True - If being able to program isn't part of the job requirements, then of course you shouldn't test for this.

If it is - and in our case it is even for higher-level positions such as software architects - then using automated testing makes perfect sense as a first automated screening. Later on in the interviews you check for other abilities.

Another benefit of having candidates do screening tests first is that you already have base material to discuss with them to evaluate other aspects (and verify that they didn't actually 'cheat', that is, know the questions in advance) - you can have them parallelize the solution, change it based on new requirements, fix all the boundary cases they didn't have time to fix during the programming assignment, etc. Saves a lot of time having some code already instead of sitting there waiting for them to write the code in front of you, and going through problems like this together with the candidate gives you an idea of how they think, if they're smart ("gets it"), gives up easily, etc. We're big believers in Joel's Guerilla Guide to Interviewing, and automated tests fits perfectly with this way of interviewing.

I'm not ignoring anyone's contributions. I'm thrilled that Sean and Michael did this port. That's not my issue. I'm well aware that it's possible to charge for distribution of GPL binaries, and I'm very happy with the GPL as a license. Nobody that chose a GPL license expects to make money off it, and neither did the original developers. If Sean and Michael makes XPilot free after recouping their out-of-pocket costs, like they promised, I'm actually quite happy. If not, they'd better own up to the fact that they're in the business of making money, and stop playing the "community service" card.

I mean selling as in not just-charging-for-distribution, but in pricing it to make money off their investment in the development.

The difference between Red Hat, SUsE, is that their variable distribution costs are not 0. Ubuntu goes a bit overboard by even doing this for free.

I think you misunderstood: I don't think it's unlikely anyone will buy the game. I think the fact that it can be made free will eventually make the game free and so they'll lose their distribution position.

According to the GPL it is fine to way for services provided after the sale, like warranty and hosting, and I can see SM charging for that. I wouldn't have any problem with that at all. I just have a problem with them charging for the actual binary when there variable distribution cost is 0. That said, I can't stop them from charging, I just think it's unethical and rubs the potential developer base the wrong way, and in the end it's not sustainable.

"Even if you could sell it" - I was being hypthetical. If you try to sell GPL software you really open up a can of worms in terms of ethical problems. I have no intention of making money off XPilot.

I was hoping they'd rethink instead of going down that road.

The reason XPilot even exists is that there was a thriving community of (probably) hundreds of developers contributing. I doubt that would happen if anyone was trying to sell it. I'm not complaining about the work he did, I'm complaining about him trying to sell software that he has built a mere fraction of.

True, though I'm sure you agree they are trading off a bigger user base for bigger profits.

I have no intentions of making money off XPilot. (Read the "even if you could sell it" paragraph above.) I've had lots of benefits from being involved in the project, though.

Hm, seems that if you git clone http://7b5labs.com/xpilot.git you'll get something that is more than 30 days old.

But if you browse Trac you'll see the latest sources. Not sure what's going on.

Well, I'm that disgruntled original developer, and I'll let other developers chime in if they feel like it, though most of the conversations with Sean and Michael (SM) have been with me. I'm incredibly torn:

On the one hand, SM have put some life back into a project that's dear to my heart, and I'm really thrilled about that. They deserve thanks.

On the other hand, SM are trying to unfairly profit from the man-years of development work that went into XPilot, and that just rubs me (and the other developers that I asked) the wrong way.

• FREE AS IN BEER
  Why is XPilot not free? "Covering distribution costs" is a joke. They are negligible ($99 per year amortized across all their projects) and I (and I'm sure tons of other people too) is willing to put the game up for free. This wouldn't be very nice to SM, so I was hoping to avoid that.

  I even suggested to SM that they make it free after they recouped their distribution costs (which should be about now considering the PR it's getting), but that made them go ballistic.

• FREE AS IN FREEDOM
  Is the source is freely available? Well...

  1) They haven't checked in any of their source since June (more than a month), though the latest release is from a few days ago.

  2) The availability of the source code isn't clearly (or at all) advertised in the game, and until I complained about it, wasn't even advertised on the app store page.

It's pretty clear to me that they did this port wanting to make money from their development time, which is no different from a commercial venture, but quite different from the expectations of every other contributor of XPilot (and other open source projects). I would even say it's against the spirit of the GPL.

There are a number of other issues with selling open source software:

• Fair compensation - Even if you could sell it, there's just no way to fairly price the development contributions of everyone in open source projects, and SM probably wouldn't be the right arbiters.
• No sustainable competitive advantage - Though they drag their feet advertising and releasing it, the source is free, so there's unfortunately no way to sustain this as a business. It doesn't make sense to try to sell it.
• Alienation of contributors - Charging for the game will severely restrict the number of developers that are willing to contribute. It just doesn't feel as altruistic anymore.
• Limited user base - Making it free would probably increase the user base 10-100 fold, so if they cared about seeing the user base grow, that's what they would do.

The only thing that might make sense charging for, as far as I can see, is the running of the servers, as that is a per-user cost someone will have to bear.

(I won't even get into the argument that it's against the GPL to even distribute through the app store, but I'll stay away from that since I think that's sad and better dealt with by lawyers and Apple.)