Topic: twiggi RPM or HOWTO

[Judy Morgann]

Hi all,

some month ago i saw here an RPM oder HOWTO about installing the web-based groupware "twiggi". now i can´t find it again.
somebody can help me?

tia
Judy

[Jeff C]

You can purchase a pre-built rpm from Darrell May at http://www.myezserver.com

I did, I like it.

-jeff

[pkidd]

or go to sourceforge.net/projects/twiggi for a tar file that's easy to install per the documentation

[steve]

Jeff C, could you put a link for the rpm?  I would like to download it.

[Jeff C]

It's commercial software from Darrell May.  I spent the money and found the ease of install and the support I got from Darrell was well worth the small amount of money I spent.

You can get it at www.myezserver.com

Tell Darrell I sent ya :>

-jeff

[Dan Brown]

No, Jeff, it is NOT commercial software, and may not legally be made commercial (in the sense of closed source and limited distribution).  Twiggi is based on TWIG, which is a GPL'd package, and therefore must be GPL'd itself.  Darrell may, if he chooses, only distribute it commercially (that is, only to people who pay him), but he may not legally prevent others from distributing it freely.

Of course, if you pay him, he does provide support, and I'm sure he does a very good job of that.

[Jeff C]

Dan,

You may be right about the licensing.  But you are certainly right about the service.  So I choose to think I got the software for free but got some support bundled into it.

=jeff

[steve]

I have a family of 6 using mine, so the support would be minimal.  I actually have installed the tar as it is easy.  I was just wondering if I could poke around in the rpm and see its install.  Much like esmith the value is in the support, though the product is free

[Mike Sensney]

steve wrote:
>
> I have a family of 6 using mine, so the support would be
> minimal.  I actually have installed the tar as it is easy.  I
> was just wondering if I could poke around in the rpm and see
> its install.  Much like esmith the value is in the support,
> though the product is free

At best this sounds a little cheesy. I would suggest that there may be some non free content in this RPM and that the best course of action is to contact him directly about this.

Darrel May spends a lot of time developing content for E-Smith/Mitel. Much of it is free for download at http://www.myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/. If all you want is to look at how he packages an RPM there are many samples here.

[Mike Sensney]

steve wrote:
>
> I have a family of 6 using mine, so the support would be
> minimal.  I actually have installed the tar as it is easy.  I
> was just wondering if I could poke around in the rpm and see
> its install.  Much like esmith the value is in the support,
> though the product is free

At best this sounds a little cheesy. I would suggest that there may be some non free content in this RPM and that the best course of action is to contact him directly about this.

Darrel May spends a lot of time developing content for E-Smith/Mitel. Much of it is free for download at http://www.myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/. If all you want is to look at how he packages an RPM there are many samples here.

[steve]

No it is GPL, and how my dear sir is it cheesy?

[Mike Sensney]

steve wrote:
> No it is GPL, and how my dear sir is it cheesy?

Twiggi in itself is GPL but neither you nor you do not know if there is some added content in that RPM that is not GPL.

You are willing to ask someone who purchased Darrel's RPM for a copy yet apparently you are not willing to ask Darrel himself for the same RPM. That is cheesy.

As I stated previously, if you are interested in how he packages his RPMs there are many available for download.

[Dan Brown]

Darrell has _requested_ that the RPM not be redistributed, but has nowhere claimed that it contains non-GPL content.  If it did, he could make that request stick; if not (as appears to be the case), he has no way to enforce his will.

I have an idea about how to answer this question, though:  somebody who has Darrell's RPM could run "rpm -qpi [filename of the RPM]" and post the output here.  That would include a statement of the license, which I expect will be GPL.

[Greg Zartman]

Pardon my abrupt statement, but I think some of you folks need to read the GNU license.  www.gnu.org

You can't add a few lines of code to a GNU app and then say that it's commercial software and only offer it to people if they pay you money.  That is a very obvious violation of the license aggrement.  You can, however, make people pay you for a service bundled with a GNU app.  This is how Mitel, for example, gets away with selling an OS that was written by thousands of other developers (i.e. we can download the ISO for free, but must pay for support and all of the really good stuff that they have developed).  This isn't to imply that Mitel hasn't added anything to the Linux project.  The Mitel folks are a excellent group of developers.

I agree with Mike, the fee that Darrell charges for his "Twiggi Bundle" is well worth the cost.  Darrell will have you up and running in no time and can answer just about any question that you'll come up with.

Regards,

Greg Zartman

[Dan Brown]

Greg, I agree with you completely except for one point: Darrell, or I, or you, or anybody else, could refuse to distribute Twiggi (or anything else) to anybody who didn't pay for it (or, put differently, he or you or I could charge whatever we want for it).  However, he _can't_ stop those purchasers from redistributing it at will or modifying it, and he _must_ provide the source code on request.