From an email this morning:
james, love the blog! I have a question that I hope you can answer. I was looking at some of the downloads on ESRI’s ArcScripts site and noticed that they are all listed as having a license of “public domain”. Downloading ET GeoWizards LT, I don’t see any of the source code included. How can ESRI allow this program to exist on the ArcScripts site if it doesn’t include the source?
We’ll we’ve been down this road once or twice. ESRI has eliminated much of the commercial software so it has gotten better. Still I do find it humorous that ET GeoWizards LT does have a Public Domain license, though I’m 100% sure that isn’t the intention of the developer. ArcScripts really isn’t public domain even though ESRI claims it is. Think of it as more “non-commercial”. There are a ton of public domain/open source scripts and applications out there, but just because ArcScripts shows it to be public domain, doesn’t mean it is.
5 responses so far ↓
1
Lefty
// Oct 2, 2006 at 3:22 pm
What a joke ArcScripts has become. I guess I’m just nostalgia for the old ArcScripts Avenue days, but the whole site needs to be killed and a more collaborative site be put in its place.
2
Brian Timoney
// Oct 2, 2006 at 5:32 pm
“nostalgia for the old ArcScripts Avenue days…”
Um, so I probably shouldn’t ‘fess up to downloading an Avenue script for an AV 3.x task within the last 48 hrs??
James: I’d love a show of hands of folks that never made the switch to 8.x or 9.x because of common everday tasks that a 3.x workflow still carries out quiet satisfactorily….
BT
3
James Fee
// Oct 2, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I’ll raise my hand and say I still use ArcView 3.2a almost every day.
4
Ryan Arp
// Oct 3, 2006 at 1:32 pm
I was going through an old ZIP disk the other day and found some old apr’s that brought back memories of yelling Projector! every time I had to use the Projector! script.
5
Ianko Tchoukanski
// Oct 10, 2006 at 3:08 am
Who said that the scripts and tools published on ArcScripts must be Public Domain?
The only requirement I found is:
“ArcScripts is intended for the free exchange of scripts and tools related to ESRI software products. We reserve the right to remove unacceptable scripts (demo, trial-version, or an advertisement for a retail product).”
The “Status of work” field was added by ESRI at some stage, and there is no way for the person who uploads to ArcScripts to change the value of this field.
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