293 words — 2 minutes read

Flattery or rip-off?

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… However, I don’t find any imitation in this Rails Cheat Sheet Collectors Edition but only a blatant rip-off of my Rails Reference.

What is disappointing about this is, that Benjamin Gorlick has been granted a Google Summer of Code grant for Rails documentation (also mentioned on the rails blog). The license I have released the reference under specifically allows for derivative works (even commercial ones) but requires attribution to me as the original author.

I’m ready to accept an apology, an inclusion of both original license and my name in his copy of the guide. A bit of the grant money wouldn’t hurt either… :-)

Update

I left a comment on Benjamins Blog, linking to the original reference. The comment was deleted only a couple of minutes later. You may draw your own conclusions

Update 2

So Benjamin has seen fit to include my company name and info at the bottom of the file. And then he must have noticed that my version of the reference document has quite a bit more info than his, so he copied the section on ActionMailer. And the Creative-Commons license is still missing. And why did you disable comments in the two related entries on your blog?

Update 3

The creative commons license and a link to this site have finally appeared on Benjamins copy of my reference. And I got an email from him claiming that he didn’t know about my version (he took it from another copy that is outdated as hell). Maybe he should read the stuff he deletes when doing a copy / paste / delete-attribution-and-license-stuff job.

Update 4

Case closed and removed unnecessary finger-pointing from my end.

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Jens-Christian Fischer

Maker. Musician