SchoolastechWorks Position Statements

On BadWords2

• BadWords 2 is a text filtering component that allows admins to configure a list of words that they feel are 'offensive' top their user community or their public audience and on content display rendering, replace these words by asterisks.  The component comes with two sample words pre configured, "********" and "********".  These are the ONLY words that will EVER appear in any official release from SchoolastechWorks.  As believers in both Open Source and Open Speech, we leave it to individual admins to use their own personal discretion and sensibilities to determine what words should be added to this list, we merely provide the facilites to do so.
• Although we have been asked more than once, SchoolastechWorks will NEVER, EVER provide a 'drop in' list of 'badwords' - this is up to each admin to decide, and we while hope it will be done with care and with participation of the user communities involved, that's where our responsibility ends.  Users are welcome to come up with their own lists and share them, but it should never be stated or implied that SchoolastechWorks or the BadWords 2 Dev Team has endorsed or supports it, and distribution must be made from your own site. 
• While we feel very strongly about the suppression of free speech, we realize that there are many environments where protection from offesive speech is necessary, especially in an educational environmnet and therefore we created the BadWords 2 component and instegrations.
• We chose the integrations based mainly on applications we use ourselves; our choice of one component in a category in no way means that we officially endorse one product over another!  We invite EVERY third party developer to integrate BadWords 2 support into their apps and we'd be glad to assist you in the integration.  If you feel 'slighted' by the fact that YOUR app wasn't listed, your sole remedy is to get involved, look at the code and join the party!  Contact us and we'll gladly help where we can.

On Joomla vs. Mambo

• BadWords2 and the related bots and integrations are confirmed to work with Mambo 4.5.2.3 and is now confirmed to work under Joomla 1.0.  Beyond Mambo 4.5.2.3, however, we cannot make any guarantees of operability or support.  As you know by now, the project has forked and decisions were made regarding future development.
• After much discussion and research of the facts and opinions, SchoolastechWorks has decided that based on our available time and resources, suporting two development strategies is simply impossible and would dilute our mission to provide support and future development of our current and future products.
• In late August, while still working under the umbrella of Two Shoes Mambo Factory, Founder Jan de Graaf made a statement of support on behalf of the SimpleBoard and BadWords 2 development teams.  Jan discussed and reviewed the statement with ALL team members before publishing it - in fact I even assisted in editing it.  We stand firmly behind the statements Jan so eloquently made; in short, we fully support the Core Developers in their exit from the Mambo project, respect their reasons for doing so and we stand firmly behind their new project, Joomla!
• All future development at SchoolastechWorks will be for the Joomla! platform.  While we believe that many of our projects will work on subsequent releases of Mambo, we will not be continuing support or development beyond version 4.5.2.3.  If another team wishes to pick up and support future releases of Mambo, we wish them luck and will provide help if we can, but we firmly believe that the future of the community lay in Joomla!

On moving from Two Shoes Mambo Factory to SchoolastechWorks

• First of all, we'd like to thank Jan de Graff, Niels Vandekeybus and the entire TSMF team for their support in the intial stages of this project.  Without their involvement, this effort probably would have resulted in niothing more than a discussion posted on the TSMF.net forums.
• BW2 grew from a idea for a 'hack' to a project rapidly, and soon we realized that the user community would be better served by a dedicated site for releases, support and involvement, thus the concept of SchoolastechWorks was born.  Later, we saw that future products, unrelated to SimpleBoard and our desire to open the API to other third party developers made a seperate site essential.
• We will still be involved in the TSMF forums and Niels (who is a dev for SimpleBoard) is still a member of the BW2 dev team (for however long he wants to be!); we'd just like to make it clear that our move was for practical reasons and not because of any disagreements or differences of opinion...SimpleBoard was our first integration project and continues to be one that we hope to expand on. 

On SchoolastechWorks

• Besides the BadWords 2 projects, the SchoolastechWorks team is looking forward to other Open Source projects in the future.  Many will be related to the educational market, partially because of my own personal involvement in education and our desire to make these tools available.
• If you are a OpenSource developer and have a product that would be applicable to this community, please contact us!  We'd love to share the news and we hope in the future to include resources for the educational community regarding the use and application of Open Source products to the educational community at large.
• Hosting and Support for SchoolastechWorks is donated by West of East, Incorporated, due to the fact that I am the President of the company.  Beyond that, SchoolastechWorks is a separate entity and all projects on SchoolastechWorks will remain free, Open Source products, licensed under the GNU/GPL license. 
• We do this for love of the code, love of the community and love of Open Source.  If you'd like to be involved, please contact us.  We hope that you enjoy our products and that they are useful to you.  We make absolutely nothing for doing this; our main goal is to help our fellow users and to support the Open Source concept.  We invite you to do the same, while giving back does require effort and committment, the rewards are enormous.
• Finally - If you like our products, let us know.  If you don't, let us know that too!  Your participation is essential in the process, so your comments are appreciated and necessary.

In closing, I'd like to remind you that Open Source is a USER SUPPORTED effort, so don't just sit there...get involved!  If you can't code, maybe you can test or support other users in forums by answering questions, or maybe you're a webmaster/graphics wizard and can help some project team with a killer logo or template.  Contribute what you can and you'll never regret your involvement.  The things I've learned and the friends I've made will last a lifetime and I can only hope that our contributions will in some small way, return the many favors we've received from others. 

Robert Anthony Pitera