Topic: twiggi RPM or HOWTO

[steve]

" However, he _can't_ stop those purchasers from redistributing it at will or modifying it, and he _must_ provide the source code on request."


This is why I originally asked jeff c for the rpm, and not d. may, as I dont need the service and support aspect.  This reminds me of the SuSE argument that has been happening for the past few distros because of yast.  They do not provide their ISOs for download anymore, but as soon as one person buys it, then they are entitled to distribute the CDS at their leisure.....

[Greg Zartman]

Dan,

Agreed. If you spend the time to turn source into a binary (RPM), then you are in no way obligated to give it away.

Steve,

I'm not sure if there is a "public" twiggi RPM floating around out there or not.  I know that there is a twiggi GNU project on Source forge.  Maybe you can find something there.  I for one respect Darrell's request not to distribute HIS RPM.  He's put alot of time into packaging this thing for e-smith/SME.  My best advise for you is to either put the time into figuring out twiggi from source forge or pay Darrell for his RPM and the support that comes with it.

Regards,

Greg Zartman

[Jeff C]

I think it boils down to this.  Whether or not it is "legal" for me to redistribute Darrell's RPM, IMHO it is not "moral" for me to do so.

This is a small community.  Darrell (and many others) spend a lot of time building, testing and contributing software that many of us find useful.  If Darrell occasionally wants some reimbursement for his time we are all free to decide whether or not to buy his products.

Twiggi is available as source code elsewhere.  I chose to spend a small sum of money to save my time and you are free to make another choice.

I for one, will honor the work that Darrell put in and not distribute his apps.

License text is all well and good, but let's look at the people situation rather that the tort law.

A little more than 2 cents worth....

-jeff

[Rich Lafferty]

Jeff C wrote:
>
> License text is all well and good, but let's look at the
> people situation rather that the tort law.

Does that include the people that wrote TWIG and chose to
release it under the license you think we should ignore,
or do they not count?

  -Rich

[Dan Brown]

I disagree, Jeff.  Darrell built on the work of others.  He was allowed to do so because of the license under which they released their work, which requires that he release his work, if at all, under the same license.  If he didn't want to abide by that condition, he had other alternatives: (1) contact the authors of TWIG and offer to pay them for a different license; (2) write his own software.

IMO, Darrell's "request" that you not redistribute the RPM violates the spirit of the GPL.  I suppose it doesn't violate the letter, because he's not actually forbidding you to distribute it, but he's attempting to induce you to refrain from exercising a right which he MUST give you.  IOW, he's giving with one hand and taking away with the other.  He has neither a moral nor a legal right to do that.

Again, Darrel isn't required to release code under the GPL.  He's free to write his own software and release it under any license he chooses.  But if he's building on GPL'd software, the resulting work must also be GPL'd.  He chose the latter in the case of Twiggi, so he's stuck with the consequences of that decision.

[Dan G.]

Darrell is only exerting modest control on his .rpm.  I gladly comply with his request not to distribute it, per his request.  If you want TWIG, go for it.  If you want a distribution of Twiggi that is fully self-installing, tested, and customized for SME, *talk* to Darrell.  That's all.  Talk to him.  I doubt he'll be a hardass.  There is some reasonable expectation that people simply communicate with him in regard to this.  After all, the RPM did not create itself, and he at least deserves that bit of recognition.

In this way, he at least has some idea of how many people are using it, and he can judge how reasonable it is for him to put continued effort into future revs.  If he's a smart man, he won't continue creating quality contribs, if he can't get any sense whatsoever of a potential payback.  Unlike many open source contributors the world over, creating freebies on their employers' clock on the sly, I believe Darrell actually makes his living doing these kinds of things.  Open source is great and noble, but there has to be compensation, or you wouldn't have a slick RPM to even be discussing here.  It's pragmatism vs. puritanism, old argument...

[Mike Sensney]

There seems to be a strong feeling among some that Darrel's RPM should be freely distributed even though 1) Darrel has requested that it not be and 2) that it just might contain proprietary, non-GPL coding.

I suggest you create your own twiggi RPM. Then you may distribute it as you choose.

[Greg Zartman]

Mike, Dan, Jeff, I agree with all of you.

One thing to point out is that with GNU software, the source must always be provided.  Doesn't matter if you spend time adding to it or not.

Some of us here have the Twiggi RPM and we could post it on our websites for free download to all.  Point is, Darrell asked us not to.  Like Jeff pointed out, this is a small community.  Unless we have a few folks around here getting paid to help support this thing, it would certainly die.  $65US for Twiggi is not alot considering it would take me several hours to figure out the sources on my own.  Considering my bill out rate, I'm saving my company about $200-$300 by purchasing Darrell's RPM.

Greg

[Scott Smith]

Disclaimer: IANAL

Darrell is obligated to provide the source WHEN ASKED and he may charge a reasonable media fee. He is not required to post it in some public place nor to make it available at no cost. The GPL is about the free exchange of knowledge, not about the free (as in no cost) acquisition of software. The fact that most GPL stuff is free of charge is a blessing to us all, but it is not a requirement of the GPL.

Any of you who have purchased or obtained it are under no obligation to pass it along to anyone. Unless you create your own fork, you can merrily refer everyone back to Darrell if they want a copy. But, you are also free to pass it along if you want, since there is nothing that allows Darrell to prohibit redistribution.

To avoid this confusion and likely hard feelings, perhaps Darrell should have taken the route of creating a separate system that would install over a stock TWIG installation. Provided he did not use GPL code (ie, his overlays were original works and not derivatives) he could license it however he wanted, prevented any redistribution whatsoever, and charged whatever he wanted.

Scott

[Darrell May]

Greetings everyone.  Anyone on devinfo may understand I have been busy lately.  Unfortunately only moments ago was I informed this thread was ongoing.  I guess no one thought to ask the me directly?

Twiggi started life over a year ago based on twig.  During the last year twiggi has become a comple code rewrite and now is no longer linked to the current twig development branch.

In support of open-source and to meet our obligations under twig's GPL license and with the blessing of the twig development team, we release all changes we make to the twig code for all to see.  This is available at our project hosted on SourceForge where the twiggi code is available for anyone to download and use:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/twiggi/

Our rpm build for the Mitel SME Server, which includes our copyrighted code, is not offered public.  We offer this commercially and include up to one hour of support.  As our support costs are $95.00/hr CAD, we offer the software for $95.00.

This costs is to handle any installation support issue you may encounter and assists us, in a very small way, in funding our continued development on this exciting project.

In summary, the twiggi code is freely available via SourceForge.  Our copyright code is not.

I have requested that our rpm, which includes our copyright code, not be distributed.  I am simply executing my right to protect my copyright code.  I trust this clears up any confusion.

As always, anyone wishing to discuss any of my products and services may do so by e-mailing me directly.  Feedback and comments from clients and potential clients are always welcomed.

I also want to take this moment to thank those in this thread, that are registered twiggi resellers, twiggi users and as such are all clients of mine.  Thank you for expressing your viewpoints and positive comments on the support we provide to registered resellers and users.  All our clients are very important to us.  It is a exceptional to see threads like this where my clients are coming to my support.  Thank you very much.

Regards,

Darrell May
DMC Netsourced.com

[Damien Curtain]

Mike Sensney wrote:
>
> There seems to be a strong feeling among some that Darrel's
> RPM should be freely distributed even though 1) Darrel has
> requested that it not be and 2) that it just might contain
> proprietary, non-GPL coding.
>
> I suggest you create your own twiggi RPM. Then you may
> distribute it as you choose.

Good point. Its pretty trivial to package something like twiggi up in an rpm. I rolled a twig rpm when it first surfaced long before anything like webmail was included in e-smith, and it didnt take long.

Aswell as another package that drops in support for the templated system which would include a templated /etc/twiggi.conf file and supported actions for a conf intall/upgrade etc that registers a twiggi service, and youd probably want to fix the couple of shell scripts called each time a user is added as they use relative locs, and then have an even each time a user is added to the system to run the twiggi configure script.

Any takers or would you like me to do it?
--
 Damien

[stephen noble]

>Any takers or would you like me to do it?

ok Damien,

but before you reinvent the wheel can you bundle up a RPM and instructions for
phpgroupware,
sgml, software to turn the sgml into text/html as per mitel standards
phorum/phpBB,
http://www.compiere.org/home/whatitdoes.html
a dial in server,
VPN,
port forwarding,
log analysis (email me for details on this one),

suggestions anyone ?

and then
*debug the rpms and keep them updated when either sme or the base package changes,
*report and fix bugs or suggest improvements to the base package,
*enhance your rpms when users make requests
*hold hands when users don't understand

regards
stephen

[Damien Curtain]

stephen noble wrote:
>
> >Any takers or would you like me to do it?
>
> ok Damien,
>
> but before you reinvent the wheel can you bundle up a RPM and
> instructions for
> phpgroupware,
> sgml, software to turn the sgml into text/html as per mitel
> standards
> phorum/phpBB,
> http://www.compiere.org/home/whatitdoes.html
> a dial in server,
> VPN,
> port forwarding,
> log analysis (email me for details on this one),
>
> suggestions anyone ?
>
> and then
> *debug the rpms and keep them updated when either sme or the
> base package changes,
> *report and fix bugs or suggest improvements to the base
> package,
> *enhance your rpms when users make requests
> *hold hands when users don't understand

Hi Stephen,

Im not sure what point your trying to raise here. But I feel if people would like to utlilise a gpl'd package on e-smith/mitel's server and require an rpm of that particular piece of software, and ones not available, that I or anyone else is at liberty to package it up as a benefit to the end users who wish to use the software.

Alot of people do not require assistance using/admining a system but would prefer to utilise the redhat package management system for ease of maintainance and accounting purposes, I for one enjoy rpm and dpkg for these types of purposes so I can clearly view installation status of software on any system I manage.

Its not reinventing the wheel, where does that analogy fit in to this thread?

The GPL exempts the asterix points you listed, right? Sections 11 and 12.
--
 Damien

[Rob Hillis]

Dan Brown wrote:

> I disagree, Jeff.  Darrell built on the work of others.  He
> was allowed to do so because of the license under which they
> released their work, which requires that he release his work,
> if at all, under the same license.  If he didn't want to
> abide by that condition, he had other alternatives: (1)
> contact the authors of TWIG and offer to pay them for a
> different license; (2) write his own software.

Darrell is complying fully with the GPL licence.  The software is available for free *with* source code, and it is also licenced as GPL software.

There is *nothing* in the GPL license to say that he *must* release *every* package of the software created.  The source is out there... go get it.  If you can find someone with the RPM Darrell created and they give it to you, good for you.  Darrell *requested* this particular package of TWIGGI not be publically distributed - he did *NOT* require it.

How would you react to the people putting together Lindows?  They're building on an Open Source operating system, and adding some proprietory/closed source code to it, and you *must* buy Lindows from them in order for it to be fully operational.  Mitel, for that matter, has added Service Link to SMEv5 - closed source code on top of open source.

> IMO, Darrell's "request" that you not redistribute the RPM
> violates the spirit of the GPL.  I suppose it doesn't violate
> the letter, because he's not actually forbidding you to
> distribute it, but he's attempting to induce you to refrain
> from exercising a right which he MUST give you.  IOW, he's
> giving with one hand and taking away with the other.  He has
> neither a moral nor a legal right to do that.

Not true.  TWIGGI is available in source form, as required.  Point out the clause in the GPL where it says that binaries or other packaged varieties of the *same* version of the software *must* be distributed.

I doubt you'll find it.

> Again, Darrel isn't required to release code under the GPL.
> He's free to write his own software and release it under any
> license he chooses.  But if he's building on GPL'd software,
> the resulting work must also be GPL'd.  He chose the latter
> in the case of Twiggi, so he's stuck with the consequences of
> that decision.

TWIGGI *is* GPL'ed.  That's what it comes down to.  What you're talking about is a custom package of the same sofware.  Different kettle of fish altogether.

(on another, totally unrelated question, where the hell did the expression "different kettle of fish" come from anyway?)

[stephen noble]

hello damien

> Im not sure what point your trying to raise here.

you can make a rpm of the gpl'd program, agreed
and i detest .tar packages as well

the difficult part is tieing the program into mitel
this is where the value of darrells rpm is, and is the part that is non gpl
i don't think it is trivial to make these tie in rpms, there aren't many around

>reinventing the wheel

the rpm already exists for twiggi,
they don't for the other suggestions  
if you have the time to make the rpm for twiggi, i would like to see rpms for the others too, i don't have time and you probably don't either

if we have to pay to have them built so be it, and if the author can't devise a method to legitimately receive payment then we'll continue with the current method of only the geeks being able to expand on the base sme server

>The GPL exempts the asterix points you listed, right?
yes, but then you'll soon have another orphaned rpm nobody wants

regards
stephen