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Features: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice
Posted by Raul Ruiz on Friday, February 28 @ 10:37:53 EST Copyright

Lawmeme operates its website using PHP-Nuke, a GNU/GPL application used to maintain blogs. Ever since our inception, Lawmeme has used PHP-Nuke (since version 5) because it is rich in features, fast, and supported by the open-source community. However, some PHP-Nuke users and the author appear to have become angry at Lawmeme because we have removed a copyright notice from the footer of the page template.

PHP-Nuke's default setting is to display the following notice at the bottom of each page that it generates:

Web site engine's code is Copyright © 2002 by PHP-Nuke. All Rights Reserved. PHP-Nuke is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license.
This default setting wasn't always so. When Lawmeme originally used PHP-Nuke, the footer was fully customizable via the administrator's interface. Naturally, we changed the footer to meet our site's needs. As PHP-Nuke was found to have numerous cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, we began to upgrade to the most recent versions of PHP-Nuke. With every upgrade came new features, and after heavily modifying PHP-Nuke's code to fit our needs, some of the upgrade scripts didn't work correctly. In fact, the most recent upgrade, where configuration settings are stored in a database, never copied the copyright statement.

Read on for more details.



Although the copyright was never copied into the database, I thought it was only fair to give the author of PHP-Nuke his share for the hard work that he has put into this application. Instead of making the copyright notice appear on the footer of every single page created, I chose to have the copyright notice printed in the HTML source code only as an HTML comment. In doing so, the datastream that users receive contains the copyright notice but it does not alter Lawmeme's page layout. If users wish to view the copyright notice, they can view the HTML source code for a given page.

I for one find the insistance on having a copyright notice displayed on every page to be quite silly. The reason that sites utilize PHP-Nuke is because it is a great program that allows rapid content deployment. That being said, I don't think it is right to splash copyright notices on pages. I do believe it is correct to place copyright notices in the source code of the program or even display the copyright when the program first loads up. Forcing a copyright notice to display on every page created with the program is akin to having Microsoft Word append its copyright information to every page you print, or having the Apache webserver append its copyright notice to every request.

I believe the resolution to this problem is best found in the GPL. Section 2(c) of said license is reproduced below:

(2) c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
PHP-Nuke is not an entirely interactive program. For example, the default page requires no user input for it to run properly, simply an HTTP request to Apache. Rather, it is a batch program. Other pages do, such as commenting on articles. While these pages are interactive in order for them to run, Lawmeme does print, though not display (notice the 'or' conditional in the clause), the copyright notice.

No one is denying that PHP-Nuke's author owns the copyright to his content engine, nor is there denial of the hard work and effort put into creating PHP-Nuke. We do, however, regret the decision by PHP-Nuke.org to publish a story about Lawmeme's removal of the copyright statement without inquiring into why that has happened.

 
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Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 11:07:31 EST
You're totaly wrong.
Pages display requires "user interaction" (clicks), and PHP-Nuke 6.0 (the version you're using stores the copyright in the database and the lines you removed expresely have the message that you can't remove them.

Anyway, read this article which includes the final answer to this topic from the Free Software Foundation people.


[ Reply to This ]


Splitting hairs (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 11:23:05 EST
Maybe because this is a law site, the letter of the law is being debated rather than the spirit. The intention of PHP-Nuke's request is that people who visit pages generated using the software can see readily what created them. That's on the front, inside, and anywhere else (if that makes any sense.) It seems a small price to pay -- a few words in the footer -- for access to such a fine CMS.

let's go with the spirit, Yale. Celebrate the software.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 1)
by starbuck on Friday, February 28 @ 12:57:21 EST
(User Info | Send a Message)
The grounds for your argument against placing the copyright seem to be primarily based on aesthetics. That's a pretty weak argument even considering the currently bloated footer. You point to a single definition for the term "Interactive" without making any attempt to confirm that the referenced definition was either the basis of clause 2(c) or agrees with common usage. Again, VERY weak basis of argument. There appears to have been no attempt to survey other sites that use PHPNuke to see if there is a consensus opinion on the propriety of removing the copyright line.

Perhaps LawMeme should get it's head out of the law books for a few minutes and think in terms of community, reputation, cooperation. Adding the copyright line seems like a small price to pay when balanced against the negative publicity and feelings generated.

As for the aesthetics of your footer. Jeez, it's at the bottom of damn page. Big deal.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 13:34:19 EST
I agree completely. You dont see "This is an Apache Web server" on everypage. Announcing that you are Nuke is just begging to be hacked.

Lastly, Post Nuke doesnt require the footer? Why? Because looks ARE everything to a webmaster. I fyou havent figured this out yet then your website obviously must be ugly.

I also concur with his reading of the GPL, and people should be carefull about printing issues or spamming websites that remove it. LIBEL is a prosecutable offense FB.


[ Reply to This ]


Microsoftish EULA nonsense... (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 14:06:58 EST
I should be able to RUN the code however I want. I only need permission from the author if I want to COPY or DISTRIBUTE the code.

Next thing you know the PHP-NUKE author will start invoking the DMCA.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 14:42:23 EST
Opensourcecms is a great spot to start looking for a replacement to your buggy cms. There are many with the same features that aren't authored/maintained by jerks.
The conversion might take a bit of work, but it's probably worth it. Nuke is broken.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 15:16:06 EST
It sounds to me like 2c of the GPL requires that when
programs emit copyright notices they must all emit a
statement about warranty or lack there-of. PHP-Nuke
does not do that. So is it violating the GPL itself?

Myself, I see how often PHP-Nuke appears in bugtraq
and would avoid it like the plague.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 21:45:38 EST
In my Php-Nuke site I have 30+ modules and blocks. I also have dozens upon dozens of fixes and modifications to the code that I have gotten from various places such as Nukecops, a multitude of forums, or have produced myself.

Should I have a copyright notice for each and every piece of code that I have used " in the spirit of community"? If so, I'd have several extra pages of text and links at the bottom of each and every page. The idea is ridiculous!
Instead I use an "About us" page where I acknowledge everyone from FB to Nukecops to Thatware and to every other author who has in some way contributed to my site. But even that is more that I "have" to do.

If I want to give credit to the person who made it all possible on each and every page I still wouldn't be giving credit to PhpNuke, I'd have to give the credit to David Norman and Thatware.org
Remember, Php-Nuke itself is not an original program, it is based off of the work of many other people. As is my site. As is this site. And no one person deserves more credit for the totality of my site than anyone else. PhpNuke is great not because of the work of FB, but because of the work of the whole community. If only the core components of PhpNuke were judged against other CMS systems, it would fall far, far short of many of the alternatives. It's the modules, blocks, hacks, themes, and other support offered by 3rd parties that make it worth using. Acknowledging PhpNuke in a fashion above the contributions of the people who make the system truly worth using seems a smack in the face of all those 3rd parties to me. I prefer to ackowledge each contributer equally and in the same matter.
For FB to demand more from people seems very arrogant. If he wants a differnt set of rules for others than he wants to follow he should dump the GPL, hire a lawyer, and draft his own license for PhpNuke.

That's the downside of using the GPL for your programs, you cannot add to it to suit your wishes. Especially if you don't submit to the same policies.
The GPL is a legal document, it's not an opinion piece and by the letter of the GPL this site and any other site that removes the displayed copyright is fully within their rights to do so as long as the copyright notice remains within the code. Otherwise, phpnuke is in violation of their inturpretation of the GPL by not displaying the Thatware, PHP, and MySQL copyright notices on pages output by it.

To make it simple, either this site AND phpnuke are both violating the GPL, or neither is. It can't be had both ways.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, February 28 @ 22:57:48 EST
You are all wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!

Changing the copyright notice is not covered by the GPL. Removing the line in the footer.php isn't either but that's a moot point.

All you have to do is change the contents of the copyright field within the nuke_config table in the database. And the contents of the Nuke database are not covered by the GPL as database contents are not a program, they are data.

As for Nuke being interactive or not, here's the definition of interactive:
"Accepting input from a human. Interactive computer systems are programs that allow users to enter data or commands. Most popular programs, such as word processors and spreadsheet applications, are interactive.
A non-interactive program is one that, when started, continues without requiring human contact. A compiler is a non-interactive program, as are all batch processing applications. "

Nuke is not interacted with by the user in any way. All output is passed to PHP and compiled into HTML code. PHP is responsible for all output, not Nuke. So making Nuke output something other than is the default is perfectly allowable (otherwise every mod, hack, module, block, and theme would violate the GPL).
In fact, if you have your permissions set correctly, it should be impossible for a user to interact with any part of Nuke. Being uninteractive is the proper set up for Nuke. The users interact with your webserver and their web browser, not Nuke. If they click a link they are not interacting with Nuke, they are interacting with their web browser, which then sends a request to your webserver, which then calls PHP, which then starts the Nuke script. Nuke then might interact with MySQL and process the result or it could skip straight to interacting with PHP which will then send it's output to the webserver which will then pass PHP's output onto the users Webbrowser so the user can then read it.
At no point does Nuke require human contact after it has begun to run. It never directly accepts user input from a humen. It accepts all it's input from MySQl, PHP, or the webserver. In essense, it is just a compiler, it takes data, process it, and spits it out to another application when then further processes it. And as defined, a compiler is not an interactive program. Which once again makes 2c moot.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 03:48:37 EST
I run a Postnuke site, and I keep their footer there. It is a small price to pay for a FREE script that has thousands of development hours into it.

This coversation will be like shoveling the walk while it's still snowing. The law weenies will try to bamboozle everyone with confusing terminology and any lame excuse they can, thats what they are trained to do.

They get a completely free web site system and complain about it, but still use it. Someone mentioned that Nuke is broke.. well any GNU/GPL software is never broke, it is always under development though.

what a bunch of weenies

Johnny


[ Reply to This ]


Another Overreaching FSF Interpretation (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 09:09:04 EST
From my reading of clause 2c, if Nuke prints a copyright notice to the apche logs to the effect that it has been started, then the clasue has been fufilled.

Remember than ambiguous tems in a contract of adhesion are interpreted against the drafting party.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 10:16:24 EST
This is your huge copy rite, which appears at the bottom of this page

Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die
All stories, comments and submissions copyright their respective posters.
Everything Else Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
You can syndicate our news using backend.php

Surely you can shorten this and include a one liner such as 'powered by php nuke'!






[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 10:46:04 EST
Your so full of crapola you even removed the version # from the statistics. Are you telling us that was part of the same upgrade error?
Yale where covering your arse is job one! This is just another example of the complete lack of moral character in corporate america.



[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 12:52:59 EST
Just add a little line to the end of the footer at the bottom of this page that says powered by php nuke

Web site engine's code is Copyright © 2002 by PHP-Nuke. All Rights Reserved. PHP-Nuke is Free
Software released under the GNU/GPL


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 17:15:34 EST
Why don't the administrators of this site just respect the authors request? It's not a hard thing to do. It's a simple request from a man who has put a LOT of work into this system. Surely *respect* is something that is taught in college nowdays?

Rob


[ Reply to This ]


And this is a LAW site? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 19:21:23 EST
What a shame... fun though, can't stop laugh, just as corrupt and false as one might think.

I think the word(s) is L.O.L.


[ Reply to This ]


And this is a LAW site? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 19:21:39 EST
What a shame... fun though, can't stop laugh, just as corrupt and false as one might think.

I think the word(s) is L.O.L.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 01 @ 23:06:55 EST
Is it just me, or do the last several anonymous postings here all have a certain similarity of style, also shared by postings on the PHP-Nuke site?


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 02 @ 02:18:41 EST
To those who point to the article on PHP-Nuke and exclaim, "But the FSF said so!" Guess what; just because one guy "said so" in an email doesn't make it part of the license. It is one person's opinion of the interpretation of an exceptionally vague part of the license. You can bet he's also not going to be the judge overseeing the suit (should it come to court.)

As has already been pointed out - ambiguous tems in a contract of adhesion are interpreted against the drafting party.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 02 @ 08:49:39 EST
its funny how it takes a huge article to "excuse" the fact that you guys had ripped off phpnuke. a law website...funny aint it?

also, if it doesn't concern you and "how silly a footer is on each page," then why is your footer so important? you did not write the code.

i bet most of your hits are from this SHAME you had brought upon yourself...

the simple fact that you took someone's software and made it your own is silly in itself...you may as well make internet explorer display "brought to you by LawMeme Explorer" in the title.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 02 @ 10:59:48 EST
What an A$$HOLE, Raul.

It is YOU who decided to use the phpNuke software. You did so of your own free choice. You could have paid $1000s to buy some CMS which could allow you to have any footer of your chosing. But instead you CHOSE this one.

In doing so , you now have NO CHOICE but to accept the terms imposed on you by the author. That you think it is overkill to have his copyright notice on every page is IRRELEVANT. If he wants you to dance the Irish Jig for every server request, then THAT's THE TERMS. If you don't like it or want to modify the terms, ask the author to agree or UNINSTALL IT. It's pretty simple to any law abiding netizen.

What a jerk. No wonder the world thinks lawyers are shmucks for bending rules to suit their self serving aims.

Have a nice day.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 02 @ 11:51:00 EST
PHP-Nuke claims its 'code' is a Web site engine, but is in fact data files (scripts) to an HTML generator called PHP. When PHP reads the scripts it outputs HTML documents. HTML documents are data files intended to be rendered by a user agent or browser. HTML cannot in be seen as an engine of any kind. One selling point PHP uses is that its scripts (e.g. PHP-Nuke) are never sent to user agents (browsers) and therefore cannot be seen or copied by them. It seems silly to demand end users read a copyright notice they cannot violate. The GPL license, as I understand it, refers to programs generated from source files - not scripts read by such programs. In this case, PHP must print or display the notice when it starts up. But the scripts it reads (e.g. PHP-Nuke) are not covered by this GPL clause. HTML authors use a meta tag to copyright their documents. The PHP-Nuke scripts print exactly the same copyright tag claiming the user or owner of PHP-Nuke (not PHP-Nuke's author) holds the copyright to the HTML Document. If PHP-Nuke acknowledges the user as the HTML document's author and copyright holder, then the author has the right to edit the documents, including removing all notices that do not affect the end user. PHP is not run interactively. All user commands are appended to the PHP-Nuke scripts and PHP runs once through for every request. The user interaction is between the browser and web server. Perl, Java, tcl, and PHP are all classified as interpreters, but Java is a client-side interpreter while the others are server-side. This means Java scripts are sent to browsers and therefore do display a copyright notice. Since PHP-Nuke scripts are processed on the server-side, no copyright violation can occur on the client-side and therefore no need to print or display a copyright notice to clients. PHP-Nuke is a great portal and displaying its logo and link is a better way to credit the author(s). Copyright notices are intended to protect authors, not to acknowledge them. PHP-Nuke claims removing the copyright notice discredits the Author, about which the GPL says nothing.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 02 @ 15:16:00 EST
your argumentation is a sham

you have been badly caught and now you have to suffer how your site is filled with annoying comments like this one


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 02 @ 22:59:24 EST
Dear Raul,

As part of the original author who developed many of PHP Nuke mods. My recommendation is for you to port PHP Nuke to others good CMS (PostNuke is one of it) out there. Else your website will be hit by many non-adult people who like to bash on people. I for example can sue FB (Francisco Burzi) by not putting a link back to my site and erasing some of the credit that suppose to be listed in the CREDIT pages.

Again PN (PostNuke) is more flexible, more open, and secure. Plus you'll get tons of support from many of us without this kind of problem. Porting easy just follow the scripts direction. You'll have your site running in no time. Furthermore if you think PHP Nuke 6.5 have tons of addditional security. Then most of them include in PN as well. Need more 3rd party references about PN? then you could visit Linux.com and search PostNuke. Check out what GPL community thinks about PN vs PHP Nuke.

regards,
King Richard
webmaster NukeAddOn.com


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 03 @ 02:15:14 EST
Get a life you all :D

PHP-Nuke is a great peice of software, I like and use it. I poersonaly found it better developed than post nuke, in many ways.

If someone decides to not use the copyright notice on the bottom of every page, that's fine with me. I chose to obey the intent of FB's request, but whatever everyone feels is right for their site.

It is not like they are claiming that they built/deisgned it from the ground up, although there should at least be something saying that it is powered by nuke, as not everyone can pick out what is and isn't a nuke site.

Of cource, if you feel it is right to go slash the tires on your neighbors car, that is a diffrent matter ;)

I would suggest a text link in the footer, but that is IMHO.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 03 @ 04:09:52 EST
Why cant you just walk upright like a damn human and put the copyright on there? Even if you dont wnt it, and you found what you think is some legal way around "having to do it".... Just do the decent thing, and give some credit where credit is due. Some people may come to this site... Like how it looks, and want to use the code themselves, if you had it, with the link, they could easilly grab the code, all this just for doing the right thing.
You are letting someone elses hard work go down the drain, just to prove some legal dogshit, when you are, in the minds of many, ripping off code. Just give the man some damn credit.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 1)
by KingRichard on Monday, March 03 @ 07:08:19 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.nukeaddon.com
Raul,

Move forward! Please ignore this kind of request because I think you are right all the way. Many commented, but did they understand what is they are talking about? If you examine the letter reply by the GNU is because it never mention about a banner embeded in the scripts. Its 100% GPL violation, if they know that FB erase those banner that are embeded by ThatWare team, on top of it FB did not put any link back to Them. So who is the culprit? You tell me my friends? Did I lied? Check out the history behind PHP Nuke guys! I rest my case...


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 03 @ 14:56:42 EST
Switch to PostNuke.... its worth it to get away from the trouble...


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PostNuke = No Hassles (Score: 1)
by ZenCMS on Monday, March 03 @ 16:23:21 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.pnapi.com
I agree. PostNuke is easier to Install, has better themeing options, and an unbeatable selection of modules.

Xanthia Theme Engine [pnapi.com]: http://pnapi.com
ContentExpess Content management [pn.arising.net]: http://pn.arising.net/ce/
Static Content Management [postnuke.wunderlin.net]: http://postnuke.wunderlin.net
PostCalendar [postcalendar.tv]: http://postcalendar.tv/
FormExpress Forms Generator [www.stutchbury.net]: http://www.stutchbury.net
pnAddressBook (Palm Style): http://smiatek.com
LDAP [www.olos.nl]: http://www.olos.nl
NukeOWL [www.sitescandinavia.net]: http://www.sitescandinavia.net
PNphpBB2 [www.itsallbutstraw.com]: http://www.itsallbutstraw.com


===========================================
Gregory Remington | Marketing R&D | Xanthia Development
===========================================


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 1, Insighful)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 03 @ 16:30:52 EST
This says it all, from the beginning of the GPL:

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

LawMeme is not distributing the product, so it's obvious it's not a problem!


[ Reply to This ]


The Bottom Line (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 03 @ 21:35:45 EST
You should all quit pissing and moaning about his footer.

Because I know how you all love to get technical and all Hows this, take your PHP-Nuke site and either switch to PostNuke becuase it's better or, fork your PHP-Nuke to whatever and the hell you want to call it and don't ever distribute it.

Then FB can't complain, why becuase you can fork :)


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 03 @ 22:06:22 EST
Keep up the fight Raul. FB has a HUGE ego, really just wants to make a buck (but he's going about it all wrong), and has legions of kids using his program to build videogame sites. Those standing up for him right now are probably these same "kiddies".

It's this attitude that forces people to go looking for other options. It's been almost 2 years now since I stopped using phpNuke, and it was because of this attitude and the closed development that myself, and countless others migrated to something else.

Postnuke is the way to go my friend. The masses can't be wrong about that one.

http://www.linuxlookup.com/html/articles/cms.html

http://www.linuxlookup.com/html/articles/cms_results.html


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 04 @ 01:53:55 EST
Give phpnuke the arse and grab postnuke - it's a lot better and at least you won't have to put up with that power freak...


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 04 @ 05:48:36 EST
My feeling is that the home page (as every other) should reflect the needs of the owner

Nevertheless we MUST " ...give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar...". I like very much the idea (appeared in the ENVOLUTION CMS) to have a link to a CREDIT page, where all copyrights are listed. ...And sometime recognise the very hard work of developers and give them donations.... to ensure continuity in their precious tasks

[Franco]


[ Reply to This ]


Shame on You (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 04 @ 13:28:03 EST
It's simple -- give credit where credit is due. Your using a program that someone spent a lot of time developing. A few words of text along the lines of "Powered by PHP-Nuke" is not an unreasonable request. Shame on you.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 04 @ 15:12:05 EST
Now I am no big city lawyer but I think its not very nice to remove the copyright notice on the pages because of the extra hard work the PHP-Nuke community did on the product. I just think it would be very nice (and fair) that you put the copyright where it belongs.


[ Reply to This ]


History Lesson: Thatware.org (Score: 1)
by ZenCMS on Tuesday, March 04 @ 19:00:19 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.pnapi.com
Mr. Burzi's is not the original aurthor of PHPNuke, David Norman is.

Once a GPL application is released or Forked you can not go gack and modify the original license, you can only add to it. PHPNuke is a Fork of Thatware.

PHPNuke is built on Thatware and Thatware does not require a PHPNuke copyright notice. Neither do all the PHPNuke Forks...

Without Thatware there would be no PHPNuke, PostNuke, Envolution, Xoops or Xaraya.

Name: David Norman
Homepage: http://thatware.org

Notes: I'm a student at a University of Texas campus. I mold PHP. I take interest in Linux, BSDs, and advocate Open Source both on my website and at school to friends and professors. I wrote a Slash copy in PHP called Thatware. It is my biggest project to date resulting in the creation of PHP-Nuke (a Thatware fork) and all of its forks.

Recently I've spent time going back and learning more about server administration so that I can have a better understanding about how certain things work and build an even more successful user interface thingie of my creative choosing.

My tool: Athlon XP 1800+, 384 mb PC133 ram, ATA/100 30gb
Email (PGP/GPG keys): deekayen -[at]- deekayen -[dot]- net



===================================================
Gregory Remington | Marketing R&D | Xanthia Development
===================================================


[ Reply to This ]


Understanding Copyright (Score: 1)
by ZenCMS on Wednesday, March 05 @ 11:42:17 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.pnapi.com
Understanding Copyright
By rps, Section Diaries
Posted on Tue Mar 4th, 2003 at 01:25:21 GMT

Recently it has come to my attention that very few people who use Copyright-- actually understand it.

After dicussing it with some people, I found that most people simply copy notices that they have seen elseware to make their work look more "professional". Seeing as the GNU GPL, and Copyleft, gain their strength through Copyright, it may be a good idea to create a Copyright How-to. So I'll attempt to start one here.




Understanding Copyright
By Ray P. Soucy
What most people don't understand about copyright is that there are two major types of copyright restrictions. You can hold a registered copyright (which is registered with the United States Library of Congress) or you can hold a commons copyright. A commons copyright is automatic. You simply need to provide a notice.

There are some key things to consider when applying a copyright notice however. A registed copyright notice is alredy registerd, so it can, and often is, be a little shorter. For a commons copyright to hold it's weight legaly though, you must create a complete notice.


The first major mistake I see with copyright notices, is the syntax of the notice itself. You must begin a copyright notice with one of the following:

©
(C)
Copyright
Copr.
Any other variations are incorrect (e.g. copyright (c)et. al.). It is unwriten in the copyright laws that you should use both the word "Copyright" followed by the symbol, but previous court cases have shown that the use of the word prepended to the symbol (the first time it is used) will prevent any misunderstanding or misinturpritation of the mark.

Following the mark, the year-date of the first publication must be present. This is not a norm, it is the law. Following the date must be the legal identity of the copyright holder. This can either be an individual, or a corporation.


For example; my copyright notice would look like this:

Copyright (C) 2003, Ray P. Soucy

This would be fine, except for the fact that I do not list which "Ray P. Soucy" I speak of. For any individual, you should put the address of residence following the name of the holder, the address can be shortened to simply the city and state if you are sure that you are the only one residing there. For corporations, unless you are federally registered, you must include the state, it is sometimes also useful to list the city, but not necessairy since only one corporation can exsist under a given name in a single state.


So the notice should be as follows:

Copyright © 2003, Ray P. Soucy, Frenchville, ME.

And for a corporation:

Copyright © 2003, Free Software Foundation, Inc., Boston, MA.

The second major mistake that people make when writing copyright notices is to list ranges of dates. One of my friends commented to me regarding this discussion that there are certain software products that list copyright dates as "1984-2006" right now. Obviously this is nonsence, as we are only in 2003, but the muiti-billion dollar corporation that uses notices like this help spread a misconception with copyright.

Copyright currently lasts for 70 years after the death of the last living author. (I wont get into the discussion on why this "limited time" of potentially 150 years is ludicrious, but as you can see, it's certainly longer than it's origional intension.). When listing a copyright notice, the laws say you must list the first year that the work was published. If the work has been modified, you can simply treat the modified work as a seperate work completely and only list the most recent date of copyright; however, if the work is under the same title, a webpage for example, and is updated each year, you must list the year

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Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 05 @ 13:28:58 EST
Releasing code under the GPL means abiding by the wide scope of GPL license. The problem here is the author of PHPNuke wants to force more laws than GPL allows. The author does not agree with GPL, and this bullying and aggression is the result?

I for one would not touch PHPNuke with a bargepole, and would be very hurt at all this.

I hope the authors of this site change to another CMS like PostNuke, they abide by GPL and are not out to make money with clubs and benefits for fee-payers


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 08 @ 01:27:37 EST
Hi pples,

the wonder of Open Source and GPL is that every developers get their fare bits of credit.

I have been contributing to the Opensource for quite a few years and most of my source is released as GPL. I see that Freedom is what end-user wanted and credit is what developers wanted so by using GPL we attain both.

Therefore, any end-users used of such software should have the freedom to customize the look and feel to their required taste and also acknowledge the developers hardwork by giving credit on their site in way the end-user is comfortable. After all credit is always stated embedded in the source too.

For example, if you uses linux and gedit to do some text. You as a end user would not want that after saving your composition the software gedit add a footer or sort of in your text file isn't it.

To conclude, i just hope that phpnuke should allows end-users, whom uses it, freedom to build a professional website and these users should show the credit to phpnuke in a section if not at the footer.

Last but not least OpenSource Developers needs motivation as well right :P


[ Reply to This ]


Has your huge footer got bigger recently? (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, March 10 @ 07:57:08 EST
Hello little law people!



[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, March 14 @ 11:22:33 EST
A link at the bottom of the page is not a copyright notice, it's an advertisement. A copyright contains text only, not HTML.

As an advertisement, why should phpnuke be allowed to offset their cost of advertising by forcing another site to consume additional bandwidth (no matter how small the bandwidth).

Advertising cost is certainly NOT covered by GPL! That's why all the other GPL software REQUESTS links back to the author's site. By forcing advertising, you are actually charging for your services. This violates the GPL.

For everyone asking why lawmeme doesn't "do the right thing", maybe they should be asking phpnuke to "do the right thing" like all the other GPL software does, and REQUEST that a link be provided.


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Wednesday, March 19 @ 12:22:54 EST
ugh ... another GPL problem glitch. Boy I just love it.

I remember the big stink about FB using thatware and not giving the orginal author credit. Why is FB (I haven't been to phpnuke in literally 2 years) and this rowdy group causing a ruckous anyway? Ohhh, wasn't thatware based on something else? Like slashdot? ughhh, my memory fails me.

Why doesn't phpnuke just do what phpBB ended up doing? No support for No link. I posted at the time asking for clarification on the GPL -- I had my links showing at that time when I was thinking of using phpBB -- and was treated as a stinky skunk much like Raul is now.

Why don't you nah sayers think about it? All Raul has to do is say that this is using LawmemCMS. Done deal. phpnuke would now have another fork. But NO he just didn't add a link ... anybody think that this could be just a reasearch paper topic, goading you all nah sayers into provinding better arguments?

I'm sorry but until the courts have settled this type of problem officially, I think that this whole issue is moot or even mu.

I'm behind Raul on this issue 99% -- 1% thinking that a link within a barch of links occupying a good 5th of my screen would be nice ... but still that link should be placed there on the users own accord not because somebody or some group thinks that person should. heck ... would you want to have (edited by Adobe photoshop) on every image you create?

Long live opensource !!!


(C) 2003 moyashi, Japan --- reproduction prohibited :p

Now will that work?


[ Reply to This ]


Re: PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, March 27 @ 04:42:05 EST
You all are missing a HUGE ISSUE and perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT issue to 99% of people that every view any NUKE site!

Us 99% often see a site they immediately like or do not like and after scanning the loaded screen scross past everything else to the bottom to find out what the heck kind of program, if at all available to others, it is!

When you take this away you are frustrating most people and hindering many new sites being created from people that love what they see but never see it again and don't happen to be searching for hours through cms programs.

just my 2 cents...
--Kiersten


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