Re: [GNUnet-developers] RE: gnunet_java_gui-1.00.tar.gz

[Krista Bennett]

Jan Marco Alkema hath spoken thusly on Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 08:56:28AM -0800:
> 
> >What is the license of Cdfoon?
> 
> I don?t think CMG is happy I (we) use the source code of them. If you do a
> lot of improvement rounds on the code it will not look on the initial source
> code of CMG.
> 
> Note: CMG has used a zip/upzip routine for the data of a German developer
> without letting hem known. I mine opinion "everyone excepts ..." uses code
> from someone else.

Jan Marco:

Forgive the tone of this e-mail, but I'm rather serious about the point 
I'm making.

I'm still not sure what you intend with the GUI (see previous e-mails), 
and I have the distinct feeling you may well be reinventing wheels, but 
that isn't the point here. 

I'm definitely *not happy* with the idea of using someone else's code
without license, even if you think it will not "look like" their code 
later. If this is proprietary code, we have no business taking it. Even 
if CMG has allegedly taken someone else's code without asking, that 
doesn't give us license to do the same. (What you do with it outside of 
GNUnet is of course your concern :)

Writing a Java GUI interface, if your intent is only to replace the
current gtk GUI, is not so difficult that we need to take code without
permission;  furthermore, since I still have no idea why you see the need
to write this Java GUI, the effort makes even less sense to me. Even if
there is a necessity here I'm missing, it does not seem to me that there
is any reason to take this other code; if the reason you're doing this is
because you want preexisting Java Swing code to work from, I can get you
the old Java GUI source if it isn't in the current anonymous CVS tarball.  
Taking someone else's code without license is just asking for legal
trouble and license problems. We don't want those.

Christian and I chatted on the phone last night and neither one of us can
quite figure out why one would write a GUI with the goal of cross-platform
accessibility when the fact remains that even with a GUI that runs on (for
example) Windows right now, you still won't be able to *run* GNUnet on
Windows. For this, the core must be working on that particular platform,
and the core doesn't have anything to do with the GUI. You are of course
free to write any GUI you want, but it will still only run on the existing
systems to which GNUnet is ported.

If there is something I'm misunderstanding here, please feel free to 
clarify (private e-mail in Dutch is fine if it's me misunderstanding your 
English :), but I'm not sure what the goal of the effort is here.

> Mine suggestion:
> 
> I rewrite the white part. Change in the input/search window ?woonplaats? to
> ?keyword?.
> 
> Change in the output window :
> ?naam? to ?filename?;
> ?straat? to ?MD5?;
> ?postcode/woonplaats? to ?CRC?;
> ?telefoonnummer? to ?gnunet Hash code?.

Again, as far as interface code, we already have existing Java source 
lying around that did this much. The work would be to separate it from the 
old request manager code, I think, but in terms of the Swing interfaces 
(which seems to be what you're concentrating on), the code is already in 
existence. If your goal is to provide a Java GUI interface in addition to 
the gtk one, I'll be happy to find the old code and give it to you (I 
won't have time to walk you through it).

I think Nagy's comment is indicative of the sense most of us are getting
from your current e-mails; this probably isn't your intent, but it kind of
sounds like you're planning to do a lot of things just because they can be
done. Why decompile someone else's code?  Of course one *can* decompile
it... that's pretty trivial... but why bother? If this is just a way to
get around writing source code we could fairly easily write ourselves (and
even if not, could obtain from some other GPL-licensed source), it seems
to me to be a really bad idea.

On a completely different note, having multiple languages available for 
the interface is fine, especially if that's all it will take to get 
your mom using it ;) Getting my mom to use GNUnet would probably involve 
the use of a crowbar and an expensive labotomy :)

I'm sorry if this message sounds sort of stern and grumpy; I don't care
what code consenting adults write or use in the comfort of their own
homes, but IMHO we don't want to sanction the association of illicit
proprietary code with the project. I'm not the GPL/open source expert
here, but I'm pretty sure the consensus among the core developers is to
keep the core project kosher.

- K

-- 
***********************************************************************
Krista Bennett                               address@hidden
Graduate Student
Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics
Purdue University

         If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit.         
             There's no use being a damn fool about it.
                           -- W.C. Fields