From 3e4350a4efa2b509d4801a23417ad48e01be2151 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "https://id.koumbit.net/anarcat" Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 01:53:11 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] move conversation about licenses here --- doc/todo/pagedown_plugin/discussion.mdwn | 59 ++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 59 insertions(+) create mode 100644 doc/todo/pagedown_plugin/discussion.mdwn diff --git a/doc/todo/pagedown_plugin/discussion.mdwn b/doc/todo/pagedown_plugin/discussion.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 000000000..b2e2f0cb9 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/todo/pagedown_plugin/discussion.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +I've tried to retrieve the wmd-editor source tarball lately, but the site seems offline. + +From what I've read on the Internet, wmd-editor is not (yet?) free software by itself, and its author has gone MIA. +But it looks like somebody recently took the step to rewrite a wmd-clone under a saner license, see [[pagedown|http://code.google.com/p/pagedown/source/browse/]]. + +Given all the above, what about upgrading this plugin to use pagedown instead of wmd? It seem a clear win to me... + +> AFAICS, pagedown is a modified version of WMD. Let's +> look at its license file: --[[Joey]] +> +> A javascript port of Markdown, as used on Stack Overflow +> and the rest of Stack Exchange network. +> +> Largely based on showdown.js by John Fraser (Attacklab). +> +> Original Markdown Copyright (c) 2004-2005 John Gruber +> +> +> +> Original Showdown code copyright (c) 2007 John Fraser +> +> Modifications and bugfixes (c) 2009 Dana Robinson +> Modifications and bugfixes (c) 2009-2011 Stack Exchange Inc. +> +> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a +> copy [...] +> +> Ok, so it says it's based on showdown. John Fraser wrote showdown and also +> WMD, which IIRC was built on top of showdown. (Showdown converts the +> markdown to html, and WMD adds the editor UI.) +> +> I can nowhere find a actual statement of the copyright of showdown or +> WMD. has a "MIT License" notice on it, +> but this is clearly just the license chosen when signing up at google +> code for the repo that would be used for a rewrite of the code, and the only thing +> said about the previous 1.0 release of WMD is "use it freely", which is not +> specific enough to be a grant of license, and is moreover not a free +> software license, as it does not cover distribution or modification. +> +> Which was all covered in the thread here, +> when StackOverflow decided to start working on pagedown. +> +> This thread does not give any indication that they ever managed to get +> a license grant for WMD/showdown. It frankly, does not inspire confidence +> that the people working on this care about the license. +> +> It would probably be pretty easy to adapt the ikiwiki wmd plugin +> to use pagedown. But without a clear and credible license, why? +> +> (Note that I have a wmd-new branch in my ikiwiki git repo that +> uses , which was an earlier +> version of pagedown (probably, not entirely clear).) +> +> An alternate alternative is markitup: +> It has a clear history and a credible license (MIT or GPL dual license). +> It's also easily extensible to other formats so could handle rst etc. +> It does not, however, have a markdown to html converter -- for +> previewing it has to talk to the server with AJAX. +> --[[Joey]]