I have always thought that the idea of GPL licensed software was a good thing.

As of today I think it is a great thing. I am constructing a genealogy of my family, starting with my wife and I and tracing lineage back through our parents. Since I am running MacOS 10.1.5 I have very few applications to choose from.

I decided to not go through the work and frustration of writing my own app, which I am able to do, but don't really feel would be productive at this time. So I scoured the bowels of Versiontracker.com and found a couple of possibilities. After reviewing each one I settled on Generation X, by the aptly named Nowhere Man. One of the nifty, dare I say groovy aspects of this app is the export to HTML option. Which allows me to export my entire .ged file as a navigable web site.

The only problem was that the export is HTML 4.0, and I have abandoned that spec for the more powerful XHTML. The other problem is that the author decided that the title of every page, as well as the h1 heading should be Genealogy X, and that was just annoying.

But thanks to the GPL, I downloaded the source and am able to make modifications to it. I have currently changed the hardcoded title, and h1 references in the source, and am looking into hacking up a pref dialog that would let you specify these options before output. I am also looking into writing a h include file to handle XHTML output. That is the real power of GPL, one guy writes an app for his own internal use, decides to release it under GPL, and then thousands if us junior haxors can grab it and run with it making mods and improvements in the code.

Sheer joy and euphoria.