General discussion of OpenCATS

Moderators: RussH, cptr13

Forum rules: Just remember to play nicely once you walk through the door. You can disagree with us, or any other commenters in this forum, but keep comments directed to the topic at hand.
User avatar
By cptr13
#44
Can we do a logo/Icon for cats? Is that allowed under the license? Cognizo doesn't really have one from the looks of it. I'd like to have a button I can slap on my site, to refer people here....
By asimbaig
#93
cptr13 wrote:YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can not convey how friggin dissapointed that I was when Cognizo pulled the stunt that they pulled. I am so THRILLED that someone has taken the initiative to continue this project. PLEASE help out and let's keep this going. I am not technical but I'm more than happy to assist with documentation, feedback, etc.

Thanks thanks thanks!!!!!!!!!!
I beg to differ. Cognizo didnt pull any stunts. I care about open source and commercial software intellectual rights. I have posted elsewhere in this forum that I have taken great care to follow "open source" practices and legalities. I have complete right to do what I did by discontinuing CATS open source project. I am a strict follower of open source licenses and expect everyone on this forum to do the same.

I encourage legal use of CATS software. I encourage legal use of CATS fork within the limits of CPL. Anyone is encourage to take CATS and build a community around it and continue the work.

What I will vigorously defend is defamation, misinformation, and factually incorrect statements about Cognizo and my team.

Asim
952-232-0880 x101
asim@catsone.com
By asimbaig
#94
cptr13 wrote:Can we do a logo/Icon for cats? Is that allowed under the license? Cognizo doesn't really have one from the looks of it. I'd like to have a button I can slap on my site, to refer people here....
The logo along with the words "CATS" are copyright Cognizo. You can't change the logo and not change the name. What you can do is change the name and then come up with a new logo. The footer of every rendered page, however, must follow CATS Public License (CPL) plus whatever else you want to to call your project.

Asim
952-232-0880 x101
asim@catsone.com
User avatar
By cptr13
#121
I have no intention of turning this into a flame war, so I won't. Let me sum up what you did as I see it...
-Built the CATS community up, touting the open source aspects for years
-Generated a large user and developer following (as your website touts....the world's most popular ATS.....)
-Pulled the plug on CATS open source overnight, with no notice whatsoever, no direct mention on your website, you didn't even allow the very community of people that contributed in so many ways a few days to attempt to download a copy. It took me about week to even figure out what the heck happened. The only notice on your site is if someone attempts to go straight to the forum link and only then do we even get a message acknowledging that you are not continuing CATS as an open source project. You entire message to the community on that very post is pure and utter crap by the way. Let me sum it up in a nutshell:
paragraph one: we are awesome and self-sacrificing for "strangers" and we do it for nothing.
paragraph two:Golly gee, we aren't seeing any money, only a "handful" of folks are helping (yet the worlds most popular?How'd that happen....maybe you're enormous advertising budget....).

It is insulting to the work that was put into the project from outside sources.


If it wasn't a stunt then why didn't you give your community any notice? Why didn't you post the download file at least for a few weeks to give users the opportunity to grab the file one last time (just in case)? Why didn't you put a notice right on your main page where you had "OPEN SOURCE" plastered the day before? Why didn't your message posted on the forum page spend more time thanking and focusing on the community that has allowed you to have the product you are currently hocking, and less time patting yourself on the back and touting the wonders of Cognizo?
Let's call a spade a spade, I wouldn't dare make any assumptions of your intentions when you started this project, but it seems pretty clear to me what they were at the end....pull the plug and get the cash...screw the folks that contributed.

Good thing that's just an opinion.....I wouldn't want to be slanderous... :lol:
By asimbaig
#122
Its obvious that you dont jack about CATS, Cognizo or the project history for that matter. You are factually incorrect on most of these. My first response was to just ignore your post, but then again...

"cptr13" thats your real name??

Come out of the closet, will you and post your real name. Tell me who you are and what you do for a living? Recruiter? ....I bet you are. In fact, I will give $100 to a charity of your choice, if you prove me wrong.....tell everyone on the forum, how many placements did you make last year for free?

At least have the b****s.... no...wait decency to sign your name on the post! anonymous coward...

I know your types. If you knew anything about what it takes to run an open source project, you wouldnt have written this...

- yes I tried to build the open source community. I had all the right intentions. I did it. I have a track record of extra ordinary performance. I gave my software to 30,000 people to use. Have you ever written code?? When did you give it away like I did?? Tell me what business are you in.....wait I already guessed it....you are a greedy recruiter.... I will call you and see what you can give to me for free...

- You are wrong here....there WAS NO developer base. Thats the problem. 5000 posts on the forum...practically no code contribution. Developers are just not interested in a business applications. We wrote ALL the code, every line....you uninformed *&%#^. Go read the code. You will see it.

- We have the right to terminate the project as we see fit. We DID NOT have a developer community. Go look at sourceforge. 80% of the projects are abandoned. How do I know it, because I actually have written and used open source for 17 years. I have contributed real code (not opinions like you) to real projects. We wrote code, gave it for free. The community that you refer to are recruiters mostly...who used CATS to run their businesses. There's about 12 guys who have posted 90% of all posts on the forums. 12 users posting regularly....30,000 downloads. How many active CATS installations is that....go figure. Where are the 29,900+ users??

- The reason we didnt want to give out links or support o/s anymore is because we COULD NOT do it. We could not handle the incoming call volume. Our phones were ringing off the hook, inboxes flooded with FREE support requests. I simply didn't have the resources. Again, give me your number, I'll call your business and ask for services....I will publish the results of our conversation here on this forum....

- Idiotic garbage ignored....(go back to school and learn about deductive reasoning). Take Logic 101.

Now go stand in the corner and slap yourself a few times for starting this flame war...anonymous coward.
By Jos
#125
Well, I hope the "shout box" ends right here. I suggest people who still have problems with the way all went contact catsone.com directly. The way it goes now is the road to nowhere.

For those who like to flame war, I suggest get a copy of Halo combat evolved and multiplayer it on-line :mrgreen:
User avatar
By RussH
#127
Jos wrote:Well, I hope the "shout box" ends right here. I suggest people who still have problems with the way all went contact catsone.com directly. The way it goes now is the road to nowhere.

For those who like to flame war, I suggest get a copy of Halo combat evolved and multiplayer it on-line :mrgreen:
...are you suggesting a .co.uk vs .com deathmatch? :-D
By skwdenyer
#133
asimbaig wrote:Come out of the closet, will you and post your real name. Tell me who you are and what you do for a living? Recruiter? ....I bet you are. In fact, I will give $100 to a charity of your choice, if you prove me wrong.....tell everyone on the forum, how many placements did you make last year for free?
I'm not the object of your ire, but I'll qualify my comments according to your metrics.

I'm a temporary recruiter, as well as running a non-profit arts project (which I set up with £200k of my own money specifically to offer free and low-cost services to the arts world), a market research business, a headhunting business and some software interests. On a quick count, I did 20 placements for free last year. I'm happier as a result :)
asimbaig wrote:there WAS NO developer base. Thats the problem. 5000 posts on the forum...practically no code contribution. Developers are just not interested in a business applications. We wrote ALL the code, every line....you uninformed *&%#^. Go read the code. You will see it.
With respect, I employed paid developers to work on CATS. If it were not for the CPL I'd have contributed all of it back to you. As it is we were going to modularise it to avoid the license problems. Some of it we would have charged money for (where it involved proprietary code from elsewhere), some of it we would have put back for free (and charged for integration / support). Now we have no marketplace (well, a few people here), no project to contribute back to, and no CATS-based business.

Your choice of licence makes a huge difference. Sugar (an example you've used) works because the module framework allows contributions, and because a lot of the developers are system integrators who will build, deploy and maybe host a custom version of the code. The CPL kills some avenues of revenue for third party developers, the lack of a stable codebase and roadmap killed some more of it. Sure, Sugar's licence is CPL-like (although a lot less restrictive), but the value is in the add-ons.

Since the CPL scuppered the obvious business model, the next-best thing was to write modules to do things. But with the code changing so rapidly, and without notice, how could we keep up? It just wasn't stable enough to try to support module users in the real world.
asimbaig wrote:We have the right to terminate the project as we see fit. We DID NOT have a developer community.
IMHO that statement is why you don't have a developer community. We could all see that, we could all see that Cognizo didn't (seem to) want anyone else to make money. Without money to be made, who develops? You didn't do it out of charitable intent, why should we? Unfortunately, from my perspective, the way CATS has been structured encouraged lots of small (and not-so-small) end-users to use it for free, but did not appeal to those who actually develop code for verticals (systems integrators, consultants, and so on), not least because IMHO the CPL stopped their business stone dead. You're unusual (as am I) as a recruiter who codes.
asimbaig wrote:Go look at sourceforge. 80% of the projects are abandoned.
Yes, and most of those are because they tried to reinvent the wheel, tried to pander to the egos of those involved, weren't really interesting, had a crap idea, had no roadmap or direction or leadership, and so on. Sourceforge is a great place to throw up a "project" and a bad place to build a community.

Anyhow, CATS is now amongst them... almost!
asimbaig wrote:How do I know it, because I actually have written and used open source for 17 years. I have contributed real code (not opinions like you) to real projects. We wrote code, gave it for free.
That's always the problem, that "free" bit. It (to me, at least) denotes a mental link between code and money, which doesn't perhaps go to the heart of the OS software debate. The business isn't always in the code these days, of course not, it is in the overall offering. I'd have looked at 30k users and tried to work out how to monetize some of them, rather than begrudging them for getting the software for no outlay.
asimbaig wrote:The community that you refer to are recruiters mostly...who used CATS to run their businesses. There's about 12 guys who have posted 90% of all posts on the forums. 12 users posting regularly....30,000 downloads. How many active CATS installations is that....go figure. Where are the 29,900+ users??
Well, for one, what is the case with other OS projects? Second, as you say, recruiters don't code. If I'd wanted to build a business around CATS (in the abstract) I'd have offered managed servers. I'd have bug-fixed for clients and posted the code back to you. I'd have developed the code because it would help my business and your business. But I'd have wanted to be guaranteed in return that my business wouldn't die tomorrow because you pulled the roadmap. And I'd not want to write and contribute new features until I knew that there was a framework to do them under and a license that kept those contributions open. There we go, that's why I didn't do what I wanted to originally when I saw the code, because the CPL didn't let me. And again you wonder why there were so few developers adding things?

Instead I paid developers to work in-house for me, adapting the code because I couldn't rely on the roadmap. I've already told you what the plan was, but that is dead for now as the whole thing has gone away. And yet you wonder why nobody else was as daft as me to invest in this project when it was clear what could happen at any time?

Anyhow, this will run and run. I'm NOT trying to flame you. I DO understand the investment you've made. And I knew all along that it was your code to do with as you saw fit, rather than any sort of true open source project, and hence you could pull it at any time. Now you have, we have to see what we can make with what is left. Sadly the CPL remains in place, so we'll have to be a bit creative in how we work out how to recoup development time invested. But as I've said elsewhere, none of this should take away from the achievement you and your team have made in realising CATS, nor should it prevent us for being grateful for the chance to do something with the code.
By asimbaig
#138
I'm a temporary recruiter, as well as running a non-profit arts project (which I set up with £200k of my own money specifically to offer free and low-cost services to the arts world), a market research business, a headhunting business and some software interests. On a quick count, I did 20 placements for free last year. I'm happier as a result
I admire you for this....you have a lot more respect from me.... now..... :)
With respect, I employed paid developers to work on CATS. If it were not for the CPL I'd have contributed all of it back to you. As it is we were going to modularise it to avoid the license problems. Some of it we would have charged money for (where it involved proprietary code from elsewhere), some of it we would have put back for free (and charged for integration / support). Now we have no marketplace (well, a few people here), no project to contribute back to, and no CATS-based business.
Please make sure to read CPL section 3.2. Availability of Source Code. If you didnt start with a module architecture, you are required to release your code on your website and let anyone have it for free. You cannot use modified CATS in your company until you do so. Thanks.
Your choice of licence makes a huge difference. Sugar (an example you've used) works because the module framework allows contributions...
CATS had full support for modules early on. If you look under the docs folder, you will see DEVELOPMENT GUIDELINES document. Look further under examples, and you will see 2 full documented modules. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of PHP could write modules for CATS. How many module contributions did we get....ZERO!!!!
But with the code changing so rapidly, and without notice, how could we keep up? It just wasn't stable enough to try to support module users in the real world.
This is incorrect. The code was professionally developed and released with module versioning and module backword compatibility in mind. I understand that you are trying to make a case, but I am sorry, you are not stating facts. Its clear from your post, that you have never looked at CATS code seriously. Sorry...I respect your opinion, but in the absence of knowledge, one should be careful with broad comments like this....please review CATS code first.
Cognizo didn't (seem to) want anyone else to make money. Without money to be made, who develops? You didn't do it out of charitable intent, why should we?
I see. So thats how you think open source development works. We didnt do it out of charitable intent.????? Dude 30,000 recruiting companies are using my software in 120 countries for $0.00

CATS license is modified MPL. YOU CANT MAKE MONEY FROM MPL!!!!! I suggest you review open source licensing. A review of MPL would really help. Yes we did add exhibit B to MPL that allowed us to run CATS in an ASP setting. I spent several hundred thousand dollars.....I cant get a penny from CATS open source customers, so I say. Ok everyone use it for free, follow the CPL (MPL). Do you know that after 3 years of CATS development, we are still losing money running our ASP service. I am funding CATS today...yes today, CATS professional hosting is running in loss.

At any rate, I have read your comments and I am not offended by them at all (unlike others). I am sorry to say that its evident you need to learn about open source licensing. Your knowledge of open source and how it relates to $$$ is limited. I do appreciate that you were trying to make a point and "help explain".

Thanks for your perspective.

Asim
952-232-0880 x101
asim@catsone.com

Hi, Im new to OpenCATS. I am in the process of […]

Our PDF Word Counter Tool is designed to make co[…]

Ensure that the SQL syntax is correct. The error m[…]

Discover Women Seeking Casual Encounters Tonight […]