wiringPi, wiringPi GPIO library – deprecated… Lessons for the open-source community :( @drogon
Gordon is no longer going to make public releases of wiringPi, here’s why (read the entire thing) and it’s a good lesson for everyone in the open-source community –
And those who’ve stolen my software and sold it as your own? Hm. Sure – it’s hard to steal free software, but say you’re a German Pi UPS maker and you pull apart wiringPi to get just the bits you need, statically link that into your own control code, but rather than publish the code and a little “thanks” note you leave my email address it in, then the poor user who has paid you their good money to buy your kit gets in-touch with me when they upgrade their Pi…
Sadly, that’s the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg, but by no means the only case. The sad thing is that people steal GPL, LGPL and other Free/Libre software all the time. I’ve even had someone tell me to my face that they would take and re-publish my code under their name because there is nothing I can do about it. So no more.
The final straw? An individual by the name of DanielK who bleated at me for not releasing the sources for the Pi v4 version in a timely manner. I’d put up a .deb file designed for the correct dynamic linking, but Daniel pointed out
Not to be a complete ass or anything, but technically the LGPL license REQUIRES you to make the sources available when it’s released.
Great. Thanks, Dan. As I had limited capacity available at the time, I just felt that that was that. If I’m going to get emails like that for a little project then it’s not worth it anymore.
…
I will make a final release of wiringPi available soon – with the sources, but that’s that. No more public releases. I’ll still be maintaining it for my own uses and clients, but for everyone else, please look at for alternative GPIO library for on-going projects.