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

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • This is from www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html :
      1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

      You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

      So if you want to post the source code of the 280 commercial extensions at the Joomla Extensions site, I think it would be okay.

      Roger
    #71628

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • This has been said multiple times by many people on the core team to be a resounding - no

      Not until they change their licenses themselves. They are currently still whatever license they chose. Being an invalid license does not make them default to a GPL license.

      Joomla will not persuing the legal actions necessary to change their licenses, as it would be too expensive and a waste of time and effort. They are instead asking for voluntary compliance.

      If you start posting commercially licensed code or attempting to sell it, you will find yourself (and rightly so) getting sued by said commercial license holder.

      Once they change their license, yes you are free to do with it what you like.
    • www.ninjoomla.com - The Ninjoomla Open Source Extension Club
      Over 50 open source extensions and 100 videos to you build the site you want.
    #71635

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • As has also been said. Such an action (posting all teh code) would be considered warez by the community - passing on the material with no changes or added value

      which is frowned upon and will not be supported by the team i.e. you can't list it on the extensions directory.
    • www.ninjoomla.com - The Ninjoomla Open Source Extension Club
      Over 50 open source extensions and 100 videos to you build the site you want.
    #71637

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • Roger Davis wrote:
      My reading of this is that it's okay to post the source code of previously commercial extensions. You can even offer them for sale.

      Roger

      That has been addressed on Joomla! and is strictly not true. Commerical extensions have not suddenly become GPL overnight. I

      sound as if I am pressing to go to the Joomla! forums but there is a vast amount of people discussing this situation there and have most of the answers we are all searching for.
    • James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
    #71640

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • When do commercial extensions become GPL?

      I know that the Joomla team have talked about what they'll do regarding commercial extensions, but commercial extensions are either GPL or they're not. The Joomla devs don't have the power to modify the GNU license. The license doesn't give them that power.

      Roger
    #71656

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • The license doesn't mention anything about a transition period. That's something created by the Joomla devs to avoid community outrage. What any individual does is their own business, and right now it's okay to post source code.

      Even if you don't believe it's okay right now, it's coming. Might not be tomorrow or next week, but it's coming. Free exchange, inspection, and modification of source code is the core concept of the GNU/GPL.

      All those commercial modules you wanted but couldn't afford...just hang in there, they'll soon be yours.

      Roger
    #71661
    • Andy Miller's Avatar
    • Andy Miller
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    Re: All commercial extensions & templates available for Joomla are now open source?

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • Look, everyone please calm down.

      First NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Joomla was GPL before, it's still GPL now, we just reiterated the fact.

      Second, 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.

      Thirdly 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 ar mainly not code per say (here i mean php)

      Fourthly, the index.php is nothing to a template. Anyway can save the html and reconstruct the index.php, it's a doddle, and quite frankly there's nothing in an index.php that's worth worrying about . Template developers are concerned about their artistic ideas being copied. That is contained in images and css, and lately javascript. The index.php takes me about 10-15 mins to write for a give template. The rest takes me many many many hours. So it's no great loss to say that 'technically speaking' the index.php is public domain.

      Fifthly (is that a word?) - 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. 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.

      We - 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 Andrew Eddie in 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 completley 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.
    #71677

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • Thanks Andy. :D

      Summed up what I was going to say nicely.
    • www.ninjoomla.com - The Ninjoomla Open Source Extension Club
      Over 50 open source extensions and 100 videos to you build the site you want.
    #71681

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    • Cheers Andy :)

      It is great that you summised everything up with facts. :)
    • James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
    #71687

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

    Posted 17 years 10 months ago
    #71706

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