Re: Concerning 'Arabic Conjugator'

[Youcef Rabah Rahal <rahal at arabeyes dot org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Salam,

On Sunday 09 May 2004 23:12, Abdulaziz Al-Arfaj wrote:

[...]

> At the risk of sounding like an incredibly dumb
> person, I don't know "what" license this will be under
> except that he doesn't mind _what_ I do with the code.
> His exact words were that I am "free to do what I want
> with the code or put my name on it if I wish". So if
> it is going to be GPLed I think we can GPL it
> ourselves, unless you want written document from the
> author confessing he releases the code to us.
>
> Here is the really dumb part, how do you GPL something
> exactly? I've never read the terms of GPL.

Then you might want to document yourself ;) Either you google about GPL and 
other free licenses, or you pick any GPLed program (look at Arabeyes projects 
on CVS for example, and search for LICENSE or COPYING files. Bayani has one 
BTW). As for releasing something under GPL, there's nothing special to do 
really, except including the LICENSE file in the release and telling the 
World (through the README file) that your program is GPLed and that they 
should read the corresponding file ;)

I think it would be wise to ask for such a written document or something from 
the original author in order to avoid any copyright issues. I'm not sure 
about that so maybe others have better ideas ??

> AFAIK, he isn't working on the project anymore. So as
> for who will be working on the project, I'll
> contribute as much as I can, but if you really want
> this extremely small project to take off, you will
> have to make someone else the maintainer. Someone with
> more programming expertise than a few courses in
> introductory programming :)

It depends on what you mean by 'taking off'... I don't think that we are in a 
real hurry to see 'Conjugator' working ;)). I'd rather see someone with no 
development experience taking the time (a few months or more if need be) to 
learn and then achieve something good than someone with already a good 
experience doing that in a few weeks. Thus we would have one more experienced 
developer, something which is very needed.

So, I encourage you to take the responsability of this project, take your time 
to learn and ask the more experienced developers (who will be very happy to 
give a hand).

On a side note, it's not impossible that Arabeyes.org will transform slowly in 
the future (mid to long term) into a 'development school' as proposed by M. 
Elzubeir more than a year ago. This was not discussed thoroughly nor planned 
seriously yet, so it's just an idea for now, but I think that you being 
conjugator's maintainer fits perfectly in this perspective.

So, are the issues of the license and the maintainer fixed ? Let's know when 
you come to a decision.

Regards,

- -- 
Youcef R. Rahal
Arabeyes.org
http://www.arabeyes.org/~rahal
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFAnrLoHDRR6Cd0eSYRAqJsAJoDL9wdzZDWwEY7chtwjCy+QEL4WgCePOa7
9a1h1RowGnTpzfZJz7YxAIM=
=ZLxs
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----