Joomla! goes GPL - again
GPL? What is that? If you don't know, you didn't pay attention during the installation process of your website. It is the license Joomla comes under. Some things you will want to know about this license, in order to understand what this post (and long discussions) are all about.
1. Software licensed as GPL is free in the meaning of: you can change it as you need, there is no charge for it (the software itself).
2. You are allowed to charge for the distribution of the software (the actual download, or sending it out on CD).
3. As the software itself is free, anyone who has a copy is allowed to distribute it, charging for this or not.
Joomla has always been released under this license. For a long time, ever since Mambo which still supports this, there was a policy of allowing commercial, even encrypted extensions to co-exist with Joomla. In the SVN code for 1.5, there even was a rider added for around 12 months, which recently was removed again.
The problem is that any limitation imposed on the distribution of an extensions makes it non-GPL. Same goes for encrypted code.
Most, if not all, commercial extensions are thus released under other licenses, which are not compatible with the GPL.
These extensions use calls to the Joomla API to run.
Recently one of the main developpers and projects leaders, after removing this rider, declared
a. that the rider was added illegaly as not all code contributors (thus license holders) were informed and asked for approval
b. that this rider should never have been added as it was not compliant with the GPL
c. that all extensions are to be considered as derivative works, and thus need to use the GPL license too
d. that Joomla will seek to enforce compliance within the community from now on.
This was started by a simple forum post, inviting developers and users to contribute their ideas and feelings about this.
The biggest thread ever in Joomla history started, went on and on for about 2 months reaching almost 2000 posts, and almost no core developer participated, or tried to clarify Joomlas intentions.
When the thread started to become really a bit much to manage, and pressure from both users and devs rose to certainly unexpected levels asking for a clear statement about the idea behind this "back to GPL but we've always been GPL", all of a sudden, apparently after recieving legal advice from the FSF, first there was a blog about this, and then 2 pages of posts/replies from Core members finally answering some of the questions.
The thread was then closed, shortly after some subforums opened for everything GPL related - the dicsussions still go on.
Posts were censored, threads closed.
Saka and Predator left the Core team because they do not agree with this change of policy.
Some working group members left also.
The Joomal Commercial Developers Alliance (JCD-A) was created.
So much for the last 2-3 months.
What is the problems for the developers of commercial extensions?
They can still sell their extension even if it's GPL.
But: they couldn't encrypt important parts of it anymore, and they can't keep anyone who has obtained a copy of their product from redistributing it for free!
This basically means they can't protect their work if they want to comply fully with the license.
What is the resulting problem for end users?
Two possible answers:
1. popular commercial extensions continue to be sold as currently, in breach of the license, and they're fine because not the user must comply with the license, but the developer -each dev is responsible for his own license and enforcing it. But at some point Joomla / OSM could decide to enforce the GPL and have them close shop by legal means.
2. to avoid this issue, dev's decide they can't reasonably make an income with support and memberships instead of selling individual copies of their scripts, and stop development for Joomla, which thus looses much of it's capacities and interest.
3. devs decide to change their business model to comply, do not make enoughincome anymore and are forced to quit.
What do I think about all this? ...
1. Decisions as important as this should be a)better prepared, b)better
communicated, c)better explained to everybody BEFORE discussions start.
It has happened before in just the same way when the core dev team
split from Mambo and created Joomla...
2. The rider, which made third party developers (3PD) think they were
fine, existed for over a year. It was writen by an FSF lawyer. This
preson must've been commissioned by someone from core to write this up
for them. So questions: if Joomla was to be GPL always, as it includes
third party GPL libraries, it needs to have a GPL license too, so this
rider was a bad idea right away and should've never even been added.
How can such an important modification make it's way into the SVN code
without the core members knowing? How come no-one reacted for over a
year? Why this sudden and quick reaction of removal now? Why no contact
with the 3PD before anything was done?
At least some points were more or less clarified by Jick who stood up
for his involvement:
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,183784.0.html - thank you, much
appreciated and exactly as it should've been communicted in the first
place.
3. Everyone seemed and still seems to agree on the fact that one of the
major strong points of Joomla is the wealth of extensions that are
available, both free and commercial. When the split from Mambo was
made, 3PD were encouraged to join forces with the core to build a new
strong community. They contributed both free extensions, time to
support users on the forums, some even more time for example in the
working groups or Joomla Extensions site (JED) maintainance etc.
Now core members and pro-GPL users start saying those developers don't
give anything back to Joomla, which is just plain nonsense.
Even if they didn't contribute anything on the forums as support, did
never provide any bug reports, did not also offer free extensions,
didn't donate part of their income, ... they'd still give to Joomla
with their commercial extension as these increase the interest in
Joomla itself and help spread the word about it's usefullness and
capacities.
pasamios blog about GPL business models
4. I can understand the good it does to Joomla to be GPL (there is no
such thing as "pure GPL" or "100% GPL", it's either dead or alive). You
can use libraries provided by other developers, can re-use code from
other GPL software etc etc...
I can not understand that considering the importance of the features
provided by 3PD, there is nothing concrete done for them. And if there is, it is not being done now, at the same time as this was made public. Lots of energy is lost which could've moved 1.5 closer to Release Candidate. What I see is blogs
offering examples of possible business models, which I wouldn't
consider if I was selling extensions under non-GPl licenses. I see MANY
references to lawyers and legal advice, but I do not see any concrete
help telling developers what is needed to make compliant extensions
(code-wise, not license). No details about what FSF considers, in the
Joomla context, as derivative works. No acknowledgement of what 3PDs
have contributed. No legal guidelines, no code help to maybe avoid
having to go GPL... you'll each have to sort this on your own.
robs blog post
5. Who buys the most commercial extensions? Individual site owners, or
website creators who sell solutions to clients and take advantage of
existing extensions, which generally are quite inexpensive compared to
the many development hours which would be requiered to code them, and
fullfill many niche needs otherwise unavailable? Imho, I would think
site integrators are the main business potential for 3PD, as they'll
either buy multiple licenses for their clients, or developer licenses
allowing them to re-use the same extension multiple times. These
persons are the ones, with the devs themselves, who have the most to
loose in this affair. Whom will they support, Joomla which is the basis
of the sites they create, or the extensions which add the needed
functionality to sell the site in the end? No more directories, hotel
reservation systems, car selling, advanced private messaging etc etc..?
Time will tell.
6. Templates were exempted from this need to comply, apparently the
only thing which would have to be GPL is the index.php file with the
calls to the Joomla API, the rest being considered as data and not
code. Suggestion to 3PD: code your components for example in such a way
that you can provide a GPL index.php main file which features all the
calls to the Joomla API, and make the proprietary rest of the component
interact with this file only so you can keep it commercial?!
Louis take on templates
Maybe this post could be a way to achieve this, but it does look a bit cumbersome and
much more code than a "simple" extension currently needs (to non-coder
eyes), and it needs for example CURL which not all users have.
7. What is the main problem made clear by all this mess? Communication,
or rather the continuing lack of it. No global goal stated for the
development of Joomla despite asking this various times during the last
2+ years (target user base, expected functionality...). No precise
roadmap with some milestones with at least an ETA (which can always be
revised, but at least gives dev's something to work towards, and users
something to look forward to). No advance notice about important things
in discussion internally. So there is nothing you can at least sligthly
rely on. (hey, it's Open Source, you get all this for free.. so what?
does free have to mean sloppy management?). 3PD left without help so
far, and the problem for users might be that some do release as GPL in
the future, but then are faced with the same dilema as with Joomla: the
code is free, so you have no right to expect support or updates. Don't
like the extension? Just find another one..
What now? Well, I'm not posting on the forums anymore, I am sick and
tired of all those endless discussions. If you still have questions,
you can use either the User GPL forum
or the Developer
forum. If you already have an opinion, you can add it here.
A post by grisbald that pretty
much sums up what I think is here.
The only rays of hope that this will be settled in a manner convenient
to both GPL advocating core and commercial extension developers
sometime in the future are:
- reassurance for non-GPL going GPL that no other "versions" of the
same extensions are featured on the extensions site and support request
go to the original dev's site, thus removing visibility for rebrands
- aims to reach a complete separation of Joomla CMS and framework API
in version 2.0 so that the API could be licensed as LGPL...
Let's see what happens.
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