<div dir="ltr">Nadav, Dan,<div><br></div><div>First - thank you! I have no idea how you find the time to work on Hspell along with </div><div>raising families. I think the notable date and hour of this email give a hint :)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Regarding the license - AGPL sounds like a great idea, but It is hard for me to imagine </div><div>gmail, for example, with a "powered by Hspell" button. I am afraid they will prefer to keep </div>
<div>using the outdated version 1.1 rather than do this.</div><div><br></div><div>Orna</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 11:36 PM, Nadav Har'El <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nyh@math.technion.ac.il">nyh@math.technion.ac.il</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Dan Kenigsberg and I are proud to present version 1.2 of Hspell, the free<br>
Hebrew spell-checker and morphological analyzer.<br>
<br>
You can find the new release in the project's homepage:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://hspell.ivrix.org.il/" target="_blank">http://hspell.ivrix.org.il/</a><br>
<br>
Over two years have passed since our previous release. In that time, we<br>
continued to improve Hspell's accuracy and further enlarged its vocabulary,<br>
reaching over 24,000 base words. We continued to document Hspell's spelling<br>
standard, which strictly follows the decisions of the Academy of the Hebrew<br>
Language; The document, <a href="http://hspell.ivrix.org.il/niqqudless.pdf" target="_blank">http://hspell.ivrix.org.il/niqqudless.pdf</a>, now spans<br>
over 80 pages.<br>
<br>
We also fixed a number of bugs. The most serious bugs were discovered in the<br>
hunspell-format dictionary (which is used by OpenOffice, Firefox, and other<br>
projects), so upgrading to Hspell 1.2 is strongly recommended for users and<br>
distributors of the hunspell-format dictionary. For more details about the<br>
improvements in this release, see <a href="http://hspell.ivrix.org.il/WHATSNEW" target="_blank">http://hspell.ivrix.org.il/WHATSNEW</a>.<br>
<br>
In this release we've also made an important, perhaps even dramatic, change<br>
to Hspell's license. Until now, Hspell was licensed under the terms of the<br>
GNU GPL version 2. From now on, it is licensed under the GNU AGPL version 3.<br>
<br>
This license change probably means very little to most users; The AGPL is<br>
still an Open Source license (of course, we wouldn't have it any other way),<br>
and it is compatible with the GPL (version 3). But nevertheless we consider<br>
this an important change, so I'd like to further explain its rationale.<br>
<br>
The GPL was designed to promote free software, and protect its ecology.<br>
The GPL allows users to freely share and improve the software, while ensuring<br>
that the improved versions remain free forever, for all of society's benefit.<br>
Nobody is allowed to market their improved version as a proprietary,<br>
closed-source, product.<br>
<br>
However, in recent years the proprietary software industry started undergoing<br>
a transformation: Whereas most software used to be distributed as a product,<br>
software is now often distributed as a service. Users do not install the<br>
software on their machine, but rather use it through the service provider's<br>
Web site. Such service providers discovered that they were exempt from the<br>
GPL's terms: As they were not distributing binaries of the software, they<br>
also did not have to distribute source code. Nowadays users frequently find<br>
themselves using software through a Web site which is based on free software -<br>
but the user cannot install this software on a different server, or modify it.<br>
Very often, the user cannot even know which free software is providing the<br>
service he or she is using.<br>
<br>
We've unfortunately seen this happening with Hspell too. E.g., traditional<br>
word games had to be free software if they were to be based on Hspell,<br>
but now online games, non-free and closed source, are appearing based on<br>
Hspell. Whereas a closed-source word processor could not include Hspell,<br>
an equally closed-source online word processor did. Even worse, most<br>
software-as-a-service containing Hspell did not even acknowledge this fact.<br>
This not only denies us this simple courtesy, but also denies the users<br>
the knowledge of which spell-checker they are using, what is its spelling<br>
standard, and where they can report problems they discover with the spell-<br>
checker.<br>
<br>
The AGPLv3 (see <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html" target="_blank">http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html</a>), which Hspell will now<br>
be using, attempts to close this loophole. Online software-as-a-service<br>
providers which derive their service from AGPL software (like Hspell), now<br>
need to make the source code of their service (or parts of it) available to<br>
their users. This will allow users that wish to do so to install the service<br>
on a different server, to better understand the service they are using,<br>
and even to modify it.<br>
<br>
Anway, I'll get off my soapbox now, and return to Hspell 1.2.<br>
<br>
Not only people who download Hspell from our site will benefit from this<br>
release. For several years now, only a minority of Hspell's users downloaded<br>
it from our site. Hspell has become the de-facto standard Hebrew spell-checker<br>
in the free software world and beyond; It is available in Linux distributions,<br>
in Aspell's and Hunspell's dictionary collections, as OpenOffice and Firefox<br>
plugins, and more. We expect that the new Hspell release will soon propagate<br>
to all these distributions and applications, so that their users will also be<br>
able to enjoy the improvements in Hspell 1.2.<br>
<br>
We hope that you enjoy Hspell 1.2.<br>
<br>
Nadav Har'El and Dan Kenigsberg.<br>
February 28, <a href="tel:2012" value="+9722012">2012</a>.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Nadav Har'El | Tuesday, Feb 28 <a href="tel:2012" value="+9722012">2012</a>,<br>
<a href="mailto:nyh@math.technion.ac.il">nyh@math.technion.ac.il</a> |-----------------------------------------<br>
Phone <a href="tel:%2B972-523-790466" value="+972523790466">+972-523-790466</a>, ICQ 13349191 |I want to be a human being, not a human<br>
<a href="http://nadav.harel.org.il" target="_blank">http://nadav.harel.org.il</a> |doing -- Scatman John<br>
<br>
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</font></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda.<br><a href="http://ladypine.org">http://ladypine.org</a><br>
</div></div>