# introductions? \[was new styles repo at github\]

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [March 1, 2011, 1:58pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962 "2011-03-01T13:58:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 10\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2011, 1:58pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/1 "2011-03-01T13:58:30Z")

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BTW, Sylvester (and anyone else that may be new to the list), can you  
tell us a bit about your interest in CSL? I saw your citeproc-ruby  
code, and you seem to be making nice progress on it. How far along are  
you? What are you planning to use it for?

Just curious …

In related news, Rintze noticed on twitter yesterday that the Mac app  
Papers2 will include a CSL 1.0 processor (which, it turns out, they  
wrote themselves in Objective-C). I understand we’ll likely be hearing  
from them next week after they’re unstealthed.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Sylvester\_Keil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Sylvester\_Keil](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sylvester_Keil)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 9:29am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/2 "2011-03-02T09:29:10Z")

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Dear all,

Bruce is right, of course, please forgive my bad manners for not introducing my interest in CSL a bit sooner. Truth be told, I was hoping to have more to show for, but for what it’s worth, I’ve been working on a cite-processor in Ruby for the past two weeks. It is written from scratch and will be available under the GPL and as a ruby gem once it is passing all (or nearly all) the tests in the citeproc test-suite (which, by the way, is just fantastic and a tremendous help).

The project is hosted on github (\*), but there is still a lot of refactoring going on still, so the code isn’t very stable. It is passing about half of the citeproc tests right now and the biggest chunk that is still missing is management of an internal registry for sorting and disambiguation.

(\*) [https://github.com/inukshuk/citeproc-ruby](https://github.com/inukshuk/citeproc-ruby)

Two of my longterm goals are to combine citeproc-ruby and bibtex-ruby to write a sort of bibtex replacement, mainly because or my personal frustrations with bibtex and biblatex styles (although I do appreciate the coolness of both bibtex and biblatex!). Another project I have been considering is a Rails plugin for bibliography management.

I’ll let you know as soon as citeproc-ruby passes the majority of the tests. Meanwhile, if you’re in any way interested in a Ruby implementation or see potential applications for it, be sure to let me know.

Sylvester

[PGP.sig](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/citationstyles/original/1X/6a9de2536a4bbf78bc1030579262684997b0191e.sig) (195 Bytes)

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 1:17pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/3 "2011-03-02T13:17:08Z")

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Thanks for the update! Quick question …On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:29 AM, Sylvester Keil \<@Sylvester\_Keil\> wrote:

> Bruce is right, of course, please forgive my bad manners for not introducing my interest in CSL a bit sooner. Truth be told, I was hoping to have more to show for, but for what it’s worth, I’ve been working on a cite-processor in Ruby for the past two weeks. It is written from scratch and will be available under the GPL and as a ruby gem once it is passing all (or nearly all) the tests in the citeproc test-suite (which, by the way, is just fantastic and a tremendous help).

What’s your thinking behind the licensing choice?

I’m pretty agnostic on these issues, or at least undecided, but have  
tended to lean towards more Ruby/MIT-like licenses. But YMMV of  
course.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Sylvester\_Keil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Sylvester\_Keil](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sylvester_Keil)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/4 "2011-03-02T17:28:51Z")

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The rationale is basically that I like to follow the FSF recommendation:

[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html)

Having said that, as long as I am the sole contributor to the project it would be no problem to license the software, on an individual basis, under different terms to allow for easier inclusion in a proprietary project (especially ). I agree, though, that if there were other contributors (or potential contributors or users requesting more permissive terms) it may be easier to change to the LGPL or a MIT-style license at that point.

Sylvester

[PGP.sig](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/citationstyles/original/1X/d40e46f7315e5151511a8f7d50c0b59824e042e8.sig) (195 Bytes)

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/5 "2011-03-02T20:59:42Z")

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INAL, but …

I think the practical issue is that a lot of the sorts of projects  
that would likely use citeproc-ruby–if those that are not  
commercial–are licensed under MIT/BSD, and I believe you can’t  
include GPL code in such projects.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2011, 9:23pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/6 "2011-03-02T21:23:00Z")

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In too much of a hurry; just to clarify …On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Bruce D’Arcus \<@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1\> wrote:

> I think the practical issue is that a lot of the sorts of projects  
> that would likely use citeproc-ruby–if those that are not  
> commercial-- …

Meant to write “including those that are not …”

I think Frank (who is a lawyer, if not a copyright guy) went with some  
dual licensing approach.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Sylvester\_Keil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Sylvester\_Keil](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sylvester_Keil)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 11:04am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/7 "2011-03-03T11:04:41Z")

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Since citeproc-ruby will be distributed as a Ruby gem, I do believe (but I may be wrong here) that it should be easily possible to use the gem for a project under a different license, because that project will never re-distribute citeproc-ruby. As I see it, the GPL would ensure that modifications of the gem itself would have to remain available under the same terms. If use of the gem is (or could be) interpreted as derivation I would rather use the same license as Ruby itself, which is essential a dual-license.

Sylvester

[PGP.sig](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/citationstyles/original/1X/eaa6129dd8f79fa7329b9f8e92fec405a19dc12c.sig) (195 Bytes)

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 2:57pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/8 "2011-03-03T14:57:31Z")

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…

> > I think the practical issue is that a lot of the sorts of projects  
> > that would likely use citeproc-ruby–if those that are not  
> > commercial–are licensed under MIT/BSD, and I believe you can’t  
> > include GPL code in such projects.
> 
> Since citeproc-ruby will be distributed as a Ruby gem, I do believe (but I may be wrong here) that it should be easily possible to use the gem for a project under a different license, because that project will never re-distribute citeproc-ruby. As I see it, the GPL would ensure that modifications of the gem itself would have to remain available under the same terms. If use of the gem is (or could be) interpreted as derivation I would rather use the same license as Ruby itself, which is essential a dual-license.

Sounds like a plan.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/9 "2011-03-03T16:34:04Z")

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Maybe not up your alley, but I’ve been playing a bit with some of the  
nosql options out there, with couchdb and riak being particularly  
interesting to me. Here’s a simple, zotero-like (with some  
CSL-inspired data model thrown in) DSL model example using Ripple:

[https://gist.github.com/842225](https://gist.github.com/842225)

Bruce

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**Author:** ![Sylvester\_Keil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Sylvester\_Keil](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Sylvester_Keil)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2011, 5:12pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/introductions-was-new-styles-repo-at-github/962/10 "2011-03-03T17:12:58Z")

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Bruce,On Mar 3, 2011, at 5:34 PM, Bruce D’Arcus wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:29 AM, Sylvester Keil \<@Sylvester\_Keil\> wrote:
> 
> > Two of my longterm goals are to combine citeproc-ruby and bibtex-ruby to write a sort of bibtex replacement, mainly because or my personal frustrations with bibtex and biblatex styles (although I do appreciate the coolness of both bibtex and biblatex!). Another project I have been considering is a Rails plugin for bibliography management.
> 
> Maybe not up your alley, but I’ve been playing a bit with some of the  
> nosql options out there, with couchdb and riak being particularly  
> interesting to me. Here’s a simple, zotero-like (with some  
> CSL-inspired data model thrown in) DSL model example using Ripple:

that certainly looks interesting, yes! I had been thinking of using active record to model bib-like (or more complex) data records and a cite processor to generate citations according to CSL styles. I have not worked with riak before, but it looks intriguing for sure.