[From Geoff Hutchison] >I'd be interested in any legal opinion about >the "ht://Dig Group" issue since there's currently no obvious "owner" of >all of the ht://Dig code.
We may be able to help there! At RightNow Technologies, Inc, we extensively use Open Source software and operating systems because they give us quality platforms and development environments. We use Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and the full suite of GNU development tools. Our 1200+ customers and their data make us one of the top two or three corporate users of MySQL and one of the heaviest users of PHP. In February our Linux servers handled approximately 65 Million page-turns for our hosted customers. We believe that HtDig is a solid piece of software, and we as a company would like to enhance and improve HtDig. RNT is currently a couple weeks away from internal testing of a document archiving project based on HtDig. We've written software that exports documents from a SQL database to XML files and indexes them via HtDig. In developing this software, a significant amount of work has gone into restructuring the HtDig code as a self-contained separate shared library (libhtdig.so) with a functional API. RNT is currently faced with a licensing issue, the current GPL license of HtDig does not lend itself to calling the API functions from closed source code. To use and contribute effectively to HtDig and the HtDig group we need: a) To use libhtdig under the LGPL terms b) To get HtDig to formalize its structure and decision making processes so that any LGPL relicense (for libhtdig) granted is beyond legal challenge. Looking into the future, RightNow Technologies believes that we will be able to make sizable contributions to HtDig software: 1) Internationalization via Unicode 2) Field Based Searching/Indexing 3) Commercial Software QA of HtDig 4) Use of commercial software validation tools to correct memory leaks and other coding errors 5) Additional contributions to the linguistic/NLP aspects of HtDig searching/indexing 6) Possible hardware donations to developers who assist us in implementing desired features. Currently The HtDig developers are divided into two groups, contributors and managers (those with CVS commit access). I've spoken with the big dogs at RightNow Technologies, Inc. about helping the HtDig Group in getting a more formal structure. Alan Rassaby, our General Counsel, has offered to assist the HtDig Group in: a)Understanding your desires for an official charter b)Drawing up a draft charter based on your desires, possibly derived from an existing Open Source charter c)answering any questions the group may have on various copyright and licensing issues. In addition, at your request, RightNow Tech would provide reasonable funds to pay for an independent third party (lawyer) to review the relevant materials. We wish to do this to eliminate any questions about conflict of interest and to give the Group the assurance that the process is fair and ethical. Issues to consider for a charter: 1) Election of Steering Committee (now effectively those people with CVS commit access) 2) Rules and Procedures for the election and other decision making tasks 3) Rules and Procedures for working with Corporations 4) Governance of Copyright & Licensing 5) Code contribution procedures The charter can be as relaxed and democratic as you wish. For RNT point #4 is the important one. We are trying to establish if the group is willing to license the HtDig software under both the GPL and LGPL. GPL for standard usage, LGPL for usage with 'libhtdig'. To accomplish this goal, a steering committee would need to approve such a move within the bounds of a group charter. The Apache Foundation is a great example of an Open Source software project that has a formal structure and is able to effectively work with Corporate Partners. Debian GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD are other notable examples. Debian did not create a Debian Foundation, they created Software in the Public Interest, Inc. [http://www.spi-inc.org/] as a non-profit vehicle to support Debian development. The SPI also supports the GNOME project. Debian's charter is also separate from SPI. It is probably not necessary to incorporate as a formal non-profit organization. Joining the SPI maybe a good way to facilitate donations and formal support to the group. Should that be desired, RightNow Tech would be willing to cover reasonable associated costs. Why are we proposing this? RightNow Tech believes that HtDig is great software that deserves support and enhancement. Helping to establish HtDig as a more formal entity allows us to devote more developer time and effort to enhancing HtDig while keeping the bean-counters happy with our participation in the group. Other companies that wish to contribute time/money/effort to furthering HtDig will probably have many of the same concerns. We are not proposing anything earth-shattering.. just a slightly more formal structure with a decision making body to take up issues with. A first step could be to call for a vote to ratify the current developers with CVS commit access as the steering committee and go forward with drafting a charter patterned after the Apache/Debian/FreeBSD etc. If you have any questions please reply! The next step would be for a couple interested people to contact me and set up a correspondence with Alan Rassaby to answer your questions. Feel free to visit http://www.rightnow.com for more information about RNT. Thanks! And check out libhtdig if you haven't already! -- Neal Richter Knowledgebase Developer RightNow Technologies, Inc. Customer Service for Every Web Site _______________________________________________ htdig-dev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/htdig-dev
