Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] Smalltalk Labs Browser for blogs
chris would you mind to put the license MIT so that it is the same with Squeak and Pharo? Stef On Nov 14, 2010, at 3:09 AM, HaiColon wrote:
Hi,
I released the first public version of "Smalltalk Labs Browser for blogs" (or just SLBfb since that name is really long.. ^^), a JavaScript widget that you can put on your blog (or any other kind of website) to offer your readers a web based Smalltalk code browser for classes you mention or even describe in an article or tutorial so that people don't need to have a Smalltalk image at hand to understand what you're talking about. The widget pops up when someone clicks on a classname and can be moved freely around a website, but it tries to position itself automatically in the best position when you don't move it by yourself and keeps doing so even when the web browser is resized.
The widget downloads the source code of a class from a database over the net. At the moment the database has all 3093 classes of Pharo 1.1 in it and more Smalltalks (where code redistribution is allowed) are going to come soon, including some popular frameworks and libraries like Seaside. The only requirement to add this to a blog is that you can add custom JavaScript to your blog's template, you don't need a blog that runs on Smalltalk/Seaside for this, which means most free blog services work fine (including Tumblr and Blogger).
I hope this will be of help to the Smalltalk community. It's completely free and Open Source, licensed under the thoroughly permissive Apache License Version 2.0 (both the widget and the database/website). I'm running this on Google App Engine and the free quota (bandwidth, database space, CPU time, etc.) should be enough to serve the whole Smalltalk community, or at least that's the idea.
You can try it out directly on the SLBfb website: http://slbrowserfb.appspot.com or in my blog post about the release: http://smalltalklabs.tumblr.com/post/1557829586/smalltalk-labs-browser-for-b...
If you scroll to the very bottom of the website, there's a link "configuration" which will bring you to the interactive installation documentation to install this on your own blog/website.
Keep in mind that this is the first release (apart from the pre-release on Pharocasts some time ago), so there could be some nasty bugs that only happen when there's a full moon and someone tries to sing a ballad on one leg with his arms tied behind his back. This only works in WebKit and Mozilla browsers at the moment, but for unsupported browsers or when you read a blog post that makes use of SLBfb in an RSS reader or on Planet Smalltalk/Squeak, a website is used to display the classes mentioned instead, so it still works but not as nicely.
If someone wants to hack on the code, I'll release a screencast about how to set up a local development environment some time next week, including a small introduction on using the git version control system since the code is hosted on Github.
Cheers, Chris -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/ANN-Smalltalk-Labs-Browser-for-blogs-tp3041451p3041451... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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Hi Stéphane, If it should really be a problem for people I can certainly change the license, at least for the client since the server uses Apache licensed code from Google already and then it would have two licenses which would make things unnecessarily complicated. The server is a rather small part though, I wrote the first version in about 5 minutes and the version that is in use now in about fifteen (not including the website, I spent way more time writing text than coding). Pharo / Squeak aren't completely MIT though, they use the same Apache License as I do for SLBfb so I didn't think it would be a problem. Is it planned to completely replace the Apache code from Pharo with MIT code over time? Here's why I chose the Apache License (without giving any legal advice or guaranteeing that my understanding of the terms are correct, mind you!): It's more popular than the MIT license by a few orders of magnitude. I didn't want to believe this myself since I know way more MIT licensed software than Apache Software, but to be fair, who reads licenses unless he really has to. 25% of projects on Google Code Project hosting were Apache in 2008, only about 8% MIT according to Google. It's pretty much the same as the MIT license, safe for a few convenient additional clauses, like saying that if a contributor contributes code to the project it is assumed that his contribution is under the Apache License unless he explicitly states otherwise. This can greatly help to prevent misunderstandings. The really big difference is that it's actually written with modern copyright law in mind, which is one of the reasons it's so much longer than the MIT license. The MIT license might very well not be a valid license. For example, in Germany where I come from it is not allowed to disclaim liability, but the MIT license does that. Limiting the liability is allowed, the Apache license does that. Since this is also a website/server and not only a "local", "client side" application, the license being actually applicable to keep me from being sued becomes much more important. The chances are very slim that someone sues a tiny project like this but why make it easier for anyone, there are tons of law firms who's whole business model is suing people over unlawful license terms on websites (it's outrageous that doing this is actually legal). Here's an interesting article from Google on open source licenses: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/05/standing-against-license-proli... and an interview: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/google-says-no-to-license-proliferation/1... So to sum it up, I'm certainly open for discussion on this but I'd rather not change the license unless it's really necessary (e.g. No one wants to use it otherwise). It's not that I don't like the MIT license, it's my favorite license, it's so short and easy to understand, I am using it for Smalltalk Labs Browser (without the "for blogs" ^^) and used it many times before, but it really does look like choosing the Apache License for future projects is the right thing to do. What good is a license if it's not applicable anyhow? Cheers, Chris Stéphane Ducasse wrote:
would you mind to put the license MIT so that it is the same with Squeak and Pharo?
Stef
-- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/ANN-Smalltalk-Labs-Browser-for-blogs-tp3041451p3041742... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
participants (2)
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HaiColon -
Stéphane Ducasse