Simetrical wrote:
On 10/11/07, David Gerard wrote:
On 11/10/2007, Brion Vibber wrote:
CMU refuses to open-source the software that runs that system, using vague justifications like "it would be hard to replicate the whole system, so surely no one would want the source". That's not really the kind of software partner we prefer to work with.
Eurgh. That's ... silly. Do we have any readers with ins at CMU who can explain to them the advantages of having it on a top 10 website in a convincing and saleable manner?
It seems likely that if Wikipedia said it would run the captchas if everything were free and open-source, they would open-source it. I expect we wouldn't want to participate in any case if it required using their servers, which it seems to in the general case: would we want Wikipedia captchas to break if they have some downtime? Could we implement some kind of reliable way to substitute our own captchas should that occur? (Like what, ping their server on every captcha request before we give the response to the request? Slow *and* unreliable.)
Another good reason to opensource it. Wiki*edia could replicate the basics and communicate with their servers in batches.
The answer is really weak. What's the problem if nobody wants it? Seems they're afraid someone copies them...