[IRCServices Coding] contributing to ircservices : legal and coding standards problems

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Hi,

Ircservices 5, with its module support, looks like the best services
package around. Furthermore, the development of other services projects
seems to have slow down, or stopped. It would probably be a good time to
make users come back from ircservices-forked projects to ircservices.

The problem is that several functionnalities are still missing. Several
people would be strongly interested in a botserv module, so I started to
look at how module are implemented, etc... Several things stated in
ftp://ftp.esper.net/ircservices/docs/6.html disturb me.

1/ While developping a complex module such as botserv, I'll probably
come accross things like missing callbacks, etc. I haven't started
coding, but it seems there's no callback for messages sent to a channel.
(I'm not sure of the m_privmsg callback not ignoring channel privmsgs).
So I'll probably have to modify things in ircservices. Since my
module(s) would be distributed under the GPL (I'm not even part of the
team of any network), I have 3 solutions :
- fork ircservices, but I don't want to. I don't have time and don't
  want to maintain such a project, and forking is counter-productive.
- distribute patches to modify ircservices core. Those are difficult to
  maintain, and are counter-productive too : my needs of new callbacks
will probably be met by other module developpers too.
- contribute source code to ircservices, but then there's what is in
  section 6.3 :
"Furthermore, any submissions of modules, code, documentation, or any
other information (collectively "information") become the sole property
of the author of IRC Services, and by submitting such information, you
agree to transfer any and all rights you may have in said information to
said author. If you do not agree to the above, or you are not permitted
(by law, contract, or otherwise) to transfer all of your rights in the
information to the author(s) of IRC Services, then you may not submit
the information. (If you cannot comply with this paragraph but would
still like to submit something, please contact the author to discuss
your situation.)"
a. this is against french law, and probably laws from many other
countries : some rights of the author can't be given to someone else.
b. this is against the free software idea.
c. if I code sthing, then contribute it to ircservices, I would no
longer be the author of this, so I couldn't, for example, include it in
a commercial product I distribute.
I don't understand why this clause is needed. There's no risk with
including GPLed code or FDLed documentation in a project, since neither
the GPL nor the FDL can be revoked. Could you please explain ?

2/ Coding standards (section 6.4)
I understand your identifier naming conventions. But there's no need for
Formatting conventions. What about using GNU indent, which is highly
configurable, and provide a .indent.pro file for ircservices, so that
everyone can submit code that matches your very own formatting
conventions ?
-- 
Lucas Nussbaum
MySQL to IRC gateway : http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/thales/