Sites/Apps like Readlang, Lingq, Lingua.ly, etc.

[Serpent]

But Serpent was implying that LingQ was somehow unfair to suppress discussion of LWT on the LingQ forum. This to me, is unfair.

We allow discussing Unilang here Anyway, I'm okay with them deleting threads if they want, but automatically changing lwt to *** is cowardice imo. And obviously they can't promote lwt by introducing a rule that says you can't discuss lwt on their forum To me the problem is the silencing and keeping the users trapped because they can't take their LingQ's with them.

[emk]

I sort of take your point. But ethically reverse-engineering can a gray area.

In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled in Lotus vs. Borland that "methods of operation" were not copyrightable:

The Altai test involves three steps: abstraction, filtration, and comparison. The abstraction step requires courts to "dissect the allegedly copied program's structure and isolate each level of abstraction contained within it." Altai, 982 F.2d at 707. This step enables courts to identify the appropriate framework within which to separate protectable expression from unprotected ideas. Second, courts apply a "filtration" step in which they examine "the structural components at each level of abstraction to determine whether their particular inclusion at that level was 'idea' or was dictated by considerations of efficiency, so as to be necessarily incidental to that idea; required by factors external to the program itself; or taken from the public domain." Id. Finally, courts compare the protected elements of the infringed work (i.e., those that survived the filtration screening) to the corresponding elements of the allegedly infringing work to determine whether there was sufficient copying of protected material to constitute infringement. Id. at 710.

In the instant appeal, we are not confronted with alleged nonliteral [*24] copying of computer code. Rather, we are faced with Borland's deliberate, literal copying of the Lotus menu command hierarchy. Thus, we must determine not whether nonliteral copying occurred in some amorphous sense, but rather whether the literal copying of the Lotus menu command hierarchy constitutes copyright infringement.

…Borland argues that the Lotus menu command hierarchy is uncopyrightable because it is a system, method of operation, process, or procedure foreclosed from copyright protection by 17 U.S.C. @ 102(b). Section 102(b) states: "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." Because we conclude that the Lotus menu command hierarchy is a method of operation, we do not consider whether it could also be a system, process, or procedure.

In other worlds, Borland could exactly reproduce the menu layout of Lotus 1-2-3, as well as the keyboard accelerators, and still not infringe Lotus's copyright. However, Borland could not copy the explanatory text used in Lotus's menus, because that was not a method of operation. The rules laid down in Lotus v. Borland are fundamental to the US software industry, and most other countries seem to have followed the lead of the US here.

If I understand Lotus v. Borland correctly—and please keep in mind that I'm not a lawyer, and you'd be an idiot to take legal advice from me—then LWT could copy the menu layout and commands of LingQ down to the smallest detail. As long as they changed any creative content that wasn't part of the "mode of operation", they would be entirely clear. Of course, this only applies to copyright claims—patent claims are a whole different question, and even obeying the law won't necessarily protect you from very expensive lawsuits.

But Serpent was implying that LingQ was somehow unfair to suppress discussion of LWT on the LingQ forum. This to me, is unfair.

Anyway, I'm okay with them deleting threads if they want, but automatically changing lwt to *** is cowardice imo. And obviously they can't promote lwt by introducing a rule that says you can't discuss lwt on their forum To me the problem is the silencing and keeping the users trapped because they can't take their LingQ's with them.

As a general rule, long threads arguing about forum moderation issues are rarely very useful. But if this is the case, surely arguing about another forum's policies is an utter waste of time. Yes, LingQ allegedly censors some mentions of at least one of their competitors on their forum. But they pay for the servers, so they can do anything they want. And of course, everybody else has the right to applaud, or to roll their eyes, or to buy LingQ's products in support, or to swear off LingQ's products forever.

(Full disclosure: I wrote a tool that turns highlighted passages in ebooks into Anki cards, which if you squint at it just right, is a sort of a competitor for readlang and other tools in this space. My favorite tool in this space is probably readlang at the moment.)

[sjintje]

LingQ: what LingQ can provide that LWT cannot provide.

Just to add to Mork's very hepful review.:

There is some decent stuff in the library, but finding stuff of interest and of your level is actually a bit of a nightmare. Previously Linq had more of a community feel, so it was quite fun to listen to the lessons of people who you saw posting in the Forum. I may be wrong, but it looks like the community has died out, probably because of the new forum structure which prevents any intelligent discussions developing.
Also, I personally find all the fanboy whooping and cheering it a bit wierd and creepy, especially when it seems clear that the management/developers just pretty much ignore the input of the community. And it is a sub beta bug fest. Apparently Ling4.0 is coming. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I actually find the interface more pleasing than LWT (although it's a while since I looked at LWT) and it somehow just seems more "solid" to use. I also like the word translations offered, which are based on other users' inputs, rather than just a dictionary.

In theory Lingq should be every language learner's favourite tool, but in reality, not many of us use it.

[sjintje]

Note the author's admission that it's "inspired by" LingQ.

I recall Lingq got a lit bit "inspired" themselves when LWT came out, although they claimed they were planning the changes all along anyway.

[Stefan]

I'm okay with them deleting threads if they want, but automatically changing lwt to *** is cowardice imo. And obviously they can't promote lwt by introducing a rule that says you can't discuss lwt on their forum To me the problem is the silencing and keeping the users trapped because they can't take their LingQ's with them.

I fully understand their decision and a mod on another forum made a good point about a similar rule:

- You wouldn't go to McDonalds forum and write about how great Burger King is.

The other point is a major issue for me though. As Allison pointed out, Benny Lewis recently decided to close down his free LWT site. I fully understand this since it was free and surely took up massive database space but as a user - this is the nightmare scenario. You spend months if not years and suddenly lose all your data because the company decides to not support it any longer. In this case you can export it and import it at a new place but overall - even if companies intend to, they never last. This is why I stopped using Jefit despite it being the best app. For years they promised an export function but they never implemented it.

There is some decent stuff in the library, but finding stuff of interest and of your level is actually a bit of a nightmare.

Wait. You can't add your own content to LingQ?

[Rotasu]

There hasn't been a lot of improvements since september 2014 so someone forked it and began a new version. I'm no stranger to beta software but in this case I continued to use the original version because you never know how new projects will develop. Today I might have made a different decision considering it's 1.5 years later and still getting new features. It might be worth switching just to get the feature that remembers where you stopped reading - extremely useful when adding a whole book chapter and reading it over several sessions. Here's a demo site.

I don't know if it's better or worse than the alternatives.

Thank you for linking this. The feature you mentioned is very helpful if you put in a novel or a long list of dialogues xP The set up was the same and the author looks to be active, see him answering questions that get posted, so I would say it's better than the original.

[Montmorency]

Or do you mean why they don't allow posts about lwt? Because it's a free open-source alternative and they claim it isn't the same thing.

http://lwt.sourceforge.net/

Note the author's admission that it's "inspired by" LingQ. I realize in legal terms reverse-engineering is legal and ideas can't be copyrighted, but in ethical terms someone please tell me the difference between:

1. Watch a great movie, make a digital copy put it on torrents
2. See a great software app, reverse engineer and code it up so "it's the same thing", put it on source forge.

I realize some people on this board are okay with torrents, and they should be okay with LWT. I understand this point of view, although I don't share it.

Other people think torrents is bad but love LWT. Can you explain the difference? Is it just that copying movies takes a few minutes and coding LWT probably took a few weeks? I don't get this point of view at all.

I'm happy to pay $10 a month to the guy that thought up the original idea and enriched to world, and reward the innovator.

As for the founder of LingQ getting banned from the form, I agree the ban was justified as the board terms of use were clearly violated despite warnings.

I have no axe to grind either way in the Lingq vs LWT discussions/competition, but my understanding was that one of Lingq's major beef's against LWT was that people were taking actual content from Lingq and then using it on LWT. I think at one time they were allegedly alleging that the LWT author was actually encouraging people to do this. That's potentially a much bigger issue than the software "inspiration", I think. Even if a lot of the content was public domain (not sure if it was or not), the Lingq team had actually gone to the trouble of putting it together and making it available to their members.

[sjintje]

Wait. You can't add your own content to LingQ?

You can. I have never tried it myself. Don't know if you need to be a paying member or not.

[sjintje]

I'm happy to pay $10 a month to the guy that thought up the original idea and enriched to world, and reward the innovator.

If they ever get it working properly, I would be tempted to sign up for a year.

[sjintje]

I have no axe to grind either way in the Lingq vs LWT discussions/competition, but my understanding was that one of Lingq's major beef's against LWT was that people were taking actual content from Lingq and then using it on LWT. I think at one time they were allegedly alleging that the LWT author was actually encouraging people to do this. That's potentially a much bigger issue than the software "inspiration", I think. Even if a lot of the content was public domain (not sure if it was or not), the Lingq team had actually gone to the trouble of putting it together and making it available to their members.

All the content (public domain or self created) is sourced and uploaded by individual community members for which contribution they appear to get scant thanks from the mangement. Although they are obviously intending it for the benefit of one another rather than the users of LWT. I suppose lingq is incurring some server costs.

edit: hmm, imagine we had a resources place for ourselves on this forum where users could upload their shared language resources, and members of another forum started borrowing all the material. Would we expect the other forum to have to pay us? What if a new SRS site started borrowing all the shared anki decks? A little unchivalrous maybe.