Hello all,
I came across an offline dictionary application for Android that uses Wiktionary as it's source. The name of the application is "English Dictionary - Offline". The developer provides dictionaries in other languages too. Unfortunately it is not a free software as the source of the application is not available and it's not licensed under a free software license.
I thought it would be nice to try to liberate the application as it would be easy to port it to other languages and further it would give it's users, freedom! As I'm not experienced with this, I would like to hear suggestion about how to contact the developer about liberating the application. A rough draft of the mail I could think of (with the help of template to convince your friend) for liberating the application could be found below,
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Dear developer, The "English Dictionary - Offline" is a great application and is doing a great job in helping users to search meanings of words easily. It's good to see the application available in multiple languages. It would have been better if it were "Free software" [1]. That would help others to easily port the application to other languages and might also help in increasing your dictionary's popularity.
As you may already be aware, releasing your program as Free Software doesn't mean you won't make money on it. You are free to charge whatever you want for Free Software as long as you provide users with access to the application's source code so that they may improve and share "English Dictionary - Offline" with their friends. Thank you for your time and effort. I look forward to hearing back from you :) and to see "English Dictionary - Offline" and it's counterparts in other languages in F-droid [2] soon.
Links ===== [1] : https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software [2] : https://f-droid.org/
Sincerely,
Kaartic Sivaraam
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Please send in your valuable thoughts and suggestions about liberating the application. Thanks in advance.
Dear Kaartic,
Great find, and I agree a free license could make this a better project. From our point of view that is. Some developers are not aware of free software licenses at all, some are but still choose not to adopt a free software license. That's why I consider you sentence 'It would have been better if' too judgmental.
As you might have found out, the project page [1] highlights how other Android apps might integrate. Also there was a question on the forums about adding more languages [3].
[1] http://thesaurus.altervista.org/dictionary [2] http://thesaurus.altervista.org/dictionary-android [3] http://thesaurus.altervista.org/forum/index.php?forum=3&thread=1288 897373
So if I were to write an email, I would adopt a slightly different structure?
Hi, great you're delivering value, not tied to online services! Have you considered a free software license? A free software license would enable others to contribute to your effort. Contributions can come by bug reports, code, infrastructure, documentation and translations. I've seen more translations are requested [3], perhaps native speakers might be motivated to contribute to your effort. A free software license shows users you care about their digital freedoms, and this motivates users to use your software, and contribute to it. If you'd like more information, or assistance, feel free to contact me. If I cannot help you directly, I know plenty of other community members who would like to help an awesome project like yours adopt a free software license. Kind regards.
Even if you were to use your stated e-mail, I think you'd be doing great. Also you might consider posting on the forum, hoping that others might chip in.
One last tip: I have found it to be more valuable to start a conversation with a small initial email, rather than dumping a highly detailed wall of text which might put people off.
Please share the results of your effort.
Kind regards, Nico
Sorry for the delayed response and thanks for your reply. Your e-mail seems much better. I would post it to the group mail of the developer and would share the results.
Regards, Kaartic On Wed, 2017-04-05 at 20:12 +0200, Nico Rikken wrote:
Dear Kaartic,
Great find, and I agree a free license could make this a better project. From our point of view that is. Some developers are not aware of free software licenses at all, some are but still choose not to adopt a free software license. That's why I consider you sentence 'It would have been better if' too judgmental.
As you might have found out, the project page [1] highlights how other Android apps might integrate. Also there was a question on the forums about adding more languages [3].
[1] http://thesaurus.altervista.org/dictionary [2] http://thesaurus.altervista.org/dictionary-android [3] http://thesaurus.altervista.org/forum/index.php?forum=3&thread=12 88 897373
So if I were to write an email, I would adopt a slightly different structure?
Hi, great you're delivering value, not tied to online services! Have you considered a free software license? A free software license would enable others to contribute to your effort. Contributions can come by bug reports, code, infrastructure, documentation and translations. I've seen more translations are requested [3], perhaps native speakers might be motivated to contribute to your effort. A free software license shows users you care about their digital freedoms, and this motivates users to use your software, and contribute to it. If you'd like more information, or assistance, feel free to contact me. If I cannot help you directly, I know plenty of other community members who would like to help an awesome project like yours adopt a free software license. Kind regards.
Even if you were to use your stated e-mail, I think you'd be doing great. Also you might consider posting on the forum, hoping that others might chip in.
One last tip: I have found it to be more valuable to start a conversation with a small initial email, rather than dumping a highly detailed wall of text which might put people off.
Please share the results of your effort.
Kind regards, Nico
I don't know if this software made by a non-profit, because I didn't get the full context of this topic, but I guess that, unless it's made by a non-profit, then these requests are almost impossible to come true. Most of the efforts are successful if aiming for replacing such software or about abandoning its usage.
I learned this myself due to the fact that the Action Items in the LibrePlanet wiki that I participated rarely got any return/reply. And it's been months since I contributed to them.