Quote from: The Simple Machines LicenseAny Distribution of this Package, whether as a Modified Package or not, requires express written consent from Lewis Media.
Hello SMF / Lewis - Media Team,
I would like you today present a Port of your SMF-Forums. I've ported the SMF into a open source and cost free CM-System called "PragmaMx" (admits before as "vkpMx"). PragmaMx based on phpNuke in the version 5.5. Except the family tree PragmaMx have with phpNuke nothing more in common. PragmaMx is listed at SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pragmamx).
As the Founder of PragmaMx I, and also my team, support the user directly on our homepage www.pragmamx.org. There we use the adapted version of the SMF-Forums. In the support everyday life I noticed again and again that none of the available forum software for the risen requirements of our users was sufficient.
Therefore I developed a solution around the SMF forum and our CM-System. This solution can be regarded in the meantime as stable! I would offer the Port to our users for a free Download right now. In accordance with your guidelines I'll ask you to approve my solution.
Please have also a look at your forums in the practical application under http://www.pragmamx.org/modules.php?name=Forum. In accordance with your regulations the copyrights were not touched or changed! I send to you, if necessary, a 1:1 - copy of the files.
With the support of our Solution you are not confronted, we give the necessary support to the affected Users directly on our homepage. About the download permission of the forum by you I would be pleased much. For possible further inquiries I am available at any time.
SMF goes CMS ... if you permit it ...
Yours sincerely,
Tora aka A. Ellsel
-Founder and Team leader of PragmaMx-
I have also written asking for permission to distribute a very slightly modified SMF into PHP Nuke 7.6 and name it SMF-Nuke. Our team wrote about 8 times in late October and early November and did not receive a reply. I have written a couple of times lately, but have yet to get a reply. My request is extremely similar to yours....
So far we have used that info email address, the support address, and by sending PM's to various ones here, but as of today we still have not gotten a reply.... :(
I wish you well in getting a reply with your request, and I hope while they consider yours, they will also consider ours.....
I hope somehow someone can reply and let me know....
[email protected]Larry Epperson
Team Leader of SMF-Nuke
http://www.smf-nuke.com
Hello Lewis Media / SMF team,
that will be the last message of us to you. Why? We are totally annoyed about your proceeding! At 19th April, thus approximately 2 months ago, we sent a email to your team. 8 Days later we got a response from once of your Teammembers (= "Joseph"). Okay, there some rules were to be kept. No Problem. We fulfilled all requirements and conditions. More then this - we also removed some Partnerlinks to in a friendly manner connected Sites. "Joseph" thought that these pages will hold adult-content. There was no adult-content at any time there!
But, we wanted this permission, so we removed the links. We wanted to give our users one of the best forums and were only delayed and put off. "Time is Money" says the vernacular - and it is right. We lost precious development time by your attitude. Our user ask us permanently when the SMF is finally available. Until evenly we have said that it still somewhat last. But that is past! From now on we will say the truth to our users. SMF / Lewis Media dont give us the promised permission. 1000 (!) users have installed our CMS and wants your forum (= our Port). We work free of charge and on it no cent would have earned.Don't you need (or want) new users? It seems so ...
For us that is historical - we look for now another solution. We want content users and with your method that cannot work. Sorry, this is a fact. We will work now with a software that will be 100% under a free license. That is better for us, our development and our user. Would we be an individual case, okay. But the developers of SMF Nuke already wait several months of your okay.
Yours sincerely,
Tora aka A. Ellsel
-Founder and Team leader of PragmaMx-
P.S.: For all to want exactly know what "Joseph" answered - I add the Mails here ...
EDIT: deleted the mails
And then?
This thread.....
Please be patient. Our project managers are very busy so it may be taking some time to get back to you - that said I have posted a link here in the admin boards so hopefully it shall get noticed.
I'm assuming that you are requesting permission to distribute SMF *with* your portal? Is it not possible for your portal to meerly bridge to a SMF install? Using all the integration links added to SMF 1.1 it should be possible to bridge to SMF with nothing more than a few database inserts I believe?
One of the main reasons why we don't normally allow redistribution of SMF is can result in updates not filtering through to other download sites. The problem I can see with full integration (i.e one reliant on the other and not bridged) is there's a chance that updates won't work/packages won't be updated as SMF fixes come out.
Obviously I'm not an admin - and it's not right that people should not have been getting back to you other a period of months - but if you could give some feedback on how your integrations work it may speed up getting a decision.
I hope someone can view and reply to my attempts to ask permission. To date, we have made 12 attempts in the last 8 months and have yet to hear one thing.
What we are doing is integrating SMF into PHP Nuke, one of the most popular CMS as you probably know. We slightly, and I do mean slightly modified the QueryString.php in 3 places that will probably NEVER be modified by SMF, we added a buffer line to the Subs.php file at the bottom of it, and we added the lines of code to the index.php to make it use PHP Nuke. Very simple, and does not affect how SMF runs. As far as I am personally concerned, I see no need to integrate member tables, etc. Too many potential problems for what it is worth (see Mambo Bridge board....).
We commented out the slogan and logo from the header of the default theme because of the PHP Nuke header and for other themes we would do the same.
We have the install.php file slightly modified to gather one more input to put into Settings.php and then on the last page of the install, it goes to the PHP Nuke admin.php page to set up the "God" admin. We have modified the Settings.php file to add the inputs from the config.php file of PHP Nuke.
All our changes do not affect the operation of SMF one bit. You can go to the website listed in my signature to verify it running. Our slight changes are from a navigational point so PHP Nuke can properly post the correct URL's.
Of course we have no intention of changing the copyright information. And of course we have no intention of doing anything other that what we have listed (see Portals board here or our website on what changes we made). We surely do not want to affect the tremendous feature of updates via the Package Manager. Heck, that is one of the best, key features that we all appreciate.
Please, someone take a look at what we are doing and give us some kind of feedback so we know what direction to take. We first started asking in October of 2004 and to date have never received one response.
thank you
Quote from: Grudge on July 12, 2005, 04:20:04 AMOne of the main reasons why we don't normally allow redistribution of SMF is can result in updates not filtering through to other download sites. The problem I can see with full integration (i.e one reliant on the other and not bridged) is there's a chance that updates won't work/packages won't be updated as SMF fixes come out.
Hmmm ... it theems that we will be missunderstood. We have not changed the originaly SMF-Files, we added only the necessarily codes. All Changes will be done very slightly. The integrated SMF-Packagemanager or other SMF-Updaterollovers are not affected.
We work with internal Bridgefunctions in order to be able to compare the necessary tables. That's all :) So that our user have not to visit a lot of Downloadsources we have us decided to offer this at our Projectpage. This was so far for nobody a problem - and remains hopefully also in such a way.
Regards,
RiotheRat (RtR)
Member of PragmaMx - DevTeam
QuoteOne of the main reasons why we don't normally allow redistribution of SMF is can result in updates not filtering through to other download sites. The problem I can see with full integration (i.e one reliant on the other and not bridged) is there's a chance that updates won't work/packages won't be updated as SMF fixes come out.
I still have not gotten the first word about our request to distribute. We DO NOT have a full integration. We have only changed a few things, with help from [UnKnown], for navigational purposes ONLY. You can see how those changes evolved by looking in the Porting board here... Here is a link to show EXACTLY what we have made changes in:
http://www.smf-nuke.com/modules.php?name=Forums&topic=30.0
As you can see, there are NO integration of tables, NO bridge, just simple changes to create the proper URL's. NOTHING MORE! Our integration of SMF as a PHP Nuke module is as simple as possible so that both will play nice and both can do their thing without bothering the other.
My tone here may sound a little aggrevated, but that is because we are doing everything exactly as we feel is needed to be allowed to distribute SMF with Nuke, and yet we cannot get any kind of reply. At least pragmaMX has gotten replies....... My tone is also tempered by seeing groups like MamboHacks distribute SMF under another name and put in things where SMF feels they are in violation of the copyrights. We however, have
NOT TOUCHED ONE PART OF THE SMF GENERATED COPYRIGHT AND HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION OR THOUGHT ABOUT DOING SO!I have tried to politely and professionally convey these thoughts in our numerous requests, but again, not one single word, hence my aggrevation here......
It gets down to what are the intentions of SMF? According to the license it is OK to distribute under certain conditions and with written permissions. Above all others who wish to distribute SMF in their distro, SMF-Nuke's intentions of keeping the integrity of the SMF software and copyright are foremost in our minds AND actions. As you can see on our site: http:/www.smf-nuke.com (http://http:/www.smf-nuke.com) the copyright is as the software presents it. The Nuke footer comes below that since we have SMF as a Nuke module, and then if a theme maker has a copyright, it is presented at the very bottom. Again, as you can see, NOTHING was changed. So if SMF truly has the intention of allow distribution, then why can't we at least get some kind of reply?
We have ZERO links to porn sites or any other sites in the footers as you have possibly thought (rightly or wrongly) of the pragmaMX request.
If you have security concerns because of using PHP Nuke, you should notice and know that we use Sentinel as a security front end, which is actually protecting SMF more. And we have permission to distribute Sentinel with SMF-Nuke. And we have used PHP Nuke 7.6 as our base and have upgraded to the latest security patches, and have ZERO intentions of adding further security holes. Actually, yesterday Sentinel stopped many bot and harvester attempts, and daily it is stopping other hacking attempts.
I would think that SMF would be pleased to see possibly the largest CMS wanting to use SMF as its forums module. I am not saying it will be the greatest thing ever, but SMF seems to work well with PHP Nuke. As you can see we have create a News module and many blocks using SSI.php.
Is it possible to hear something back from someone, even if it is to acknowledge our request?
thanks....
I would understand your doubt about porting your software if we do not care about the smf licensing system or about problems with further updates. But in fact we do!
Whats about the Mambo Bridge? Isn't it the same like we do? Why can't we say PHPNuke - Bridge or PragmaMX - Bridge?
Just a comment
BowlingX
pragmaMX developement team
Its maybe just me, but those coding changes are pretty minimal, cant you just tell people to download SMF and then tell them to execute a package in the package manager that would carry those out?
Hi :)
bridge or not bridge....
Fact is this:
Quote-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: RE: SMF ported to pragmaMx-CMS
Datum: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 16:10:48 -0400
Von: Joseph Fung <[email protected]>
An: <[email protected]>
Hello Andreas,
Thank you for your efforts, all appears to be in order, and I will forward a
letter of permission to you at the end of the week.
Thanks again for jumping through all the hoops, however I'm sure you can
appreciate the delicacy of working with intellectual property legislation.
Cheers,
Joseph
Trekkie---- For the vast majority of people, making any kind of changes is a grueling task at minimum. People who wish to use some of these products are not well versed in how to do these things, and as you know, and an extra comma or semi-colon, etc. is disaster for these php programs which means instant panic and guaranteed emergencies where support/help forums are hit asking, "what did I do?"....... And no, not using the product because of lack of knowledge should not be the reply either......
BowlingX---- I am not interested in a "bridge". Take a look at the over 1000 topics and over 9000 posts in just the Mambo bridge board at the top of this category. Geez.... Does anyone, especially SMF, need 4, 5, or 10 boards just like the Mambo bridge board? I am all about support, but at some point in time you just got to step back and say, "there has to be a better way". That is why I chose to do the minimum possible to fully eliminate such issues. And why are there that many topics and posts? Because like I said in the paragraph above, some people can make simple mistakes and that can lead to disastrous results.
Tora---- Of course I agree with you...... You and I are trying to do exactly as is requested and we cannot seem to get any replies, yet some others rename SMF and offer it to others....
All I am asking is this: I am repeatedly asking permission, under the conditions of minimal changes in the software, and NO changes in the copyrights. Pure and simple.... Can I get a reply one way or other, even if it means we must "jump through all the hoops" like Tora has done?
.....not an unreasonable request......
Larry
I am doing my best to get a reply to this topic - please be patient!
THANK YOU!!!!
I most appreciate it......
Okay ... we stay tuned. What shell we else do..?
RtR
Hier kann man lange auf eine Antwort warten :'(
Quote from: Grudge on July 13, 2005, 05:44:21 PM
I am doing my best to get a reply to this topic - please be patient!
Quote from: Grudge on July 12, 2005, 04:20:04 AM
Please be patient. Our project managers are very busy so it may be taking some time to get back to you - that said I have posted a link here in the admin boards so hopefully it shall get noticed.
I'm assuming that you are requesting permission to distribute SMF *with* your portal? Is it not possible for your portal to meerly bridge to a SMF install? Using all the integration links added to SMF 1.1 it should be possible to bridge to SMF with nothing more than a few database inserts I believe?
One of the main reasons why we don't normally allow redistribution of SMF is can result in updates not filtering through to other download sites. The problem I can see with full integration (i.e one reliant on the other and not bridged) is there's a chance that updates won't work/packages won't be updated as SMF fixes come out.
Obviously I'm not an admin - and it's not right that people should not have been getting back to you other a period of months - but if you could give some feedback on how your integrations work it may speed up getting a decision.
QuoteHello Andreas,
As soon as all the copyright notices are ok, send me your mailing address or
fax number, and I can send you written permission so that you're in
compliance.
Regards,
Joseph
Hello Joseph,
thank you for your Response. I quote the essential part of your mail:
>> As soon as all the copyright notices are ok, send me your mailing
address or
>> fax number, and I can send you written permission so that you're in
>> compliance.
As shown on our Project-Page (http://www.pragmamx.org/forum.html) i
changed the copyright notice in the footerline to: "Forum powered by SMF
1.0.3 © 2001-2005, Lewis Media. All Rights Reserved." I had never
changed the credits to Lewis Media, the basic idea of the older
creditsversion was to protect you against support-inquires by
pragmamx-users.
In the downloadversion of the ported SMF-Forums the footerlines, as
shown above, are 1:1 contained. I'll send you a copy of this package, if
necessary.
Quote-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: Re: SMF ported to pragmaMx-CMS
Datum: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 16:20:35 +0200
Von: [email protected] <[email protected]>
An: Joseph Fung <[email protected]>
CC: [email protected]
Hello Joseph,
at 27.04.2005, thus already several weeks ago, you promised me to send
me (or us) the permission for the SMF-Forums-Port by the Mx-Team. Until
today this permission was not received. We furnished all conditions of
Lewis Media. This was already confirmed in one of the eMails by you.
Therefore now my question: Do we get permission from Lewis Media to
release our Forums-Port? And if, when? Our members are not lucky about
the past process of the publication. We cannot act without appropriate
permission. I ask for understanding that promised permission is finally
given now!
Yours sincerely,
Andreas Ellsel
-Founder and Team leader of PragmaMx-
I am following this thread from start, and i must say, i can't follow Lewis Media Team and representative people. When you guys react on such important subject with such delay, how would you dealing normal support and business questions of customers ? How you want to make your this board more popular then under a bounded group of some limmited community ? It seems to me that concerned people are realy not will to answer it and playing a ping pong game. if thats the case, then i would recommand Tora and spottedhog to make thoughts about, Is this Borad realy worth to integrate it in a CMS by investing so much energy, when Lewis media team is not able to predicate their own statements?.
Where the heck is
Mr. Joseph Fung and why he is not responding after sending emails with the statement:
As soon as all the copyright notices are ok, send me your mailing address or fax number, and I can send you written permission so that you're in compliance.Or should i take it, that the words of this guy have no value and he don't have any competency ? or they are acting with the tactic
*lets delay the subject. sooner or later they will give up*If this is the policy and tactic of responsible people of lewis media, then i am sorry, then i think this borad is not worthy to invest more thoughts about or even make thoughts to integrate it in any cms.
Its typical mistake which have been made by Novell-Net-Services and IBM. They use to snooty too. Beeing proud on a product is a different thing but acting like a snob and not answering a thread bring them to same graveyard where Novell-Net-Services sepulchered is.
My comments may sound harsh but as a neutral and interested observer, thats how i see things going in this thread.
Friendly regards
Seleck
Quote from: Tora on July 09, 2005, 10:28:53 AM
I would like you today present a Port of your SMF-Forums. I've ported the SMF into a open source and cost free CM-System called "PragmaMx" (admits before as "vkpMx"). PragmaMx based on phpNuke in the version 5.5. Except the family tree PragmaMx have with phpNuke nothing more in common. PragmaMx is listed at SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pragmamx).
I don't like ports, because in the end they always have meant the same thing,
every time in the past I've ever seen them: an eventual change of copyrights, separation from the original product, laxer security updates, or in some way a general detriment to our users and our product.
Tell me, why exactly does it need to be a port?
QuotePlease have also a look at your forums in the practical application under http://www.pragmamx.org/modules.php?name=Forum. In accordance with your regulations the copyrights were not touched or changed! I send to you, if necessary, a 1:1 - copy of the files.
What exactly needed to be changed? Why is this different from the Mambo Bridge (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=77.0) product, which has had no necessity whatsoever to redistribute SMF? I have worked with PHP-Nuke myself, and know that the core changes it would take to make SMF work with it are minimal (specifically because I have done work to make it so, while YaBB SE definitely was not.)
I ask because, so far, I don't understand why you are asking permission to redistribute - and the same goes to spottedhog. Why is it necessary for you, and not for Mambo? Why is it not necessary for Dreamportal? Why isn't it necessary for MK-Portal? What about Coppermine? Are your code changes really that much greater - in contradiction to what you've even said?
Joseph Fung is a busy man. He seems to be okay with the redistribution, based on this, but if you aren't prepared to wait for a response, I'm frankly quite surprised. Time is money, yes - for him and for you. And so it is with the charges to send things outside Canada for him - also money.
To be utterly frank and honest, the moment I saw the subject line I was dissapointed and very much disinterested. I'm a busy man too, and I don't appreciate many of the things you've done here: posting private correspondence, breaking the rule that you should always act like whoever you're requesting something from is as busy as a bee (even if they are far from) and you can understand any delays. Now, it's probably the German in me showing... but frankly, I don't like responding to people who do such things.
If it were up to me - as a developer who knows just how much needs to be changed: I would say no. I don't see the purpose. If you want a different response, I suggest you take a sip of something cold and liquid, and wait for the busy man who is much more likely to grant your request when he has time to do so.
This is not support, SELECK. This is a request. Like a feature request. No one's going to lose any sleep over the outcome of this. No one is going to pull their hair out - unlike with support. And if they do, they need some perspective.
Forgive me though, I suppose you wanted me to say, gosh... thanks for being rude to us, we'll check to make sure that permission went off righto. But then, I hate policians and politics: perhaps that really is what you expected after all.
-[Unknown]
Please, let's let cooler heads prevail here. I agree and disagree with both of you. Selek, I have pushed and pushed and when I see that patience must be a virtue here, I backed off, hoping that my request will be seriously considered. And I hope those that hold the power notice that I am patiently waiting, and not up in their faces. Yes, to me, SMF is worth whatever "unperfectness" we must endure. SMF has so many built-in features that meshes nearly perfect with what our team envisions a better tomorrow would be.
Unknown, sorry about you not liking ports. There is no way we would even consider our offering to be a general detriment to users. If anything, we are going to go out of our way to make SMF superior because of the marriage of SMF and PHP Nuke. And given the law of averages, every time is due to be changed. ;)
I am saddened that you feel the sins of the past dictate what will happen in the future. Whoever went the direction you stated is definitely not me or my team. And we have no intentions of doing anything that would harm or lessen security. Our team used to run a site named: NukeHelp.biz which was a support site for PHP Nuke. We are very much aware of security issues and that is foremost in our minds. This is why we chose PHP Nuke 7.6 all patched, etc. and it is why we got permission to distribute Sentinel with our project. You see, if anything, Sentinel makes SMF even more secure because it will stop a large majority of attempts even before the SMF code can do its thing. Using SMF as a PHP Nuke module and running Sentinel keeps SMF as much if not more secure than any where else SMF is used. Is SMF by itself able to ban ranges of IP addresses? or IP addresses by country? no....... but with Sentinel this can be done in a matter of seconds. SMF and Nuke with Sentinel is really an excellent security marriage....much much much more than standalone SMF.
You mention the Mambo Bridge...... I just take one look at the Mambo Bridge board and I get my answer of whether to bridge or not bridge. Mambo Bridge has its own special place atop your forum category, and as you well know, now have around 1100 topics and 10,000 posts. To me that does not look like a healthy thing support-wise. You see, our SMF-Nuke Team uses the approach that a question should only need to be answered once. When we get a support question, we analyze to see if it should have a FAQ or Tutorial written to address that particular issue. Then we stress to members to view the FAQ and Tutorials first to possibly get your answer. This is easy for us to do since we are using a CMS. This worked extremely well when we ran NukeHelp.biz and I see no reason why that method of support would need to be different now. This approach helps the members find information much faster, and in most instances, without the need to post on a forum. Have we gotten our SMF-Nuke support up to this level right now? No.....we are maybe 90% done with SMF-Nuke HOWTO's and have not yet posted them, and we are 90% done with an "Idiot's Guide" to explain the pure basics etc........
Why would we "need" to distribute and not Mambo? Again, the bridge issue does appear to be a nightmare waiting to happen and as a former support site, we do not go looking for ways to add to the burden of support like this bridge may "possibly" do. No, I am not saying a bridge would do that with 100% certainty, but I do believe it would dramatically increase normal support issues.
The main "need" to distribute comes from one simple file: install.php. With a couple of slight modifications in it, we can use that file to completely install SMF-Nuke, including all the Nuke and SMF tables, along with configuring the Settings.php file. You see, we have moved all of the Nuke config.php file to Settings.php and we have also changed the following Nuke fields to be variables in the Settings.php file: $sitename=$mbname $adminmail=$webmaster_email and $nukeurl=$boardurl minus the /modules/Forums. Those 3 key fields of Nuke are now deleted from the nuke_config table because they are no longer needed.
Now maybe you can see the power this one file and the Settings.php file have in eliminating nearly all installation support issues. For Nuke users, manual inputs in the config.php file and manually making the proper changes in the Admin Preferences page to the proper URL, etc. are one of the largest support issues Nuke has. If you have ever seen NukeCops.com you will see up to at least 30% of the support postings in the forums directly relate to the extremely poor method of installation that Nuke has. The SMF install.php and Settings.php file eliminate all of that...... pretty powerful stuff, especially considering support and headaches associated with that.
This week we have gotten the SMF Package Manager to change lines in Nuke files. And we did this by adding a Package Server URL. We can maintain updates, etc. right from our home site, and NEVER need to ask SMF-Nuke users to download files and manually make changes like is done now with the Patch series..... major, major support potential headaches stopped dead in their tracks. And since we have modified the Nuke Admin page to add an IFrame to our news page, the SMF-Nuke website now shows version numbers, etc. almost exactly like SMF does in its admin page. There are no more questions about "what version of Nuke do I have?". It is all at the bottom of their Administration page along with a view of the latest SMF-Nuke news we have posted. (no news yet posted there...)
UnKnown, please consider how SMF-Nuke would be if we did not distribute SMF along with our modified Nuke code........ We would need to create and distribute directions on where to download SMF and where to upload it to be able to use it. We would need to explain BOTH how to install Nuke, with its manually created config.php, and manually uploading the database tables. (but this method kills the use of only the Settings.php file, unless we provided even more instructions of what files to change to make Nuke use the Settings.php file) wow.... OK.... so SMF is installed.... Now we ask the users to download the files we needed to change that make SMF a Nuke module and then ask them to upload them over the just installed SMF files. ..... hmmmm...... Now we have maybe got both Nuke and SMF installed.... but what if we had a Nuke bridge like the Mambo bridge? What files would need to be either edited or replaced?
This is the choice we see in front of us. Do we wish to distribute SMF along with the files we needed to modify along with the Nuke files? Or do we wish to post all the steps involved to get Nuke and SMF working together, and then sit back and wait for postings in a support forum asking, "what did I do wrong?"
Sooooo.... which looks better to us? A complete installation that may take 2 minutes? Or an installation that could take hours and maybe 3 or 4 support postings? This is not rocket scientist math here...... ;)
Let's bottom line this.... The product name here begins with "Simple".... That is exactly what we are doing with SMF-Nuke. We are making a much more simpler product and go out of our way to make everything as simple as possible straight "out of the box". Distributing SMF is the key to that simplicity. And the integrity of code, copyright, and security are a given. We have removed unnecessary Nuke code and features and have made the Admin section more user-friendly. We have added some nice features as well.
We are not Mambo. We are not Dreamportal. We are not MKportal. We are who we are. We wish to distribute to ELIMINATE support issues inherent with anyone needing to make modifications to make something play nice together.
Let me elaborate on these inherent support issues if we cannot distribute SMF with our modified Nuke. There have been a few people come to our website, maybe from reading this topic. We have NOT marketed or advertised SMF-Nuke. Anyway, 3 people have had an issue using the directions I have posted on what changes we made. 1 forgot one step. 1 had put in an extra ";". And one had put in the buffer line in the wrong place. These kinds of issues will plague using SMF in Nuke if we let the end user admins do the code replacing. We are not wanting to drastically increase support issues.....
We give support, in the past, present and future. We have more things displayed on our website now to assist a website admin than any other group, including SMF. (sorry, but it is true due to the pure nature of being a CMS) We have Basic html, Color Chart, Color Matching, CPanel User Guide, html Editor, Idiot's Guide, Logo Creater, PHPNuke HOWTO, PHPNuke Tools modified to create modules and blocks and more for SMF-Nuke, Search Engine Tutorials...... along with the FAQ's and Tutorials we created in the past and will add to in the future when a new issue arises. Name one other site that has all these things..... ohhhhh... we also have additional modules, blocks, and themes available in our Downloads module. We can more easily display and offer for download, SMF themes.
And you think we would possibly let support go in the toilet when distributing SMF??? Please rethink.....
No bridges..... eliminate support issues.... make all as simple as possible, yet keep integrity for all concerned. That is what we do, who we are, and our future life if we are allowed to distribute SMF with our modified Nuke.
.......and ya know...... asking for a reply since we first started asking back in October of 2004 is not that unreasonable a request...... is it? And yes, we have waited this long..... we can wait some more.... But again, we are not being unreasonable to ask for some kind of reply, seeing as how we started asking 9 months ago.... This is really nothing for anyone to be upset about....
One more bottom line...... If we are not allowed to distribute, then SMF-Nuke will be no more. We will just use our modifications for our own personal use and not make our improvements available to the public. We are NOT in the business of creating a need for more support. 1100 topics for a bridge for a less poplular software package than PHP Nuke is not my idea of a fun time.... ;) I am sure you see what I mean.
@ [Unknown]:
Have you visited our Homepage? Have you checked the work we have done? Neither still, or? If you haved visited our Page or you would have seen into the Source, then you had senn that there is no Cpoyrightviolation. And you had also seen that the work ist well done. We have only added some lines to the orginal Source to get a common user administration.
It seems to me here as a running between rabbit and hedgehog. With you in the company does not seem the one to know which the other one says or does. We give answers to ask.
QuoteTell me, why exactly does it need to be a port?
That is a redundantly discussion around a word. Exactly the Word "Port". You can call it also "Bridge". We combine our own (not the buggy construct of phpNuke) Usermanagement with your Foumsusermanagement. The ulterior motive? The users and the administrators have not to register themselves senselessly and useless two times. That's all ...
Okay, You dont like Ports. That's okay, this is your good right. We wanted to give somewhat special to our users. Particularly well and particularly surely. We could have done the same as Francisco Burzi and implement the phpBB. Then we would have exactly the same problems! Safety gaps, Vulnerabilities and Exploits all over ... not our opinion!
We work straight, we work strikt and we work secure' n safe. Did you know that pargammax is listed at
SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pragmamx)? Why should we hide us or our Project? There is nothing do hide. Had you ever seen a
Credits-Section (http://www.pragmamx.de/mxcredit.html) like
this (http://www.pragmamx.de/mxcredit.html) at phpNuke or any Fork? No, you rather condemn. You condemn us, the "bad people" those migrated your Forums into a stable, fast and secure CMS. We had you offered to throw a searching view into our work. Probable you are too "busy" or putridly to do this. And thus only one remains for us ...
waiting ...
Regards,
RiotheRat (RtR)
Member of PragmaMx - DevTeam
RiotheRat, my point is this. If you were to make it such that you have no need to modify the copyright statement, and have no need to redistribute any part of SMF, you would obviously need no permission from us.
I can call it a bridge, but that's where the difference is: a port is a changed and redistributed version. A bridge is neither; it is a separate entity which makes the two softwares work together as one. A bridge requires no redistribution whatsoever.
I'm not condemning anyone. I just don't like ports. Supermod was bad for mod authors. ttForum was bad for the team. YaBB.it was bad for the Italians and for us. I cannot recall a single port that did any good for anyone in the long run.
-[Unknown]
[Unknown], I guess we will need to agree to disagree......
You keep talking about a bridge as if it were a good thing.... Again, I just looked at the Mambo bridge and today it shows 1218 topics and 10,278 posts.... all because of trying to maintain 2 database tables for 2 separate systems. If there were just the one database table to maintain, all of those topics and posts would immediately disappear. (and I am all about eliminating support issues)
The value in being able to distribute is in an area that you have not mentioned. Two of the best features of SMF are in the install.php file and the Package Manager. When those two areas are slightly modified to accomodate the CMS, then this is a tremendous help for the website admin.
Let me explain using PHP Nuke as the base. Sure there are database install files that can create the tables for Nuke, but then one still must manually edit the config.php file. What I am doing is to remove everything from the config.php file, and place it in the Settings.php file. Then I add the Nuke tables to the SMF sql file and then the SMF install.php file does it all. (Yes, a couple of modifications were needed in the install.php file to make it all work best for both applications)
The Package Manager is an excellent tool, and with a couple of small changes and additions, it can be used to modify PHP Nuke files. No more manually editing any files.
So the value in us distributing is to more easily make available the few file changes necessary to make SMF and the CMS play nice. The core code integrity is intact and future upgrades will rarely change the code we modified. (you are aware of this with what we did with PHP Nuke) The value in us distributing is for the website admin..... so they can download all the files from one location and not have to upload and replace files from 2 locations. It is all about logistics..... it is NOT about code or copyright integrity.
I am saddened you lump all intregration efforts into the "sins of the past" groups. We or anyone else are NOT these past groups you refer to. I have no idea what they did, but I know at least our intention is to abide by the SMF Licensing Agreement. And from what I have read and understood, our small changes coupled with the inclusion of the License text file and NO copyright changes are what SMF require to distribute. welllllll, along with written permission. We easily meet SMF requirements. Pretty simple stuff.....
This all may boil down to whether or not SMF wants to allow distribution. Obviously you are against any distribution. If all of SMF feels the same, then SMF should remove that distribution part of the License. Pretty simple really. But if SMF wants to continue to allow distribution on a case by case basis, then they should analyze requests in a fairly timely manner and at least establish some kind of communication with the requesting party. That would be mutually beneficial.
Ya know, there are some possible advantages in SMF being distributed with a CMS package. I can see three distinct advantages in our proposed distribution.
1. Theme files and langauge files can be downloaded from the central Downloads module of the CMS.
2. More SMF theme files will be created because more theme designers will have another place to use their creations.
3. SMF will be more secure because it will be under the CMS security umbrella, (Sentinel in PHP Nuke for example)
What would be considered bad from the above improvements? So actually there are even more reasons why distribution can be a good thing.
The overall implication is that those of us who wish to distribute SMF lack in some way or another. Personally I think there must be a feeling we lack integrity. Do you really believe that if we are here battling for something we truly believe in, that we would be lacking integrity? If we lacked integrity, we would just do what we wish and then let SMF "catch us"..... But you are not seeing that here. We each have been sincere, and we each have been following the rules and guidelines set up by SMF. In PragmaMx and in SMF-Nuke (ours) we have followed all the rules as is publically printed. This is truly the issue for us. It has nothing to do with whether programmically we need to port or bridge. We have been doing what is asked in what is publically written. We have been trying to maintain and even improve SMF in its use with other programs. But we have not received reciprical communications. This is what we are asking..... talk to us..... tell us if we have been "good or bad".
bottom line...... Is SMF going to allow distributions or not? And if so, we ask that we are in the communication line.... that is all we are asking...... but it is the source of our frustrations ..... and our need to vent here......
ok, we will build a bridge ;)
first demo:
http://demo.pragmamx.de/modules.php?name=Forum
QuoteRiotheRat, my point is this. If you were to make it such that you have no need to modify the copyright statement, and have no need to redistribute any part of SMF, you would obviously need no permission from us.
I can call it a bridge, but that's where the difference is: a port is a changed and redistributed version. A bridge is neither; it is a separate entity which makes the two softwares work together as one. A bridge requires no redistribution whatsoever.
@ [Unknown] & Team
Here is the first alpha pre-release:
http://www.pragmamx.org/temp/pragmaMx-SMF-Bridge.zip (55kb)
Please take a look at it and tell me if it's ok as "bridge"
Quote from: [Unknown] on July 27, 2005, 01:00:20 AM
I'm not condemning anyone. I just don't like ports. Supermod was bad for mod authors. ttForum was bad for the team. YaBB.it was bad for the Italians and for us. I cannot recall a single port that did any good for anyone in the long run.
-[Unknown]
I must agree with you on this, in my intentions yabb.it was a modding and support community, the coiche of a port was not mine, i was already out of yabb's world :(
Hi :)
maybe 1000 pragmaMx Users are waiting for this great Forum script.
I will give them an answer.
Please give me 2 quick and easy answers:
QuoteThank you for your efforts, all appears to be in order, and I will forward a letter of permission to you at the end of the week.
can we hope for this letter?
YES or NO
QuotePlease take a look at it and tell me if it's ok as "bridge"
Is this new script a 'bridge', where we don't need permissions?
YES or NO
QuoteQuotePlease take a look at it and tell me if it's ok as "bridge"
Is this new script a 'bridge', where we don't need permissions?
YES or NO
Patience, again, is a virtue. It looks fine to me, and no you do not need permissions to distribute a modification package ("patch", "package", etc.) of your own design - the license *specifically* allows this.
-[Unknown]
Hi :)
QuotePatience, again, is a virtue.
You saw, that this patience already persists for April? ;)
But no matter, it makes me happy very much, that we became now nevertheless still united.
It would be too unfortunate, to withhold this ingenious board all the potential users.
Thx for this great work :)
greetings from germany, of me and of all future SMF users
ps. please excuse my bad English
Can we have a hope to see this bridges in the smf downloads?
Pragmamx is cool and the bridge works very well.
Thanks for advance.