October 2003 - Inkscape Devel

Copyright assignment policy
by Bryce Harrington 30 Oct '03

30 Oct '03

It is a common misconception that one should list as copyright holder for docs, sourcecode, etc. the name of the project, unless it is an actual legal entity. Obviously, 99% of open source projects aren't legal entities. Likewise, Inkscape isn't and probably won't be a legal entity, so can't hold copyright. Assigning copyright of something to a non-legal entity invalidates it. If there would ever happen to be any question of copyright, this would make it difficult to chase down who really holds the copyright. So ironically by trying to do something nice for the project it could cause more problems than it solves. Thank god that this is almost never ever an issue since open source projects rarely get into legal troubles. Instead, list yourself as the author and copyright holder for things you make, and make sure to declare it GPL'd. (If you wish, you can dual license with yourself and Inkscape if for some reason you're optimistic that one day someone will bother to file the papers to make it a legal entity.) Also take care to provide good contact info so folks can track you down 10 years from now if, for instance, they needed to assign you a bunch of stock options or something. ;-) Bryce

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hydra is in CVS
by MenTaLguY 30 Oct '03

30 Oct '03

Just a quick note to let you guys know I've imported Hydra into CVS as module 'inkscape'. -mental

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DNS and other things
by MenTaLguY 29 Oct '03

29 Oct '03

I've finished twiddling DNS for inkscape.org to point at our SF webspace, I think, though it'll take a while for things to settle down and propagate. I've also added email aliases @inkscape.org for each of the currently added developers (y'all let me know if you object). Also, I'd like to congratulate bryce on his perennial state of being-on-the-ball with this mailing list thing and getting more folks added, so I didn't have to. ^_^ Next up is probably getting the goodies in CVS. I'm strongly in favor of labeling the Sodipodi fork "hydra", but I'm not sure what to call the piece of code I'm working on. I'd originally been thinking "hercules", but maybe just "inkscape" is fine? Also, is anyone any good with Doxygen? I'd like to start looking into that for both codebases... -mental

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"Invariants"
by Bryce Harrington 29 Oct '03

29 Oct '03

The book "Open Source Development with CVS" is IMHO the best source of good, solid advice about starting and running open source projects. (The odd numbered chapters talk about cvs, the even ones about open source dev.) For starting a new project one of the key things it recommends is to choose the "Invariants" for the project. That is to say, certain base assumptions that define with some specificity what the project will be (and, on the flip side, what it _won't_ be.) This is important because it helps potential users and developers in setting their expectations and determining if the project is worth their effort. Typical invariants would be file formats, programming languages, and key underlying libraries. Processes and policies could also be invariants if they would play a large role in how decisions are made in the project. The trick is to select specific enough invariants to make it easy to pigeon-hole the project, without painting yourself into a corner. Typical mistakes would be picking a programming language you're not totally familiar with, or a new library that you haven't discovered its quirks yet, or selecting hardware performance criteria that make sense today but turn out to be anemic and silly when you finally hit 1.00. Based on our discussions so far, it looks like the invariants might be: * Full SVG compliance * Core coded in C/C++ * Gtk-compliant user interface * Extensible using various scripting languages * Open, community-oriented development processes * Baseline is the Sodipodi 0.32 codebase * Strives to use commonly available libraries Thoughts? More? Less? I think the first three in particular are important items to establish firmly, because they are the types of things that can get endlessly argued back and forth and back again, until months path with zero results. Establishing them as invariants allows us all to admit and agree that C and C++ suck, and lets us get down to coding in them anyway. ;-) Bryce

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Inkscape Wiki now available
by Bryce Harrington 29 Oct '03

29 Oct '03

http://inkscape.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HomePage If you've used Wiki before, have at it, you know the drill. If not, click the 'edit' link and write what comes to mind. Bryce

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frist psot
by MenTaLguY 29 Oct '03

29 Oct '03

(or not)

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Welcome!
by Bryce Harrington 28 Oct '03

28 Oct '03

First post. ;-) Bryce

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