Finally, don't think that I don't earn money from Sweet Home 3D. A few users make some donations, and some companies directly paid a part of a few features, like multiple level management. As explained previously, I also sold a few licenses to companies willing to distribute derived versions of Sweet Home 3D under a proprietary license, and some of them paid me the work hours to make such modifications.
And what about the book? Haven't you sold many of them?
It's not really that much profitable yet, but who knows how this story will finish in the long run?
But do you have plans to make a big extension to the "core" code in the future? Or is the program not going to change much except for more 3d models, textures, and plugins?
Yes, I do.
Distributing a software under GNU GPL doesn't force a developer to give up its copyrights on his work, it gives the freedom to users to use and distribute that software, and distribute a modified version of the software under the same license. A programmer gives up his copyrights on his work only if he publishes it in the Public Domain.
By the way, Sweet Home 3D is also a registered trademark to protect it from people who want to abuse of the software name.
Distributing a software under GNU GPL doesn't force a developer to give up its copyrights on his work, it gives the freedom to users to use and distribute that software, and distribute a modified version of the software under the same license. A programmer gives up his copyrights on his work only if he publishes it in the Public Domain.
By the way, Sweet Home 3D is also a registered trademark to protect it from people who want to abuse of the software name.
Oke so someone can't rename the program, change the UI ( user interface ) and pretend that he wrote it? But how can you proof that he didn't wrote it? By comparing the bit sequence of the compiled code or something?
Apart from the ones coming from Java itself, you'll find a few ones like:
- an abstract factory which specifies how to create view components,
- a few state machines like the ones found in HomeController3D and PlanController classes,
- many observers based on CollectionListener and other Java listeners use,
- some adapters to adapt the model classes handling furniture to JTable and JTree models in FurnitureTableModel and CatalogTreeModel classes,
- some virtual proxies like the IconProxy class,
- some singletons like IconManager, ModelManager, TextureManager and Component3DManager classes.
- an abstract factory which specifies how to create view components,
- a few state machines like the ones found in HomeController3D and PlanController classes,
- many observers based on CollectionListener and other Java listeners use,
- some adapters to adapt the model classes handling furniture to JTable and JTree models in FurnitureTableModel and CatalogTreeModel classes,
- some virtual proxies like the IconProxy class,
- some singletons like IconManager, ModelManager, TextureManager and Component3DManager classes.
Oke interesting. I should dive in a bit deeper to understand them all but thanks for the information.
No sad
Oke well maybe I can give it a try.
