[Twisted-web] Re: [Twisted-Python] twisted webdav server

James Y Knight foom at fuhm.net
Fri Oct 22 22:47:08 MDT 2004


Following up on twisted-web mailing list.

On Oct 22, 2004, at 11:23 PM, Yasushi Iwata wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 12:31:57 -0400 Bob Ippolito wrote:
>> This particular package is not going to go into Twisted unless the
>> license changes.  LGPL is not compatible with MIT.
>
> Some code of akaDAV were adapted from Twisted 1.3.0 which is
> distributed under LGPL, so I cannot change the lisence of akaDAV.
>
> I'm glad to change the lincense and contribute what I wrote to Twisted
> project. Should I rewrite all the code adapted from Twisted 1.3.0 to
> change the license?

To change the license, you should copy the code from Twisted again, but 
this time from a version of Twisted under the MIT license (current SVN 
or 2.0 when it's released). Or you could just say you did that, and no 
one would know the difference, since the code you copied likely hasn't 
changed much since 1.3. ;)

I'd *love* to have a WebDAV package as part of Twisted, with a few 
caveats (I have not looked at your package yet, so none of this is 
criticism, just generic comments):

- I would require it to be completely RFC conforming.  Bugs are one 
thing, but some of the other python WebDAV implementations I've looked 
at have left me very unimpressed. A quick glance through the code and 
the RFC found numerous MUSTs that they didn't even _attempt_ to 
implement. It seemed as if the authors wrote the absolute minimum to 
make it "work" with some popular clients and left it at that. An 
absolutely minimal implementation is okay for some purposes, I suppose, 
but not for inclusion as a protocol implementation in Twisted.

- I'm not sure how much code you duplicated, but that would likely have 
to be resolved somehow, as it's clearly not acceptable to have two 
slightly different copies of a large portion of code in twisted.

- It should be very well unit-tested.

- I'd like it based on the web2 API (which is currently still 
unfinished, so don't write to it yet expecting it to be stable). 
Hopefully it will be easier to not copy code with the new API. If not, 
the new API should be fixed so that it is. ;)

- It should integrate nicely into a standard twisted web resource tree.


I have muttered about possibly doing WebDAV for Twisted at "some point 
in the future" a few times, and that still stands. But, for now, I 
don't have time to do it. I've got more than enough on my plate just 
trying to get the web2 rewrite done, without adding highly complicated 
new protocols. So, either you or someone else would have to volunteer 
to get it into merge-able shape *and* to be the primary Twisted 
maintainer to handle any bugs which will inevitably show up. Or wait 
probably at least a year for me to become able to do it. :)

James




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