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ChrisMorgan
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Sweet Home 3D Portable

Greetings! I'm one of the developers at PortableApps.com.

At PortableApps.com, we've been developing a portable version of Sweet Home 3D for running from USB disks on Windows. It's ready for release now, having gone through testing for quite a while, but we need to sort out some things with you about branding.

The current test version is available at http://portableapps.com/node/19377. Along with Sweet Home 3D Portable, there are also plugin installers for the Advanced Rendering Plug-in, db4tech's lights, and the Contributions, Kator Legaz and Scopia 3D models. (db4tech was helpful in suggesting these to do.) If there are any other packages which should be made available as plug-ins, please tell me and I can create them. That way useful resources can be easily installed into Sweet Home 3D Portable.

Now to the issues:

First of all, there's the Sweet Home 3D registered trademark. I must confess that I didn't notice it when I first made the portable version, otherwise I would have got permission from you before publishing it. To distribute Sweet Home 3D Portable, we need permission to use the registered trademark.

Secondly there's the matter of image branding. Almost all of our portable apps have a PortableApps.com splash screen, indicating that they're portable (and also because startup from USB disks is often slow); because Sweet Home 3D already has a splash screen of its own, we can integrate some features of our own onto it and use one splash screen which still announces that it's a portable version. We've done this in a few other cases, such as with OpenOffice.org and Celestia. We've made a draft Sweet Home 3D Portable splash screen, based on the main Sweet Home 3D splash screen:



We can make any changes you reckon are needed to it. One thing which we would like to do is change the bar at the bottom from reading "PortableApps.com/SweetHome3DPortable" to "PortableApps.com & SweetHome3D.com", if you wish to host Sweet Home 3D Portable from your SourceForge project as an official Sweet Home 3D build.

If you have any questions or comments, please tell me and I'll answer them.


Thanks for Sweet Home 3D,

Chris Morgan
[Oct 1, 2010, 8:54:11 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
db4tech
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Re: Sweet Home 3D Portable

Hi Chris,

Welcome to the Sweet Home forum! smile

Emmanuel,

The PortableApps version of Sweet Home 3D was a huge help on the last semester of my course. It enabled me to present the gallery model I'd previously built at home (on the normal install version of Sweet Home) as part of my course work, using a portable Sweet Home version on college computers that don't allow software to be installed. I could have just show rendered images but being able to also show a live walk through is definitely a bonus.

I do hope you and Chris will be able to work together, helping allow more people to be able to enjoy and experience your fantastic software!

db4tech
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[Edit 1 times, last edit by db4tech at Oct 2, 2010, 4:33:33 PM]
[Oct 2, 2010, 4:30:01 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Puybaret
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Re: Sweet Home 3D Portable

Thank you Chris for your proposal to develop an other portable version (winPenPack already proposed one a few months ago).

I don't mind that you offer some additional furniture or plug-in files with your version, and I might do that too one day in Sweet Home 3D. After all, the license of these files let us distribute them along with Sweet Home 3D so it's not a problem. For your information, I even asked by kindness to Scopia and Kator Legaz if I could distribute their models with Sweet Home 3D, and they agreed.
You should also know that the next version 3.0 will include the features of the Advanced Rendering Plug-in, so I don't know if it will be a good idea to keep that plug-in once this version will be released.

I must confess that I didn't notice it when I first made the portable version, otherwise I would have got permission from you before publishing it
You couldn't notice the trademark at first, since I registered it in May 2009, the same month as the one you started to support Sweet Home 3D (from the dates on portableapps.com site). wink
Registering a trademark costs more than 200 Euros in France, and you easily guess it's not the first expense you want to make for a free program!

To distribute Sweet Home 3D Portable, we need permission to use the registered trademark.
First, thank you for asking. I give you the permission to redistribute Sweet Home 3D if you:
- copy or move the license information buried in the App/SweetHome3D directory to the root,
- add to the root the 3D licenses bound to the additional 3D models you included (Free Art License for the contributed models, Creative Commons 3.0 Unported license for Scopia models and Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution 3.0 United States license for Kator Legaz models),
- display clearly a link to the source code and the license of your tool (you claim PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform on PortableApps.com home page but found no link to the source code or to the license of your tool), and a link to the source code under GNU GPL that will help users build the version you distribute (for those who don't know about it, I simply recall to Chris the terms of the GNU General Public License under which Sweet Home 3D is distributed),
- do not call it "Sweet Home 3D Portable". Current version of Sweet Home 3D is named "Sweet Home 3D", and as the owner of the trademark I prefer at this time to forbid the creation of any name derived from "Sweet Home 3D".
Sorry if it seems severe, but I will never forget the stupid idea of Sun Microsystems, the inventor of Java, who let Netscape use JavaScript name in the 90's (almost all people who don't program still believe Java and JavaScript are the same thing or something very similar!), and you should also know that a portable version is in the works for Sweet Home 3D itself for a long time already (see Sweet Home 3D roadmap or this request).
I hope you'll understand my point of view.

By the way, as a Java guy, I'm always astonished how the meaning of portability evolved in Windows user's mind.
Personally, a portable application should run on any computer with any operating system, and that's I want to achieve with the implementation of portability I'll program... wink

Secondly there's the matter of image branding. Almost all of our portable apps have a PortableApps.com splash screen, indicating that they're portable (and also because startup from USB disks is often slow); because Sweet Home 3D already has a splash screen of its own, we can integrate some features of our own onto it and use one splash screen which still announces that it's a portable version.
Your splash screen looks nice but as a conclusion of the previous point, you'll guess that I don't want "Portable" word below "Sweet Home 3D" on the splash screen. I don't mind the USB key and prefer you write "PortableApps.com & SweetHome3D.com" at the bottom, even if I won't add your distribution on SourceForge.net (there's already many files to manage at each release!).

I hope my answers are clear. Sorry, if I took a long time to answer but legal stuff needs some thinking (before all if you're not a lawyer!).
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
[Oct 4, 2010, 8:39:21 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Puybaret
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Re: Sweet Home 3D Portable

Chris, I just discovered that the Other\Source directory in your installation contains the GNU GPL license of PortableApps.com. Nevertheless, I still think it's too buried in subdirectories, since even the help file doesn't display any link to the license.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
[Oct 4, 2010, 9:14:32 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
ChrisMorgan
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Re: Sweet Home 3D Portable

Thank you Chris for your proposal to develop an other portable version (winPenPack already proposed one a few months ago).

winPenPack only made their package and told people about it; we'd like to work with you on it and make it an officially supported Sweet Home 3D build if possible.

I don't mind that you offer some additional furniture or plug-in files with your version, and I might do that too one day in Sweet Home 3D. After all, the license of these files let us distribute them along with Sweet Home 3D so it's not a problem. For your information, I even asked by kindness to Scopia and Kator Legaz if I could distribute their models with Sweet Home 3D, and they agreed.

I did take particular care when setting those up; the installers of each of them contain the license agreement as part of the installer.

You should also know that the next version 3.0 will include the features of the Advanced Rendering Plug-in, so I don't know if it will be a good idea to keep that plug-in once this version will be released.

Sounds good. It's easy to dump the plug-in once 3.0 is finalised (and the 3.0 installer can then clear out the old version of the plug-in from the user data).

You couldn't notice the trademark at first, since I registered it in May 2009, the same month as the one you started to support Sweet Home 3D (from the dates on portableapps.com site). wink

Ah, I see. But still, I should have noticed it at some earlier point...

I give you the permission to redistribute Sweet Home 3D if you:
- copy or move the license information buried in the App/SweetHome3D directory to the root,

I didn't put the GPL in as part of the installer, because it's not necessary for the user to agree to it (or even for the user to see it). If you want to make sure people see that it's GPL, I think the best way would be to attach it as the EULA in the installer. That's very easy to do and well-supported. Most of our users won't ever browse to the folder but will just use the app straight from the PortableApps.com Platform.

- add to the root the 3D licenses bound to the additional 3D models you included (Free Art License for the contributed models, Creative Commons 3.0 Unported license for Scopia models and Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution 3.0 United States license for Kator Legaz models),

As mentioned above, the plug-in installers include the license is part of the installation process. I think that satisfies what you're wanting?

- display clearly a link to the source code and the license of your tool (you claim PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform on PortableApps.com home page but found no link to the source code or to the license of your tool), and a link to the source code under GNU GPL that will help users build the version you distribute (for those who don't know about it, I simply recall to Chris the terms of the GNU General Public License under which Sweet Home 3D is distributed),

The launcher is the PortableApps.com Launcher; apps using the PortableApps.com Launcher have a note put on them in their main page, in the spot where source is mentioned, e.g. for PChat Portable. All our programs (including the Suite/Platform) have that section so the source code is easily available. Some sites make the source code a more visible download, but in our case it's not really applicable (running from source is rarely going to do anything), and also we're appealing to a very large audience of non-geeks. Making the source link not the most prevalent is thus a good thing for us - but it's still there if you're looking. For the apps in Beta Testing, it's generally a case of the source code to the launcher is included or it uses the PortableApps.com Launcher. That, perhaps, takes a bit of inside knowledge, but when it gets to being released officially, it's all formatted nicely.

- do not call it "Sweet Home 3D Portable". Current version of Sweet Home 3D is named "Sweet Home 3D", and as the owner of the trademark I prefer at this time to forbid the creation of any name derived from "Sweet Home 3D".
Sorry if it seems severe, but I will never forget the stupid idea of Sun Microsystems, the inventor of Java, who let Netscape use JavaScript name in the 90's (almost all people who don't program still believe Java and JavaScript are the same thing or something very similar!), and you should also know that a portable version is in the works for Sweet Home 3D itself for a long time already (see Sweet Home 3D roadmap or this request).
I hope you'll understand my point of view.

Your splash screen looks nice but as a conclusion of the previous point, you'll guess that I don't want "Portable" word below "Sweet Home 3D" on the splash screen. I don't mind the USB key and prefer you write "PortableApps.com & SweetHome3D.com" at the bottom, even if I won't add your distribution on SourceForge.net (there's already many files to manage at each release!).

We'd like this to be as official as possible with you; our standard naming convention would have "Sweet Home 3D Portable" or "Sweet Home 3D, Portable Edition" - perhaps that second one appeals more?
On the topic of releasing, we're quite happy to do the work of making and releasing the portable edition and sending it to you for approval if you wish and linking from this site as an official download if you wish (as we've done with other projects like Inkscape). You'll also find that having a portable version at PortableApps.com will increase awareness and usage of Sweet Home 3D very significantly - we have millions of users and a very well-frequented site - in the top 7,000 by the Alexa rank.

By the way, as a Java guy, I'm always astonished how the meaning of portability evolved in Windows user's mind.
Personally, a portable application should run on any computer with any operating system, and that's I want to achieve with the implementation of portability I'll program... wink

I guessed you were a Java guy by your projects. I'm a Python guy; ao much nicer than Java smile. However, having been stuck on Windows generally in the past, I quite understand the need for our type of portability - which is why I became involved with PortableApps.com.

Our type of portability is meaning that it can easily be run from Windows machines (which, you will admit, is a large percentage of computers), and keep all settings. Currently Sweet Home 3D is not portable in that it uses java.util.prefs, so settings go in the registry on Windows, and the furniture library will go in APPDATA. If you were wanting to make it easy to have an app which would fit our description of portability, cross-platform portable as well, there'd need to be some path configuration file, and not use java.util.prefs but instead a consistent method.

Portability of settings etc. across different platforms is something that we have in our long-term plans. But in a case like this, it'd actually require a fair bit of work, because the registry file format would need to be rewritten to the Linux file format for java.util.prefs, or the OS X file format, etc. It's not at all impossible though. If you'd like, I can play with including a shell file (or Python script, the settings conversion would be very difficult in sh) in the root to provide a launcher for Linux if you like, and see if I can get some help with finding out precisely how it works on the OS X side (not having a Mac).
[Oct 5, 2010, 1:52:20 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Puybaret
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Re: Sweet Home 3D Portable

I didn't put the GPL in as part of the installer, because it's not necessary for the user to agree to it (or even for the user to see it). If you want to make sure people see that it's GPL, I think the best way would be to attach it as the EULA in the installer. That's very easy to do and well-supported.
So please, do it. If I didn't care about license, I would have released Sweet Home 3D in public domain.

Most of our users won't ever browse to the folder but will just use the app straight from the PortableApps.com Platform.
If I follow your way of thinking until the end, then who cares about licenses? After all, it's free, it works, that's all what counts! Sorry but this is certainly not the best way to promote the spirit of free software and recognize contributors work.
Some people care about licenses, and for that people, please give them an easier access to license by moving license texts at root of installation directory. winPenPack accepted that change, I don't see why you wouldn't.

We'd like this to be as official as possible with you; our standard naming convention would have "Sweet Home 3D Portable" or "Sweet Home 3D, Portable Edition" - perhaps that second one appeals more?
I already explained that I give to "portable" a meaning that covers more than just moving an application from one Windows computer to an other.
So please, keep the name "Sweet Home 3D" unchanged since it's the same application, and show more clearly it's PortableApps distribution by storing your distribution in a folder named "PortableApps-SweetHome3D" by default (place your platform complete name first).

For your information, portability of Sweet Home 3D across different platforms is ready for the coming version 3.0 (java.util.prefs aren't used anymore). I just have to decide whether I'll include 3 JREs with it or not.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
[Oct 9, 2010, 1:10:23 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Puybaret
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Re: Sweet Home 3D Portable

For your information, Sweet Home 3D comes now with its own portable version. smile
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
[Sep 12, 2012, 5:50:54 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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