[Bkm-devel] License issues (was: Hello and introduction)

[Patrice Neff <mailinglists@pa...>]

Hi Daniel,

> I was looking at Sync2It, and had some concerns about license issues.

Thank you for pointing them out. Unfortunately when I tried to
download the modified BKM the downloads always timed out. So I was not
yet able to look into that issue myself.

> If you have concerns about proprietary code you may have integrated, another
> option is to wrap that code in a DLL and get Patrice to write an exception for
> that DLL into BKM's license notices (such exceptions already exist for several
> DLL's that Patrice wrote or modified), and distribute the remaining sources a
> la the GPL.

Just an explanation for the records: The reason why I did this with
the DLLs this way is not that I want to hide the source code but that
I have simply lost the source code to them.

> The final option (and least desireable IMHO, as it prevents Sync2It users from
> upgrading Bookmark-Manager if you stop maintaining your copy, as well as
> preventing the community as a whole from benefiting from improvements you've
> made) is to ask Patrice for a separate license agreement for Sync2It (if you
> have already done this, please forgive me), in which case you should remove the
> GPL notices from the installer and documentation, as the software would no
> longer be under the GPL's restrictions.

There is no such license agreement in the moment. And with your
(Daniel's) changes I would not even be permitted to grant such a
license anymore. At least not without some paperwork.

Thank you again for pointing this out. I think Jack is going in the
right direction with integrating the changes into BKM. Meanwhile it
might be good to just upload the source code to the sync2it Web server
so that we can have a look at it. This does not have to be publicly
announced.

And thank you Jack for making the changes and joining the development
team. Who knows if we had ever found out about this changes I you
didn't...

Regards,
Patrice

-- 
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me."               (The Bible, John 14:6)

Re: [Bkm-devel] Hello and introduction

[Daniel Remenak <remenakrabbits@ya...>]

Jack,

> Patrice just added me as a BKM developer and as a matter of introduction, I
> operate Sync2It.com and have incorporated BKM as a value added addition to
> the site.  The changes I've made to BKM are mostly cosmetic at this point.
> I would like to add the following to the code.

I was looking at Sync2It, and had some concerns about license issues.

The GPL (which Bookmark-Manager is released under) requires the source code of
any modified (even trivally or cosmetically) modification to GPL'ed software to
be made available (see footnote for more info); I didn't see any source
download links for Sync2It's version of Bookmark-Manager.  Please correct me if
you have posted the sources somewhere.

The easy way to fix this is to post the source, or a statement saying that the
source is available on request, and how to get it.

If you have concerns about proprietary code you may have integrated, another
option is to wrap that code in a DLL and get Patrice to write an exception for
that DLL into BKM's license notices (such exceptions already exist for several
DLL's that Patrice wrote or modified), and distribute the remaining sources a
la the GPL.

The final option (and least desireable IMHO, as it prevents Sync2It users from
upgrading Bookmark-Manager if you stop maintaining your copy, as well as
preventing the community as a whole from benefiting from improvements you've
made) is to ask Patrice for a separate license agreement for Sync2It (if you
have already done this, please forgive me), in which case you should remove the
GPL notices from the installer and documentation, as the software would no
longer be under the GPL's restrictions.

More information on the specific requirements of the GPL are available at
http://www.gnu.org  (see the footnote for their FAQ about requiring source
releases)

Please don't misinterpret my intentions; I like seeing BKM used and improved
(especially since you've joined the development team).  I just want to make
sure legal issues don't come back to bite us (or you) in the butt.

--Daniel Remenak

(footnote)
The Free Software Foundation (www.gnu.org) has the following statement in their
GPL FAQ:

Q: Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the
public?

A: The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free
to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This
applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a
modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the
organization.
But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL
requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users,
under the GPL.
Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways,
and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.

__________________________________
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Re: [Bkm-devel] New Web site

[Patrice Neff <mailinglists@pa...>]

Daniel Remenak <remenakrabbits@...> writes:

> Looks good to me (English at least :))  One thing I noticed is that there is no
> longer any direct link to the sourceforge project page, and to get to the bugs
> or feature requests pages the reader has to go several layers down, and make
> some logical jumps (e.g...I found a bug, where do I go?  Have to figure out
> which product I'm using (probably a good thing as far as we're concerned), then
> have to make the connection that "Feedback" is the right place to go for that)

Good point. I'll try a few things to make that easier to understand
for the users.

Regards,
Patrice

-- 
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me."               (The Bible, John 14:6)

Re: [Bkm-devel] Hello and introduction

[Patrice Neff <mailinglists@pa...>]

Daniel Remenak <remenakrabbits@...> writes:

> Whoops, should have read this before responding myself :).  Sorry for any
> duplication and/or contradiction.

No problem. Funny to see that we had similar to almost equal
thoughts. ;-)

Patrice

-- 
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me."               (The Bible, John 14:6)

Re: [Bkm-devel] New Web site

[Daniel Remenak <remenakrabbits@ya...>]

--- Patrice Neff <mailinglists@...> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have just uploaded the new Web site¹. I even did the German version
> again. But I did not provide any way to translate the news and did not
> translate the pyBKM road map. Both should not be much of a problem.

Looks good to me (English at least :))  One thing I noticed is that there is no
longer any direct link to the sourceforge project page, and to get to the bugs
or feature requests pages the reader has to go several layers down, and make
some logical jumps (e.g...I found a bug, where do I go?  Have to figure out
which product I'm using (probably a good thing as far as we're concerned), then
have to make the connection that "Feedback" is the right place to go for that)

> If we ever want to have localized news, we can do something with the
> subject lines or insert some tag in the body. But that's not something
> I'm considering for the near future.
> 
> If you change anything on the Web site, please tell me. Because I
> don't want to accidentally overwrite your changes with my local copy.

Will do :).

--Daniel Remenak

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Re: [Bkm-devel] Hello and introduction

[Daniel Remenak <remenakrabbits@ya...>]

Whoops, should have read this before responding myself :).  Sorry for any
duplication and/or contradiction.

--Daniel Remenak


--- Patrice Neff <mailinglists@...> wrote:
> Thank you for joining us. Please allow me some comments:

<snip> 

> Regards,
> Patrice

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Re: [Bkm-devel] Hello and introduction

[Daniel Remenak <remenakrabbits@ya...>]

> Patrice just added me as a BKM developer and as a matter of introduction, I
> operate Sync2It.com and have incorporated BKM as a value added addition to
> the site.  The changes I've made to BKM are mostly cosmetic at this point.

Cool, welcome.  If you're looking to integrate the cosmetic changes you've
made, be sure you've made them on a CVS checkout and not on the pre6 sources,
because I made a significant number of cosmetic fixes for pre7.

> 1. Incorporate meta-tag extraction to the 'check links' code so that
> descriptions and keywords can be automatically imported from the target
> website.

This would probably fit better under the title fetcher...e.g. parallel to or in
clsGetTitle.  If you want to be able to do it at other times (e.g. after the
bookmark has been added), a context menu item might be nice.

> 2. Add a registry class to move all of the programs settings to any
> (configurable) registry hive. (This way I can group Sync2It's and BKM's
> registry settings together.) This is a non-trivial effort so I'm not sure
> how much enthusiasim I have to accomplish it.

Non-trivial indeed :).

> 3. Tie BKM's synchronize feature into BookmarkSync's token system for
> automatically keeping the two systems in sync.  This is an easy addition.  I
> envision a checkbox in the program options for this and perhaps a URL text
> field to point to the users BookmarkSync Server of choice.

Sounds like a fine idea to me.

> 4. Since our average user has 750 bookmarks, and many have several thousand,
> I added a progress bar to the synchronize dialog.

I have not made very much use of the synchronize command, but isn't this what
frmSyncronizeProgress already does?

> Anyway, nice to meet you all.  If you have any suggestions, please let me
> know.

Glad to see another face around here :).

--Daniel Remenak

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Re: [Bkm-devel] Hello and introduction

[Patrice Neff <mailinglists@pa...>]

<admin@...> writes:

Thank you for joining us. Please allow me some comments.

> 1. Incorporate meta-tag extraction to the 'check links' code so that
> descriptions and keywords can be automatically imported from the target
> website.

I am not sure if "Check links" is the right place to do this. I for
one expect check links to be a mostly passive function.

It might be best to integrate this feature with the title fetcher
written by Daniel. And for existing bookmarks I'd rather see this as a
new command. For example "Fill data" in the context menu (and thereby
also in the menu "Actions").

How does that sound to you?

> 2. Add a registry class to move all of the programs settings to any
> (configurable) registry hive. (This way I can group Sync2It's and BKM's
> registry settings together.) This is a non-trivial effort so I'm not sure
> how much enthusiasim I have to accomplish it.

That's indeed not very trivial and will need a lot of testing to
ensure that nothing breaks.

> 3. Tie BKM's synchronize feature into BookmarkSync's token system for
> automatically keeping the two systems in sync.  This is an easy addition.  I
> envision a checkbox in the program options for this and perhaps a URL text
> field to point to the users BookmarkSync Server of choice.

What options dialog do you mean? The one in the Synchronisation
settings?

> 4. Since our average user has 750 bookmarks, and many have several thousand,
> I added a progress bar to the synchronize dialog.

That sounds like a good idea. Though I was under the impression, that
I had added that before. But my memory is short (=efficient in
forgetting :-).

Regards,
Patrice

-- 
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me."               (The Bible, John 14:6)

[Bkm-devel] New Web site

[Patrice Neff <mailinglists@pa...>]

Hi,

I have just uploaded the new Web site=B9. I even did the German version
again. But I did not provide any way to translate the news and did not
translate the pyBKM road map. Both should not be much of a problem.

If we ever want to have localized news, we can do something with the
subject lines or insert some tag in the body. But that's not something
I'm considering for the near future.

If you change anything on the Web site, please tell me. Because I
don't want to accidentally overwrite your changes with my local copy.

Regards,
Patrice

______________
=B9  http://bkm.sourceforge.net/

--=20
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me."               (The Bible, John 14:6)

[Bkm-devel] Hello and introduction

[<admin@sy...>]

Hello,

Patrice just added me as a BKM developer and as a matter of introduction, I
operate Sync2It.com and have incorporated BKM as a value added addition to
the site.  The changes I've made to BKM are mostly cosmetic at this point.
I would like to add the following to the code.

1. Incorporate meta-tag extraction to the 'check links' code so that
descriptions and keywords can be automatically imported from the target
website.

2. Add a registry class to move all of the programs settings to any
(configurable) registry hive. (This way I can group Sync2It's and BKM's
registry settings together.) This is a non-trivial effort so I'm not sure
how much enthusiasim I have to accomplish it.

3. Tie BKM's synchronize feature into BookmarkSync's token system for
automatically keeping the two systems in sync.  This is an easy addition.  I
envision a checkbox in the program options for this and perhaps a URL text
field to point to the users BookmarkSync Server of choice.

4. Since our average user has 750 bookmarks, and many have several thousand,
I added a progress bar to the synchronize dialog.

Anyway, nice to meet you all.  If you have any suggestions, please let me
know.

Jack Dean
 http://www.sync2it.com

[Bkm-devel] New Web site

[Patrice Neff <mailinglists@pa...>]

Hi,

I have spent some time redesigning the BKM Web site. I used the design
that I already created for my own Web site=B9, though with a custom
picture in the bottom left. Additionally, this Web site also works
with Internet Explorer.

The news are now automatically imported from the Sourceforge news
backend. I do this with a Python script=B2 which fetches the RSS feed
and puts the output into the HTML pages. The cronjob for this runs
every two hours.

The navigation is now in some parts split between vbBKM and pyBKM.

I have not applied the changes to the German translation, yet. And I
am considering stripping the German version down to a minimum. If
anyone is willing, to maintain the German Web site, please speak up.

I uploaded the Web site to <http://bkm.sourceforge.net/new/>;. Because
of the subdirectory, most internal links probably don't work. The
navigation should be fine, though.

Regards
Patrice

______________
=B9  <http://www.patrice.ch/>;
=B2  <http://bkm.sourceforge.net/new/_scripts/news.py>;

--=20
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me."               (The Bible, John 14:6)

[Bkm-devel] Passwords with proxy

[Patrice Neff <mailinglists@pa...>]

Hi,

I have just made available this list to everyone. Feel free to
subscribe to it and help us with the following items (and possibly
more):
  - Writing documentation
  - Translating BKM to other languages
  - Testing
  - Developing code

Bye,
Patrice

-- 
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes
to the Father except through me."               (The Bible, John 14:6)

[Bkm-devel] Translated version

[Patrice Neff <mail@pa...>]

Hi there,

The last two or three weeks I worked a lot on the BKM. I fixed some
code, translated every single comment to English and - the big news -
I translated the UI to English. Yeah, it's now possible to translate
the BKM. If you want to translate it to French or any other 8bit
language, just go on. :-)

Please have a look at it. It's an alpha release. You can download it
at <URL:http://www.patrice.ch/tmp/bkm.zip>;.

If you want to have a look at the code you could download if from the
CVS tree. But most Windows users don't have a CVS client installed, so
I uploaded the source to <URL:http://www.patrice.ch/tmp/bkm_src.zip>;.

(If your mailer doesn't support this URL format, throw it away or
copy&paste the URLs manually.)

Bye, patrice