Darkbot License Notice

May 1st, 2014
This notice is being sent and published as "Darkbot License Notice" and Darkbot-License-Notice.txt in Source Forge DarkbotProjectNews section, root tree of Source Forge Darkbot Project "Files" section, Darkbot Site at Source Forge and a link to the stated locations to known E-Mail addresses of contributors mentioned in Darkbot source files.

...

In March 2014 it was called to my attention by who I asked and nominated as the Lead Developer, David Seikel, that the license was ambiguous and not complying with some conditions which we need it to properly run the project.

I asked then David Seikel to summarize to me in writing his thoughts regarding the matter, which he detailed it posting on 2014-03-11 as a Feature Request at http://sourceforge.net/p/darkbot/feature-requests/4/ .

I believe it is on the interest of all parties in this project and users in not having it inactive, to have it going forward and getting better and make it easier to use and contribute - it is necessary to attend the contributors wishes, intentions and motivations for contributing. It is imperative in having again Darkbot as the most used bot on its kind, as reliable, useful and fun.

Moreover there are hosting rules to be followed namely regarding the Open Source hosting place at Source Forge, which the license as is does not comply with.

Preserving the spirit of a free service and usefulness to the community started by its creator Jason Hamilton on his first public release on 1998, I agree that a revision of the license needs to be made.

Being so, in parallel to the mentioned auditory by David Seikel and not having any feedback from it I've decided we'll need other ways of making efforts in having a consensus on this matter, being this notice one of the steps to accomplish it.

After attempts to contact Jason Hamilton to consult his thoughts about Darkbot's License, I conclude I am unable to get in touch with him. Nevertheless, I'll keep trying to find any way of talking with him - and I ask anyone who has any of his contacts to inform me.

Also, I'm again making my best efforts in trying to contact all interested parties until June and email this notice to the known email addresses of contributors listed in the source files. I'm asking anyone who has been contributing to the project for any thoughts on this matter.

There will be a thirty one day period between this notice and another analysis on this matter to decide on a move for a public release of Darkbot under GPL 2 License on the terms mentioned in the attached portion of README.

That move is to be made from the development and testing source code management area of Source Forge in the GIT repository to its public 'Files' section at http://sourceforge.net/projects/darkbot/files/ .

If anyone wants to test the work in progress and help us detecting eventual malfunctions could do so by cloning the source files from the GIT facilities at http://sourceforge.net/p/darkbot/darkbot/ci/master/tree/

_ START OF Darkbot legal terms in README.txt file _
- Copyright (C) 2014 Darkbot Project.
- Darkbot, The Talking Robot, created by Jason Hamilton.
- Running under GPL version 2 License.
- Darkbot Project Administrator: Luiz Castelo-Branco LuizCB@users.sourceforge.net

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

The a copy of a full GNU General Public License version 2 as well as this README.txt are
in the root tree of the released files.

These terms and conditions applies to all source files released even if for some reason
they are not not included or mentioned in them.

The the first four lines on top of this document are included to the start of each source
file with a pointer to the full notice, this whole document, with the name README.txt

_ END OF Darkbot legal terms in README.txt file; all other README contents will follow after this point. _