README
1WELCOME TO VISITORS 0.7
2-----------------------
3
4Hello, this is Visitors,
5a fast and easy to use web log analyzer.
6
7For more usage information, documentation and examples
8please visit:
9
10 http://www.hping.org/visitors
11
12or check the docs.html file in this directory
13for the reference documentation.
14
15HOW TO COMPILE
16--------------
17
18Under UNIX systems just type:
19
20% make
21
22Under WIN32 you need MINGW and MSYS, then follow the above
23istructions.
24
25For compliation problems please write an email to <antirez@invece.org>
26with the exact problem, version of Visitors, environment, GCC used, and so
27on.
28
29HOW TO USE WITH IIS LOGS
30------------------------
31
32Use the iis2apache.pl perl script to do the conversion, like:
33
34cat yourIISLogFile.txt | perl iis2apache.pl > yourConvertedFile.txt
35
36Then run visitors against "yourConvertedFile.txt".
37
38There is an alternative way to convert logs using a program
39that does not require Perl, with Windows and Linux binaries.
40This program is called RConvLog and it's possible to
41download it at http://www.rebex.net/RConvLog/
42
43HOW TO GET SCREEN RESOLUTION INFORMATION
44----------------------------------------
45
46Log files don't contain information about the screen resolution
47so in order to generate the screen resolution report Visitors needs
48that you add the following code in your home page, after the <body>
49tag:
50
51<script>
52document.write("<div style=\"visiblity:hidden;display:none;\"><img src=\"visitors-screen-res-check.jpg?"+screen.width+"x"+screen.height+"x"+screen.colorDepth+"\" /></div>");
53</script>
54
55Without this code the screen resolution report will not work.
56
57HOW TO HELP
58-----------
59
60Unfortunately I can't accept source code written by external contributors
61without a "Copyright Assignment", because I'm not sure I'll take the
62GPL license in the future, instead I may switch to BSD, or even to create
63a commercial version of Visitors (very unlikely). Because I don't like
64the idea of "Copyright Assignment" at all I'll be happy to implement
65any useful feature in Visitors for you so: Please send suggestions
66and bug reports. Thank you.
67
68ABOUT THE GPL, AND WHY SOMETIMES IT DOES NOT WORK
69-------------------------------------------------
70
71There is some kind of problem with the GPL and small projects, when
72you can expect an amount of help by external contributors that is so
73little that's not worth the "License Lock-In" problem. What I mean
74is that Visitors is under the GPL license, and I'm not sure I'll be
75happy with this license forever. For example I may want to change
76the license using the BSD in the future, it's worth to lost the
77ability to do it just to accept some patch?
78
79When it's a big project and it is very likely to get a lot of contribs
80all is ok, I start directly with the BSD license. An example of this
81is the "Jim Interpreter", an open source program I started to develop
82after Visitors itself (see http://jim.berlios.de). You get a lot of help,
83the project gets bigger/better, still if you want you can use the
84code for your commercial stuff (it's BSD), and everybody can do it.
85
86Also note that nor the GPL accepting patches, nor the BSD allow
87the open source developer to create software that is available in
88two flawours: one free, and one commercial. BSD allows this but
89everybody can create another commercial product based on the same
90code: not fair. GPL allows this if you don't accept patches, that's
91also not good given that after all the code contributed will stay
92anyway in the GPL product forever.
93
94This is why I don't accept patches for Visitors, and why I'm highly
95unhappy with this solution. If you have some idea or comment please
96feel free to send it to antirez (at) gmail (dot) org.
97
98THANKS TO ...
99-------------
100
101Please see the ChangeLog file for credits.
102
103Enjoy,
104Salvatore Sanfilippo
105
