---
title: "The Regulator won't be available while I sort this GPL thing out."
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/24/the-regulator-wont-be-available-while-i-sort-this-gpl-thing.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/24/the-regulator-wont-be-available-while-i-sort-this-gpl-thing.html"
published: "2003-10-24T19:21:00"
updated: "2003-10-24T19:21:00"
tags: [".Net Original"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Following the recent discussions about the legal status of The Regulator in terms of the GPL, I've decided to take down the public release of the program from GDN until: I can make it fully GPL compatible (i.e,…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# The Regulator won't be available while I sort this GPL thing out.

By Roy Osherove October 24, 2003 In [.Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original)

**Historical article** · Originally published October 24, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

Following the [recent discussions](http://weblogs.asp.net/kguner/posts/33317.aspx) about the legal status of [The Regulator](http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/posts/33126.aspx) in terms of the GPL, I've decided to take down the public release of the program from [GDN](http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/reg) until:

- I can make it fully GPL compatible (i.e, releasing the source and resolving having non GPL components in there at the same time)
- Or use a different component for text editing (I've contacted SyncFusion for perhaps donating their [Essential Edit](http://www.syncfusion.com/products/edit.asp) control for this purpose, since it looked very professional in [Snippet Compiler](http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/SnippetCompiler/).

Having said that, I can say this:

This totally sucks. I might be in a bad mood anyway, but this totally sucks. What happened to the days when people just wanted to make “free stuff”? If it's free, why the hell does it have “terms”? Yeah, it's childish and stupid to say that, but isn't this situation bizarre?

**Update:**

All is ok now, we got ourselves a brand new edit control. Look [here](http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/posts/33441.aspx) for more details

## More in .Net Original

[All posts in .Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original)

- Oct 27, 2003

    ### [Winforms menu shortcuts not working sometimes? Use ProcessDialogKey()](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/27/winforms-menu-shortcuts-not-working-sometimes-use-processdia.html)

- Oct 26, 2003

    ### [Calling webservices asynchronously - 2 possible ways](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/26/calling-webservices-asynchronously-2-possible-ways.html)

- Oct 23, 2003

    ### [\[Tool\] Introducing The Regulator - advanced regex tool](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/23/tool-introducing-the-regulator-advanced-regex-tool.html)

- Oct 15, 2003

    ### [\[Article\] on MSDNAA: Creating a Generic Site-To-Rss Tool](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/15/article-on-msdnaa-creating-a-generic-site-to-rss-tool.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/