[aprssig] questions about the Bulletin Screen "billboard" concept

Thu Nov 10 04:58:41 UTC 2011

Hi, John.

Glad to get your contact info. I'm not sure if I can find the notepad I was scribbling on at the DCC, so I'm glad to have another copy of your contact info.

If you want some geographically redundant places to deploy your AVRS server, I'd be happy to host a copy. I already have a business-grade FiOS Internet line with spare static IP's into my place, and have been hosting low-budget websites here for about 5 years (Fedora Core Linux, Postgresql, and Tomcat for the current deployments, but Apache and PHP available). Just bought replacement batteries for all the old UPS's; ouch! :-)  I'm reasonably happy that my service hasn't gone down even with Hurricane Irene and the latest nor'easter (OK, the lines were knocked down during the nor'easter, but service kept running through them on the ground, and I did have an 8-hour power outage after Irene, but the batteries kept it up through most of that).

Regarding licensing, I've been considering the Lesser GPL (LGPL) for my own stuff; third-party libraries I'm using would of course have to remain under their own licenses. But I need to read over all those licenses before I commit to anything; I need to know if I have to rip out any of the third-party libraries and replace them to keep the combined licenses reasonable and compatible. For example, I'm currently using the old Sun JavaHelp 2.0 library because I don't like the license for Oracle Help for Java (OHJ), but I don't know if Oracle is planning on retroactively changing the JavaHelp binary library license (or if they already have) to make it more restrictive and/or costly.

Andrew Pavlin KA2DDO

Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2011 22:49:46 -0500
From: jgorkos at gmail.com
To: aprssig at tapr.org
Subject: Re: [aprssig] questions about the Bulletin Screen "billboard"	concept

    Andrew-

      I'm glad you finally popped up on the list.  I was in such a rush
    to get to the airport after DCC that I misplaced your contact
    information (and my brand new TH-D72A).  Based on what little I saw
    at DCC, you're well on the right track for a cross-platform client. 
    I hope you make the decision to "go public" with your code.  There
    are a number of quite talented developers on this list that might
    just prove that "all of us are smarter than one of us."  I don't
    want to rush you or try to force you down a path you don't like, but
    what license are you considering releasing your client under?

    John Gorkos

    AB0OO

    (the AVRS author, for better or worse...)

    On 11/09/2011 10:40 PM, Andrew P. wrote:

        Hi, Georg.

        Thanks for the "encouraging words". :-) Good thing I've been a
        professional software engineer for 30 years (!), so I've
        developed a pretty tough hide regarding user complaints.

        Re: targets: I'm writing my app in Java, so it's very
        deliberately "write once, test everywhere." :-) I've already
        successfully run the same pre-alpha distro on Windows XP and
        Linux (Fedora Core dialects); when I get it a little further
        along, I'm going to see if I can find a Mac owner to try it,
        too. But I still have a bit of work to do (currently 14 tasks
        to-do on my work list before I'm ready to send the alpha release
        to Bob for evaluation, and one of those tasks is the first draft
        of the user manual). Once Bob (and anyone else he recommends)
        has had a chance to shoot holes in it, I'll be ready to release
        it to the general ham public.

        I met the AVRS author at the ARRL/TAPR DCC this year, and he
        told me about his library. I've been working on my application
        independently since June. At this point, considering that this
        program started as a training exercise in APRS system
        engineering, I'm probably going to keep what I wrote myself for
        a while longer, until the app's internal API's settle down a bit
        more. Doesn't mean I'm not going to look at his AVRS stuff, and
        see if there is a good convergence point for his library and
        mine.

        So, back to the hack. I'd like to have it out there before it's
        completely obsolete. :-)

        Andrew KA2DDO

        Berwyn, Pennsylvania U.S.A.

        Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2011 12:58:18 +0100

          From: georg at op-co.de

          To: aprssig at tapr.org

          Subject: Re: [aprssig] questions about the Bulletin Screen
          "billboard" concept

          * Lynn W. Deffenbaugh (Mr) <ldeffenb at homeside.to> [2011-11-09 03:49]:
> >Looking forward to some good advice.
> Be ready to do it, and re-do it.  What platform are you targeting
> your application to if I may ask?

In case it is Java based, maybe you can make use of (and contribute to)
the APRS parser/encoder which is part of AVRS:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/avrs/

It would be great for the community as well as for the APRS standard to
have a strong multi-platform library which can be plugged into own
projects. Maybe together we can make that vision come true!

> And if you're planning to release it to the general amateur radio
> public, you should probably read G4ILO's excellent description of what
> you can expect from your user base:
> 
> http://blog.g4ilo.com/2010/10/advice-to-amateur-programmers.html

However, you should not take the advice too serious. Most of the
feedback I'm getting for APRSdroid is very positive. The only
significant exception are people too impatient to wait for an APRS-IS
passcode.

73 from Germany,

Georg DO1GL
-- 
APRSdroid - Open Source APRS Position reporting and Mapping on Android
http://aprsdroid.org/m ++ https://market.android.com/details?id=org.aprsdroid.app

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