Yesterday was release party day [1]. Check out the following projects for updates:

• libSystem 0.0.1
• configure 0.0.5
• libc 0.0.2
• utils 0.0.1
• Accessories 0.0.1
• Editor 0.0.1
• Browser 0.0.1

and additionally, CVS dumps for:

• the complete DeforaOS tree [2]
• PHP Explorer specifically [3]

They are reachable on their respective homepages, or directly as pointed.

I am sorry for the daily CVS uploads (which are still missing), but I promise to continue to fix, implement and setup things as much as possible, and this in particular.

[1] https://www.defora.org/index.php/category/264/release
[2] https://www.defora.org/download/DeforaOS-20070817.tar.gz
[3] http://people.defora.org/~khorben/projects/php%20explorer/

The Browser license had to change again. It was using the GPL version 2, but it links to the libSystem library, which has a non-commercial clause. I am afraid this would not be compatible, so I changed it to the DeforaOS Project License just before the upcoming release.

A new CVS snapshot [1] (and direct link [2]) can be obtained from the downloads area. The daily uploads promised a year ago should be actually setup some time after next week.
[1] https://www.defora.org/index.php/project/download
[2] https://www.defora.org/download/DeforaOS-20070621.tar.gz

I managed to find a way to improve DaPortal in order to support some kind of friendly links. It's not as polished as many 2.0-compliant web sites, but certainly much better than before, and I believe it works in most cases.
As always you are welcome to try and find broken links and what not. File a bug [1] or contact me directly [2].

[1] https://www.defora.org/index.php/project/bug_new?project_id=12
[2] http://people.defora.org/~khorben/contact.html

First, the packages part of DeforaOS that were loosely licensed under the terms of the GPL version 2 are now fixed in two aspects:

• they were erroneously specified as licensed under the "GPL version 2 or (at your option) any later version"
• all relevant files should now be referenced as such.

The terms of the imminent GPL version 3 are apparently of a sensible matter. They will be studied for applicability in this project when the final version is out.


Moreover, most of the other projects hosted here are now licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported" license. This deserves some explanation:

• even though this license is probably not the best as-is to protect software, I could not find anything which fits better the needs, and I am not a lawyer;
• while being a strong supporter of free software, this project is so far the result of the work of one single developer, myself;
• because I believe in the future of this project, and currently have the opportunity and will to try to complete it, I have decided to dedicate all of my time working on it;
• while this project is and will always remain free to use, modify and copy free of charge for the general public, it needs support in another way;
• eventual licensed commercial uses of part or all of this project (directly or indirectly) are believed to be a potential solution to this problem.

Feel free to contact us (me) [1] if you want to discuss or be involved in any aspect of this decision.

Speaking of which, one of the main tasks that needs work in the following days is probably this website itself, in order to better reflect the state and direction of this project. I will try to improve the content and formatting as soon as possible, probably starting with daily source code uploads and software packages.

Thanks for your attention!

[1] http://www.defora.org/support.php

The libc has now been working for a while on sparc64 (on top of a NetBSD kernel). The remaining pieces for sparc were added today. They can both link and run most of the code that already works on i386.

Trying to introduce friendly links from bits and pieces was certainly a big mistake. This feature was disabled when migrating the infrastructure a couple of months ago, but some places were found recently again with the "friendlier" links. I apologize for the confusion.
On a related note, I started work again on DaPortal and fixed some long-standing bugs as well as improved a few things (SQL quoting with SQLite, configuration forms, monitoring graph generation for swap, ...). An actual solution for friendlier links is still under study.

The initial version of a desktop icon management application was commited [1] into the Browser project [2] today. Screenshots and eventually a new Browser release [3] should be available soon.

[1] http://www.defora.org/index.php?module=project&action=browse&id=230&file=/src/desktop.c,v
[2] http://www.defora.org/index.php?module=project&action=display&id=230
[3] http://www.defora.org/index.php?module=project&action=download&id=230

This was actually possible about 2 weeks ago, but I finally built it up tonight: the first piece of DeforaOS userland just booted on top of a Linux kernel.
Although it feels nowhere close to the amount of work I put into the project (and the libc in particular), this is definitely a major milestone. The roadmap is 10 days late already, but continuing the project still seems to be realistic.
As stated above the libc took way more work than wished and expected, but from now on its development will be done in the background of the following projects, rather than be the main focus. This is relieving.

Almost every module part of DaPortal no longer refers directly an image in its own directory, if at all. This means a few things:

• PHP source code can from now on easily be stored outside the web server document root;
• an installation can be made easily without icons;
• using different icon sets along with different themes is also straightforward.

To conclude, this should improve DaPortal significantly, both eye-candy-wise and security-wise.