From: "Colin-Stewart Bridge Deady" csbdeady@mythicz.u-net.com Date: 21 Nov 99 20:15:46 +0000 Subject: [KOSH] Summary 28 To: kosh-general@iconimaging.net Reply-To: kosh-general@iconimaging.net Hi all Enclosed is Summary no. 28 - at last. Apologies for the long wait. I feel I may not have done justice to a couple of the concepts present - if so please post a reply with suggested ammendments and I'll incorporate them. -Bridge ----------------------------------------------------------- http://www.mythicz.u-net.com | DT-MUD:sunsite.auc.dk:4242 Amigan | Vegan | KOSHan - "across the crocodile pond with nitroglycerine on a pogo stick" http://www.iconimaging.net/kosh/ =========================================================== 2: ksum28.txt ----------------------------------------------------------- KOSH [Kommunity Orientated Software Hardware] Summary Inclusive of Dates: 25th September 1999 to 20th November 1999 Number: 028 Mailing List: kosh-general@iconimaging.net I'm happy to receive comments on this summary (and corrections if I have made mistakes). Email me (Bridge) at kosh-scribe@mythicz.u-net.com In the mailing list these last few weeks, the following items were discussed. a) Subject: Formalising past KOSH discussions Summary of debate: It was discussed at length that there is a need to look over past debates on items relevant to KOSH and to present these in a more formal manner. One of the main reasons for this is in order to prevent information relevant to KOSH from being lost in historical records. Instead we would like to take these ideas and cement them into positive feedback for the KOSH project as a whole as an aid to providing further direction for KOSH. In order to accomplish this, it was suggested that voluntary Working Groups be organised, each of which would present a document on a selected topic - based mainly (but not exclusively) on the summaries and other documents from the various mailing lists. Alternatively a more fluid approach could be used in which each person who was interested in contributing to a document on a particular subject would hold the document for a week or two at a time, add their own ideas and correct the previous holder's mistakes (changes being discussed and agreed to by both parties), then pass it on to the next person. When passed around a turn without getting any more changes, the document would be trimmed, signed and posted on the ML where a few additional changes could take place before it is put on the website. It was suggested that working groups can on occasion be inefficient due to large numbers of people being involved. Therefore perhaps 3-6 people should be the limit per topic. A small group of KOSHans is looking into this. b) Subject: KOSH Introductory Website Summary of debate: Marcus Petersson has written some material for an introductory website to KoshOS (thanks Marcus) - if anyone has any information which would be useful for this worthy project please contact Marcus via the ML. c) Subject: Connection troubles resolved Summary of debate: Between the last summary and this one there have been a couple of instances when access to kosh-general@iconimaging.net vanished. Thanks to Jason Radford for putting the bits back in place. Certainly for the last few weeks there have been no connection problems (to my knowledge). d) Subject: GPL Summary of debate: The idea of the Gnu Public Licence was discussed in depth. It was suggested that KOSH should be put into GPL, and this received a mixed response. It was stated that distributing GPL items along with private items is OK as long as clear notices are maintained in the appropriate places. It was further stated that any software programs including or derived from GPL source must be covered by the GPL itself. That doesn't mean that whole suites would become GPL, but would mean that the relevant subsystem would. It was felt by some that GPL could be contrary to the aims of KOSH and therefore should be avoided. However there is also the LGPL or Library Gnu Public Licence which applies to libraries. This licence exist to guarantee that the user still has the ability to modify the library under LGPL but not the product using the library (although the product can be GPL). You can charge for distributing LGPL and GPL software as long as this is limited to things like covering media and postage costs for example. See http://www.gnu.org for more information on Gnu. This debate (as with many) is set to continue. e) Subject: KOSH Contacts database Summary of debate: Suggested was a contacts database for KOSH that would include all "known" KOSHans, others who have a slight interest, developers, newspapers, magazines, etc. This would be useful in two ways. Firstly (and obviously) that it would enable easy dissemination of information relevant to KOSH. Secondly it would be a tool to demonstrate that KOSH is definitely alive and well. Part of this information is available at http://www.iconimaging.net/kosh/kommunity/developers.html f) Subject: K and C Summary of debate: For those that may be wondering, "Kommunity" on the KOSH website is now "Community" due to Babelfish translation problems. KOSH is still KOSH and not COSH as a COSH involves to clubbing people. g) Subject: "KOSH UK" meet. Summary of debate: John Chandler and Greg Webb and I (Bridge Deady) seem to have become "KOSH UK" in that we are all [1mahem[0m in the UK, are thinking of KOSH at World of Amiga 2000 in the UK and we also recently took part in a KOSH Q&A session via IRC hosted at the Cologne Fair in Germany. If anyone else is in the UK (or abroad and is willing to fly over) and is interested in a "get together" sometime please let us know as this is something we are thinking of. h) Subject: User Interface Website Summary of debate: See http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm which covers examples of good and bad user interface design. i) Subject: KOSH Virtual Credits and taxation Summary of debate: A query was raised concerning tax laws in countries such as the UK and the KOSH Virtual Credits scheme. In the UK (amongst other countries presumably) virtual credits would be liable for tax but that tax would have to paid in UK pounds sterling. It was discussed that if sales are made to EC countries above a certain threshold (apr �70,000 p.a. for the UK) then the seller must register for VAT in that country. This is something to bare in mind but won't become an issue for a while yet. j) Subject: KOSH web site updated Summary of debate: The KOSH website at http://kosh.convergence.org and http://www.iconimaging,net/kosh amongst others has been updated a number of times since the last summary. Feel free to have a quick browse. k) Subject: EROS goes GPL Summary of debate: EROS have gone GPL. See: http://www.eros-os.org/ and for a discussion on this, http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/28/0151212&mode=nes l) Subject: Licencing parts of KOSH Summary of debate: It was suggested that we could make a simple policy over licensing of our software. Whenever any module is withdrawn from our distribution it could be put on a countdown for a fixed period. We have the duration of that period to reverse the decision and put it back in under our own terms, but once that period has expired, the source and binary are released under a simple freeware licence. A similar idea was previously discussed in that software developed for KOSH could be given a particular licence that stated the software would lapse into the public domain if certain criteria had not been fulfilled. At the very least the sources released would be of educational use and would hopefully spark off further development. This idea of software licencing received a favourable response from those that commented on it. It was further suggested that some sort of "auction" of old code could take place to generate funds for KOSH (and the author of the code) before it was placed into a free-ish -ware state. This could however allow large corporations to take over KOSH and therefore a limit on the size of bids would be needed. Even so this could cause problems. If an "auction" was implemented then to prevent corporations from buying code and then leaving it dormant a clause in the auction could be that if a new version of the code updated from the original is not forthcoming after a specified time then the code reverts to being the property of KOSH. Overall the idea of code becoming freeware under a licence as discussed initially received a more favourable response than that of an "auction" based system. None of this is supposed to remove the rights programmers have over their own code. It was then suggested that a version of the Mozilla Public Licence may be appropriate. This allows retention of copyright but opens up the potential for others to develop the code. m) Subject: KAROS (KOSH hosted on AROS) Summary of debate: A discussion on hosting KOSH on AROS was held. At least two ideas were forthcoming: 1) AROS can either run standalone or on another OS such as KOSH (once KOSH itself is running of course), 2) AROS could be used as a basic services provider for KOSH allowing us to implement other things without having to spend a large amount of time getting a filesystem, device drivers, etc written first. This is not to detract from the thoughts on hosting KOSH on Linux, AmigaOS, MacOS, Win32, etc. but merely adds another possibility. AROS is available from: ftp://www.aros.org/pub/aros/ n) Subject: Distribution format Summary of debate: It was suggested that KOSH could be distributed on DVD rather than CD which would then enable a program on the DVD to create a hosted-KOSH CD for any given OS. This would enable one DVD to contain versions of KOSH for a large number of systems. However it is hoped that KOSH will be compact enough not to require a DVD for distribution! It was also mentioned that DVD is still not commmonplace everywhere. o) Subject: Linux, GPL and KOSH Summary of debate: It was queried as to whether an OS running hosted through Linux automatically GPL'd? While the LGPL only covers the module concerned, the GPL infects everything it touches. p) Subject: KOSH featured at the Cologne Fair. Summary of debate: KOSH were kindly invited by Hendrik Hoener of Amiga UGN Germany to take a slot in an IRC conference that they are hosting during the Cologne fair. We were represented by Greg Webb, John Chandler and myself (Bridge Deady). We were slotted in directly after Petro Tyschtschenko of Amiga which provided us with a prominent mid-afternoon position. The log of the session, while being a little bit difficult to follow in places (due to three people answering different questions at the same time) can be found at http://ugn.amiga.org/events/hew99.shtml - (Scribe's note: if it becomes unavailable, email me and I'll send you a copy). The main issue that came to light was that a lot of people simply did not know what KOSH is. We fielded a lot of questions to this effect. We gave plenty of references to the website and this ML as well as providing both short and lengthy descriptions. Various other items of great relevance were discussed - and it was mentioned to those online at the time that KOSH will consider these. There will be a threaded summary of the proceedings available from myself in the near future which we can all digest. q) Subject: Formalising documentation of past discussions Summary of debate: Greg Webb, John Chandler and Marcus Petersson have been discussing a proposal for a system to make it easier for more than one person to work on a document. If you would like to be involved in this please contact one of the above via the ML. r) Subject: KOSH IRC Summary of debate: A KOSH IRC session in the nearish future was proposed. This is under consideration. s) Subject: KOSH at World of Amiga 2000 Summary of debate: This has been suggested on numerous occasions and hopefully we will have more news on this idea soon. t) Subject: Protecting systems with an "undo" feature Summary of debate: It was suggested that http://www.powerquest.com/en/secondchance/index.html and http://www.go-back.co.uk/start.htm should interest people as they do this. GoBack may be a better model to work from as it uses it's own partition structure to store the data, while SecondChance just uses ordinary files which need clearing out and cannot be so easily overwritten if the user needs the space.