[JDEV] Re: Open Source?

[Sebastiaan Deckers]

Ok, time for some clarification.

I'm one of the two RhymBox developers.  Shalom contacted me a few days 
ago with this very same question and I answered his questions, as I do 
with every request.  I did not receive any response from him.  Whatever.


> Shalom Levytam wrote:
> 
> Thanks, this helps a bit.
>
> I guess Rhymbox is closed source then...

Take a look in the subdirectory "src" where you installed RhymBox.  It 
contains all scripts, HTML and CSS that you need to modify the GUI.
The source code for the .exe framework is not distributed because pretty 
much the only reason you would need that is to create commercial 
application based on RhymBox.  And we don't want that right now.
We do however give out that source code to friends, people we trust, 
people who pay, etc.  Contact me directly for more about this.  JDEV is 
not a mailing list about one client.


 > Tijl Houtbeckers wrote:
> "
> Free services
> RhymBox client and Jabber server
> We offer a next-generation Jabber client. RhymBox is open source and 
> free of charge for personal use. "
> 
> It doesn't state what licence though, but "free of charge for personal 
> use" sort of implies not free for commercial use Perhaps a more clear 
> licence is provided in the download (since it's a DHTML application I 
> assume source is bundled with the download (or maybe there's a way to 
> compile DHTML these days).

There are ways to conceil DHTML code but they are flawed, hardly worth 
the effort and the exact opposite of what "open-source" means to the 
RhymBox project.  The license states something like "you can modify the 
source code as long as you don't make a million bucks selling it behind 
our backs".  Not in those words though. ;-)
The license is the first screen of the installer, and is also placed in 
the installation directory ("License.txt") for reviewing.
We want people to be able to tweak the program interface, to learn about 
the Jabber protocol, to have an example of programming for the different 
libraries and languages that we use.  Nothing more.


-- 
Sebastiaan