Inquiry Regarding Current Status of CommandCam and Proposal for an Alternative

[NewtTheWolf]

Hello @tedburke ,

First and foremost, I want to express my appreciation for your work on CommandCam. This tool has been invaluable to many of my clients.

However, I've noticed that the last update was around 2012, and many of my clients are encountering issues with the current version.

I wanted to kindly inquire about the current status of the CommandCam project. Is it still under active development? Are there any plans for future updates or modifications to address the current issues?

In the event that CommandCam is no longer being actively developed, I have been working on an alternative solution that I believe could be beneficial to the user base. I would appreciate your feedback and any guidance you might be able to provide in terms of making this transition as smooth as possible for the users.

Thank you again for your time and the hard work you have put into this project. I look forward to your response.

Best Regards,
Dominik Spitzli aka. NewtTheWolf

[tedburke]

Hi Dominik,

CommandCam is published under GPL v3 license, so if you're talking about an open source fork then you're already free to do that (and for what it's worth you have my blessing). If you're talking about something different, like using the current code or the CommandCam name in a proprietary product, then I guess I would need to know a bit more. In principle though, I'm happy for anyone to use the current code for whatever they want (proprietarty, non-proprietary, whatever) as long as it's not unethical. For that reason, I'm wondering if it would be better to put the whole thing in the public domain. Would that facilitate whatever you're planning to do?

As things stand, I personally have no plans to spend significant time developing CommandCam and I have no interest in profiting from it, so I'm open to considering anything reasonable that doesn't expose me to some kind of liability.

Ted

[NewtTheWolf]

Hi @tedburke,

Thank you for your response and your openness towards the future of CommandCam.

I want to clarify that I have developed an alternative to CommandCam in the Rust language, and it's not a fork of the original CommandCam project but a completely independent implementation. Since I don't have a command of C++, no code from the original CommandCam was adopted in my project.

At its current state, my project addresses many of the issues users are facing with CommandCam. Moreover, I plan to implement additional features in the future to further improve user experience.

My intent is to release this project under the Apache 2.0 License. This license would allow the community and other developers to use, modify, and even create commercial derivatives of my project. This is especially pertinent as the company I am working for intends to offer additional services including custom developments, installation, and support.

While CommandCam served as a significant source of inspiration for this project, it is an independent work. However, I would like to acknowledge CommandCam as the source of inspiration and would certainly refer to it. Before moving forward, I wanted to get your perspective and ensure there are no legal concerns.

Thank you again for your time and your support.

Best Regards,
Dominik Spitzli aka. NewtTheWolf

[tedburke]

Hi Dominik,

Ah, I understand! Well in that case you certainly don't need any permission from me, but I enthusiastically applaud your work. There appears to still be demand for an application like CommandCam, but I am no longer actively developing it, which obviously is a bit of a problem. It sounds like your program, which is being actively maintained, would be more useful to those looking for something up to date, so maybe I can add a notice (plus link) to the top of my CommandCam web page suggesting that people use your program instead? I'll leave my page there for historical reference, but if there's a contemporary alternative I would like to be able to point visitors in that direction.

Ted

[NewtTheWolf]

Hi Ted,

I want to commend you again for the great work you've done with CommandCam. It's remarkable. I'm also appreciative of your decision to keep the website available for historical reference. Furthermore, I'm grateful for your willingness to link to our project. If possible, I'd suggest that you could also include a link to our project in the Readme of your repository, for anyone who might come across it directly.

Here is the link: https://github.com/LCH-Cloud/CaptchaCam/

Best regards,
Dominik Spitzli aka. NewtTheWolf