"The most I saw downloaded was their Win32 release with around 160k downloads"
Firebird is very commonly used as an embedded database in an application.
For example we have a free software product VisibleResults (Fundraising application) that has been downloaded several 1,000 times and it uses Firebird.
So there are lots of applications with lots of installations out there using firebird. I have very little idea about the size of lots.
But anyway I don't quite see your point. By most scales Firebird is an active free software application of appreciable size.
At what number of downloads are you saying that names should be respected?
Quote from Brendan@mozilla.org today on the Firebird-general mailing list (that is Firebird the dbms).
What I'm trying to convey is that we don't want people to run "firebird" or "firebird.exe" in a year -- we want them to run "mozilla". But we need to change the front end of the program. And
we need to keep the old front end around, under the "mozilla" name, in the interim.
Unless you're a milestone or daily build tester for Mozilla, you're not going to see the "firebird.exe" name. And if you are such a
person, you are *not* going to be confused about anything.
So it appears that firebird the browser is not intended to be the name that end users will see.
This is a really significant advantage to Mozilla.
With Mozilla being so attractive to web developers it makes it so much more likely that sites will fully support mozilla and those developers will bring in more users.
Getting developers to use your application is a great way to build market share.
Our own developers tend to use Mozilla as the key browser already, with tests to check behaviour on IE later.
All we need now is full etester type functionality using Mozilla instead of IE (preferably Linux based). We have used many add-ons for JUnit (like Canoo Webtest), but the javascript and DOM support is always the problem. Embedding mozilla might be a better way to go.
The SCO problem is of course different, I for one think it is likely to be bogus depending as it does on seemingly unlikely assumptions about both Minix and Linux in the early days.
I am not sure why you think that obvious legal issues over a video player are less important that obscure patent issues on the kernel.
All licenses are there to be checked and kept. The mPlayer issue is relatively straightforward case of library foo uses license x, application bar uses foo, therefore does it keep to the license of foo.
This discussion again shows to me how valuable the legal team on Debian are. We do not want free software to end up having legal problems due to ignoring licenses. Unfortunately the checking is hard and complicated work so it is fortunate that we can rely on the Debian team.
Just look at the current SCO issues and be grateful for all Debian do to avoid problems like this.
I have used PCVS, Source Integrity and CVS. My feeling is
1. Forget PVCS depending on your need both CVS and Source Integrity are better.
2. If you use a language like Delphi where you need to lock files when you edit them (because they are binary and simultaneous changes cannot be merged) then Source Integrity is excellent.
3. For distributed development of systems where all the code is in text files (java, C, C++, python, perl, php etc etc etc) then cvs is excellent due to the way it can merge changes to the same file by different people.
If you want to look at an outsider that could be the very best look at bitkeeper.
If I remember the figures correctly you are twice as likely to kill someone if you hit them at 35 compared to at 30 (it's quite a high death rate at 35 and I think almost certain at 40). If reduce to 20 you rarely cause death.
I do get the idea that there are lots of ways of travelling at more than 10mph that
a) are not likely to kill or badly injure other people and
b) don't hurt the environment.
Home zones are designed to make the places people live nicer by reclaiming the streets for children to play in, neighbours to chat etc. They have a number of nice side effects including better chance of a vibract community and lower crime rates.
As a Brit I have to say that the majority of posts I have read have completely missed the point.
1. The is not a transmitting device. It does not give the govt any information about where you are.
Hence Compared to the current cameras this gives you more anonymous freedom to travel.
2. It does not have to store the whole database of map data, the only point of interest is speed restrictions. These can allow massive amounts of defaulting so in a suburban area you only need to store the roads that allow different speeds to the normal 30mph.
3. Some of us care about freedom. People spout off abou their freedom to speed, what about my freedom to walk safely or for my kids to walk to school. We have a very bad record for child pedestrian deaths, anything that reduces the speed of large heavy objects travelling in close proximity to pedestrians reduces deaths and serious injuries.
4. Some other proposals will make this simpler eg a 20mph limit on the whole of inner London. Others will make it harder (fragmentation of existing 30mph urban speed limit into 20mph areas and 10mph home zones.
I have 3 of Steve's books and have found them all helpful. But it seems to me that this latest one is much less relevant to where I find myself now.
I think that the Open Source/Free Software methodology challenges a lot of software engineering as it would appear this book is promoting.
How can software engineering handle the talent of many open source programmers many of whom are unqualified and very young? Yet the os/fs methods work well.
Products produced using os/fs methods can appear very quickly, can change rapidly (including major design changes - see KDE and it's use of CORBA for communication within a single machine as one example). Yet these same products typically have a much longer life than commercial products. How many commercial editors have been going as long as Emacs (and are still alive and well)?
It seems there has been a progression towards control and a "right way" in Steve's books which seems a pity. I would have much rather have seen a book on Quality Development to match Rapid Development. Such a book could have provided lessions for both os/fs and closed source programmers - there are things both can learn from the other as well as from best practice in their own camp.
Oh and as I forgot to say we are already contributing in work time to more than one project and have released tools under open licences. Now we are negotiating to release full products under GPL.
The headline for this story is completely wrong. As is clear from some of the comments the license under which the blackdown team have done their work has always allowed this to happen.
The real story is that the FSF and everyone else who has criticised the Sun community licence has been proved right. This licence has now been proved to be anti open source as we expected.
Calling IBM a saviour in this situation is also naive. Their JDK is not open source either.
Java must now decline as a language for open source/free software.
I have used db2 before on NT and tried to get it adopted as a company standard (at my previous place) but failed.
Now with my own company I will be reviewing db2 again. At first glance it is a pity that Java Applications require a Db2 CAE installation on the client (currently I use Interbase or Postgresql both of which have pure java jdbc drivers which is much to be preferred).
Regarding your comments about package standards. I understand your point but I think you are overestimating the amount of work. For example I use Debian and I am certain that creating a DEB is not that dificult.
Of course for a small company like us the price of DB2 may prove to be prohibative anyway. I just looked at the ibm shop and could not immediately see what license price would apply to a an application server accessible over the internet.
Actually the thing I find amusing/sad is that I was team leading a Derivatives capture, transmission and matching system more than two years ago in the city of London.
I did design in using XML and DTD's for all the derivatives we supported.
That system is (I believe) now live although somewhat cut down from the original proposals.
The whole thing was definately tied up in very non-open licenses. The company has the standard for dealer confirmations already tied up internationally so it is possible for completely proprietary standards to suceeed (but only for a while).
For me the clear point from the article and this thread is that management of software development is still failing.
This is a key reason why free software results in higher quality software with fewer bugs.
In many companies the behaviour of management actively destroys productivity and quality. Many managers completely fail to understand software development and the people who do it.
Company Management forces software developers to spend time on none productive work. It rewards behaviour that is not aligned with quality work. It measures the wrong things.
People like DeMarco have understood this and documented it for years. Have companies listened? No.
The article in CNN clearly shows a manager who also completely fails to understand how to manage software developers. He needs training urgently.
In my last job before starting my own company I worked as a hacker and then team leader for a software company in the City of London on banking software.
That company was run and managed entirely by sales people. They did not understand AT ALL what motivates programmers/analysts and designers.
These types of managers try to measure software development by number of hours worked and LOC. The results are late, slow and buggy software.
Compare this to free software which is often developed at an amazing speed, has fantastic performance and many less bugs.
Whats the difference? Free software does not have managers!
I see your point about large sites being able to have dedicated servers. I meant that it is only very small sites that need no application server at all. The majority of sites will need at least some multi-purpose servers which do other things than just file and print. I would say that Linux still has more such server applications available than Netware.
Yes I agree that at present Linux competes most closely with Netware for small sites or as one element in a large site that also uses netware.
Yes I also agree that I would choose Intranetware again over NT, but I would also consider Linux over both.
All the application functions you mention come with Linux except some of the Groupwise stuff - but then I have never liked Groupewise, had problems with it on Dos and more recently on NT.
Once NDS is available for Linux then Linux is truely able to replace Netware on much larger sites.
I have now read up quite a bit on LDAP and agree partially with you. But an open directory standard supported by multiple products and easily accessible to applications (eg from Java using JNDI) is a powerful thing. OpenLdap do seem to have a working product for Linux (server and client) and it seems Netscape are porting their directory server as well.
Did you actually read my posting apart from the bit you quoted?
My Netware experience is with 20 or so LANs in 17 or so countries over a number of years (more than 10 I think). As I clearly stated this has been on small sites.
I clearly stated that NDS is a key strength of Netware. But it is not so relevant for small sites. It is also true that for a long time Banyan Streetalk (sp?) was the premier directory service and that came well before NDS.
Is it not true that LDAP is an open standard for directory services that is being adopted by a large part of the industry and will potentially compete with NDS?
The argument that netware is better for Dos may be true but for how many sites is that still important?
Win 95 Client Aware software, sorry where is this better than the support for Win 95 via Samba?
Linux can compete with and be better than Netware for small LAN's now. For large Lans using NDS it cannot (but that's what I said anyway). As Novell have ported NDS to NT is it not possible that they will also port it to Unix?
So by what criteria are you describing my posting as a flame? I really can't see it myself.
You are very correct, Netware 3.12 was the most reliable software I had ever used until I started using Linux (OK I admit it I am entirely from a PC background not a big box one).
But Netware has not yet proved itself as an application server. We all know how few NLM's there are. The choice in dbms has always been tiny with many vendors saying that Netware was not suitable for hosting a dbms.
OK it has changed a bit with the internet stuff Novell have added in recent times. It might change further if Java support is as good as claimed for version 5.
But it seems to me that Linux already has the stability of Netware, it already has the file and print services (via Samba), it already has the dbms and other server applications (Apache etc).
So I am not surprised that Novell are trying to change things - they must be very worried by Linux, although also very relieved that all the attention has been on Linux replacing Windows.
I have used netware a lot in the past from 2.1 onwards through 4.1, this has been in smallish lans with upto approx 70 users but mostly less than 30.
For file and print services for msdos PC's Netware was magic, completely reliable, fast and very simple to manage.
But Netware has never been much in the way of an application server. Few dbms supported it (Btrieve being the most common), few other server based applications were available and those that were tended to result in one server per application due to load, performance and stability. For example we tried Global MHS for a while but it was hopeless compared to using a workstation. (NB Most of the server applications that were available were also very expensive)
Now we all expect to use application servers for many tasks. Servers only oferring file and print services are only relevant to very small LANS.
Unlike older versions of Netware it appears that Netware 5 might be a good application server environment. Particularly now with support for Java making it much easier to develop for than NLM's ever were. Also having Oracle now bundled makes a big diference.
But surely if Linux and the BSD's are competition for NT they are even greater competition for Netware on small sites.
Will I ever again specify Netware? Well if I need NDS then maybe, if I need plain MSDOS PC's then maybe (I have not looked at connecting msdos to Linux/BSD).
But in every other way Linux already has everything a small site would want from Netware. Not only that but the the number of vendors offerring pre-installed Linux is growing fast - how does it compare to the number with pre-installed netware.
All we need is directory services to compete with NDS and who will need Netware anywhere? I believe this is where LDAP should come in but I don't know much about that or the status of free LDAP software.
Does anyone else feel that news.com reports like this are going downhill.
They lack detail and they also lack external links to the content.
In this story almost all links are only internal to other news.com reports and at least one of those: "The company has already rolled out plans" is broken. Even the link to Novell's site is broken.
Where is the detail about what exactly is being opened by Novell? To be a bit fairer to news.com I have just been searching novell.com and can't find any details there either.
I was applauding a message that was constructively helping Apple evolve towards a fully Open Source license.
1. I do not care much about OSI as an organisation, it is closed and I have no influence over it. I prefer SPI which I can contribute to by becoming a Debian developer (if I understand it correctly) SPI is democratic OSI is not.
2. It is too soon to see damage by IBM's license but a) it's most common use is for Jikes which is a Java compiler, if it fails there are other alternatives, it is not as critical as an OS. b) IBM's license did not have all the same clauses (eg about the Apple URL for modifications.
I certainly believe that if the community does not examine attempts to join it and point out any problems it will be destroyed (or at least very fragmented) - why is that zealotry?
Dave
PS I would prefer to respond to a person not an AC.
Slashdot Mirror
"The most I saw downloaded was their Win32 release with around 160k downloads"
.
Firebird is very commonly used as an embedded database in an application.
For example we have a free software product VisibleResults (Fundraising application) that has been downloaded several 1,000 times and it uses Firebird.
So there are lots of applications with lots of installations out there using firebird. I have very little idea about the size of lots.
But anyway I don't quite see your point. By most scales Firebird is an active free software application of appreciable size
At what number of downloads are you saying that names should be respected?
Dave
No the product name is Firebird.
They were unable to get the firebird.org domain as it was already taken by a car enthusiast.
Dave
Quote from Brendan@mozilla.org today on the Firebird-general mailing list (that is Firebird the dbms).
So it appears that firebird the browser is not intended to be the name that end users will see.Regards
This is a really significant advantage to Mozilla.
With Mozilla being so attractive to web developers it makes it so much more likely that sites will fully support mozilla and those developers will bring in more users.
Getting developers to use your application is a great way to build market share.
Our own developers tend to use Mozilla as the key browser already, with tests to check behaviour on IE later.
All we need now is full etester type functionality using Mozilla instead of IE (preferably Linux based). We have used many add-ons for JUnit (like Canoo Webtest), but the javascript and DOM support is always the problem. Embedding mozilla might be a better way to go.
Dave
The SCO problem is of course different, I for one think it is likely to be bogus depending as it does on seemingly unlikely assumptions about both Minix and Linux in the early days.
I am not sure why you think that obvious legal issues over a video player are less important that obscure patent issues on the kernel.
All licenses are there to be checked and kept. The mPlayer issue is relatively straightforward case of library foo uses license x, application bar uses foo, therefore does it keep to the license of foo.
Dave
I have made my way through some of the thread.
This discussion again shows to me how valuable the legal team on Debian are. We do not want free software to end up having legal problems due to ignoring licenses. Unfortunately the checking is hard and complicated work so it is fortunate that we can rely on the Debian team.
Just look at the current SCO issues and be grateful for all Debian do to avoid problems like this.
Dave
Ah ha,
I jumped ship from delphi after version 3 so was not aware that you could now save dfm's as text by default.
How well does cvs merging actually work on form files like this. I can imagine it could get confusing.
Anyway if anything this just increases the advantages of cvs or bitkeeper over source control software that requires locking.
Dave
John,
I have used PCVS, Source Integrity and CVS. My feeling is
1. Forget PVCS depending on your need both CVS and Source Integrity are better.
2. If you use a language like Delphi where you need to lock files when you edit them (because they are binary and simultaneous changes cannot be merged) then Source Integrity is excellent.
3. For distributed development of systems where all the code is in text files (java, C, C++, python, perl, php etc etc etc) then cvs is excellent due to the way it can merge changes to the same file by different people.
If you want to look at an outsider that could be the very best look at bitkeeper.
Dave
If I remember the figures correctly you are twice as likely to kill someone if you hit them at 35 compared to at 30 (it's quite a high death rate at 35 and I think almost certain at 40). If reduce to 20 you rarely cause death.
(all speed figures in mph).
Dave
I do get the idea that there are lots of ways of travelling at more than 10mph that
a) are not likely to kill or badly injure other people and
b) don't hurt the environment.
Home zones are designed to make the places people live nicer by reclaiming the streets for children to play in, neighbours to chat etc. They have a number of nice side effects including better chance of a vibract community and lower crime rates.
Dave
As a Brit I have to say that the majority of posts I have read have completely missed the point.
1. The is not a transmitting device. It does not give the govt any information about where you are.
Hence Compared to the current cameras this gives you more anonymous freedom to travel.
2. It does not have to store the whole database of map data, the only point of interest is speed restrictions. These can allow massive amounts of defaulting so in a suburban area you only need to store the roads that allow different speeds to the normal 30mph.
3. Some of us care about freedom. People spout off abou their freedom to speed, what about my freedom to walk safely or for my kids to walk to school. We have a very bad record for child pedestrian deaths, anything that reduces the speed of large heavy objects travelling in close proximity to pedestrians reduces deaths and serious injuries.
4. Some other proposals will make this simpler eg a 20mph limit on the whole of inner London. Others will make it harder (fragmentation of existing 30mph urban speed limit into 20mph areas and 10mph home zones.
Dave
I have 3 of Steve's books and have found them all helpful. But it seems to me that this latest one is much less relevant to where I find myself now.
I think that the Open Source/Free Software methodology challenges a lot of software engineering as it would appear this book is promoting.
How can software engineering handle the talent of many open source programmers many of whom are unqualified and very young? Yet the os/fs methods work well.
Products produced using os/fs methods can appear very quickly, can change rapidly (including major design changes - see KDE and it's use of CORBA for communication within a single machine as one example). Yet these same products typically have a much longer life than commercial products. How many commercial editors have been going as long as Emacs (and are still alive and well)?
It seems there has been a progression towards control and a "right way" in Steve's books which seems a pity. I would have much rather have seen a book on Quality Development to match Rapid Development. Such a book could have provided lessions for both os/fs and closed source programmers - there are things both can learn from the other as well as from best practice in their own camp.
Dave
Oh and as I forgot to say we are already contributing in work time to more than one project and have released tools under open licences. Now we are negotiating to release full products under GPL.
Dave
"but at work I'm in the hands of my management. Those guys think money first, ethics later"
So leave and start your own company that does things right.
Then you can change things.
I did and now only use two non free applications (Interbase and visual slickedit) thats changing as we move to postgresql and vim.
Java may be next we already use python for many tasks that used to be java.
Dave
The headline for this story is completely wrong. As is clear from some of the comments the license under which the blackdown team have done their work has always allowed this to happen.
The real story is that the FSF and everyone else who has criticised the Sun community licence has been proved right. This licence has now been proved to be anti open source as we expected.
Calling IBM a saviour in this situation is also naive. Their JDK is not open source either.
Java must now decline as a language for open source/free software.
Dave
Hi,
I have used db2 before on NT and tried to get it adopted as a company standard (at my previous place) but failed.
Now with my own company I will be reviewing db2 again. At first glance it is a pity that Java Applications require a Db2 CAE installation on the client (currently I use Interbase or Postgresql both of which have pure java jdbc drivers which is much to be preferred).
Regarding your comments about package standards. I understand your point but I think you are overestimating the amount of work. For example I use Debian and I am certain that creating a DEB is not that dificult.
Of course for a small company like us the price of DB2 may prove to be prohibative anyway. I just looked at the ibm shop and could not immediately see what license price would apply to a an application server accessible over the internet.
Cheers
Dave
My biased response is that the Locomotive is a good option.
We have been using this for a while now and are part of the development team.
It is stable, fast and easy to develop for. It also has a history of use for large sites.
In a less biased view I expect to see a fair bit of merging between the various projects over the next few years.
Regards
Dave
Actually the thing I find amusing/sad is that I was team leading a Derivatives capture, transmission and matching system more than two years ago in the city of London.
I did design in using XML and DTD's for all the derivatives we supported.
That system is (I believe) now live although somewhat cut down from the original proposals.
The whole thing was definately tied up in very non-open licenses. The company has the standard for dealer confirmations already tied up internationally so it is possible for completely proprietary standards to suceeed (but only for a while).
Dave
For me the clear point from the article and this thread is that management of software development is still failing.
This is a key reason why free software results in higher quality software with fewer bugs.
In many companies the behaviour of management actively destroys productivity and quality. Many managers completely fail to understand software development and the people who do it.
Company Management forces software developers to spend time on none productive work. It rewards behaviour that is not aligned with quality work. It measures the wrong things.
People like DeMarco have understood this and documented it for years. Have companies listened? No.
The article in CNN clearly shows a manager who also completely fails to understand how to manage software developers. He needs training urgently.
In my last job before starting my own company I worked as a hacker and then team leader for a software company in the City of London on banking software.
That company was run and managed entirely by sales people. They did not understand AT ALL what motivates programmers/analysts and designers.
These types of managers try to measure software development by number of hours worked and LOC. The results are late, slow and buggy software.
Compare this to free software which is often developed at an amazing speed, has fantastic performance and many less bugs.
Whats the difference? Free software does not have managers!
Do the world a favour - sack a manager today!
Dave
Max,
I see your point about large sites being able to have dedicated servers. I meant that it is only very small sites that need no application server at all. The majority of sites will need at least some multi-purpose servers which do other things than just file and print. I would say that Linux still has more such server applications available than Netware.
Yes I agree that at present Linux competes most closely with Netware for small sites or as one element in a large site that also uses netware.
Yes I also agree that I would choose Intranetware again over NT, but I would also consider Linux over both.
All the application functions you mention come with Linux except some of the Groupwise stuff - but then I have never liked Groupewise, had problems with it on Dos and more recently on NT.
Once NDS is available for Linux then Linux is truely able to replace Netware on much larger sites.
I have now read up quite a bit on LDAP and agree partially with you. But an open directory standard supported by multiple products and easily accessible to applications (eg from Java using JNDI) is a powerful thing. OpenLdap do seem to have a working product for Linux (server and client) and it seems Netscape are porting their directory server as well.
David
H'mm,
Did you actually read my posting apart from the bit you quoted?
My Netware experience is with 20 or so LANs in 17 or so countries over a number of years (more than 10 I think). As I clearly stated this has been on small sites.
I clearly stated that NDS is a key strength of Netware. But it is not so relevant for small sites. It is also true that for a long time Banyan Streetalk (sp?) was the premier directory service and that came well before NDS.
Is it not true that LDAP is an open standard for directory services that is being adopted by a large part of the industry and will potentially compete with NDS?
The argument that netware is better for Dos may be true but for how many sites is that still important?
Win 95 Client Aware software, sorry where is this better than the support for Win 95 via Samba?
Linux can compete with and be better than Netware for small LAN's now. For large Lans using NDS it cannot (but that's what I said anyway). As Novell have ported NDS to NT is it not possible that they will also port it to Unix?
So by what criteria are you describing my posting as a flame? I really can't see it myself.
Dave
You are very correct, Netware 3.12 was the most reliable software I had ever used until I started using Linux (OK I admit it I am entirely from a PC background not a big box one).
But Netware has not yet proved itself as an application server. We all know how few NLM's there are. The choice in dbms has always been tiny with many vendors saying that Netware was not suitable for hosting a dbms.
OK it has changed a bit with the internet stuff Novell have added in recent times. It might change further if Java support is as good as claimed for version 5.
But it seems to me that Linux already has the stability of Netware, it already has the file and print services (via Samba), it already has the dbms and other server applications (Apache etc).
So I am not surprised that Novell are trying to change things - they must be very worried by Linux, although also very relieved that all the attention has been on Linux replacing Windows.
Dave
I have used netware a lot in the past from 2.1 onwards through 4.1, this has been in smallish lans with upto approx 70 users but mostly less than 30.
For file and print services for msdos PC's Netware was magic, completely reliable, fast and very simple to manage.
But Netware has never been much in the way of an application server. Few dbms supported it (Btrieve being the most common), few other server based applications were available and those that were tended to result in one server per application due to load, performance and stability. For example we tried Global MHS for a while but it was hopeless compared to using a workstation. (NB Most of the server applications that were available were also very expensive)
Now we all expect to use application servers for many tasks. Servers only oferring file and print services are only relevant to very small LANS.
Unlike older versions of Netware it appears that Netware 5 might be a good application server environment. Particularly now with support for Java making it much easier to develop for than NLM's ever were. Also having Oracle now bundled makes a big diference.
But surely if Linux and the BSD's are competition for NT they are even greater competition for Netware on small sites.
Will I ever again specify Netware? Well if I need NDS then maybe, if I need plain MSDOS PC's then maybe (I have not looked at connecting msdos to Linux/BSD).
But in every other way Linux already has everything a small site would want from Netware. Not only that but the the number of vendors offerring pre-installed Linux is growing fast - how does it compare to the number with pre-installed netware.
All we need is directory services to compete with NDS and who will need Netware anywhere? I believe this is where LDAP should come in but I don't know much about that or the status of free LDAP software.
Just my 2c.
Dave
Does anyone else feel that news.com reports like this are going downhill.
They lack detail and they also lack external links to the content.
In this story almost all links are only internal to other news.com reports and at least one of those: "The company has already rolled out plans" is broken. Even the link to Novell's site is broken.
Where is the detail about what exactly is being opened by Novell? To be a bit fairer to news.com I have just been searching novell.com and can't find any details there either.
Dave
Sorry Mr AC but you have contradicted yourself.
I was applauding a message that was constructively helping Apple evolve towards a fully Open Source license.
1. I do not care much about OSI as an organisation, it is closed and I have no influence over it. I prefer SPI which I can contribute to by becoming a Debian developer (if I understand it correctly) SPI is democratic OSI is not.
2. It is too soon to see damage by IBM's license but a) it's most common use is for Jikes which is a Java compiler, if it fails there are other alternatives, it is not as critical as an OS. b) IBM's license did not have all the same clauses (eg about the Apple URL for modifications.
I certainly believe that if the community does not examine attempts to join it and point out any problems it will be destroyed (or at least very fragmented) - why is that zealotry?
Dave
PS I would prefer to respond to a person not an AC.