Speedcubedb Shutting Down (It's Back Up and Running)

[Sub1Hour]

Unfortunatley in the last few minutes the website speedcubedb.com has went down. This message is stated if you try and access any page from the website

Aside from this message nothing is known about the shut down, I saw this on Cyoubx friends and thought it was important enough to put here

 

[Waffles]

When you are in the middle of finding good algs

 

[Sub1Hour]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cubers/comments/ow0rax

 

[kubesolver]

I think it's probabaly triggered by this attitude from Phil@thecubicle

Phil on speedcubedb. - TheCubicleStream on Twitch

Watch TheCubicleStream's Rubik's Cube clip titled "Phil on speedcubedb." on Twitch.

www.twitch.tv

Q: What do you think about speedcubedb?
Phil:
I am mean it's a database of cubing algs so it's very good.
I think it's kind of scummy that some of the people marketing it
deliberately target algdb
as if they need to do it in order to like
make people give them their attention.
I think that's kind of scummy and not necessary.
But there is no doubt it's a good service
and it's good that cubing resources are beginning to be more populated
So I think it's a good thing fot the community
kind of question how it's being advertised.

I am not sure i understand the whole background but here is my stance.

I think it's perfectly fine to advertise speedcubedb referencing to how much of an improvement it is to algdb.net because. It's simply so much better. Anyone who refers to algdb.net deserves to be referenced to speedcubedb. It's doing someone a favor a not being scummy.

Thecubicle seems like a fair business and I like what the're doing overall. But in my opinion in this instance it's Phil who is showing primitive tribalism

 

[xyzzy]

I think it's kind of scummy that some of the people marketing it
deliberately target algdb
as if they need to do it in order to like
make people give them their attention.

Hypocrisy much? Nobody's been using AlgDb (as in, submitting and voting for algs) for a really long time because the v3 interface was horrible and nobody was reviewing the submitted algs – so in case anyone forgot, the pre-Cubicle-acquisition AlgDb had its own user login system, but v3 required you to make a Cubicle account first. That seems pretty scummy too, if you ask me.

In all honesty, I have my own reservations about SCDB and Gil's other cubing websites, and what Phil says does match my impression of how the websites were being advertised over the alternatives (edit: to clarify, when SCDB and CubeDB were first launched). I just feel like nobody on Cubicle's paycheck has any right to point this out without first acknowledging what they've done to AlgDb.

(edit edit: also want to mention I don't quite have my pitchfork out yet because this is really only one side of the story; I'm not connected enough to know exactly what happened, because clearly this can't be the full story)

 

[Deleted member 36445]

here it is opening fine
please don't make me have a heart attack!
EDIT: there is a message down there

Spoiler

 

[Sub1Hour]

here it is opening fine
please don't make me have a heart attack!
EDIT: there is a message down there

Spoiler

View attachment 16523

I'm glad that Gil put the site back up. Hopefully on his own accord.

Side note, way to keep it civil over here, it got kind of heated on some Facebook groups so hopefully, this was his own decision and not some people pressuring him to keep a website up

 

[qwr]

I have no idea what went down here but I am still suspicious of Gil not wanting to make a tool open source if he really does it for the benefit of the community

 

[kubesolver]

I have no idea what went down here but I am still suspicious of Gil not wanting to make a tool open source if he really does it for the benefit of the community

There are plenty of good reasons to not make software opensource. What he does is clearly to the benefit of the community and many (me included) have already benefited from it. So what if he wants to keep options of monetizing it open?

He can sell his time for decent $ so any time he devotes to his cubing software is basically a donation to the community. If you wanted to pay someone to build speedcubedb for you you'd have to spend $10k+.

Even The Cubicle is there for the benefit of the community! I am sure that Phil would make more money doing something else than selling twisty toys. Consider the difference to be his personal donation to the cubing community.

Let's be simply thankful for skilled people who instead of selling their time to the highest bidder do something for cubing instead of being "suspicious" that they don't do it solely for the community.

 

[qwr]

Being open source is compatible with monetizing the project.

 

[Deleted member 69688]

I have no idea what went down here but I am still suspicious of Gil not wanting to make a tool open source if he really does it for the benefit of the community

Then you are probably also suspicious of The Cubicle for not making the current running version of algdb.net open source. or thecubicletimer, or the old version of CubePb which both went defunct along with their respected database.

or maybe you are suspicious of Cubeast, Cubedesk, and other many, many applications, which their programmers spent the best of their time to give you - free of charge - the right to use the application.

 

[qwr]

Then you are probably also suspicious of The Cubicle for not making the current running version of algdb.net open source. or thecubicletimer, or the old version of CubePb which both went defunct along with their respected database.

or maybe you are suspicious of Cubeast, Cubedesk, and other many, many applications, which their programmers spent the best of their time to give you - free of charge - the right to use the application.

Welcome to the forums. You are correct. The reason algdb.net has stagnated is because people from the community are unable to contribute much needed fixes. I have not tried Cubeast but I do not like the closed source app model if that is what they are using. In contrast, cstimer and alg.cubing.net/twizzle have been able to continue development with help from the community. (CubeExplorer has its source published but iirc it is written in Pascal in a Windows-centric manner so I would rather do a rewrite.)

 

[abunickabhi]

I hope there are less toxic people attacking such efforts, and more appreciation for open source and volunteer coding efforts in the cubing community.

 

[Tabe]

I have no idea what went down here but I am still suspicious of Gil not wanting to make a tool open source if he really does it for the benefit of the community

This is a horrible, entitled attitude to have.

 

[xyzzy]

This is a horrible, entitled attitude to have.

Is it, really?

In the history of cubing, being released as free software is the norm, not the exception:
- The WCA website is free software. (GPL v3)
- TNoodle is free software. (GPL v3)
- csTimer is free software. (GPL v3)
- Twisty Timer is free software (GPL v3+)
- ksolve+ is free software. (GPL v2+)
- cubesolv.es is free software. (MIT)
- alg.cubing.net is free software. (MIT)
- Twizzle is free software. (GPL v3+)
- Cube Explorer is (mostly) free software. (GPL v3)
- cubers.io is free software. (GPL v3)
- All of the scramble generators I've written are free software. (mostly MIT)

Pointing out that someone is deviating from the norm is hardly "horrible" or "entitled".

 

[Tabe]

Is it, really?

In the history of cubing, being released as free software is the norm, not the exception:
- The WCA website is free software. (GPL v3)
- TNoodle is free software. (GPL v3)
- csTimer is free software. (GPL v3)
- Twisty Timer is free software (GPL v3+)
- ksolve+ is free software. (GPL v2+)
- cubesolv.es is free software. (MIT)
- alg.cubing.net is free software. (MIT)
- Twizzle is free software. (GPL v3+)
- Cube Explorer is (mostly) free software. (GPL v3)
- cubers.io is free software. (GPL v3)
- All of the scramble generators I've written are free software. (mostly MIT)

Pointing out that someone is deviating from the norm is hardly "horrible" or "entitled".

Of course it is.

Being upset that somebody is giving you something for free but not in the exact way you want is pretty much the definition of entitlement. What other companies or people have done with their software doesn't matter. And, last I looked, speedcubedb IS free. It's just not open source.

Casting aspersions on that person's character (being "suspicious") based on absolutely nothing is horrible.

I stand by what I said.

 

[Waffles]

Casting aspersions on that person's character (being "suspicious") based on absolutely nothing is horrible.

I have a tip - never play Among Us

 

[Tabe]

I have a tip - never play Among Us

LOL.

 

[Deleted member 69688]

Welcome to the forums. You are correct. The reason algdb.net has stagnated is because people from the community are unable to contribute much needed fixes. I have not tried Cubeast but I do not like the closed source app model if that is what they are using. In contrast, cstimer and alg.cubing.net/twizzle have been able to continue development with help from the community. (CubeExplorer has its source published but iirc it is written in Pascal in a Windows-centric manner so I would rather do a rewrite.)

Well, as someone who has been teaching computer science for the last 20 years, i can tell you there are many flaws in open source.

One of which, is that anyone is allowed to fork your existing code, overwrite ones name one, and publishing it as one's own while removing all credit. --- and it will be completely legal and according to the agreement of the GPL. There are many closed code application that i know that are using GPL-3 opensource code, yet there is no way one can prove that and do something about it. a prime example of it is Scrambow ( https://github.com/Owstin/scrambow ), which pretty much copied Lucas Garron's and other's hard, GPL3 code into a free to use MIT, which is now used in commercial software.

The other, is that you give up the ownership of your code to the free software foundation, so the code is not really yours. Its in the very few lines of the GPL licence.

also, your claim is a false one, because a year ago, Saransh Grover (WCA Vice Chair), Caleb Hoover (the creatore of lets cube) and James Chang (the cubicle co founder) have started an opensource algdb.net ( https://github.com/cubing/algdb ) which was abandoned just like the old algdb, and unlike your claimes - it was never picked up by the members of the community.

There are many reasons for many opensource projects to fail, some of which are memebers losing intersest, leaving or pulling to their own directions. the algdb.net project started about the same time i started working on speedcubedb.com, and my version was up in a matter of two weeks. so was cubedb.

At any case, as a computer science teacher, my view is that any decent computer science student can build such tools of its own - i have it as a part of my curriculum. Look at the myriad algorithm database websites since the day Jessica Fridrich released her own.

At any rate, it being the fruit of my hard work, while sharing it for free for people to use is my choice, since it's my intellectual property.

having someone demanding me to release the code, when there are so many other parralel software, such as the amazing Lucas Garron's cubing.js ( https://github.com/cubing/cubing.js ) is frankly, antagonizing.

it was for the same reason, that when the co owner of The Cubicle, James Chang, approached me and asked me to have my code open sourced and remove all reference to their competing company in a whole different project - i refused. His reaction was to tell me he (and probably his company) will refuse to interface with any of my other non-promoted projects such as speedcubedb and cubedb.

so yeah, go ahead, force me to work for free, give up my code, and keep up my motivation doing it.

 

[xyzzy]

And, last I looked, speedcubedb IS free. It's just not open source.

I deliberately phrased my post in terms of "free software" because this discussion is meaningless if you're not at least aware of the distinction between "free" and "open source", or even those two terms and "free and open source". (You can look this up on Wikipedia yourself.)

One of which, is that anyone is allowed to fork your existing code, overwrite ones name one, and publishing it as one's own while removing all credit. --- and it will be completely legal and according to the agreement of the GPL. There are many closed code application that i know that are using GPL-3 opensource code, yet there is no way one can prove that and do something about it. a prime example of it is Scrambow ( https://github.com/Owstin/scrambow ), which pretty much copied Lucas Garron's and other's hard, GPL3 code into a free to use MIT, which is now used in commercial software.

What? Have you actually read the GPL? It grants zero provisions to arbitrarily relicense the code. The only permissible "relicensing", if you even want to call it that, is that the GPL is often used in a "version x or later" form, so the Free Software Foundation could, in theory, release a GPL v4 that's essentially public domain. They have not done that, they likely never will, and even if they did, whether it's enforceable is questionable. (There is, however, precedent to this: the FSF updated the GFDL at one point to allow for relicensing to CC-BY-SA, by Wikipedia's request. That is still a copyleft licence – not a "you can do whatever you want" licence.)

The fact that people do violate the GPL is not an implication that violating the GPL is legal in any sense. The original copyright holders do have the right to sue and revoke the distribution rights granted by the GPL. It's not like proving GPL violations is impossible either; FFmpeg used to do that, a lot.

it was for the same reason, that when the co owner of The Cubicle, James Chang, approached me and asked me to have my code open sourced and remove all reference to their competing company in a whole different project - i refused. His reaction was to tell me he (and probably his company) will refuse to interface with any of my other non-promoted projects such as speedcubedb and cubedb.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is absolutely petty of James Chang. I too, would prefer if you'd released your projects as free software, but I'm not going to demand that you do it (and in fact, I haven't; we've talked before and I never once brought this up directly to you because I don't think it's that important).