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I agree that there is a lack of knowledge of the history of the project among newcommers, but as a relative newcommer myself, I have to say that it's very hard to discover this information. There is no history of XOOPS on the site, you have to dig through the really old news postings and forum archives.

I think there would be tremendous value in a section in the 'All about XOOPS' part of this site, which discussed:

--the original creation of XOOPS

--the development of XOOPS 2

--the formation of the 'new XOOPS community':
https://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=992

--bios about some of the major figures.

While such things were being prepared, some material about the current directions, such as 2.1, would be good to put up there. Is there even a design document for 2.1?

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This is not true. The GPL is silent on the issue of charging for development. What the GPL says is that you cannot impose restrictions on other people's rights to examine and modify the software source code, nor on their rights to redistribute the software. How you choose to fund the development of GPL software you write is entirely up to you. But if you release it as GPL, then the above restrictions apply.

This effectively pulls the rug out from under standard closed source business models, where the revenue stream is built on restricting the supply of the software because only the author is legally allowed to distribute it. The GPL allows everyone who has a copy to be a distributor, which simply creates a disincentive to build a business around charging for your own distribution, because potential buyers could probably get the software from somewhere else.

Basically, to use closed source terminology, the GPL legalizes piracy; making and distributing copies for free is allowed, so that's a severe disincentive to use a closed source business model.

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I agree that the term 'donation' as used in the distribution of AMS seems odd. It is a fee, since they are not allowing you to download the current version without paying. If you could download and then choose to pay a fee or not pay, then that would be a donation.

However, I do not believe that charging a fee or donation or whatever you want to call it breaks the GPL in any way (see above). The GPL simply means that anyone who has downloaded a copy could put it up for download themselves if they chose to.

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If I read between the lines, I think I'm hearing you say something like this: "and it's bad that other people are only giving to the community in as much as they are getting paid for their efforts." I appologize if that's not what you are saying, but if it is, then I would say: "isn't it only a good thing for the community to have more contributions from more people, no matter how they get made?"

It's up to the community and the core team whether contributions get accepted into the official core, or get stamped as official modules in the new 2.1 world when we get there. So more people doing more and giving more is only a good thing, no? I mean, since the community is still the arbitrator of what gets accepted or not, business interests aren't going to hijack the project.

In fact, it's against the interests of businesses that would be involved in XOOPS to try and hijack the project or fork it. The value of an open source project for a business is simply that other people are helping out by contributing to the project, so the business doesn't have to do all the work itself. It's a cost effective way to develop software for a business. If a business were to hijack the project and make its focus more narrow and related only to whatever uses of XOOPS that business were interested in, that would make the project far less useful and interesting for everyone else, so a lot of contributors would leave the project, and all of a sudden, the whole point the business is involved in the project -- the fact that other people are contributing -- disappears.

I will fall back on an example I seem to always bring up in these kind of discussions: IBM and Linux. IBM does not give work and effort to the Linux community out of altruism, and you can bet the IBM programmers who contribute code are being paid for their time, and IBM is building a fee for Linux into the price of their computers that come with Linux. And is this bad for Linux? Absolutely not, it's been good to get more code and more professional code into the project.

JMorris's post about Red Hat and Linux in another thread seems apt to point out here too:

https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31535&forum=11&post_id=137966#forumpost137966

--Julian

I believe Formulaire, aka Form Generator on dev.xoops.org, already has file upload. It is a fork from Liase.

--Julian

I have just finished checking, and I am confident the script will work just fine with version 1.07 of wf-channel.

The only issue was whether new instances or variations on the wf-channel name had been introduced by any of the changes from 1.06. If there were any, the script would have had to be modified to account for them. But after a review of all the code changes, I don't believe there are any new instances or variations on the name.

The index.php file was modified extensively, but the search and replace operations that the script performs on that file should account for all the instances of the module name.

--Julian

This script is specifically written for wf-channel and will not work with any other module.

There is no reason in principle that something similar could not be written for wf-sections or any other XOOPS module, but each such script would have to be custom made since each module requires different changes in order to be cloned.

--Julian

There are many options for this. These two FAQ entries will get you started in the right direction:

https://xoops.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=253
https://xoops.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=280

--Julian

XML

What you're talking about, common data schemas underlying different sites on the same topic, is the holy grail that XML was supposed to reach. It always seemed over blown to me.

Sometimes people talk about this as "the semantic web" but it's all the same thing: use common XML schemas to allow websites to share common data.

The problem is: who defines the schema? It's a political question really. Google's director of search quality recently had this to say about it:

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=P7480_0_3_0_C

An excerpt (the article is longer and worth reading IMHO):

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When he says ontologies, he's talking about what you're calling taxonomies above.

--Julian

brash wrote:
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This is indeed a very interesting idea. A paper has been written about a similar idea: an open-source software development bond market:

http://www.openknowledge.org/writing/open-source/scb/

The basic idea is that the "pledges" would be put up beforehand in the form of bonds, with the money held in an escrow account. The developers would hold the bonds, and then cash them out upon completion of the software.

There is a lot of administrative overhead associated with any such approach, but this kind of mechanism may be a required step as open-source software matures as an alternative to closed-source funding schemes.

Another view about funding, though, is that perhaps, where there is a large enough market, open-source software can be sold by the creator just the same as closed-source, because most of the market is not willing or able to seek out "unofficial" download sites for the software. So most people go to the creator's website for the actual download, which they would have to pay for, and they're happy to get a copy they know is good, and also access to any support services or other value-added services the creator is offering.

It is an open question whether most people would actually do that. But I think it is possible that they might.

--Julian

You can simply comment certain fields in register.php so they don't show. Two slashes "//" at the beginning of a line turns that line off.

You can also change the language constants used for other fields that you are showing so that, for instance, instead of the label for the textbox reading "ICQ" it could read "Department". In the database, the data would be labelled as ICQ, but on the View Account page, it would be ballened Department.

Good luck,

--Julian

Oh I hear you. I have held off too!

But I remember reading something during the beta phase about that feature being added in.

For what it's worth, I have heard/read that a fresh install of 2.0.9.2 is okay. And if you update direct from 2.0.7.x to 2.0.9.2 you're fine too. But if you updated to 2.0.9 or 2.0.9.1 then you've got problems.

Some of our people are playing with fresh installs of 2.0.9.2 right now, so I'm interested to see if they find anything interesting.

--Julian

I remember this being listed as a new feature in 2.0.9 beta. Is it not in 2.0.9.2? It was a feature to be added to the Edit User section, I think.

--Julian