[Clipart] Creative Commons Sponsored Software ccHost Releases Version 3.0

[Jon Phillips]

Creative Commons Sponsored Software ccHost Releases Version 3.0

San Francisco, USA - September 8, 2006

Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that provides flexible
copyright licenses for authors and artists along with the Creative
Commons Developer Community released the ccHost 3.0 today. ccHost is an
Open Source web-based media sharing software. This major feature release
comes on the heals of winning the Linux Journal Linux World Expo Award
for "Best Open Source Solution" and combines approximately five months of
development, usage, and testing into packages that anyone may download,
install, and use to empower on-line media sharing communities. This
release builds upon ccHost's novel support of collaboration, sharing,
and storage of multi-media using the different Creative Commons licenses
and metadata.

These features most notably show up and are tested in Creative Commons'
project, ccMixter (www.ccmixter.org), a popular on-line social network
service that supports legal music sharing and remixing. ccHost is the
Open Source Software engine powering ccmixter.org and which anyone may
download, install, and use to freely build media sharing communities.

Ryan Lerch, a developer from the project Open Clip Art Library
(www.openclipart.org) says, "the new release of ccHost now includes
features that we have wanted for some time. It now integrates powerful
features that will enhance both the usability and efficiency of the Open
Clip Art Library and will help us immensely in our goal of creating
a comprehensive library of public domain clip art." The Open Clip Art
Library is but one of several projects moving their projects to use the
solid infrastructure ccHost provides.

Major features in this release include native forums, infrastructure to
support multiple languages, and an e-mail notification system. ccHost
has replaced its dependency on phpbb2 with native fully-functioning
hierarchical forums. They are totally integrated with user profiles and
administrators may specifically control them.

ccHost now supports multiple languages. There is new integration of
the standard Open Source GNU gettext-based multi-language support
tools. This allows for initial support for Italian, German, Mainland
Chinese, Taiwanese Chinese, and Brazilian Portuguese in addition to
English. The project encourages others to get involved in order to
translate ccHost into more local languages.

A user-requested feature now implemented is e-mail notifications. It
allows registered users to get e-mail whey they have been reviewed,
rated, remixed, or when someone else has uploaded a file and they want
to be alerted.

Other important features include recent reviews for the sidebars, the
'How I Did It' browser sorting, and tons of statistics. Stats include
number of reviews for uploads, an overview of forum messages, and times
remixed, all to help a community know about itself. ccHost also supports
XSPF 1.0 playlists as feeds, basic support for the new getid3 SVG module,
and dumping of content from ccHost to a large feed file format (useful
for search engines and external parsing).

ccHost makes the lives of administrators much easier by adding an
FTP-less file manager, a Bayesian rating scheme, sub-navigation tabs,
spam flood protection, and setting of file-permissions. External to
the core ccHost application are also several command line scripts
which admins can use to powerfully help them in their maintenance
of an installation. Of particular note is the inclusion of code from
Brazil-based Bruno Dilly's Google Summer of Code project into a tool
called "publishcchost" which allows one to publish a file to any ccHost
installation from the command line.

This release also focuses on addressing compatibility with modern ways
software is installed on the web. ccHost 3.0 fully supports PHP 5 and
has been tested thoroughly in shared hosting setups on Dreamhost and
Freedesktop.org. Also, one outstanding bug has been squashed in that
ccHost does not require getid3 for installation.

The ccHost development community encourages new developers to
contribute to the project. The future of ccHost is bright with upcoming
development focusing on user and admin requests for features like further
generalization of media support, better tools to support social networking
features, and further language support.

Chat with other developers on channel #cc on
irc.freenode.org, join the project mailing list
(https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/cctools-cchost), and
edit the project wiki page to help shape this project's future direction
(http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ccHost).


Project Website

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ccHost


ccHost Download

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?
group_id=80503&package_id=156675


Feature Requests

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=80503&atid=559969


Bug Reports

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=559966&group_id=80503&func=browse


Roadmap (Project Timeline)

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CcHost_Roadmap


About ccHost

The goal of this project is to spread media content that is licensed
under Creative Commons throughout the web in much the same way that
weblogs spread CC licensed text. ccHost is web-based infrastructure that
may be used to host and allow for commenting, remixing, and distribution
globally. The more installations of ccHost and its variations, the more
content there will be available for enjoyment and artistic re-use in a
sane and legal setting. ccHost is what is used for the infamous Creative
Commons ccMixter project, which supports legal media sharing and remixing.


About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that promotes the creative
re-use of intellectual and artistic works - whether owned or in the
public domain. Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of
protections and freedoms that build upon the "all rights reserved" concept
of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved"
approach. Creative Commons is sustained by the generous support of various
foundations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
the Omidyar Network Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller
Foundation, as well as members of the public.

For general information, visit http://creativecommons.org/.


Contact

Jon Phillips Developer, ccHost jon at creativecommons.org


Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit