Re: [GSWHackers] Re: OGo/GNUstep cooperation Re: Re[2]: Frameworks integration

[David Ayers]

Helge Hess wrote:
> On 02.03.2004, at 23:16, David Wetzel wrote:
>
> > Please stop your marketing on the gnu lists. GNUstep Web is a working 
> > WO 4.x clone. You speak bad of GSWeb to promote your own product.
>
>
> This is ridiculous. The goal of OpenGroupware.org is to promote a 
> *groupware*, not to promote a WebObjects clone.
> I've lined out our motivations quite clearly and this is not at all 
> restricted to gnustep-web, but covers cooperation with whole GNUstep.
>
> I would be really happy if this discussion would finally get away from 
> insults and imputations from the gnustep-web side - you really make it 
> sound like conspiracy theories. I didn't speak bad of GSWeb or 
> questioned the current quality of it in a single mail.
>
> Anyway, lets stop that now. Its quite clear that gnustep-web core 
> developers are not interested in cooperation. Your product, my product - 
> really childish behaviour.
> Why not just explicitely state that you are keeping to your codebase 
> whatever?

I fully agree that this is one of the most ridiculous threads I have had 
to bear with.  And I'm unwilling to comment on the slander and 
insinuations. Yet I feel coerced to jump in.

From my point of view, the thread has been aiming at discrediting 
GSWeb, GDL2 and it's authors and maintainers.  The request for 
cooperation was a request for people to porting apps to OGo frameworks 
incl. patches to make them work with gnustep-base and -gdl2 and to 
incorporate SOPE code/features in the -gsweb repository.  FWIW, the 
-gsweb projects I'm working on are not publicly available (which doesn't 
imply they are not free software to their users).

I have repeatedly downloaded the cvs version of OGo and have yet to see 
it compile with -make and -base.  I'm not willing to volunteer my time 
on fixing the OGo build process wrt -make and -base, but I'm willing to 
respond to issues posted, esp. wrt -gdl2 and EOF 4.5 compatibility.

I'm grateful that S.J. has tried to start an objective comparison, and 
I'll try to fix any GDL2/GSWeb related issues he finds to the best of my 
ability.  (That is if Manuel doesn't beat me to it :-) )  If there are 
free software packages that work with WO45, then I'd be glad to help 
port them to GSWeb.  Yet I would avoid incorporating SOPE extensions 
(lest they are trivial, non intrusive and fit well) in GSWeb proper or 
add any dependencies within GSWeb.  An extension framework/library would 
be possible which also mustn't reside in the savannah repository (in 
fact the SOPE repository will probably be the best).

But to clearly state the situation of -gsweb and -gdl2:  They are both 
active projects in development.  The primary authors Manuel Guesdon and 
Mirko Viviani have both done a tremendous job.  The code base is in use 
in production environments, but is (IMO) not in a state to be released 
to "users" yet.  We are grateful for contributions and bug reports.  We 
currently have no time frame of when the "user" stage will be achieved.

To me and probably to others, it is important that both -gdl2 and -gsweb 
are assigned to the FSF and reside in the main gnustep repository. 
IANAL but I'm unaware of any legal issues wrt. copyright assignments per 
se in the EU or Germany.  If it were so, I really wonder how the FSF 
could hold the copyright on prominent projects like GnuPG.  I think you 
may be referring to the:
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/fla/fla.en.html
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/fla/fla.de.html
where the /license/ has been adapted for European law, but the act of 
assigning copyrights is still the method of transferring the rights.
OTOH we are all aware that any legal discussion wrt. copyrights, patents 
or trademarks would have to tested in court on a case by case basis 
anyway, and that legislature in the EU is dealing with aspects of these 
issues currently so anything we assert today may be invalid next year.

I'm still in the process of auditing/testing in GDL2, tweaking and 
filling in the blanks as I go along.  At the moment I'm working on a 
request to allow GDL2 and GSWeb to build on Cocoa.  GDL2 should do this 
now.  GSWeb still has issues which I hope to resolve soon.  I'm also 
looking at EOEditingContext/EOUndoManager related issues wrt. reports of 
MulleEOInterface.  Others are working on Adaptor issues.

Another long standing issue is to decouple GSWeb from a full GDL2 
implementation.  I may soon start looking into incorporating a simple 
database layer based on work by David Wetzel as an alternative to GDL2 
wrt. GSWeb.  And this is not my daytime job.

IOW: We have our work wrt. -gsweb and -gdl2 cut out for us.  If you find 
people willing to port applications to/from GSWeb/OGo that's great.  If 
you/they find issues with GSWeb/GDL2, we'll try to deal with them as 
promptly as possible.  I doubt any of the maintainers will have time to 
do any ports of SOPE applications (unless of course you wish to hire us, 
please note that this is a volunteer driven effort).  If you wish to 
contribute code then the copyright issue must be addressed.  If you'd be 
willing to clarify your legal concerns then I think:
https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
would be the correct forum.  (They don't seem to have a search engine 
though :-/.)  Yet as you have clearly stated that you will not assign 
the copyright, this maybe superfluous.  If you wish to use our code, 
feel free, the FSF grants you the LGPL for our library code.

Cheers,
David Ayers

PS: Please note that any future replies by me, may be delayed due to 
other priorities.