Talk:UnFREEz

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[edit] Contest of Speedy Deletion Tag Inserted By GDallimore

Thanks for tagging this article for speedy deletion. It seems that just about any new article gets so tagged these days.

I wrote this article because I was looking for information on this software application and oddly, while Wikipedia has articles on just about every software application in existence, there was none on this one. So I completed my research elsewhere (as cited in the article references) and started the article to rectify this omission in Wikipedia.

In my opinion this article does not meet the the guidelines on spam for deletion. It is not written in the tone of an advertisement, was not written by anyone even remotely connected with the company that created this software and has the same degree of external third party references, tone and NPOV as other software articles, such as OpenOffice.org, Ad-Aware and AVG Anti-Virus to give just three examples.

Furthermore there doesn't seem to be any attempt by anyone, even the company that created the application, to advertise it anywhere on the internet, let alone through Wikipedia. This is probably because it is available for free and is open source. Mass uptake of this application won't make any money for anyone, so advertising would be redundant.

While that article could use additional input to make it more complete I don't believe that being a "stub" is reason to delete an article. The article already contains four citations from reliable third party sources to show that the article is verifiable. Because this software application is small and has been around for a while there are few critical articles about it available. There are no known third party refereed journal articles that could be found about this subject. I attempted to find criticisms of the software application to include but have not located any in other sources yet, although I am still looking and will include them when they are found. Ahunt 01:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Licence Status

This one is an interesting issue. The website for this software does indeed claim that the software is freeware, but then it also posts the source code as well, which is the definition of Open Source Software. To make matters even more muddy, when you download the software there is no licencing agreement of any kind. You just download the ".exe" file and then run it to use the software. There is no licence at all, so maybe we should just not specify a licence? 11:30, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I myself prefer the term free software over "open source", but I want to refute your specific claim :-P. From the Open Source Software article, "Open source software is computer software whose source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form." [emphasis mine]. Just providing source code does not make software "open source". This is why the microsoft "shared source" stuff does not qualify either. The only information I can find from the UnFREEz developer is "you may use it forever without paying a cent or feeling the slightest bit guilty". As the none of the essential rights are explicitly stated, it does not qualify as "open source". Freeware is not well defined, but this is what the author calls the software, so I went with that. --Mosquitopsu 13:56, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fair enough to me. This one is a bit of an odd case. I haven't found much software that is just given away free with no licence. I agree with your citing of the definition of Open Source. It is sort of implied by the developer that you can do all that with the source code he has provided, but like the licence, it isn't explicitly stated. Odd case indeed! Let's leave it the way you have put is down as "freeware" and leave it at that.Ahunt 14:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)