Daily Archives: February 28, 2003

PHPNuke Copyright Notice Debate

Uncategorized

Today, a story (beware the popups) on PHPNuke.org caught my attention. Basically, it is slamming Yale’s excellent LawMeme site because it doesn’t include a PHPNuke copyright statement at the bottom of each page. The PHPNuke people seemed to be asserting that this was required of them under the GPL.

This concerned me, as PHPNuke is a part of Debian, which has a strict set of guidelines requiring included software to be truly Free. I did some checking, and, in a post to debian-legal, highlighted the problem.

There are several interesting aspects of this saga. One is that some may consider the user to actually be distributing parts of the PHPNuke code to each person that views a webpage. Another is whether PHPNuke qualifies as an “interactive program” under the GPL. So far, these seem to be uncharted waters.

A Lesson on Influencing Adults

Society, TV

When the news broke yesterday that Fred Rogers had died, it was amazing to see how many adults still remembered the Mr. Rogers show and even were personally moved by the show in later life. I think it goes to show that what children watch on TV and at the movies really does matter to their character development.

A number of stories about Mr. Rogers appeared yesterday in addition to those liked above. We saw appreciations, lists of Fred Rogers quotes, links to an old interview with Mr. Speedy Delivery, and even how to talk to children about his death.

NPR has a webpage about Fred Rogers.