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Meeting 2008 - Announcement and invitation   (News)

This year, the event happens on the 23th and 24th of August, in the picturesque city, Bingen[1, 2] at the gate of UNESCO world cultural heritage "Upper Middle Rhine Valley" [3]. At meeting place, I rented two conjoining rooms in my former university of applied sciences [4] n the district of Buedesheim. These are solely separated by a dividing wall, so that particular topics can also be dealt with simultaneously. For example, it is possible to allow several lectures and discussions for users and developers to take place at the same time. A workshop is in consideration as well, to diversify the agenda.

At this time we are still at the beginning of planning, but will delve into it during the next weeks and give an account of it in regular intervals. We have several ideas, especially due to the large feedback from last year. For instance, we are up to start a shuttle service as designated by multiple people. There will certainly be a supporting programme again - how this will look like and if proportionate costs, in form of a fixed amount, which has to be carried by the participants themselves, will incur thereby is still open though. But we will make an effort to keep this amount as low as possible (less than 25 Euro). It is also not certain yet where and in which form the traditional prelude event on Friday will be.

Since there were already three companions last year, we want to organize a secondary agenda which is going to happen parallel with the primary conference and is being overseen by my girlfriend. However, during the complete supporting programme, for example the dinner on Saturday, both groups will be together.

Many other details like possibilities for arrival as well as accommodations and the program itinerary will be recorded in the Wiki [5] (German only). Also preliminary suggestions for lectures, workshops and discussions can be handled there. In coincidence of The Rhineland Palatinate's State Garden Show [6] happening simultaneously, a shortage at close hotels may arise. We will put several addresses and alternatives into the Wiki this very day. Please take care as soon as possible for corresponding reservations. If there should occur any problems, I am within reach and of help at axel@zikula.org.

We are looking forward to a large attendance [7].Registrations are without commitment, but exceedingly helpful for our organization, particularly as we must roughly estimate the total amount of persons. Also the information how many people are going to bring along their partners, is very important for the planning. The first meeting which is all about $newname is hopefully going to become an exciting and innovative performance with active participation.

Links:

http://www.bingen.de/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingen_am_Rhein
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1066
http://www.fh-bingen.de/
http://camp-zikula.info/wiki/
http://www.landesgartenschau-bingen-2008.de/
http://camp-zikula.info/contact/

Generated on April 1, 2008.

Url rewriting on Postnuke 0.8   (News)

Main principles of the mod rewrite


For information, the URL rewriting is a module that you can activated in your apache to rewrite the links of a site in order to simplify their reading.

The idea is that the Pn Team also thought that the mod rewrite was not necessarily available / activated on all types of servers (particularly on Windows servers). Indeed, the Postnuke team offers rewritings based on tips already heavily used in management systems like blogs.

Before you begin, here is the format of a link without rewriting.


without rewriting
index.php?module=Users&func=logout Index.php? Users & module = func = logout


URL rewriting without mod rewrite

This rewriting reproduced a "virtual" Folders system on your site, links look like this


URL rewriting without mod rewrite
index.php/Users/logout



In terms of mechanism, it is very simple, when your Web server receives a request for a link, it loads instinctively page "index.html". In this index.php, the parameters of the request are recovered via the header (you can look in "phpInfo" there is a field $ _SERVER [ 'REQUEST_URI'] which corresponds to this information).Then these parameters are interpreted , between the first two "/" is the name of the module, between the two others, the function name. Now Postnuke know the name of the module and function to launch.

You can pass parameters too, for instance, if you want to load a forum with id=2, the links will look like this

URL rewriting without mod rewrite
index.php/Forum/viewforum/forum:2




Note that the url rewriting uses ":" to represent the parameters in a url. So you can't pass variables like this "index.php?variable=filter:3". (be carefull if you are using Pagesetter and his filters system).



URL rewriting with mod rewrite

Optimizing the previous version

In the previous example, all links contained index.php ... but it's ugly, and functionally this file contains no
information useful to load the asked module.This trick is useful when you have no mod rewrite, but if one has an "mod rewrite enabled" server,you can use a "lighter" version of the previous rewriting without an "index.html"



Here is an example



URL rewriting with mod rewrite :Optimizing the previous version
/Users/logout




Be careful, if one of your pictures is written this way and you load the page /MyModule/main/. "/MyModule/main/test.png" which will be searched. Note that you can make a rewriting that redirect all links of the form "/*/*/*.(jpg | png | gif)" to "$ 3. (Jpg | png | gif)." (but it's ugly).


Mode file


This url rewriting is the classical version already used in previous versions of the cms, The rewrited links are lists of words (module name, the name of function) separated by dashes. Note that this version uses a large number of regular expressions rules to do the rewriting compared to the other one, which may increase the load of your server Web.



One example here ...
URL rewriting with mod rewrite : Mode file
module-Forum-viewtopic-topic-2903-start-0.html





Note that the "module" which one would have thought there's no point in it, is made for the support of the "old style" loading of modules.



URL rewriting customized


So here is the coolest feature, which allows you to customize the URL rewriting depending on the module you want to load. Just create a "encodeurl" function in your API module (pnuserapi) that takes as parameters, the information needed to create for output a fully customized rewrited link.

After, the loading of each page of the CMS, a "decodeurl" function in the API part of the module takes care to reformat the encoded url in a form understandable by the CMS.



You can find an example of the use of this method in the module "Pages" of values addons


Format of a encode and decode url
function pages_userapi_encodeurl($args)
function pages_userapi_decodeurl($args)



This feature is interesting because it allows us to have the hands on your url, not only before loading the page, but after loading this page, allowing you post-processing actions rather interessant.




This method allow you to

- put keywords in the url: (see Pages module)
- have a single version of your rewrited url : Indeed, through the post treatment you can recalculate the url and it does not conform to your requirements, you can redirect to the good link via a redirect 301 "Moved Permanently headers.






Use case of a url rewriting "no duplicate"



Notes: A small problem nevertheless for the use of this rewriting, which is limited to the type url "user". (more details here)

This article is a translation from this "how to" released on Postnuke-France

Generated on February 25, 2008.

What's going on?   (News)

kinds of modules and so on. We couldn't do that without you. So a special kudo from the development team to everybody who's testing.

2. We are all looking forward to the International Postnuke Developer Meeting in Osnabrück, Germany in September. You are still invited and we will be happy to get to know you. The focus of this year's meeting will the the .8 technologies. We have to spread the knowledge about all the great libraries inside .8 to the community. Thus we will have several presentations and workshops dealing with that. You can still register http://support.pn-cms.de/index.php?module=formicula&form=6 and book a room: http://www.kulmbacher-hof.de

3. There are currently some reorganizations going on within the teams and Postnuke Foundation is working on a nice little surprise - we will have seperate announcements about this within the next weeks.

4. We need your help to build a good documentation. Please look into the wiki and see if you can't improve it: Pick out one of the .8 modules and describe how it works. Look through the articles and improve the descriptions. Remove typos. Find paragraphs that are not clearly enough written and make them clearer.

We could also use some good best practices - if you think you found a clever way to combine this and that module or you have some other special solution - write an article. People will love it.

There is so much you can do. And it's not too complicated. Postnuke lives through it's community. And you are part of that community, no matter how small your input is. Small pieces accumulate to a bigger picture.

Generated on August 25, 2007.

New Shop, New Calendar - Postnuke Community gains speed again   (News)

New Community Modules
Have you seen Florian Schliessl's modules? The central module is pnProfile - an alternative profile module similar to the new core module or AdvProfile (which actually has become the new core profile module ;-) ). pnProfile offers dropdowns, textfields aso.
Demo: technobilder.de.

Another nice community module is Florian's UserPictures. It allows users to keep their own personal gallery.
Demo: technobilder.de

I personally very much like Florian's ClickedMe which displays all the people who checked out you profile. Every user can choose for himself if he wants to be seen or not.
Download: ClickedMe.

To cut a long story short: Florian has released a bunch other modules. A list can be found in his NOC profile.

PostBuddy is a module that copies a very popular function of mySpace aso - you can make people your friend and display a list of your friends in your profile. Cool, eh?

Has anybody tried pnConnections? It sounds like a cool module.

Shops!
Did you see that Bernd Plagge adopted pnCommerce and released a working version? Contact him, if you are interested in cooperating with him! pnCommerce could use some cool new templates.

And pnCommerce has a young competitor! The development team has released a first beta of ShoppingKart. They are very active and keen on making ShoppingKart a cool module. IMHO their templates also lack beauty - but it's a first beta. ;-)

New Calendar
Robert Gasch and a user named "bones" announced to start working on a successor for PostCalendar - I'm really looking forward for that one.

But the grandmother of all calendar modules also has a competitor: crpCalendar. A neat little modules that's made to display a list of event dates - if you don't have too many of them it could fit your needs.

What else?
Did you see that Treverj is working on a cool Postnuke based Web 2.0 community site? Read: Project Updates.

The Spanish community released a Karma Addon for pnForum. You only need dpGraph for it.

Mark West released a new version of EZComments and added Akismet support. Akismet is the spam detection API of Wordpress. So EZComments sends all comments and trackbacks through Akismet to find out if it's spam or not. If you are working on any module that's been spammed - check out the Akismet module API and integrate its features into you module.

InvalidResponse released a first final version of his ElementBB forum. It's a nice and slim forum with great templates. Check it out at his homepage.

Jørn Wildt released a new content module that keeps content in a book like way and is made for team work. It's called CoType and should also serve as an example for a .8 implementation.

Hilope's Scribite is not only a module that adds the WYSIWYG editor of your choice to Postnuke modules. If you look deeper into the possibilities of for examples Xinha you will certainly never work on any site without this module. BTW: The initial development of Scribite was sponsored by the German Postnuke foundation. ;-)

Forgive me if I forgot your cool new module - this article wasn't meant to be complete. I wanted to give a little overview o

Generated on June 7, 2007.

New tools for postnuke community interaction   (News)

german speaking bikers. Because of the need of programming some new functions I decided not to re-program one new powerful module.
I decided to program some compact, little modules that can be linked together and be used in any kind of community. So perhaps the modules can alo be interesting for your postnuke community.
As I wrote already - the idea of all modules is to increase the communication and interaction between the community members.

Graphical member search
Whenever community members want to get new contacts they can write personal Messages to other community members. So I first programmed pnMap, a graphical based user search engine. This is not a free module but all other modules are free and open source.

See how active a user ist (last login)
But very often there are many peoples members of a community but not everybody is very active. Perhaps someone has logged in the last time some months ago? If this is the case you do not really need to write an personal mail to these members - you better write mails to the more active members.
So I released pnLastLogin, that loggs the last login of a user. These information can be integrated in a member search as a sort criteria with pnMap or in the profile page of a community member. So you can see who is really actice.

Do you want to know who has visited your profile page?
Did you ever think about the question who visited your profile page? I think this might be an interesting gimmick for all community members. So I released pnClickedMe. This little program loggs who clicks whoose profile page. You can install a little block afterwards on your page that shows a user who has visited his profile page. So many people get interested and want to see who is that person that clicked me? Perhaps this can create new contacts!

Manage friends in a little addressbook
If you have created new contacts, you might be interested to store a list of "friends" with additional information to the contacts. For this you can use pnUserinfo. This is like a little addressbook.

Give your community the possibillity to publish content in weblogs!
If you want to publish some things about yourself, blogging is the keyword. Weblogs can be a really great tool in a web community. pnWebLog for example is a weblog module for postnuke. You also can integrate the newest postings of a weblog owner in his profile etc.

We need faces not nicknames!
Web communities are full of nicknames. But who is the person behind the nic? Mostly user's can upload an avatar but avatars are mostly used for funny pictures etc. But I think in a community that was build up to create real contacts you should be able to see who is the person behind a nicname.
To reach this goal I release pnUserPictures. Using this module you can define picture templates that can be integrated in a user's profile page for example and you can also allow it that users can manage their own gallery. There is not only a category managment possible, usernames can be assigned to the uploaded pictures. So it is not only possible to see the picture, you know who is on the picture. You now can integrate a link in the user's profile that shows with how many other pictures a user is associated. This increases interaction in the community. For all pictures there are thumbnail galleries available. You can install a block that shows the newest pictures and so on.

Give the users the possibillity to delete themselfs - if they want it
Sometimes a user wants to leave a community. Did you ever notice that there is no possibillity in the postnuke core yet for a member so that a member can delete its account with a click? If a user can delete his account himself, the administrator even has less work with such things. To make this possible, I released pnUserDeletion. But before you use this module test the deletion process on an offline backup installation. Some modules might have problems if a user is not found any more in the database.

Invite guests to get registered!
OK - loosing members is not really great but sometimes you can't avoid it. It's better so see the community growing. To invite people to get registered I programmed pnRegisterNow. This module displays a nice javascript popup (no nerving popup...) after a specified number of pageviews. So if a guest surfs in your forum and he opens the 20th page for example, he'll see a popup with an register link and a login form.

The advanced postnuke profile links most of the modules automatically
Now you have seen various modules that can be usefull in a community. But you now say that linking these modules is hard work? No, not really.
Take a look at pnProfile. This is an advanced profile module for postnuke. All modules listed above that are linkable are automatically linked after pnProfile is installed. You can define custom profile fields in pnProfile, integrate user pictures in the profile page, integrate the user's weblog and so on. Take a look at the information page of pnProfile and you will see

Generated on May 21, 2007.

Second Annual PostNuke Developers Meeting: See the Fun on the Live Webcam   (News)

Live Cam Feed: http://support.pn-cms.de/webcam.htm

Presentations and Papers
Download the presentations and papers here when the weekend in finished: http://support.pn-cms.de/Downloads-req-viewdownload-cid-8.htm

Missed the Live Feed: Checkout the History of Pictures
http://www.juist-news.net/cgi-bin/pnmeeting/view.pl
Conference Agenda
Saturday, August 13, 2005

9:00 Official Start
Welcome message

10:00
Whats going on behind the scenes right now for .8? (all)

10:45
What's left to be done for .8 and what comes next (Mark)

11:30
Debugging Tools (Sebastian)

12:30
Lunch break

13:30
Introduction to the new Module Developer Tutorial (Jörg)

14:00
OpenStar: Background & Targets (Robert Gasch)

14:45
OpenStar: Module development using the OpenStar-libraries (Robert Gasch)

15:30
API Level Bug considerations (Sebastian)

16:15
PostNuke Foundation (Mark, Drak, Andreas)

19:00+
Biergarten

Sunday, August 14, 2005
9:00 Begin

9:15
PostNuke in commercial environments I(itevo)

10:00
PostNuke in commercial environments II(itevo)

10:45
Introduction to the new Folder module (Jörn)

11:30+
Annual general meeting of the PostNuke e.V.

Generated on August 13, 2005.

Get Involved: Get Your Name in Lights!   (News)

Get Involved
We are looking for volunteers for several positions listed below:
PostNuke CMS Module Reporter
Responsible for testing and reviewing new and older modules to publish on the main PostNuke CMS site. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

PostNuke CMS Community Reporter
Not every module developer writes his own news at PostNuke and we're looking for someone who is interested in writing up announcements, interviewing developers, and looking for exciting developments in this specific area of the community. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

International PostNuke CMS Community Reporter
As a project we want to build relationships with the wonderful international sites and communities. The person who takes on this position will be responsible for writing announcements, and conducting interviews. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

PostNuke CMS Theme Reporter
Responsible for theming news, short how-tos, tutorials, and introducing/interviewing designers. You should be familiar with all the elements of theming for PostNuke CMS including the Xanthia and AutoTheme. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

Special Content/Documentation
We are looking for someone to compare/contrast the features of PostNuke CMS to the following software: PHP-Nuke, Mambo, and Drupal. The person should be familiar with both software CMS's to do a clear, concise comparison of features, functions, etc. Also you would have access to the PN team to review the comparison to offer technical feedback and information for accuracy. And the document would be included on the main PN site to help potential users decide which package to use. You would also be provided with a matrix of specifics to compare with guidelines so you wouldn't have to start from scratch. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

For more information about the volunteer positions contact us at: vanessa at postnuke dot com

Note, because we had such a great response to Steffen's article calling for wrtiers (thanks Steffen) we wanted to make sure we

Generated on July 13, 2005.

PostNuke Community User Survey Results   (News)

http://www.designs4nuke.com/results/

PostNuke Site Navigation
We are currently working on improving the navigation and look/feel of the main PN site. And with all things it doesn't always go as quickly as we'd like but we expect to launch a preview of a new site in the very near future.

Documentation
This is constant concern for everyone involved in the project. There have been some nice additions to the documentation project over the past few months and I think more than not having documentation, the real issue it is difficult to find. So as we improve the main site we are paying close attention the issue of documentation. So look for improvement in this area in the near future.

Module/Block Repository
Some users requested a "full and complete list of all available modules/blocks/themes" - and we would like to say this is nearly impossible and it it were possible, it would be alot of work to keep it up-to-date. Several years ago we setup PostNuke's NOC as a centralized place to support any PostNuke related project for FREE.

The site offers the following developement tools: CVS (including a web interface), mailing lists, discussion forums, bug/feature tracking, document mgmt, task lists, and a website that provides usage statistics, including the project members, the number of mailing lists, CVS statistics, the number of items in the discussion forums, etc.

We encourage anyone, developers and designers, with a PostNuke related project to register their project.

Register a Project
Check out the Current Projects

UPDATE: The NOC is not perfect. The team knows it has flaws and that support there was lacking so we've added additional admins so no one should have to wait for weeks for project approval any longer.

Current NOC admins Drak Valerio, Frank Schummertz (pnCommerce.com) and IIRC Franky Chestnut (pnConcept.com).

This is our attempt to build a module, block, and theme repository for all PostNuke related projects.

Module Info
There are so many modules claiming to be PostNuke modules and were only half heartedly ported it the first days of PostNuke so beware there have been so many changes in the development over the past four years some modules may not work with the most up-to-date versions of the PostNuke CMS.

Better Forum Support
First let's agree the forum is quite helpful but we recognize there are some areas we can improve. We appreciate the feedback and are looking into ways we can optimize the technology to help us provide better forum support. But don't be shy, once you learn to do something or have an answer/response to a question get involved.

Summary
Finally as mentioned in the comments there were design errors in this initial survey but even with these errors the results are valuable and has shed light on several areas of the project. Again, it's our first survey and we will improve as we create more surveys in the future. There's no such thing as a perfect questionaire but we intend to get closer to perfection in the future. :)

Get Involved
We are looking for volunteers for several positions listed below:

1. Module Review Reporter: Responsible for testing and reviewing new and older modules to publish on the main PostNuke site. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

2. PostNuke Community Reporter - not every module developer writes his own news at PostNuke and we're looking for someone who is interested in writing up announcements, interviewing developers, and looking for exciting developments in this specific area of the community.

3. International Community Reporter: As a project we want to build relationships with the wonderful international sites and communities. The person who takes on this position will be responsible for writing announcements, and conducting interviews. Your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

4. PostNuke Theme Reporter: Responsible for theming news, short how-tos, tutorials, and introducing/interviewing designers. You should be familiar with all the elements of theming for PostNuke including the Xanthia and AutoTheme. All your articles/publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

5. Special Content/Documentation : We are looking for someone to compare/contrast the features of PostNuke to the following: PHP-Nuke, Mambo, and Drupal. The person should be familiar with both software CMS's to do a clear, concise comparison of features, functions, etc. Also you would have access to the PN team to review the comparison to offer technical feedback and information for accuracy. And the document would be included on the main PN site to help potential users decide which package to use. You would also be provided with a matrix of specifics to compare with guidelines so you wouldn't have to start from scratch. Your publications will include your picture, a short bio, and a link back to your site.

For more information about the volunteer positions contact us at: vanessa at postnuke dot com

Generated on July 12, 2005.

An Expert's Opinion: Furthering Our Understanding   (News)

Dear Vanessa and All Other Members of The Fabulous PostNuke Community:

I am an attorney-at-law, licensed by the State of Florida, and the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida to engage in a multi-jurisdictional copyright and trademark practice. My practice focuses on cyberlaw (see http://cyberlaw.info). Nothing contained herein is legal advice, nor should it be relied upon without independent research and consultation with a licensed attorney. The following discussion is limited to the laws of the U.S.

I have been asked to comment upon the following hypothetical. If a person or entity (jointly and severally referred to hereafter as "Party A") creates a theme utilizing, or adds an original image or code to a GNU GPL program that was copyrighted subject to the GNU GPL ( see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt ), may another person or entity (Party "B") distribute Party A's distribution containing the new material without the permission of Party A because the entire work (including the new material added by Party A) has now become subject to the GNU GPL?

Also, you have asked me to assume the following notice appears on Party A's
work:

// ----------------------------------------------------------------------
// Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Party A
// http://partya.com
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------
// LICENSE
//
// This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
// modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)
// as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
// of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
//
// This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
// See the GNU General Public License for more details.
// To read the license please visit http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------

The pertinent portions of the GNU GPL are as follows:

"0. ... the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does."

"2. ... mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.

Pertinent Sections of United States Copyright Law:

Copyright protection extends to an "original work of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression. 17 U.S.C. 102 (a) at ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/102.html ).

Copyrights are divisible (i.e. you can retain certain exclusive rights, but transfer others). See Section 17 U.S.C. 106 ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/106.html).

Discussion:

The above license purports to convey via the GNU GPL rights to the "program."

Since copyright is divisible, we must first determine the meaning of the word "computer program." A definition for the term "computer program" is actually a question of fact that would need to be determined by a Court or jury. Dictionary.com defines computer program as follows: "computer program n : (computer science) a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute; "the program required several hundred lines of code" [syn: program, programme, computer programme]".

It can be argued that an image (which has been stored on digital media) is not a "program." It is data which is called by a program. It would be an anomalous argument to propose that a copyrighted picture taken by the owner of the program and was included in his distribution of his GNU GPL program could be used unless the owner consented.

Similarly, it follows that a presentation, template or display, which is created utilizing copyrighted programs, may not in and of itself be a "program."

Very generally, there is no impediment to obtaining independent copyrights for original works of authorship created by utilizing programs. If there were, Microsoft would be able to prosecute every author who submitted an original manuscript to a publisher in Word format and digital artists would be unable to copyright their works because they used a paint program.

Similarly, if someone creates a theme or skin that artistically rises to the level of an original work of authorship utilizing a program, the resulting theme or skin should be copyrightable separately from the program that created it. It could be argued that the skin, theme, or result is a new, original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression, and not a derivative or compilation of the original program (i.e. Word, Paint Shop Pro, or, for that matter, Autotheme).

Turning to paragraph 0. of the GNU GPL, licensing a program or work under its terms does not make all files included with the distribution subject thereto See paragraph 0., supra. In our hypothetical, the notice only refers to the "program", and not any particular resulting theme or image therein.

Turning to paragraph 2. of the GNU GPL, "the mere aggregation" of an original work of authorship which is not a derivative or compilation of the program with the program (or with a work based on the Program) on a ... distribution medium "does not bring the other work under the scope of the License." In plain English, this means that just because a distribution contains some files which are subject to the GNU GPL, NOT ALL files contained in the distribution may be so subject. This argument should also apply to data entered into the program to make it display an original work of authorship.

With respect to the language contained in the notice contained in Party A's distribution, a reasonable interpretation of same should lead a Court and/or jury to determine that a program is not the resulting theme, skin, etc., but a set of instructions that the "artist" utilizes to create same. Just because core code is distributed with additional files, or data is entered into existing code to make, draw or display the new skin on screen, should not, in and of itself, make the new files or data subject to the license. See GNU GPL paragraphs 0 and 2 above.

Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. 106, copyrights are divisible (i.e. you can retain certain exclusive rights, but transfer others). Accordingly, it could be argued that Party A's copyright in and to the theme or skin or image remains the sole and exclusive property of Party A. If the argument succeeds, those who violated Party A's exclusive rights (17 U.S.C. 106) in the resulting theme, display, image, skin, etc., face exposure to federal suit for copyright infringement.

Notwithstanding, the program code and modifications made thereto which are considered to be derivatives or compilations ARE subject to GNU GPL, unless the additional code merely "plugs-in" to the preexisting code, is "not based on preexisiting code," and is capable of "standing alone." Note, early cases did not hold telephone manufacturers liable for patent/copyright infringement because their pin out to wall jacks was identical to that of the other's pin out, allowing access to the other's network.

It would logically follow that a third party can utilize GNU GPL code to create an original work of authorship (i.e. a new theme) and obtain a copyright in the new material. However, if the resulting theme, display, image, and or template is similar to that which the artist has not released under the GNU GPL, the third party could be prosecuted for copyright infringement if that third party did not get consent (provided other procedural requirements are fulfilled).

It is worth mentioning that the creator of a program who initially released it under certain conditions, may be able to revoke same at any time (but this would require further research and is a topic for another discussion).

Elliot Zimmerman, Esq.
The Law Offices of Elliot Zimmerman, P.A.
5353 North Federal Highway, PH 405
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33308
http://cyberlaw.info
legal@cyberlaw.info

Generated on April 30, 2004.

Postnuke .8 - A Preview   (News)

order to improve Postnuke's performance the code was optimized. Additionally Smarty's (Xanthia) and ADODB'd caching can be used.

5. Advanced User Module - All features of Chestnuts pncUserHack will be included in the new user module. Dynamic user date will be kept in an extra module.

6. Mailer Module - Basing upon phpMailer (PHP Libary) external SMTP-/Mailservers, HTML-mails and attachements can be used.

7. Further Database Abstraction - ADODB data dictionary Tools will support installation with various database management systems other than mysql.

8. Advanced Authentication - Additional to Postnuke's user database authentication with other system can be realized. LDAP will be supported and other systems can be added via plugins.

9. Additional Hook Modules - Jörg Napp's EZComments replaces the hitherto NS-Comment modules. Other hooks will be bbcode, bbclick, bbsmile and hitcount.

10. Advanced Statistics - Craig Saunder's AdvStats Module will replace the HTTP-referer and the statistics module.

11. Syndication Feeds (RSS / Atom) - Feeds can be generated from all modules using templates.

12. extended RSS Support - Future RSS support will be using external RSS parser Onyx RSS

13. Global Categories - The new categories module provides cateories in all compatible modules like FAQ, News, WebLinks aso.

14. Collected Pending Content - Basing upon the SnakePending module all pending content will be collected and displayed in a to-do overview.

15. Printing - Printing view supported via special printing template

16. Better Support of current Standarts - All output will be valid HTML strict (hitherto: transitional) and XHTML. This also applies for the the feeds.

17. Support of 3rd Party Developements - Postnuke will in future include 3rd party open source developements. Since the .7 series only featured ADODB as an example, .8 will make use of the Smarty developement, but will also include phpMailer and Onyx RSS.

Together with Jørn Lind-Nielsen globally available pictures gallery Photoshare and his meta module pagesetter, pnCommerce, PagEd, Content Express and all the other great modules this all sounds great, doesn't it?

The ultimate question remains unanswered: When will .8 be released? pnCore-Team manager Larsneo expects a milestone release in

Generated on March 11, 2004.

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