I contribute quite a bit to open source as part of my work on Talon, including the speech engine, the tools I use for model training and dataset creation, and I've upstreamed security fixes and other improvements to core projects like CPython and LibUSB.
> except when you contribute code to them
That clause isn't for code contributed to the Talon app, it's so other users in the community can use ad hoc scripts posted to Slack. Talon itself does not use any code under that clause and I still recommend users explicitly license their community code.
I've had the open source conversation plenty of times, but basically it boils down to: it feels like the bare minimum to protect myself from hostile forks given I have been working on it full time for over five years now, give it away completely for free, and provide high quality support.
It's also segmented so all of the primary functionality (e.g. voice commands and their behaviors) are implemented in open source user controlled code, and I open source plenty of the components of Talon.
You might read the handsfreecoding review [1] which covers this a bit.
> I contribute quite a bit to open source as part of my work on Talon
That's good and admirable! It doesn't change the fact that Talon is not open source, which makes it risky for users to come to depend on it.
I'm not trying to change your mind on whether Talon is open source. You can do whatever you want. The only reason I posted the comment was that I landed on your documentation site at first[0] and I mistook it for an open source project, only to find out later that I was mistaken.
I am responding in this way because your top post heavily implies details that are not the case:
- "very much not open source": Talon has a lot of open-source code, including the users' entire custom voice user interface necessary to replicate their setup on a different app (if a compatible app were to exist).
- "except when you contribute code to them": This is simply not the case, users are sharing the code in question with each other as customizations in the community chat. None of that user code ends up "in Talon".
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Please read the handsfreecoding post. I have mitigated the continuity risks (e.g. bus factor) of being closed source, and I am fundamentally against selling out. It is extremely important to me ideologically that Talon is free and will continue to be free.
Talon is the best option for a lot of people to use their computer without pain. I would not have quit my job and spent years full-time developing Talon under an open source model. To my knowledge I am the only person currently working full-time on this problem.
Please understand that if you convince someone to not use Talon for this reason, their alternative may not be "use some other software", it may be "computers continue to cause them literal pain".
I have read the handsfreecoding post now. It sounds like Talon is a really great tool for the people who need it and it is much closer to open source than ~any other proprietary software I am aware of. If anyone deserves criticism for releasing software that does not respect its users, you're far from front of the queue. It's still true that Talon is not open source, and there are some people who will reject it on those grounds (I am one of them). But that's OK, you don't owe us anything.
Sorry for the misunderstandings I posted in my first comment, they came from a quick reading of the EULA - unfortunately I can't edit that comment now.
I contribute quite a bit to open source as part of my work on Talon, including the speech engine, the tools I use for model training and dataset creation, and I've upstreamed security fixes and other improvements to core projects like CPython and LibUSB.
> except when you contribute code to them
That clause isn't for code contributed to the Talon app, it's so other users in the community can use ad hoc scripts posted to Slack. Talon itself does not use any code under that clause and I still recommend users explicitly license their community code.
I've had the open source conversation plenty of times, but basically it boils down to: it feels like the bare minimum to protect myself from hostile forks given I have been working on it full time for over five years now, give it away completely for free, and provide high quality support.
It's also segmented so all of the primary functionality (e.g. voice commands and their behaviors) are implemented in open source user controlled code, and I open source plenty of the components of Talon.
You might read the handsfreecoding review [1] which covers this a bit.
[1] https://handsfreecoding.org/2021/12/12/talon-in-depth-review...