How to make money out of (their) JavaDocs ?
The recent slide of few sites that provide access to the JavaDocs of various Open Source projects has raise a very interesting question in my mind. Do we need to change the terms in GPL/LGPL/ASF/[Any Open Source License] to restrict this (in my feeling un-ethical) use ?.
Most of the sites that provide access to these docs embed Ads in their pages that allows them to make money just by displaying some one?s ads in the Java Doc that is generated from some else?s source code, interesting isn?t it ?. Are they doing this thing right ?.
But aren?t our friend developers who use some Open Source library as a part of their Application (eg Struts , Jakarta-Commons, Hibernate etc etc) know a better way of doing this, by adding the source folder or source zip/tar file to their project, simple isn?t it ???. Also they can then navigate the code of the attached library with out opening another window, and also get an inside look on the way that our friends have written a piece of code, and perhaps add a little patch to improve or enhance the functionality.
So which way are you going to use ?