Not necessarily, it depends on the purpose:
The requirements are that the servers TOS don’t violate Gramps licence. Users have e.g. the right of free acess to the source code (Gramps code and altered code which derivates from Gramps), but not free access to all services of a server.
This means a commercial product as google. it’s not free.
I spent several thousand hours freely to develop gramps since 14 years. it’s not to see someone make money on our work.
I agree
I understand & agree.
I object to FindAGrave changing its terms of service and pushing high bandwidth (self-refreshing!) ads so people can see many thousands of hours of work contributed to their site. Since I am on metered ISP service, I object strenuously to their advertisers having not bandwidth constraints & FiindAGrave’s profligate use of multi-megabyte backdrop images!
I object to Ancestry’s selling subscriptions for people to view work that other users pay them to host. (Both at many times the cost of simple hosting services!) I object to them perennially holding a subscriber’s own research hostage with ongoing subscription.
On the other hand, I do not mind an author writing a fiction or non-fiction book for commercial publication using free software. (Or ABOUT free software. Actually, I would welcome a commercial book about Gramps!) Or a professional Genealogist using Gramps to deliver their genealogy research to a client.
I fully understand that and I’m also not delighted on the idea that people use my work for commercial products, but Gramps licence does not forbid comerical use if they meet all requirements.
I haven’t wrote the license nor decided that Gramps should use it, I’m just pointing out that it is possible with Gramps license, so don’t project your anger on me. Just look it up here.
No, an API key do not need to be commercial, I use at least 3 fully open source software that needs an API key to either connect a client application to a server application, or to be able to connect without logging in to a server with UID/PWD.
It’s only a key used for identifying communication, no proprietary code, no commercially paid services , just simply a key to establish access between two software products using an API, that key can be something as simple as a username, or a two step generated application security verification.
API is, and this you know, just a abbreviation for Application Programming Interface, and a Key for that can be anything to identify the initializing end of that communication so that the answering end know that it is a verified “caller”.
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Out API key here is used to connect the user of Gramps to access her own data in Isotammi service. I don’t think using open sofware (like LibreOffice) means that everybody has right to access and modify my documents.
But if we later decide to offer some common data sets to our members only, what we should do? Now we are going to use an opensource lisence, should we remove that lisence and continue like nothing has happened?
I am sorry we not very familias with such things. We are now working only within our local team, using also the experiance of Gramps developers and also giving some contributions to Gramps, too.
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Let’s start a new discussion thread in Development (since this thread has diverged from where @Wildkat was inquiring about installing a Gramplet from outside the add-on management)
Perhaps something like:
Isotammi (Finnish ‘Big Oak’) Special Interest Fork
It would be good to develop a clear discussion of where such forks can diverge in some ways & be collaborative in others.
There is value to the community when Genealogical Societies can leverage Gramps without losing their own identity & control.
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The Isotammi project is specific to Finland which has strict privacy laws. While there may by things in common with Gramps they have different aims and needs. The managers of Gramps owes nothing to Isotammi users. The Isotammi managers owe nothing to Gramps users.
Like Gramps, Isotammi is maintained on Github as an open source and available to those interested. Nothing more.
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That is the beauty of freely sharing information. People with different interests can pursue their own joy. They owe only civility. (Of course, any Derivative Work has to comply with the Derivative work clauses of the parent licenses.)
Yet they can still collaborate where their interests align.
The work the Isotammi team is pursuing in mass merging (with compare & contrast), collaborative genealogy research, privacy preservation all show intriguing insights into underexplored areas. They represent a real-world exploration of Gramps in controlled crowd genealogy.
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You are not doing anything wrong by using an API Key to identify an user…
I key used that way is just a handshake saying; - “Hi, My name is Peder, I would like you to provide me with access to this set of data, thank you mr. Server”.
If it was not legal, then it would be a violation to use Username/Password to access an Open Source Software Application…
Postgresql, MongoDB, Neo4j, A ton of CMS’ all use either some form of API Key or usern/pwd to protect access to data nothing wrong with that.
So just keep up with what you are doing
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