Mylar Connector for Mantis

[chrishane]

I have implemented the first cut at a Mylar Mantis Bug Tracker Repository Connector. You can find it at sf.net http://sourceforge.net/projects/mylar-mantis/. From the Summary page you can click Project -> Web site to see more complete notes and status for this connector.

It is an alpha level plug-in that is mostly feature complete. It's a bit rough right now; but very workable.

Any one with patches to add refinements/niceties are very welcome to submit them.

Chris....

[vboctor]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for sharing the connector and posting your work here. There is an implementation in progress as part of MantisConnect, see the following issue in the bug tracker:
http://www.futureware.biz/mantis/view.php?id=238

Please refer to MantisConnect project for distribution of MantisConnect. The this due to the licensing of MantisConnect. You are welcome to join the MantisConnect as a developer to implement whatever extensions that you need.

[dingfelder]

eprhaps I misunderstand the last post, but the way I interpreted it was that the eclipse plugin that is getting created can not be distributed except on the futureware.biz site.

If so, I am troubled / dissapointed. perhaps if that is the situation, the licensing requirements should be reviewed?

My reasoning is that there are a HUGE number of eclipse users and many will never find out about mantis or how it could integrate into eclipse, unless we fully embrace the eclipse plugin addition / discovery process. (so users can get the plugin automatically from within eclipse)

[chrishane]

The way I understand things:

Mantis is GPL
MantisConnect is GPL
Eclipse is EPL

I have put my Mantis Mylar plugin under the EPL (mainly because it is based off of the Mylar Trac code which is also EPL).

There is also an eclipse plugin on the MantisConnect site (in SVN only right now). I believe they are trying to integrate it into Mylar - I don't know that status of that effort.

There should not be any license issues since this Mantis Mylar eclipse plugin use no code from the MantisConnect project. I have not even looked at MantisConnect java code.

You can find this Mylar Mantis connector at:
http://mylar-mantis.sourceforge.net/

The long term goal is to get it to a level where it is included in Mylar project proper. I welcome any patches. It works pretty well currently. It just needs some refinements added and things will work great. I would invite anyone (including the current Mantis/MantisConnect developers/users) to contribute any changes.

Chris....

[dingfelder]

It sounds like you are aware of the issues. For those that may not be aware of exactly what is going on, the main license issue between EPL and GPL is that EPL grants patent rights that the GPL does not.

specifically, from the FSF:

For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)

another interesting comment is that the GPL will be changing to more closely align with the EPL:

During the drafting process of the GPL version 3 Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen from the Free Software Foundation have stated repeatedly that compatibility with the Apache Software Foundation's software license and the Eclipse Public license will be one of the goals of the new version of the GPL, so it might be possible to combine EPL and GPL software in the future.

Having said that, I would think that mantis would prefer that their license would be EPL instead of GPL, because they would want more patent protections. Obviously there must be other reasons for going with GPL that I am not aware of.

I think I will wait until it is integrated into mylar. Good news that it is happening though :)

[chrishane]

I think I will wait until it is integrated into mylar. Good news that it is happening though

I'm not sure what you mean by "integrated into mylar". Anyway, re-reading what I wrote I wasn't clear. So let me try to explain the situation again:

There are 2 eclipse plugin projects. The one hosted on the Mantis Connect site and mine host on sourceforge.

For the eclipse plugin hosted on the Mantis Connect site, the effort to "integrate" the plugin with mylar has not occurred (at least from what I can read in bug reports since I have not looked at the code).

Which gets to the plugin hosted on the sf.net site. This plugin is integrated (in fact depends) on mylar. I started writing this because the other plugin does not integrate into mylar yet due the the licensing issue and probably time to make it happen (I also think there are some technical issue they are working through). This plugin is EPL based and the goal is to eventually have it included in the mylar project proper.

Hope that clears up any misunderstandings.

Chris....

[vboctor]

chrisbane, at the moment you are distribution the MantisConnect webservice from your plug-in project Sourceforge website. Users should download the plug-in from your mylar-mantis project and download the webservice from mantisconnect. This is needed for users to comply with the dual license model of MantisConnect.

As I said before, I would be happy to give you access to merge any updates you may have and drive releases of MantisConnect.

[chrishane]

chrisbane, at the moment you are distribution the MantisConnect webservice from your plug-in project Sourceforge website. Users should download the plug-in from your mylar-mantis project and download the webservice from mantisconnect. This is needed for users to comply with the dual license model of MantisConnect.

As I said before, I would be happy to give you access to merge any updates you may have and drive releases of MantisConnect.

Victor,

Thanks for the offer for access to MantisConnect. As of now though I have not made any changes to the webservice. I have only pulled the latest SVN snapshot of the code and bundled it with the included GPL license. Peter (I believe it was him) has been responsive and implemented the one feature I requested. If I have a need to integrate changes in the future I will be sure to communicate that with you and the MantisConnect project.

If the MantisConnect project releases a new version, then I probably will do as you ask since it would have all the latest bits. As it stands, the last release of the web service that I could find was june 2005.

As to licensing, I'll start with INAL. However, my understanding is the code is released under mutiple licenses with one being the GPL. If someone does not want to abide by the GPL license that comes with the version on sf.net, they can always contact the MantisConnect project for a commercial license. I am in no way trying to work around the GPL or create a fork of MantisConnect webservice. If it would help, I can put a note on the sf.net website mentioning that if someone wants a commercial license of the MantisConnect webservice the can go to...where? http://www.futureware.biz/mantisconnect/license.php.

I don't mean to create any animosity with the Mantis/MantisConnect group. I like Mantis and use it every day. However, I have a need to have plugin integrated with Mylar and would like for users of the plugin to be able to easily get all the bits they need. Hopefully this helps out Mantis as well.

Chris....

[dingfelder]

the sf.net name needs to get changed from

http://mylar-mantis.sourceforge.net/

to

http://mylan-mantis.sourceforge.net/

as mylar is a copyrighted term and the project name was changed to mylan

[djcarr]

I think the new name is actually Mylyn... those links provided don't work.

I believe the sf.net project is now at :

http://mylyn-mantis.sourceforge.net/