Update on this project which is a copy of an email I sent to someone who asked about the fork.
Now that the devs have EZProRealty.com for the fork, their attorney took and verified the Open Realty license last Friday from the website and in the SVN as of yesterday or the day before I believe and notarized a document stating that the current license does not prevent a fork. They did this in case the future release of Open Realty have license changes. Since licenses affect the version release they are accompanied by, they wanted to be sure to document the license because it can’t be retroactively restated. Usage agreements are usage agreements and once someone acts on that agreement its in force. Legal crap really but the logic is easy to follow.
The devs then managed to get CSV, and a similar type of contact form pbflash offers added to the project which uses session tokens as opposed to captcha. They are pursuing two more commercial products to be emulated in features and provided free. Once that is done, like in a week or so, they are releasing the fork. The idea is to make about $250+ worth of commercial options in Open Realty standard features in the fork.
Why? Well because they know that once people at Open Realty look at the side by side list of features that have been assembled they will likely simply copy them or do the same thing. It’s a clever way offsetting the time and investment made into the fork. There are plans to make all current worthy commercial options offered in Open Realty, including commercial templates, FREE options and features in the fork. Anytime anyone publishes a commercial add-on a similar feature will be added to the forks core or as an optional add-on.
Some people may feel that this is being little bit over precautious of the fork but honestly its not. Everyone involved feels that if Open Realty were to do similar updates to its product it would only mean that it took a fork to get Open Realty actually motivated to bring it up to date and current as it should have been years ago. Simple things have been fixed in the fork like the nasty URL's with the plus (+) signs and better control over inline script processing for PHP. There is also a new globals.php file that handles some dynamic features for RETS and IDX integration as well as some new user levels to include more than just agent member and admin. There is now agent, admin, manager, editor, member and member2.
One thing is for absolute certain; the forums for EZProRealty are not going to have any rude and abusive moderators. When you ask a question even if its core modification related you wont have PBFLASH, MICK or The_Sandking beating you up and closing your thread because they deem your questions necessary to police. You also wont get answers to your questions like "read the documentation" then having your thread closed. If the documentation was so well put together people wouldn't ask such questions but the fact is they use a wiki (basically an encyclopedia) for documentation where the fork will use RoboHelp.
SIDE NOTEI’ve said it before, Open Realty moderation of that their forum is the least friendly place on the web second only to a popular real estate forum where EVERYTHING you say is policed with censorship and dictation. Everyone I’ve talked to that looks at the forum usually agrees and notices that two types of users are most common, worshipers or disciples, and the truly non technical and I believe the mods want it that way. My opinion!
I’ve decided to go ahead and make my post titled “Do you fear your webmaster?” available even though I previously abandoned the idea realizing I can’t be unbiased in it. But I’ve cleaned up some of the content and its because of forums like Open Realty (among other things) that motivated me to write it. The simple fact is, you should NEVER fear your webmaster EVER and you should NEVER fear asking questions that are “legitimate, in context and properly placed”. I have noting but full disrespect for anyone who thinks otherwise. We really do have a responsibility to stop the spread of the Natzi mindset in internet professionals and teach people they can break away from control, manipulation and doctors of lies by simply providing them an option. Wasn’t that how PREN was formed?
Oh yeah, last note on the fork. The devs added menu management and some bridging options to get people out of the ineffective method of using integration. Site map, menu management and pdf generation are all standard features.
I love saying, “It’s about time!”
Open Realty Fork Discovered
Re: Open Realty Fork Discovered
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