wordpress

Log Cloud 1.0 beta

In a somewhat previous life, I used to write software. At this point it’s been years since I’ve written a line of production code. But I still poke around every once in a while. I’ve even coded up some plugins that I use on Rat’s Reading. Most are very specific to that site, such as adding in my Amazon associates tag automatically. Not really releasable stuff.

Both on that site and this one, I use Simple Tags to manage my tags. Pretty good plugin. However, one of my irritations both with that plugin’s tag cloud and the standard WordPress tag cloud are that they use linear scaling for font sizes. In other words, if a site has one tag that has a disproportionate number of uses, the font sizing is worthless. See this post for a good explanation.

Anyway, I took the ideas from that blog post and hacked the Simple Tags tag cloud implementation on Rat’s Reading to use logarithmic scaling. But every version upgrade of Simple Tags overwrites that, which is a pain. So I looked for a standalone tag cloud with this kind of scaling so I wouldn’t lose my changes every time I upgraded.

I couldn’t find a standalone tag cloud plugin that implements logarithmic scaling. So I just wrote one. And here’s version 1.0 (beta). It’s very very simple. Almost zero features. Only way to get a tag cloud is via shortcode, and it only implements options in the standard WordPress tag cloud functions. I’m throwing it out in case other folks want to play with similar stuff. I will add a few features over the next few weeks and versions, as it’s currently not good enough to replace my modified Simple Tags tag cloud.

Log Cloud 1.0 (beta)

cforms II now uses GPL 3.0

A short update to the kerfuffle that my opinion entry about cforms II caused. As a result of the mess, Oliver Seidel released cforms 10.2 under the GPL version 3. It’s not yet back in the WordPress plugin repository, but hopefully it will be soon. And hopefully he’ll see increased notice and attention due to using the GPL.

cforms II does not use a GPL compatible license

I helped a friend of mine set up a web site for her small business. She asked me if I could install some sort of contact form for it, so she wouldn’t have to rely in people getting her email address right. Sure, she could use a mailto: link, but even then some people manage to mangle her email address in the process. She wanted something where people could simply type what they wanted, hit send, and she could be sure it got to her.

Since her site was built using WordPress, the first place I headed was the WordPress plugin repository. The handy-dandy integration between WordPress 2.7 and the repository makes such things simple. By far the most popular contact form plugin is cforms II (no link). So I installed and configured. Voila! A little complex but it wasn’t too hard to work with.

Testing it out, I noticed a link at the bottom of the contact form. It pointed to Oliver Seidel’s web site. He’s the developer for cforms II. I didn’t like the placement for the link (my friend has a credits page where I would put it). So I immediately Googled how to do this. Lo’ and behold Mr. Seidel has deliberately made it difficult to remove the link. That’s fine. His software… sort of.

See, here’s the thing: All plugins on wordpress.org are supposed to use GPL-compatible licenses. That means that users get the source code, and they can do nearly whatever they want with it. Turns out that Mr. Seidel never actually included a license in the download (so far as I can tell). And on at least one page on his site, Mr. Seidel claims the license for cforms II is not open source or GPL compatible. Specifically, he says that users may not modify or redistribute the plugin or it’s source. That’s not GPL.

This plugin is so popular, and the credit line issue is so prominent, that the folks at Automattic (who run wordpress.org) can’t have missed it. Supposedly they check the license for every plugin to verify it is GPL compatible. They’ve booted hundreds of themes from the repository for lesser offenses. But the popular cforms II remains. Does Automattic not want to lose a popular plugin from their repository?

When uploading plugins to the repository, plugin authors assert that their plugin is GPL compatibly licensed. Did Mr. Seidel lie? Or did he just not read it very thoroughly? Regardless, if he’s not going to license it under a compatible license, he should voluntarily pull cforms II from the repository. He should not take advantage of the multiple benefits of the repository (easy installation, high prominence, etc.) if he doesn’t want to play by the rules.

Insult contest winner(s)!

I hereby announce the winners for my Insult King Rat contest. Here’s your prize, links to your site from this post without rel=”nofollow” added.

Christopher Mendes gets first link for saying he would bescumber me if I was already fimicolous. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I suspect he typo-ed his entry by omitting the word not.

And I’ll give eliZZZa a link for saying I’m driven by larmoyance. My friends and I weren’t quite sure what she meant by that, as the definitions of larmoyant didn’t quite work in context. We think she meant to say I was a crybaby, but we are just guessing.

Anyway, here’s hoping you get some traffic for your efforts. Though it did seem like people weren’t even trying.