GPL, Joomla! and what it means for RocketTheme
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 9919
- Thanks: 96
- Web Kahuna
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This post is in reference to:
www.joomla.org/content/view/3510/1/ (READ IT ALL)
Nothing Has Changed
Joomla was GPL before, it's still GPL now, the announcement on joomla.org just reiterated the fact.
Anything that has been released with a non GPL license is still a non GPL license, you can't just magically change a license for something. So no you can't start redistributing stuff that was never released with a GPL license. If you do you'll still find yourself in litigation for piracy and copyright violations.
Regarding templates, there has been provisions in the GPL for a long time, way before RocketTheme that stated that templates are outside of the restrictions of GPL mainly because they are an 'artistic' element, and the technologies involved are mainly not code per say (and here i mean PHP)
There are unscrupulous people who will try to take advantage of the system and put up their own resources for templates and extensions. If they do so with commercial templates they are just as liable to litigation as they always were because the GPL is the same today as it was yesterday, and Joomla is still using the GPL license just as it always had. Extension wise, ONLY GPL extensions can be redistributed, so unless the extension has a GPL license bundled with it, you are again going to be liable to litigation and copyright laws. I have ongoing battles with pirates and people of this sort, and quite frankly the people that are going to take advantage of those are not going to get the benefits of updates, bug fixes, support, community, tutorials, etc. That's how RocketTheme works in the first place, and when I start up commercial Joomla development, the model will be the same, just with GPL components. If you want updates, support etc, pay up and join the club.
Any commercial templates, can stay commercial, there's no change there. There is however an impact on commercial developers of extensions (modules, components, etc). If they want to be compliant with the Joomla license, they need to release their components under a GPL compatible license, that's really it. Theoretically if your component is not a derivative work (ie, how much of Joomla source code did you leverage to get your extension written), then you could use another license, but I think that most components were based off one of the core components and make substantial calls to Joomla for functionality. If they didn't they probably would not run well in Joomla.
The Joomla core team have spent an exhaustive amount of time research the options here, and quite frankly it boiled down to the fact that we really had no option. We've been a GPL project from the start, we would not be here today if that were not the case, and we are continuing to stay a GPL project.
There are many ways to create a viable business around commercial GPL extensions, and I for one, intend to be implementing one very soon with RocketWerx. Joomla was founded on the fact that "Open Source Matters", that was it's very premise, in fact it's our tag line for crying out loud. We are just standing up and saying, hey let's not forget how we got here. I think this is going to be a trying time for some people, but I also think there's a great opportunity to build something great, and now there's a definitive stance, there's no more ambiguity. Although that said, i would state that if developers had read the GPL license completely and had full understanding of it from the start, we wouldn't even to be having these discussions today. I am at fault there as much as anyone else. I just assumed along with everyone else, but over the past couple of months I have become intimately familiar with the GPL and other licenses.
If there were a viable option we could have used to continue to allow proprietary commercial (encrypted/non gpl) extensions, while adhering to the GPL license of Joomla, we would have done it. But the nature of the GPL is such that this was not possible. The so called "rider" the people throw around was not legal, was not approved by all Joomla commiters as it should of been, and even if it was, it would mean that we "Joomla" were no longer a GPL project, and we would not be able to incorporate or be used in conjunction with any other GPL project. We would of put ourselves outside the GPL user sphere, and ostracized Joomla and it's users.
This really was the ONLY path we could of taken, i think its the right path, but i will admit, it took me longer than most of the other core devs to really feel this way. But, I certainly do now.
Why Are Templates Treated Differently?
1) First the GPL says that derivative work should be GPL. Modules, and Components generally follow the same structure and calls as core joomla versions, any component written have a lot of similarity in structure to the core ones upon which they are based, hence their derivative nature.
2) The GPL was written primarily to handle code, and code is compiled in some form. Any time one bit of code is compiled with another bit of code, even if this is php, and we're talking includes, it's compiled into one memory space of a computer and handled as one entity. A module or component is mainly code, so this makes up the vast majority of the work. You end up with a cumulative bit of executable code that because it's running with GPL code, should be GPL as a whole.
Now templates, templates are a little bit of php so any PHP that gets compiled and runs in a single memory space should theoretically be GPL. HOWEVER, images, css and javascript are not compiled into this homogenous GPL code, they are infact sent seperately to the user's computer where the user's browser actually handles them all in seperate threads. There is not ever any interaction with the GPL part which is by this point, from the users perspective, rendered HTML. Templates by and large are mostly images, css, and javascript, the NON-GPL part. Hence the exception made in the GPL for them.
3) Third, and most importantly. Modules and Extensions are mostly code, they may have some GUI parts, and some maybe as much GUI as a template, but this is a general rule, and not a blanket definitive statement. Templates are mostly GUI stuff, with very little code, further more, templates are 'artistic works' and come under other copyright rules where the GPL just does not have relevance.
NOTE: I think it's important to understand that templates are considered "skins" that are applied on top of code. They just change the way something looks. The GPL is about free software, and a "skin" is not really considered software and it's usually very unique to an individual owner. This is probably why an exception was made for templates in the first place. Also note, that this exception was not put in for joomla templates, it was put in way before there was even a joomla. - Last Edit: 16 years 10 months ago by Andy Miller.
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- Dan L
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 1453
- Thanks: 0
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Andy, THANKYOU.
I spent ages trudging through the J! forums to get some clarification on licensing regarding templates, and the post I was looking for was right here all along. - Toolbox Digital | Dribbble | Forrst
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