Must Joomla Extensions all be GNU/GPL? Have your say.
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- Daniel Chapman
- Elite Rocketeer
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@Andrew.
Well when you have a large number of experienced and skilled joomla developers as the proprietary guys do, some funds to do it, as the proprietary guys do if they pool funds, and the need/desire to do it, as the proprietary guys do. And you are working together as the proprietary guys are then a unified single bridge isn't that much of a pie in the sky dream.
You are right it -is- a waste of time and effort from a technical point of view. But when it's your life and the lives of your family on the line people will do some extreme and often amazing things to preserve that. It's what happens when people get pushed into a corner.
Plus you are right they will be removed from the JED, but that may not be a huge problem for them either .
You are right that most wont put their code into escrow, but some already have and others are pooling to do so. (I would put a link but you probably don't have access to the forum)
I am not sure who the 'dishonest' comment was directed at so I won't comment on it.
I agree you have to be serious, and to get by you either need a damn good idea (or lots of pretty good ones) or be prepared to put in a lot of hours only to see your stuff for free or being sold at $10 less on other sites.
I love open source, it's the reason I can even use joomla let alone write code for it, but it is not really conducive to commerce without huge sacrifices or a large team working together to get something substantial up with no reward for a long time.
The saddest part is that most people with serious commerce oriented web sites, probably each individually make more money from using x extension than the author of that exension made in total from them. (under gpl).
Time will tell. I think the next few months will be an interesting time. Every revolution is. Even though -technically- nothing has changed it is a revolution like it or not.
@Amy
It's just the beginning. I wonder if the Joomla hacks one contains SMF code? If that goes too we have a VERY interesting situation. but at least the Best Of Joomla guys will be happy.
A lot of the most popular GNU projects are funded by commercial sales. Those projects are also in doubt now. CB and SOBI2 are just two of the more high profile ones.
Which directory component will the JED use if SOBI2 goes under and Mosets is commercial?
CB is the single most popular extension I am pretty sure. That will be another one that will be a potentially big loss to Joomla.
Someone quoted 15% or so as the number of commercial extensions that will dissapear from the JED, but a recent survey of the commercial devs showed that all who answered except one (who only had one extension) had 2 or more gnu extensions for every propietary one. So that 15% is probably closer to 45-50% of extensions on the JED are now at risk.
People don't come to Joomla for Joomla, they come for the extensions.
On the upside, DAMN a huge hole just opened up in the market if people can get into it quick enough before the customer base evaporates -
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Over 50 open source extensions and 100 videos to you build the site you want.
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- Amy Stephen
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Daniel Chapman wrote:
I wonder if the Joomla hacks one contains SMF code?
Orstio posted that Joomla hacks will also be an issue. My guess is Fireboard will see a growing end user base.
I believe it was Phil or Vimes that set the number of commercial extensions at 15% - it's early in the Thread from Hell if someone wanted to dig around in the rubble. Interesting to hear that non-proprietary extensions have reached the same level of GPL'ed solutions. It sure did seem to me that 15% was very, very low.
You got a feel for what the issues are, no doubt! Are we going to make it through each one of them unscathed? I doubt it. Can we survive? I'm quite certain we can.
You are very right about opportunity emerging, Dan.
Blogged about your cartoon the other day, btw. As with all good political cartoons it is based on dark humor and irony. I loved it!
All the best,
Amy
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- V-man
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As a commercial and GPL developer, I have mixed feelings about the entire issue. What seems obvious is that some developers will walk away, some will modify their business model, some will continue unchanged. It is the latter, those developers who disagree with the core teams interpretation of the GPL, whom I think this will eventually fuel legal action by OSM (despite their comments to the contrary). In any case, it seems a legal test of the Joomla! core team position is the only way to truly resolve this. A legal outcome against OSM would open the floodwaters for coomercial developers. The opposite would essentially cease all commercial Joomla! development. Perhaps something like this should happen sooner than later. Notably, someone properly motivated could also push legal against template developers, as this exception is also open to interpretation.
One thing that nobody seems to have mentioned (though i can't have possibly read all the posts concrening this issue (57 pages!!! in the thread from hell!!!) is that some people must be repackaging Joomla! as their own proprietary package and offering it to unsuspecting clients. This may now increase with devs who have a lot invested in commercial components. I hope i am dead wrong about this.
I think a lot of 'part-time' devs (such as myself) are waiting to see what guys like Phil Taylor will do. With 10,000+ customers, he is likely the the largest vendor of commercial components (unencrypted components BTW). I know he disagrees with the core team's position, but i have not seen any comments from him since the core team announcement as his entire business model is now wiped out.
Does anyone know if a commercial version of the JED has sprung up?
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- damo
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ok. cat amongst pigeons time.
what is actually going to happen to you if you put a non GPL component into your site.
if you don't know, i'll tell you; nothing - www.c3p0.se - sweden
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- Daniel Chapman
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@Amy
Cheers! Did you check out the rest I just wrote? I have a new site devoted to bringing dark humor to the Joomla world! It is about time we had a critical Joomla site that was biased for and against all sides
@ V-man
Your questions answered here : jcd-a.org/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,28/
I am with you, I am both incensed and inspired, depressed and overjoyed. Quite an up and down environment.
I know joomla will make it out -alive- but if it remains at the top of the CMS pile only time will tell.
Will commercial GPL sites make enough to bring the customer base back?
Will the GPL abusing leeches ruin it for everyone by trying to always get their free ride?
Will the Proprietry guys get their lgpl interface shield up and running?
Will Java administrator interfaces be the new fad for proprietry components?
All this and more only time will tell.
p.s. if Jhacks has to pull their bridge, does that mean that RT will change to Fireboard? -
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- Rick O Banion
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Okay now I have a question here...
I understand that the SMF bridge is a mix, so it is in a problem area, but why would CB be a problem? If the CB is released under the GPL, isn't that okay?
Is there not portions of the GPL that allows for mixed code? Surely this is not the first time this has happened? Can't bridges and what-not have a different license for each portion?
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- Daniel Chapman
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CB is fine for the code. But the developers have the time to work on it because they sell other non GPLcomponents.
e.g. the new CB component that EVERYONE just about has been waiting for was to be non GPL. Well that just hit a brick wall.
The only reason we have CB and SOBI2 and MANY other GPL extensions are because the devs sold other components to make free time to work on these ones.
If they had not sold these other extensions we would not have these two great extensions today.
How many times have you used CB? How much money have you made making sites using CB? How much money have you given Nant and (gah forgot his name) the other guy... to compensate them for the money you made? -
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- James Spencer
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Daniel Chapman wrote:
How many times have you used CB? How much money have you made making sites using CB? How much money have you given Nant and (gah forgot his name) the other guy... to compensate them for the money you made?
Bert
- James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
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- damo
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Daniel Chapman wrote:
e.g. the new CB component that EVERYONE just about has been waiting for was to be non GPL. Well that just hit a brick wall.
why? what is stopping anyone selling non GPL components? what i'm really asking is, do you honestly think anything will happen? - www.c3p0.se - sweden
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- Daniel Chapman
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Nothing is stopping people, I will be doing it myself soon in fact.
But it is much harder and many components don't support a paid model.
Plus lots of people simply won't pay for a component unless they have too. They have confused free as in liberty code with free as in beer code.
GPL profits are much lower per unit so you need more components and more services.
It can be done for many but not all extensions.
The ones that suffer are niche tools and large complex components. Because they require higher per unit costs to recover the development. The higher the cost the less people will pay. -
www.ninjoomla.com
- The Ninjoomla Open Source Extension Club
Over 50 open source extensions and 100 videos to you build the site you want.
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