how is that Comply with GPL？
Talk:BlueSpice
Thanks for asking.
From https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic
- Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
- The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.
- But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL.
- Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.
In general, almost all "parts" (extensions, skins, libraries) of BlueSpice Pro are available on public locations anyways. Therefore one could build a custom version of BlueSpice Pro.
The finally released "package" (which contains all parts) is not released to the public, but it is still open source. Users of the software can inspect the code, e.g. for educational purpose and even modify it. There are no mechanisms in place to prevent that (e.g. obfuscation or ioncube enrcyption)
Just to add: We are one of the largest contributor for extensions in the MediaWiki ecosystem. And we develop almost everything in public Wikimedia repositories.
All extensions can be used and further developed, including scripts such as the Confluence MediaWiki migration script. These are all things that we don't have to publish, but we publish them because we believe that open source is a give and take and that public money also means public code.
The bundling, testing and the technically and legally flawless provision of certain distributions is the part for which we charge money and which enables us to throw a BlueSpice free over the fence, for example. This is entirely compliant with the GPL. All open source providers have been working in this or a similar way for decades.
Hi, I'm testing bluespice, and I've noticed a flash of the default skin before the custom skin loads.
To reproduce, just go on the demo bluespice website, navigate on the site and at some point you'll see the flash of the default skin.
[Sun Apr 23 21:34:06.162111 2023] [php:error] [pid 3831096] [client 232.323.343.343:58700] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: BlueSpice\\DynamicSettingsManager::applyAll(): Argument #1 ($globals) cannot be passed by reference in /var/www/bluespice/extensions/BlueSpiceFoundation/src/Foundation.php:31\nStack trace:\n#0 /var/www/bluespice/includes/registration/ExtensionRegistry.php(578): BlueSpice\\Foundation::onRegistry()\n#1 /var/www/bluespice/includes/registration/ExtensionRegistry.php(261): ExtensionRegistry->exportExtractedData()\n#2 /var/www/bluespice/includes/Setup.php(161): ExtensionRegistry->loadFromQueue()\n#3 /var/www/bluespice/includes/WebStart.php(89): require_once('...')\n#4 /var/www/bluespice/index.php(44): require('...')\n#5 {main}\n thrown in /var/www/bluespice/extensions/BlueSpiceFoundation/src/Foundation.php on line 31
Any idea?
Which version of BlueSpice and PHP are you using? This looks like you have PHP 8.1+. BlueSpice is not yet compatible to that.
Hello
@Osnard any idea on php8.1 support planning?
Yes. With BlueSpice most recent version on BlueSpice we support PHP 8.1
in section -> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/BlueSpice#See_also please realign dead link for Richard Heigl article -> https://bluespice.com/bluespice-mediawiki-confluence-wiki-alternatives-part-1/
--Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 09:39, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
Good catch. Just fixed the link. Cheers
Obviously, BS does not follow semver. Looked like it a bit before but now ... Anyhow, this imho makes it even more difficult to handle.
Hmm. What do you mean? The versioning of BlueSpice is in itself SemVer. Do you mean individual extensions?
4.3 breaks compatibility with MW 1.35; thus, it should be 5.0, no?
When compatibility with MW 1.31 was dropped, the version changed from 3.x to 4.x. Same for MW 1.27 with 2.x to 3.x. This is why I figured that BS somehow followed Semver. This new version change does not look like it at all to me.
Ultimately, this is not a big deal for me, but one needs to be careful here, I guess.
Hi!
You are right, raising the MediaWiki core requirements in the latest release of BlueSpice would have qualified for a major version bump in order to comply to SemVer.
You might have noticed that the BlueSpice team has started to publish new extensions without the "BlueSpice" prefix (e.g. Extension:Workflows, Extension:StandardDialogs, Extension:EnhancedUpload, ...). With those extensions, we did exactly what you would expect: we made a major release based on and compatible to 1.39. This is how it should be.
Now with the "BlueSpice"-prefixed extensions, it is a little bit different. Historically we currently align their versions with the version of the overall distribution. We have discussed internally whether or not to make a major release out of this, but ultimately decided not to do so. Mainly because we release them bundled with MediaWiki itself as a distribution. I agree that this problematic for people using those extensions outside the distribution.
I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this decision may have caused. Our goal is to come to a more flexible and "extension individual" release strategy in the future. But things take time. Processes need to be adapted, tools chains and workflows to be created. There are already plans to decouple individual extension versions from the distribution version.
Thanks a bunch for elaborating. This helps grokking your approach.
Indeed, not using the officially published BlueSpice Free suite is probably a fairly uncommon path for people. In this situation, taking care of dependencies is on me as the end user. Also, versioning is not as important in this situation, and other aspects like marketing may prevail if you consider them.
There is no need to apologize. It is a decision you take as a creator, and still, people appreciate using your software, even if it is a bit more effort for the system administrator. :)
In the end, I think SemVer is a pretty good approach. Thus, following it is probably a good idea. Good to see it in place for the newly published and decoupled extensions. Thanks also for publishing them in the first place.
Anyhow, the future will show for the rest.
I've noticed a trend of skins being created that have dependencies on BlueSpice extensions.
This worries me as it suggests the ecosystem for skins is becoming more fragmented, at a time I've been pushing to improve the skin system with some colleagues and fellow volunteers.
I was curious what modifications could be made in MediaWiki core to reduce these dependencies. A good example in the Tuleap skin which requires a global method called mwsInitComponents and enforces the use of OAuth through Extension:TuleapIntegration. The mwsInitComponents method looks very interesting and seems to share some overlap with some of the foundational changes currently happening in MediaWiki core (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T293289). Would love your input there on how we can help empower BlueSpice's ideas.
I'd love to see this skin and others in the wider ecosystem how can we get there?
Looking forward to chatting!
We are generally in the process of reducing dependencies. To what extent this affects the skin, I unfortunately do not know, but pass the question internally. If we can work together here, that's great in any case.
Hi all, Anyone with an idea, when will this great extension might be available for MW 1.37?
Hi Gachangi, we always bind BlueSpice to the respective LTS version. So the next supported MediaWiki version will be 1.39. We don't recommend all intermediate versions, because we can't test that. But we want to integrate 1.39 into BlueSpice relatively quickly.
Okay, thank you for your response, now I think I might have to downgrade to 1.35. Not certain my backups are backward compatible.
Hi!
In the translatable messages of BlueSpiceAvatars, there are "avatars" and "user pictures".
What's the difference?
Hi!
Thanks for reaching out. For my understanding there is no difference.
In BlueSpice, every user account gets a "profile picture" that is shown next to the username in certain places. Users can upload their own image files, but if they don't, there will still be auto generated images. One could probably refer to the first one as "user pictures" (uploaded by the user) and to the second one as "avatars" (automatically generated), but I don't see a real reason for this.
Thanks! This message appears to make a distinction: "You have set a user picture in your preferences. Using avatars will clear this setting. Do you want to proceed?"
I'm not entirely sure how to translate it into my language. We don't have a common, established translation for "avatar", and one possibility is to write something like "user picture", but "user picture" appears to be used in English for something else.
Perhaps that message could be rewritten like this: "You have set a user picture in your preferences. Using auto-generated avatars will clear this setting. Do you want to proceed?" (It's just a guess, thought.)
I see. Yes, your proposal makes sense. Thanks.
Hello HalloWelt, say please when will it be possible to install your extensions in 1.35 Media Wiki ?Almost all of them are for the version 1.31
No, not yet. We are working on the release of BlueSpice version 4 wich will build upon MediaWiki 1.35. We aim to publish it later this year.
Hello there,
every single time i am editing articles in my personal BlueSpice-MediaWiki, i have to push the "save"-Button two times until the changes are saved. Does anyone have an idea how to solve that issue?
Thanks a lot for help in advance...
It always helps to know the versions used, i.e. PHP, MySQL, MW, BlueSpice ...