volomike

Ever hear of WordPress app themes? They're somewhat new. These are no ordinary themes. Take for instance a dental office. You walk in and the dental assistant makes an appointment on the scheduling app. Only it's not an app per sé, but a WordPress theme that acts like a full-blown web application. The application may use some features of WordPress, but may not use others. Some of the files will load via an MVC framework kicked off by WordPress calling a theme's index.php file. Some of the files may use WP API calls, while other files may not use a single WP API call at all. Some app themes may simply use WordPress as the sales mechanism because things attached to WordPress have market uptake. (Note, almost all app themes are not available on wordpress.org.) Some app themes may simply use WordPress to borrow the same database, provide easy admin panels that people are used to using, and the rest might be something else entirely. Some may use pages and posts inside the app theme. It depends.

Now that you know what a WordPress app theme is, the question is, "If a given PHP file doesn't make a single WP API call in it, but the parent file that called it may make a WP API call, does that file also mean it must be GPL as well because WP is GPL?"

Here's what the FSF told Matt Mullenweg about it:

http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/

However, did the FSF take into consideration my question above in the case of an app theme? That's a bit different, don't you think?

Here's my conundrum. I've put family life on hold, which hasn't been easy for me at all for me and my marriage. I've been drinking water and eating bread some days, almost. I did all this so that I could have the time to spend 30 days coding a WordPress app theme. Now that it's finished, I want to market it behind a paywall and get paid for my hard work. I want to ensure that when I told my wife, "We'll make some great sales here on this," that I was telling something realistic. But there's woothemes.com and cheapwoothemes.com as an example. Like that, I don't want someone to fork my stuff and sell it as their own accomplishment, perhaps doing nothing but changing branding, eroding all my seriously hard work.

I want to see the Android OS succeed, and am learning how to develop Android apps with PhoneGap, but there's a glaring hole that needs fixing. It seems to me that developers can use it for marketing or malicious intent.

- Imagine a free and fun soundboard app for some movie star you like, such as Christopher Walken. You install the app, but it says it needs access to your contact information. A naive user may just shrug their shoulders and click OK on that permission request during installation. But then within 24 hours, they start receiving spam email, direct mail, and even telemarketing calls to their home phone and even their mobile phone. And why? Well, they opted in, but they didn't know what they were opting in for.

- Next, imagine that same app, but oddly it needs permission to your microphone or camera and without telling you why. When you install it and use it, the thing remotely spies on you for criminal purposes.

Google, we really need to fix this by separating those kinds of apps out in the marketplace from the rest, and by making it crystal clear to users why this information would be used if they opt in for it. It's not an easy thing to fix if we want a surge of app growth. However, if this thing hits the nightly news with an expose on how completely exposed we are to opt-in marketing and malicious apps that spy on us remotely through the camera or microphone -- it's going to kill Android for a good long time.

So, Google, let's fix this before it hits the evening news.

Crap!

I just received an email from Verizon. They say my new ISP on July 1 will become Frontier Communications. I don't know if this means my phone service as well. (I'll call in the morning to find out.)

Does anyone know the good and the bad with this? I mean, what's the response time if my Internet goes down? Will they filter and throttle my Internet differently than Verizon? Will my rates shoot up? These are things that worry me.

I need your advice on how to start a F/OSS project. Where's the best online hangout to gather devs for this? Where's the best place to put the code as we build it?

I'd like to invite PHP developers (who know a slight bit of Kohana and Bash) to help me build a Cpanel-like F/OSS package for Ubuntu Server. Sure, there are other packages out there, but none equal the simplicity and intuitiveness of Cpanel, and also I want this to be GPLv3.

The first goal will be application security because panels like these are often targeted. Following that, I wish to start on the login and the main page, and make it work in a shared hosting environment among many customers. From there I want to build an easily extended API where one can define panel sections, and then panel icons in each section. At that point, the team splits up and starts focusing on each icon-connected script that does a specific task in an intuitive way.

If you have advice on starting a project like this, let me know here.

If you are interested in joining me to build this, then contact me with either a message reply or PM here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1499853

According to CNN, the Internet runs out of IPv4 addresses in a mere 18 months from now. Unfortunately, a lot of software is coded for the IPv4 standard, not IPv6. I predict a Y2K-like crisis until this is resolved.

CNN Report is here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/27/internet.crunch.2012/index.html?hpt=T2

In fact, at a previous company I used to work for, I recall software I wrote that was tuned for IPv4 because at the time I had no idea that IPv4 would run out so fast. After a layoff, I warned the boss, but he likely ignored me. Oh well, their loss. I imagine with all the tech layoffs going on, this is going to be quite common.

Meanwhile, this is not the booming economy of the early and mid 90s, so a lot of companies won't be able to afford to make the changes like they could during Y2K -- making the crisis for IPv6 even more lengthy.

I would like to recommend each and every developer to start reading up on IPv6 as soon as possible. The world needs to sound the warning bell and get everything tested and cutover to IPv6 before we have major systems malfunctioning.

Imagine what would happen to the world's financial markets, in a tough time like we have today, when the systems we rely upon start failing because they need IPv6.

I also predict that pretty soon, you'll start to see a massive hiring cycle for IT workers as they are brought back into the workplace to convert and test everything for IPv6.

(Might also be a good time to buy gold?)