Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 17:49:38 -0700 (PDT)
From:  <parker@momma.mi-recordz.com>
To: midgard@greywolves.org, lwn@lwn.net, marty@linuxtoday.com, 
Subject: MWS38-16-05-2000

Hello,

Here's the latest volume of the Midgard Weekly Newsletter. Enjoy! In the
event that I've overlooked something and you catch it, please let me know.
There were several welcome suggestions made last week and due to a
demanding work load I've probably overlooked some of them.

Ron Parker
parker@momma.mi-recordz.com

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Greetings!

MWS for 16th of May, 2000 (#38)


============================
----------------------------

Current versions:
        Stable: 1.2.5 'Mad King'
        Devel.: 1.4beta.3
	Oracle: 1.2.5 Oracle 8i

----------------------------
============================

Defining Copyright, Publishing Model For The Midgard Manual

A discussion concerning the Midgard documentation effort and Midgard
Projects Ry's role as a publisher and copyright holder is taking place.
Participation by someone experienced in handling Open Source related
copyright and publishing issues for documentation would be highly valuable.

An effort to understand copyright and publishing interests is currently
centered around OpenContent and the GNU free Documentation License. Both of
these organizations offer licensing solutions and it's likely Midgard
Projects Ry and the documentation writers will embrace a solution that's
developed around one cense Issues Raised When Considering Sales of Midgard
Product

Sean D. Ackley, Midgard contributor and user, announced his interest in
selling the Midgard application server as a supported product. "In the
same manner that RedHat, and other versions of Linux have gone, we have
the ability to actually sell Midgard, with a printed manual," said Ackley.
"My ideas include offering a full Midgard with documentation (printed), on
a CD, with install scripts, and even support if needed."

Ackley's announcement of his interest for selling a Midgard product on the
Midgard mailing list is intended to elicit a discussion about licensing
issues. "I would like to start entertaining that idea," said Ackley. "I
wanted to get some feedback on this before I plunged ahead with it, as I
want to maintain license agreements, and such."

"I think it's great, if he can pull it off," said Emiliano Henys, Midgard
developer, when asked about Ackley's intentions,  "It's quite a
responsibility he'll be taking on. If he does well, we do well. I do hope
he shares his plans so I can jump in when needed."

Heyns stated that the licenses for the Midgard application suite are in
place, and efforts to sell Midgard will have to abide by those licenses.
It is stated on the Midgard web site,
http://www.midgard-project.org/article/884.html, that the core libraries
are distributed under the GNU Library General Public License, which
permits the software to be freely used so long as it is dynamically linked
to or the user can relink to new versions of the libraries.

The GNU GPL Preamble explains that the use of the word "free" in regards
to GNU GPL licensed libraries grants the freedom to distribute free
software, charge for the service of distribution, receive or have access
to source code, change the software, use pieces of it in new programs, and
awareness of these rights.

A discussion on the Midgard user and developer lists has failed to resolve
the issue of how Midgard documentation will be licensed. However, writers
retaining copyrights to their documents and MPRy publishing the documents
with the GFDL has been suggested.

A search for this thread using the original subject "documentation in Word
2000" at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/ failed to find the original post so
a new post that includes this excerpt from this report will be posted to
the list and titled "Sales, Licensing."
of these licenses. 

The midgard-dev mailing list archive subject titles for this thread are
"Some
documentation" and "Documentation License" the archives can be found at: 

Learn more: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=midgard-dev&w=2...

----------------------------

Manual Updated, Includes "Building A Site Tutorial"

Part II of the Midgard manual titled "User Guide" has been updated to
include Dariusz Debowczyk's "Building A Basic Site" tutorial. The tutorial
is a step-by-step guide to building a site. The tutorial does not cover
advanced features or design "The site only for demonstration purposes so
we won't bother it's design
nor advanced functionality," said Debowczyk. "We assume you know HTML and
at least basics of web page creation. Some knowledge about website
deployment on a
  server (using FTP) is also required."

The tutorial is located at:
http://www.midgard-project.org/manual/basicdevel.html 

----------------------------

SiteGroup Bug Demonstrated, Patched During IRC Session

On Monday May, 15, 2000 Emiliano Heyns, SiteGroups programmer, and I, Ron
Parker, SiteGroups editor in chief, used our newly created Internet Relay
Chat (IRC) server to uncover a bug which has been hampering the
documentation effort for SiteGroups. After a couple weeks of struggling
with the problem, I was able to demonstrate it and Emile wrote the fix
within 30 minutes. 

There has been some interest in having a chat forum for Midgard developers
and users, so Emile built an IRC server which is being hosted by
Mi-Recordz. The first session where we worked on SiteGroups proved
effective and has made the effort a success.

We're inviting everyone that's interested in Midgard to use server:
"irc.mi-recordz.com" channel: "#midgard" for any Midgard activities
including social interaction amongst our group.

To use IRC you'll have to install a client application. There's an
abundance of IRC client applications available. A quick search at
http://linuxberg.vegasys.net/ for keywords "irc clients" produces a list
of six applications that can be downloaded from those servers. There are
many IRC clients available.

----------------------------

Henry Bergius, Midgard developer and user, has begun redesigning the
midgard-project.org website to improve ease of use. "The current
architecture of our site is rather confusing," said Bergius. "I'm planning
to do a redesign of the site this month, and I'll try to rearrange the
contents."

The thread for this topic can be found at:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=95798146500002&w=2&r=1

----------------------------

============================
============================

About Midgard

Midgard is a freely-available Web application 
development and publishing platform based on 
the popular PHP scripting language. It is an 
Open Source development project, giving you the 
freedom to create your solutions in an open 
environment. Midgard is the tool for creating, 
modifying and maintaining dynamic 
database-enabled web services.

  -> http://www.midgard-project.org

----------------------------

About MWS

The Midgard Weekly Summary is a newsletter 
for the Midgard user and developer community.

The MWS is currently being distributed in
following mediums:

 -The Midgard Project's Web site
   -> http://www.midgard-project.org

 -Linux Weekly News
   -> http://www.lwn.net

 -Linux Today
   -> http://www.linuxtoday.com

 -Linux Developer's Network
   -> http://linuxdev.net

 -LinuxProgramming
   -> http://www.linuxprogramming.com

 -Midgard mailing list

If you would like to release it elsewhere,
please contact Henri Bergius 
(Henri.Bergius@iki.fi).

Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can 
be found archived at the Midgard web site.
  -> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html

============================

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