CcHost Press Release 3.0
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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@creativecommons.org
