm pretty sure I see when I use the mouse to click.
edit:
Refined it a bit more. Every time I use the mouse to click the final button "Go" it works as intended. Every time I press the enter key instead, I get the timer stop & no starting text bug.
I hope you can get some amusement in the fact that I'm procrastinating writing a design doc for work by debugging your writing app. :D
Yup, I did. Also, I noticed that some times the game starts up with the required text, but sometimes I get a blank page.
>other clues...
On it! I triggered the timer stop again by going back and forth using your back links a few times. Another difference is the first time I used the site, I proceeded only with the enter key, not a mouse click. I'll poke at it for a few mins and see if I can find an easy repro case, least I can do...
> or even $300...
I'm afraid to tell you what it would be worth to me, if I knew ahead of time it worked. ;)
I wasn't trying to say "I think $100 is too much for this sort of thing", lol no. (I'd pay $$$ for something like this + a human to evaluate, coach, and push me in the right direction)
I was trying to say "I bet you'll get way more sales if you offer a bite sized trial AND the full package".
> Or spend the money, and I'll just give it back to you if you have any regrets :D
(I was already mentally gearing up to commit to buying it, and trying to do at least 1 a day starting with my next paycheck, tomorrow. ;) )
> Maybe I'll consider it!
Please do! I've now gone through a few times to see different prompts and I'd love a easy, medium, hard tag, because some are much easier than others, and, psychologically, being able to choose those in advance makes it easier for me to force myself to actually do it.
Ran in private mode w/o extensions, still can repro. There's gotta be some difference between giving the final button a click, and whatever happens in a browser when I press enter. I don't know anything about browser programming but hopefully that helps you find it.
I put the site online just 1 day ago, and didn't really tell anyone about it until this HN post. I expect that the situation with search engines will change as the domain matures and becomes more known.
> From "Play" to the actual game is 6 clicks. I'd much prefer 2 or fewer.
I see what you're saying but...I'm not sure what's ideal. Fewer clicks with more info density, or more clicks with less info density. People have short attention spans. And a fewer-click-approach would probably not be mobile-friendly.
> Might be even more fun or game-like to work with text on the sentence level. Certainly much faster for a user to complete, and you have more options for assessment as well.
I try to vary it. Some games are longer and some are shorter...there are different lessons to be picked up from each.
> I'm curious about what other people have submitted, though I expect there's a lot of noise in that data.
Yeah I'd like to have some way to showcase user-submitted solutions at some point, because there are always multiple good ways to approach these challenges that a single human couldn't possibly devise. I don't save any data on the server-side for users who aren't logged in, but as more people sign up (hopefully), I'll have more submissions to play with.
Yeah, the time limit doesn't serve much of a purpose beyond creating some playful pressure.
> It's not clear what other rules (AI?) are being used to judge whether a response is valid, so when you get marked invalid even though you're using all the required terms, it's not clear what you're supposed to do to make it valid.
> It would be nice to be able to review the Background section of the instructions while writing.
> After completion, you see your response compared to a target, but you can't see the original anymore to compare target vs original to see how the target improved on the original.
Very cool app, but just wanted to agree with OP that I wasn't a huge fan of the timer. Writing is an anxiety provoking activity for most people, and adding a timer can make it more so ( or at least it did for me).
Thank you for this! I enjoyed the exercises. Speaking for myself, I liked the pressure of the timed task.
An enhancement I'd like is being able to scroll in the editor box when "Show required" is enabled. Right now, the latter overlays the editor and hides much of the text until it's disabled (possibly a small-screen problem - mine is 768px height).
Sometimes I break grammar rules for effect...in that case, I like the rhythm of the single-syllable words "write well and write fast" better than "write well and write quickly".
But you're totally correct. Maybe that's not the best place to flex rule-breaking :D
I tried to make it responsive because I knew a lot of people would visit the site on their phone. In my testing, gameplay works on mobile...without an on-screen keyboard. When that keyboard pops up on the screen, there isn't much room for anything else.
If you think it's something other than your on-screen keyboard that's messing it up, feel free to link a screenshot and tell me your device, browser, etc so I can look into it.
I'm using the same setup. There were several pages to click through before the timed text editing challenge. Two pages showed the text to edit in a static form before the timed challenge.
If you click the "i" button in the bottom-left during a game, you'll see the original text with required terms highlighted. Lots of people seem to miss that so I need to figure out a way to make it more clear.
In early testing, people seemed to enjoy the challenge the timer provides. But yeah to be honest, I personally don't like it...I'm a slow writer and hate to be rushed. Paid users can disable the timer.
If someone wants attribution or something then they should use a license that requires that thing.