Building e on Fedora 10
April 22nd, 2009
Wim Vander Schelden has written a detailed guide to building e on Fedora 10.
Linux Progress
April 15th, 2009
Since the source was released, there has been quite a bit of progress with lots of outside contributions. Adam Vandenberg has been putting in a lot of work on the build environment on the windows side, and Andrey Turkin and Roman Lisagor have been hard at work on getting the Linux version up and running.
As you can see on the screenshot, it now builds and renders on Linux. Getting the build up and running still takes quite a bit of hand holding, and lots of minor issues will have to be corrected before it is usable for daily work, but if you are familiar with Linux, get the latest source and join in and we will soon have a working release.
Releasing the Source
April 3rd, 2009
As of today, the source of the e text editor is being released. This is the first step in the transformation into an Open Company.
Note that this is not just handing the development over to the community. I am still, and will continue to be, the main developer. Development of the editor will continue and it will still be fully supported in the future.
What the release means is that you can never risk ending up with a product that is totally abandoned, that many more eyes will be there to find and remove bugs, that companies and individuals can themselves add features only they need for inhouse use and that the community can help speed up the development of e and hopefully free me up to work on the more innovative features (of which there are many in the planning stages).
The Open Company License
The source is being released with a clear and very permissive license. It is essentially the well known BSD license with a single extra clause:
Copyright (c) 2009, Alexander Stigsen, e-texteditor.com
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- Neither the name of the e-texteditor nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
- Any redistribution, in whole or in part, must retain full licensing functionality, without any attempt to change, obscure or in other ways circumvent its intent.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
I think that too many of us have been in situations where we had to review huge multi-page licenses, with no chance for understanding all it’s implications short of being license lawyers. By basing the Open Company License on a simple and well understood license, it is hoped to make community involvement much easier.
While the addition of the extra clause means that the license can no longer be termed an Open Source License, it is ideal for the open company. It is essentially an issue of mutual respect. If I fully respect your ownership, you will in return respect my right to make a living.
Linux version
There has been many questions about whether the release of the source would make it possible to build a Linux version. The answer is yes. The source does build under Linux, it just needs a Linux version of the ecore library which will be released shortly.
The editor could not have been build without the support of a lot of open source projects (most notably wxWidgets). So to give back, the Linux version will be totally free (as in beer).
So play with the source, and join us in the forum if you have any questions.