Flash and Joomla News by Eyezberg

The situation

The Joomla Joint Commercial Developers Alliance has many well-known members. Names such as Vimes, Websmurf, Netshine, Jaclplus, Predator, absalom, lobos, joomlatwork, iJoomla, Elearningforce, saka, Phil Taylor etc etc (sorry to those not listed explicitly), over 70 good devs many community members will recognize as developers of many of the best commercial (non-GPL) extensions.

They have tried to talk to the Core devs to find a solution, while at the same time trying to save their businesses. I know of concrete examples.
Not much positive response.

Proposals of how to work around the obligation for them to re-license their extensions as GPL, including code examples, have been posted on the forums.
No usefull interaction from there.

The GPL-related forums are read-only for all community members except the original thread starter, who has to try to justify his position against all moderators in support of the Core idea(l)s.
No fruitfull discussion on proposals is possible.

If you want a perfect example for this, look at this thread.
It is just not possible to get simple answers to a simple question, all you get are replies with the same GPL references over and over.
The question is VERY simple, and VERY important: Does Joomla! WANT non-GPL extensions around? If yes, let's work together to find a solution to make this possible. If no, just tell us so it's perfctly clear. That's the point.
The answers are: developers take a risk if they violate the GPL terms. Once again, the we-are-so-helpfull reference to "The core team has said numerous times that they want to work with the developer community", but what is omitted here is the important part "...to help them make their extensions compliant" (not "to find a solution in the Joomla code to allow interaction with non-GPL extensions")! Which is not at all what they want, what was asked here, what they can do to keep their businesses alive. But all Joomla wants to offer them: "The offer to help them figure out how to come into compliance with our license". And even though it has been stated that Joomla had no intentions of using legal means to force compliance, you can also read there "proprietary developers would rather live with the risk of being sued by the copyright holders"..! Inconsistency. Which copyright holders are meant here? Is someone going to legally enforce anything or not? (notice all the strong words in those posts, risk, sue, violation.. scary!)
Final topping: "Joomla! is open source, so if you want to work at finding a solution within the core, you are free to download the nightly build and try to come up with something." which basically a)still doesn't answer the important question of welcome or not, and b)tells the dev's "we've offered help, but you'll have to provide it to yourselves"..
No clear position. No constructive contributions from Joomla.

Conclusion:

1. I have discontinued the few extensions I had on the Extensions directory. They are GPL, so feel free to continue support and development if needed.
2. I have loged out of the forums there and do not intend to post again untill this unhelpfull resistance to 3rd party devs and absence of answers to simple questions get resolved after this last thread here, where about 5 people didn't manage to answer another simple Yes/No question about the same topic...
3. I heard good things about the upcoming Mambo 4.7 version, nice features, and as it looks like some good extensions developers might increase their support and contributions for Joomla's root CMS, I shall wait untill this gets released, check once more on the Joomla board if the situation has evolved to the better, and if not, might move back to Mambo - what I started with anyway.. que sera, sera.
   

Comments (5) >>

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Lawrence Meckan said:

Joe, The Mambo site these days is: http://forum.mambo-foundation.org/. Just to let you know..

July 04, 2007 | url

alteiis said:

Mon dieu quel gâchis, l'attitude délirante de certains 'core members' va plomber joomla 1.5 (sans parler du planning, ce que peut les devs de typo3...). Non seulement Joomla perd de nombreux codeurs talentueux (y compris dans l'équipe de dev) mais on revient à une sorte de position dogmatique. L'impossibilité sans bricolage, de développer des composants non GPL va éloigner Joomla de pas mal de sociétés : certains clients pour un bout de composant de 50 lignes refusent qu'il soit GPL. Je suis plus circonspect sur mambo ( le souvenir de la qualité du code/framework des anciennes versions). Vraiment dommage, car la qualité du code et du framework de la 1.5 laissait entrevoir de belles choses (même si on peut largement discuter des orientations...).

July 05, 2007

Les said:

It's interesting that you make these comments. You are not the only developer making a stand on the non-GPL. Azrul Jom Comment also will not support Joomla 1.5. As an end user of these great products this is sad news. I agree with you and hope a solution is possible. Since Joomla is the only product I know maybe Mambo 4.7 is a close fit. -Les-

August 21, 2007 | url

Laurent Belloeil said:

Il n'y a en effet rien dans la licence qui interdise de vendre du GPL... On peut aussi n'assurer le support que pour les clients. Sans parler de le personnalisation, souvent demandée : c'est un bon moten de financer les nouvelles versions. Mais il est tellement plus facile de pondre un code et de le vendre tel quel... En d'autre termes, faire de l'argent avec du GPL c'est possible, mais pas suivant les méthodes classiques de commercialisation. Soyons inventifs dans ce domaine que dans le développement! Mais il est difficile de changer les mentalités, surtout quand il n'y a pas de dialogue...

August 24, 2007 | url

wwvine said:

A challenge to the whole community. Hopefully, the many excellent components affected will not disappear from Joomla! all together.

August 30, 2007 | url

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