0
Welcome Guest! Login
0 items Join Now

All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

Last Post
Search Topic

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • Daniel,

      I'm not sure where respect comes into it...presumably everything allowed by the license benefits the community. Not posting the index.php files would be disrespectful.

      What am I missing?

      Roger
    #71465

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • Hey Roger,

      If you have a spare week, you may want to read the infamous thread on the Joomla! forums ;D forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,381.0.html

      Probably stick to the pages from 58/59 onwards as I have seen a few posts crop up about the issue address by yourself here :)
    • James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
    #71472

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • If you need to ask that question then you are missing quite a bit.

      This is actually the thing I dislike most about the GPL.

      The GPL was designed to allow code to be improved and shared and furthered to provide value. But opportunists just look at it as a field to take what others have worked on for nothing and to not return any real value to the community but rather purely to themselves by taking all they can.

      Everything allowed does not directly benefit the community simply because it is within the license guidelines. Sharing purely for the sake of taking money from others simply means that less stuff gets developed because people have to go and get other jobs to support their production of code.

      Less code can in no way be perceived as a benefit to the community.

      The only people that should really be getting their hands on GPL code are people who will add value to the code and return it to the pool. Not people who just want to post it for the sake of it and get everything they can without returning anything to the community which provides to them.
    • www.ninjoomla.com - The Ninjoomla Open Source Extension Club
      Over 50 open source extensions and 100 videos to you build the site you want.
    #71473

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • Daniel....

      Personally, I think it's a disaster for Joomla. This goes way beyond RocketTheme.

      The purpose of the GNU/GPL is to benefit the community by deliberately exposing previous works to the benefit of modification. From the perspective of a commercial developer, that would be "threat of modification." But (quoting Spock) the spirit of the GNU/GPL is that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

      As I understand it, there's nothing to prevent anyone from reposting or even reselling the index.php files. In fact, someone could work up their own CSS and do this all day long. Maybe offer RocketTheme index.php files with their own non-copyrighted CSS for $1 a download.

      Creating new CSS files is a lot of work, but so is creating the index.php files. For someone with some experience with CSS, how much trouble is it to tweak the CSS and defeat copyright considerations and work up some new images? Not really that much. There are only so many CSS statements, so the CSS wouldn't have to be all that different from the existing RocketTheme CSS. Just reorganize the statements and maybe useing margin-top, margin-right, margin-left, margin bottom instead of margin 10 10 10 10. You get the idea.

      I think it's terrible, but it's true. There are quite a number of Joomla guys who could do it. I could do it, if I wanted to put the time in.

      People start open source projects all the time and spend tons of time on them. What's to say that some team won't come along and decide to offer new CSS for all existing RocketTheme index.php files, then make the CSS GNU/GPL?

      Nothing. But at least they'll mention Andy and the RocketTheme crew in the HTML comments. <----Thanks Andy---->

      Roger
    #71474

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • And by the way, this probably means that the existing index.php files have to be offered as open source by RocketTheme anyway. The GNU elements of the templates have to be separated from the proprietary elements and offered as a separate open source download.

      What a pain.
    #71475

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • The best bet is to ask a lawyer or someone who has already sort legal advise etc... People could debate all day and be absolutely wrong.

      Might have to wait on Andy for an answer :)
    • James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
    #71476

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • I think what it means is that the CSS could grow more complex and difficult to modify and understand. That's the only way to protect the substantial amount of time and investment in the templates.

      That's kind of loss for all of us here.

      For extension developers, it means that each extension will require its own templating mechanism, and that this mechanism will make use of CSS that's difficult to understand and change, and may even be obfuscated. Instead of containers having IDs like "container", they'll have IDs like "DSIE1323s34332223432905948Sdidghtas"

      Instead of paying $20 for an extension or template and getting code I can understand, I'll pay $20 for CSS I can't understand.

      Looks like a new market in CSS obfuscators could develop. Just take all the CSS statements and put them in random order, and make all items 20 characters long and consist of random sequences of words and letters.
    • Last Edit: 17 years 10 months ago by Roger Davis.
    #71483

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • it seems like a very bad thing for the joomla template/component developers

      and in my eyes, a big "F You" to them (devs) from the joomla core team

      IMO - andy and others spend alot of time on there templates/components, so i feel it only right, that said developers have the right to ask for a payment.

      IMO - it is there work - so they can ask for whatever they want for it.

      it is IMO a very bad thing for joomla itself, it is the vast array of customisation with both templates and components/modules that draw alot people to joomla,
      if ppl like andy lost there income, there would be little point in doing it (sure some ppl do it for fun - but on a monthly basis? regularly? with fantastic support?)

      i doubt it highly! who would have the time?

      and even if he could still charge for the templates, if someone did like roger said, he would soon either give up or start developing for another cms

      these of course are just my opinions, and im not entirely knowledgeable on GNU/GPL
    • Joomla Extensions - www.ninjoomla.com
    #71485

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • I used to pay $20 and get an extension where the source was encrypted and the CSS easy to change. I liked that model. Now I'll pay $20 and get an extension where the source is open, and the CSS is nearly impossible to change.

      What a Flip flop.
    #71488

  • Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • The biggest problem of this situation is that people are getting confused between opinions and facts. I do not know much about the situation but from the posts on Joomla!, there is much confusion between opinions and the actual situation.
    • James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
    #71490

Time to create page: 0.070 seconds