Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: GPL and the use of GPLed Code in Commercial Products

I'm not getting into the GPL debate with Frank, as our swords have met a couple of times already.

What I'd like to dive into is the comment about the GPLed code that has not made it back into OpenACS.

The windows installer is a very good contribution. Sadly not many within the community seem to have the enthusiasm with windows that the marketing people have. So, unless someone is willing to publish a windows installer with the latest OpenACS and .LRN code in a regular fashion, nothing will come of it. But if you commit yourself to this endeavour you can be pretty sure the community will be grateful for it. As long as the installer contains an option to say "Install P/O", "Install .LRN", "Install pure OpenACS".

I had a look at the dynamic and configurable menu system and I think portals is better. Though there is one advantage, and I'm not sure Don has changed that in the portal package: You could add permissions to portlet instances, therefore controling who can see what portal page / menu. But maybe I looked at something different in P/O and the menu system is something utterly different. Maybe you can quickly tell us the benefits of this menu system of yours so we could evaluate what we could use of it.

Regarding the report system, what is the difference between listbuilder and your report system? What can we learn from the report system? What are pieces that are missing in listbuilder which we could add to it?