Joomla! Discussion Forums

OK, so Joomla core remains GPL. I'm very happy about this - it's the right decision.
But, now extensions must be GPL (or compatible) as well? This is a change of stance, and I don't see how it naturally follows, and really affects my attitude to developing/using/promoting Joomla.

There have been some well put arguments that the reach of GPL to extensions is a gray area and, while this is an unacceptable state of affairs, it appeared to me to be a starting point to resolving the issue. Paired with the declared support of 3PDs, I had confidence that a resolution could be found. Declaring all extensions must be GPL isn't a resolution, but a conditional and unnecessary withdrawal of support for 3PDs.

I'm a pragmatic developer, not a lawyer. So I am happy to accept that the GPL as written and Joomla as written means that extensions must also be GPL.

But as a developer I know that with sufficient will we can develop around this, to move out of the gray area sufficiently that extensions are clearly not under the GPL. Technical issues can be overcome, but the will is a different matter.

Until now the Joomla community has embraced 3PDs openly, without being proscriptive of what business model they had. This was a great thing, and allowed for some great experimental approaches. The first goal of a developer is to get great solutions to our users, and secondly to get enough money to support our families and grow our business so we can do even more. I believe firmly in the right of everyone to try their own approach, and so did the Joomla community, I thought.

If we have the will, the desire within the Joomla community to coexist with non-GPL extensions, then we can work around this issue.

My question to the Joomla community then - Do you want to?

It's not a matter of wanting or not wanting, it ia a matter of needing to follow the licenses under which the copyright holders contributed code to the project.

3pDs are an important part oc the Joomla! community. They need to understand the risk they take when they violate the terms of the gnu gpl.

Since I'm not allowed to reply to someone else's post in this forum, here's my reply to: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg886995


I disagree. It is very much a question of whether the Joomla! Team and the Community want to support non-GPL extensions. 

As I believe we have seen in the discussions here, there are probably ways to create non-GPL extensions even given the constraints outlined by the lawyers the Core Team consulted (which I don't agree with, but that's a different discussion), particularly given that there is an exception for 'bridges'. Non-GPL extensions can probably be significantly helped by work in the Joomla! core itself and by the creation of some shared libraries, and I'm guessing a number of 3PDs would be willing to pitch in and give their time and/or money to make some of those changes possible. Critical parts of the code that extension writers need could be licensed or re-written to use the LGPL instead of the GPL (or even a different license that does not containt the 'viral' side of GPL). We could all work together toward that end.

From what I've seen so far, however, the Joomla! Team does not want non-GPL extensions. I'm basing this on comments I've seen in the forums and the initial annoucement. If I were part of the Core Team, I would have written an annoucement that read more like this -

Joomla Matters

After consulting with our lawyers about the GPL, we realized that we have a problem with our license and the current state of the Joomla! code and extensions. There is a large amount of GPL code in Joomla! whose owners could potentially file a lawsuit against Joomla! or non-GPL extensions. This would not be beneficial to Joomla! or our extension writers. It is not possible to add a rider to the code because we do not have the permission of all the copyright holders. Commercial third-party extensions are an important part of the Joomla! community and we believe they are vital to the continued and future success of Joomla! In order to allow them to continue, we are going to work with the 3PD community to find solutions to this problem and allow non-GPL extensions in Joomla! We're not sure exactly what these solutions will entail, but we know that with the intelligent people who use Joomla! every day, that we can find solutions that will allow us to move foward. While it will mean changing how non-GPL extensions are written, in the end, we believe that as a community we will be stronger because of this.

Replies in the forums have mostly focused on trying to convince developers to change their business models and that they've always been developing for a GPL platform anyway rather than trying to work together on a solution that people can live with. Which leads me to my belief that the Joomla! team does not want non-GPL extensions at all. If that's the case, I think the Core Team should own up to that fact and state it outright. It'll make things clearer (or at least give us something else to discuss  ) and avoid 3PDs spending time trying to create non-GPL extensions with Joomla!'s help. Certainly in that case some commercial developers will decide to write for other platforms where they are more welcome. How that would affect Joomla! we wouldn't know for a while.

I'd prefer the Core team to say they'd like to see non-GPL extensions in the "product mix" for Joomla! and want to work with developers to see how that can happen. I think we're better off if we all work together on this and try to help everyone in the community who has made this community strong over the years.

david

The core team has said numerous times that they want to work with the developer community. They say so in the paragraph that you quote.

Whether all members of the commercial developer community are willing to work with the core team is the bigger question, and one I am surprised you are not asking.

Sadly, it is clear that a small number of  proprietary developers would rather live with the risk of being sued by the copyright holders than to continue to work with Joomla!.  Speaking for myself, I'm sorry that they have made that decision, and I hope that they will come back. Some of them have been fantastic contributors to the success of Joomla! and Mambo before that. They have given me advice here on the forums, and I own some of their extensions.

I think that Joomla! 1.5 is going to be so popular, that as business people they will decide that they have to reconsider their decision to walk away rather than to work with the team. The offer to help them figure out how to come into compliance with our license will stay open. Louis famously said in a post "we are open source geeks." There is nothing that open source geeks like better than to meet a challenge. You see that right now with posting proposed code-based approaches to this issue. In the end the open source model is a powerful one because it puts so many minds together trying to solve problems.

But it absolutely *is* a matter of wanting or not wanting. If *you* want it *we* can find a way to fully comply with wording and spirit of the GPL while also allowing others to create proprietary non-GPL extensions.

I have the greatest respect for all the copyright holders involved in Joomla - core team members and 3PDs. But the status quo was that proprietary extensions were welcome in the Joomla community. I would like to know if that is still the case, because if it is we need to work on a solution, and if it isn't 3PDs deserve to be told that Joomla is withdrawing support from them unless they change to a GPL compatible license.



This is pretty much like that childish game of pushing someone into the road and then pulling them back claiming you saved their life. It's pretty hard to swallow the idea that these developers, who had operated within the Joomla community in good faith, are suddenly at risk and you are the good guys for trying to pull them back into compliance with the GPL. As I see it, the 3PDs had worked within the Joomla community within the accepted behaviour of that community. You are, in effect, putting the 3PDs out in the cold because the commonly accepted behaviour is not strictly in accordance with the legal minutiae the core team agreed to. We are talking smallprint here, albeit important smallprint that we all value and wish to adhere to. I think the 3PDs are at least important enough to make a statement that we want to continue to allow proprietary extensions, that this *is still* accepted behaviour in the Joomla community, and that we will work towards some technical solution that will allow 3PDs to continue with their current business models, but if they want to switch to a GPL model, that's just dandy.



Well it is your ball, and while we were all playing along quite nicely, you've now decided you want to play by different rules because it is your ball. You're simply trying to take the moral higher ground by saying you are playing by the official rules rather than the informal rules that we had all agreed on until now. This is where the metaphor falls down (and this seems to be our sticking point - I don't you agree about that); we are talking about software not a ball game, and we are clever enough to come up with a game with multiple sets of rules. That is, if we want to.



From my perspective the 3PDs *are* the copyright holders of the proprietary extensions they supply. The core team are the copyright holders of the core of Joomla. The work of all these people is to be applauded and is greatly valued by us all, and they both have a right to license their copyrighted work as they wish.

The risk of proprietary 3PDs being sued is mainly because they are required to use fragments of core code, either by refererence or re-use in order to make their extension work within Joomla. Again - the crux point is if the core team *want* to allow proprietary 3PDs, not only is the risk of being sued by the core team much reduced (which is nice to know, while we work this out) - we can work towards making it so that these fragments of core code are not necessary, or provide variants that are suitably licensed, just in case they have a future change of heart. I'm not saying that it will be easy, especially if we try to comply with the stricter interpretations of the GPL (personally I'm happy if we are sufficiently outside the gray area we are currently in that resorting to the courthouse would be advised against by any reasonable lawyer). In any case it's something we can achieve if we want it.

If we want a technical solution, it must be part of Joomla core. So it is clearly pointless developing a technical solution to this problem if the core team don't want one.



Unfortunately, this sort of ideological upheaval is a run, don't walk, away sign to any business.

On a personal note I spent about a month convincing a client to go with Joomla on what will eventually be, literally, hundreds of separate web sites. I just today had to tell them we may have to reconsider Joomla, as the custom components I have given them so far are now considered by the Joomla team as being a breach of copyright and could open us up to a lawsuit. No, I don't want to release my components under a GPL compliant license, not just yet, sorry. Also, and I'll separate this out to emphasize the point:

I had to tell the client that some of the components that they will rely on on their website may not exist by the time they go live.

And no, we can't blame the 3PDs for this, they are the not the one changing their stance at this time (which is your issue, is it not?). Its within our power to change the way extensions work/interact so that we respect the copyright and license of the core teams code as well as the copyright and license chosen by the 3PDs. But again, it all revolves around whether the core team want to allow proprietary extensions. I do, do you?

One final point to consider: The GIMP supports photoshop plug-ins, even proprietary ones. If GIMP was written before photoshop even existed, would we be requiring all plug-ins to be GPL?

Of course they are the copyright holders of their work. That is why the other copyright holders will sue them and not Joomla! now that Joomla!/OSM has made its position clear. This is a legal issue and not a personal one.

The GNU GPL is hardly fine print. The developers knew they were taking a risk when they licensed with non-compliant licenses. They are grown ups. They are business people.

We've put the ball in play, we have offered help and advice and time. Many have responded and are working on it. A few are not. I'm sad about that, but I can't make them talk.

addition:
Joomla! is open source, so if you want to work at finding a solution within the core, you are free to download the nightly build and try to come up with something. Go for it.

Pointless effort if we produce something that you don't *want* in the core as it will never be accepted. Which is why I am asking the question of whether you want it in the core or not.

You have made it clear that you are talking on behalf of the Joomla core team, and it is very clear that you don't want to answer my question. But I'll rephrase it and ask it again anyway, and I would appreciate some sort of answer:

If we could come up with a technical solution that would allow 3rd Party Developers to create extensions that are not GPL compatible, but can interoperate with the Joomla core in a way that is compliant with the GPL, do you want it and would you incorporate this solution into the core?

Firstly, no one is talking on behalf of the core team.  Everyone who posts on this forum is posting his/her own opinion.  It is unfair and invalid to project a single person's feelings onto an entire group of people, even if that person is a member.  While Elin is a very valuable member of the Joomla! community and in fact the president of our non-profit, she is not the mouth of the core team.

Secondly, while I speak for myself only I would say that I am not really bothered either way whether or not someone comes up with a technical "solution" to allow proprietary extensions.  I can also tell you that I personally have no intentions of modifying the Joomla! core code base for the sole purpose of facilitating proprietary extensions.  Our goals are geared towards and centered around the Joomla! project and community, not proprietary third party extensions.

I will also say that I don't think proprietary developers are "evil" or "bad" or anything of the sort.  I have written proprietary code in my day, and in some instances still do.  There is nothing wrong with it at all.

Further, I don't care how someone licenses their code, it is their code.  I will endeavor to respect the author and license of any software that I use.  In fact, all we have asked is that same courtesy from everyone else.

Louis

Louis - I appreciate that you are speaking only for yourself, and thank you for responding.



I would hope I'm interpreting this right. Are you saying

1. "fine, you're free to do what you want, none of my business, but not in my back yard" or are you saying that

2. you really have no desire or interest in this subject, and though you are unlikely to participate in the development of a solution, you would not oppose it and perhaps would facilitate it if it had sufficient support from within the Joomla community when it didn't negatively impact other members of the community?

I have always considered it a great strength of Joomla that it was inclusive and considered proprietary developers as part of the community. I have the utmost respect for the most ardent purist GPL developer (in the same way as I greatly respect the SpyBot team - of whom I often appreciate their level of professional paranoia, I just wouldn't like to share it) - but the ardent purist GPL developer are one extreme edge of a wide canvas. At the far other edge are the more sleazy proprietary developers trying to take the best out of Joomla and giving nothing back (and while I have only a fledgling web solutions business maybe I belong in that group?). But I believe the Joomla product and community is better off and has greater credibility for including these extremes, and believe it is better for Joomla as a whole if all groups respected and accommodated each other's needs. Oh, and that a good technical solution is found and added to Joomla core with the blessings and support of the core team.

I believe, and I'm speaking for myself only and my interpretation of what Louis said... that he's not going out of his way, spending his time, trying to make solutions for proprietary extensions.  One of those "I've got way bigger fish to fry" types of things, in my opinion.

However, Johann has said recently that the core developers are trying to separate the API from the core more so that the API can be LGPL and thus give 3PDs more flexibility.  It does not appear they succeeded for 1.5 but it is an ongoing effort, in my opinion.

Louis,

The comments that you have made are confusing to me, especially this; "Our goals are geared towards and centered around the Joomla! project and community, not proprietary third party extensions". I would have thought that any type of project thinking of it's self as a "framework" would be sympathetic to the needs of 3PD integration.

I have spent a lot of time thinking on ways to overcome this problem, but hearing something like this from a J! developer:



seems to imply that I am wasting my time, yet I have been invited on numerous occasions to offer my input and advice on the matter.

Well anyway since I have finally got the chance to talk to a J! Developer I would like to ask what your views are on my "Simplified non-gpl extension deployment pattern" topic. The solution I have provided there is probably the most compatible with your statements of:



I look forward to your informed feedback, especially whether you feel personally that this pattern allows the deployment of the demo component I provided under such a licensing scheme.

-Lobos

from: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,186865.0.html

I think if you read what Louis said as a whole piece instead of just ripping one sentence from the post trying to make it more significant than the others you would plainly see how louis feels...

But I'll give my take on what he said:


There is no central policy from the team. Each member has their own take on the subject with subtle differences. This is normal as there is no way any group of people could agree on every point in a discussion. At best each member of the developer team can give you is their own take on the subject.
the opinions and interpretation of the GPL we are getting from them is based on how they will approach the GPL in regards to their work on Joomla. They are not in business to advise us on how to develop they can only make decisions for themselves and their project...the Joomla Project.
Because Team members are always in flux it would be impossible to find one central policy that every developer from now until infinity will agree. Should they take a vote and affirm that 3PD GPL-Incompatible extentions are legal this week and in a month from now when the members of the team change or new members come on board should another vote be taken? Will we have policy patches to fix previous policy as well as bug fixes?  Even if the entire development team (and maybe this is already true) has decided that GPL incompatible extentions is a good thing they can not give you permission to use code they themselves have not written. And because Joomla uses GPL code from other developers that are no longer on the team or never were on the team they can not go and make decisions for everyone who has ever coded for J!




This basically says to me that Louis' interest is in coding for J! not in coding for someone else's business model. And I can't blame him. He has volunteered very kindly to make a free product that makes so many people's lives easier. Less than 25% (Maybe as low as 2.5%) of the projects that are available on JED are commercial non-GPL. And to prioritize coding just to accomodate those projects is unfair to all of those developers who give freely their coding time to help enhance Joomla. They do have so many more BIGGER fish to fry right now including:
1 - Getting 1.5 stable so they can actually work on adding new features.
2 - Working on a better ACL system that you could plug into the system so that the one glaring deficiency in J! can finally be addresses easily.
3 - Standard compliant output so that the project will finally be compliant with accessability guidelines and WIA Complaince

All of those (and I'm sure there are more I didn't mention fall at the top of the priority list and over helping someone who is trying to make a profit keep making that profit.
And if I read Louis' indifference correctly he does not care if while doing those things some way to allow a commercial non-GPL manages to happen. But he is going to code them with Joomla in mind not some 3PDs business model.


This is the line that people should focus on not the line everyone has focused on instead (the one I quoted above)
He does not think propriietary development is wrong. But he also believes that the needs of joomla far outweigh the needs of these developers. And Joomla has needs that need to be addressed first. If those needs being addressed manage to also address the needs of the proprietary developer well thats just great. But they are not going to be the focus of the code...Joomla is!


This is the key issue many people have missed....what the J! teams have said is limited to their own actions and how they intend to interpret the GPL license for themselves and the Joomla series of code. The feel because they use GPL that they must comply themselves with the GPL and you must decide for yourself if you intend to follow them. They are giving freely and they would hope others would also give freely out of respect and as thanks for the work the J! developers have done for us. They have not forced anyone to agree with that interpretation of the GPL and leave them to their own devices how far they want to test that interpretation. they have not made any threats of legal action at all. They did however give us the courtesy of a warning that they aren't the only ones who could take you to court as there are other license holders involved that are not members of the J! development team...the J! devs (and OSM) can only speak for themselves on points where the group is 100% in agreement and can not speak for these other developers of GPL code that Joomla uses.

People keep asking for explicit permission or approval of some method of getting around the GPL restrictions on incompatible license...
J! Devs can not legally do that any more than they can legally say to you it's ok you have my permission to go rob my bank. the bank has as much say if not more than anyone who might have an account there.

People are shooting the messenger. and the messenger was not serving subpeonas just a warning of what they have found in their oiwn research.
And while the J! developers wouldn't mind one bit if a method of allowing Commercial GPL Incompatible license was made they sure aren't going to put off feature enhancement simply to get that to happen. They are coding Joomla for Joomla and feature set...not licensing.

And truth is that is the way it should be.

But a central policy statement is needed, don't you think. Not everyone in the group will agree with the policy, but if one were to be properly put forward, they should respect it. Otherwise you could end up with one team member adding changes to support 3PDs and another one removing those same changes (rinse and repeat). Some consensus is necessary. It all comes round to do we (or at least the core team) want proprietary 3PDs in the Joomla community?



I'm not asking for them to declare them legal, or make any legal statement or opinion, nor am I asking them to bind themselves to any agreement forever. However, the status quo was that proprietary 3PDs were a part of the Joomla community, and their needs were taken into account like any other member of the community. If the attitude within the core team turns against proprietary 3PDs (which is their right), and they are no longer welcome, then it is only fair that they are told of this change in attitude. The concern is that this change has taken place and proprietary 3PDs are no longer welcome, just that no-one is willing to come out and say so.



Actually, I totally agree. But are you saying it is a matter of priorities and not principles? Because if it is priorities, I'm sure that every proprietary 3PD out there consider it their number 1 priority, and are more than willing to contribute in whatever way necessary for the core team to achieve this in addition to their own priorities. But the need to support proprietary 3PDs must have some value within the core team, otherwise all effort is wasted the moment a core team member decides to junk the contribution on principle, or just because it inconveniences them in a future development effort.

For proprietary 3PDs to remain in the Joomla community, the core team have to allow non-GPL compliant extensions. For everything to continue as it always has, they have to come out and say they want to allow for non-GPL extensions. Even if you don't agree with them on principle, you appreciate that members within the community rely on them. If we no longer want them in Joomla, it is tantamount to saying we don't consider these proprietary 3PDs to be members of the community. And that, as I've said before, would be a shame.

Where there is a will, there is a way. And if you are willing, we will find a way to make this work.

What statement can they give? There is no statement Joomla could make that would change a thing about this situation.

Sure they like Proprietary developers. I like a few drug dealers...Doesn't mean anything I say can make their work legal or permitted!
They can not offer any statement without jeopardizing Joomla's ability to use GPL code...
If they say we love proprietary software and love when people develop it for Joomla they could be dragged into court as an accomplice to the license violation of someone else's GPL code they used as part of Joomla!
Joomla does not have the right to give blanket permission to use any parts of the code included in Joomla for use in a proprietary codework. Not unless they can remove all of the GPL code that is in there and re-write it completely so that they can then change the license to LGPL which would allow it.
All Louis has said from what I hear is that he is not about to go through all of that work just to satisfy someone's desire to make a buck off his work. Proprietary developers want to get paid for their work and they want Louis to work for free to get them that right?
If it happens during the course of what he has already volunteered to do for the project so be it. But he is not inclined to change course just so someone else can pay their rent! These proprietary developers could just as easily take that goal on as a project and submit it to the Developers as a proof of concept and if it doesn't interfere with the goals of Joomla and cause any technical difficulty I'm sure the Developers would be happy to implement that work into the project.
The 3PDs who want to get paid for their work derived from a free program should take the onus on themselves to do the work needed to allow Proprietary Extentions to be compatible with Joomla. And contribute that work to the project.


You presume something has changed...NOTHING HAS CHANGED! What happened was a reality that many people ignored was RE-ITERATED!
It was NEVER LEGAL to create a proprietary work and combine it in conjunction with the GPL. You could have been sued all of these years past by any of the many developers who have contributed code to the project under the GPL license. You could have even been sued by Mambo for making a proprietary code that used GPL routines that Joomla has carried over! Any GPL developer's work or GPL library that has been used by the Joomla project (Rightfully because the project is GPL) could sue you! This has ALWAYS been the case!
The only thing that has happened is that Joomla was reminded of this fact when it started to discuss what license to release J1.5 under. They got legal counsel and that counsel said if you are using any GPL software J1.5 must also be GPL. And that was repeated here and is the only statament Joomla or OSM could make. So lets stop trying to paint the Status Quo as changed...the Status Quo is still the status Quo.
All Joomla has done and said is that the status Quo STILL EXISTS and therefore they are going to do what they can to be compliant with the licenses of the GPL products they have used and they hope others who contribute to the project and write for it will do the same.

They even went further to say they were not going to immediatly boot all proprietary software off the JED site and they had no intentions of suing anyone into compliance! What more could they say? We love you and you should break the law and hope someone else other than us doesn't sue you?


Yes every Proprietary 3PD which as I stated means about 3-5% of the developers who write for J! as most use the GPL and don't expect to make a cent.
Who gets the priority? the 2-5% of the proprietary or the 93-95% of the rest of the community that actually uses Joomla?

I don't need Commercial extentions to be legal I sure would rather the Devs worked on ACL than LGPL framework....
98% of the community are users. 2% of the Community are Developers and 2% of that 2% are proprietary developers...
No they should not be the priority! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one!

The whole project is a GPL project and these Proprietary 3PDs have just as much capability to recode the framework to a state that can be LGPLed as anyone else! I suggest instead of looking for permission they roll up their sleeves and either donate the work needed to LGPL the API or work on some LGPL Bridge to their extention.

Truth is they don't even have to do any of this since nothing has changed they can continue to take the same risks they have taken all along by releasing a derivative code for a GPL program with a license incompatible with the GPL...
But when the subpeona gets served by someone other than J! don't look to J! to pay your legal fees!
You have been warned...Thats the statement they have made and is about the only statement anyone could make.


Well they can't give them permission...they don't own all the licenses to the codes that J! uses! Only the bits they wrote themselves!
Until they do your asking the bank teller if it's ok to rob the bank...Even if she says yes the bank manager is going to prosecute you because the teller doesn't own the bank!
Joomla Devs don't own all the code!
No permission can be given! And if you think a move to Mambo changes any of that you may find yourself in court because their statement means nothing.
Any developer who wrote code for Mambo under the GPL could sue you if they wanted! And mambo couldn't do a thing to stop them or help you!
IT's an empty permission! They really never had the right to give you permission to use a GPL incompatible license...
They didn't care if you goit taken to court. Thats your problem. All they wanted was for you to develop for their project!

The Joomla team has been far more caring towards their developers in that regard. They at least passed on the legal advice they themselves got regarding the license

edit:
LEts for arguments sake say Joomla makes a statement that it is ok to release Proprietary code for use in Joomla...
You release it...some owner of a GPL library J! uses sues you for making a derivative work and releasing it under a license that is incompatible with the GPL...Violating his license
What is your defense going to be in court? Joomla said I could?
You lose if that is all you have...they don't have the right to give you permission...

So what good is that statement?
And what are you going to say when Joomla gives that permission and you get sued anyway?
Take them to court to pay your lawyer fees?

No maybe you understand why the statement you want is useless!

End Edit

Err, I'd appreciate it if moderators didn't merge this posting by Asphyx to this thread. I think the link is sufficient. [edit - ok, include it, your call]

I'd like to say, in the few parts of the posting where it actually touches upon what I'm saying here, it completely misses my point.

My question is would the core team be happy to include a solution to allow for proprietary extensions? While Asphyx would be "sure the Developers would be happy" I don't quite share his confidence everyone likes proprietary extensions enough to include and support a solution. I'm looking for that assurance.

What I'm not doing, is I'm not asking for the core team to say that proprietary extensions are legally OK with the current architecture and license restrictions. I'm not asking for the Joomla license to change, and I'm not trying to force the core team to spend their precious (and as I said before, respected and much appreciated) time to come up with a solution.

Once we have a positive common understanding, our efforts can then rightly be applied to coming up with a solution that will satisfy everyone. I'd like our community to heal, to get to the point where we are no longer pointing fingers at parts of our community and declaring them unclean and unwanted. We need to start building bridges, technically and socially.

I'm not looking for a fight, just the word that we are wanted here.

No one said any 3PD is not wanted.  What has been said is this:

http://www.joomla.org/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=74



and


Everyone is welcome.  Joomla! is, has and always has been GPL.  If mistakes have been made in the past, there is no time like the present to correct those mistakes.  The whole community is here to help each other out.

Specifically take note of this:



No where at all is there any mention of anything remotely similar to saying that any 3PD is not wanted. 

I appreciate being told we are welcome, forgive me but it has not been too obvious but perhaps thats a vocal minority. Joomla is a broad community, not everyone will agree or like the morals or principles of other members of the community, but until now everyone accepted that they have a right to be here and were free to make proprietary extensions. I personally accept that we are currently not free to do so. But I'd like to think that we have not been outcast and are suddenly fair game because of it.

MMMedia - I think we disagree on two things: what the mistakes were and how we resolve it. That sounds glib, but I understand your point of view and do respect it. My opinion is that the mistake was not that we have proprietary extensions, but that we misinterpreted the GPL. Yes, if that mistake hadn't happened we wouldn't have successful proprietary 3PDs, but since it did and in my opinion Joomla is better for it, we should find a way to move forward rather than set the clock back as if it didn't happen (edit: sorry that's harsh and not how I intended it) , because simply you can't.

We need to (metaphorically) bring all the members of the community to the table, and discuss this to come up with a resolution for *all* the members of the community without compromising *any* of them. It's not an easy mountain to climb, but does start by us saying we want to climb this mountain.

If it helps move us along a little, I personally believe this issue is so heated because, there are three inconvenient facts to our community, and people assume that a compromise requires one of them to go :-

- The core of Joomla is GPL, and that is not going to change to suit us
- The GPL is what it is, and is not going to change to suit us
- Some proprietary extensions are not GPL compatible, and that is not going to change to suit us

Any change to any of these does change the nature of the Joomla community, as they have always been part of it. The upset and arguments we are having is because these facts do matter, they define us as a whole.

All I'm asking at this point, is as statement that the core team want a resolution and would support a solution that would allow proprietary extensions?

If they do, then we can begin work on a solution.

Erik,

I think you are not understanding the nature of open source. From what I have read and seen, here is how you make something happen.

1. You write  code. You don't wait for permission--you just do it. Write it using the core coding style.

2. You announce that you have done it, let people download it, see what they think. You can release it as a core hack. alpha, beta, stable. You release it gnu gpl so that the core team can choose to incorporate it into the core in a future release.

3. You can also go put it on the wish list, which implies more that you would like the core to code it, but you can include your idea and suggestions.

Also, it is really important to understand the release cycle http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/39/63/ and the road map http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/23/61/.  Understand that the team is late in beta 2 of a major new release and that means that they have been feature frozen for a long time. However, even now people are thinking about 1.6, 1.7 and 2.0.

If you want to make a code contribution to Joomla! (9or you want to report bugs) I urge you (and everyone else) to join the developer network.
http://dev.joomla.org/content/view/14/55/


There are no guarantees. But if you achieve something--a great  core hack or something utimately incorporated into the core-- useful you get the payoff of respect and reputation that is the currency of the open source economy. And of course you would be free to sell it to all of the proprietary developers.

added:

One last thing. I think that if you release something and you make it gpl or lgpl and you say it works and the icensing, people usually assume that you know what you are talking about. There are not a lot of people patrolling the internet looking for small technical violations.

I do, I've thought long and hard on this in order to reach what I think is the keystone to this whole issue. I think you have an axe to grind and are purging Joomla of involvement in proprietary software beyond what is legally necessary for GPL compliance.

Yes, you must draw a line down through the community, and there will rightly be technical (but only technical) difficulties in interoperating from this point forward. But it's something more isn't it - you are trying to build a pure GPL only community when it contains members that can't or won't relicense - this sort of change by definition splitting the community. You can pretend that this isn't a split because everyone will be on your side before you finish (or gone), but that's either naive or a cynical ploy.

If there is an ideological problem here, we need to know. It needs to be out in the open.

If there isn't a problem, we only have a technical issue to overcome, then it shouldn't be that difficult to come out and say it.

And yes, I can go away and write code, but at least part of what I write will have to be included in the Joomla core to work. In order to do that it has to be accepted by the core team. I would like that change to be accepted based on merit, and not discriminated against because it's sole purpose is to facilitate proprietary developers. Or at least if you are going to do so I'd like to know now, before I go away and write the code, rather than after. I'd be rightly peeved off finding out after, wouldn't you?

You are simply not listening.

You can do whatever you want.

I--speaking for myself--do not care whether you write your hack or not or whether or not it is included in some future version of Joomla! . I'm happy to have people of all kinds using Joomla! but I like every other normal user mainly want to be able to do what I want to do with my sites. As an end user, frankly, I am free to install any extensions I want, including proprietary extensions.

I, if I wanted a core hack or thought a core hack would help my business, would write  a core hack or really, I would hire someone to do it, because I am not a coder. That is the nature of open source, you are allowed to do that. The only thing that would be required is that if it is distributed it needs to be distributed as gnu gpl or compatible.

You can choose to act in a way that is all about making demands and being the center of attention. Or you can get down and do the hard work.

I have given you suggestions. If you don't want to do the work, I can't help you.

Well, I should have expected a few insults back.

If I wanted to be the centre of attention I would have a few more posts to my name, since I've been registered almost as long as you have.

I want to do the work, but I don't want the result to be wasted. Noone would. Even more, if I we go ahead and take your advice and just build this, and then you refuse to accept the changes on principle. Well, at that point we have a fully working variant of Joomla that is demonstrably superior to the one the core team have, with more tested and mature extensions available and better placed to be backwards compatible with Joomla than Joomla can ever be. If we let it get to that point, a fork would be inevitable

Fork won't help you.  It would have to be licensed as GPL, and you could not change that license or add to that license, without consulting every single contributor to the Joomla! code.

Unfortunately that is what a lot of people don't understand about this.  It isn't as if there is a choice here.  Joomla! is, has always been, and for the forseeable future will continue to be strictly GPL.

But a fork would help, if the solution allowed the Joomla core to still be strictly GPL *and* allow proprietary extensions. That's the technical problem we are trying to solve. If we solve it, what do we do if you refuse to incorporate it into Joomla?

Not really...forking Joomla requires you to honor all the past licenses of code you forked...
At best you would be in the same situation that the Joomla Devs are in.
Until you get every developer who wrote code that is in that fork to agree to change the license to LGPL you would not solve a thing. Just have two projects both with the same problem in that they can't LGPL the core because of GPL code it uses!

So forking does not help you...being able to LGPL something is but if you could do that with a fork then Joomla could have done that without you!
They can't get that permission...IF you can I suggest you get that permission on behalf of the project so Joomla can make the change to LGPL....

But that is where we are at!
Joomla couldn't secure the permission to change to a LGPL...
If they can't no fork in the world is going to be able to either!

It is not about "you" "us" "me" or "them." It's about copyright, licensing and taking ownership of problems to try to solve them.

Erickendrick,

The discussion of a fork to solve the issue has been making the rounds. A fork however would not allow proprietary extensions any more than the current Joomla! would. The reason for this is that the fork would inherit the same copyrighted code that is already Joomla! The persons forking the project are no more allowed to ignore the license restrictions (legally) than the Joomla! teams are allowed to do. The same goes for any copyrighted material. If I do not like that Yahoo Unlimited! has restrictions, I cannot simply take the music that I have downloaded and then begin distributing it under any license I want. Since we are dealing with copyrights, we have to have permission of the copyright holders to distribute their words, or make derivatives of their works. The GNU GPL has provided an easy mechanism for us to offer such permission broadly without having to spend time in negotiations with each distributor. But the mechanism must be followed, or you give up your rights to distribute. So this permission, follows the Joomla! project to any forks that are made in the future, as does its revocation should its terms not be adhered to strictly.

Hope this helps.

Note to self, read Asphyx's posts before I respond:)

Valid points all around.

LOL...I think you said it pretty well in your response...

What I find Ironic about the whole notion of a fork is:

I want to make money off a free program
I can't do that if I use GPL because someone can steal my code and re-release it under their own license.
So my solution is to steal someone's code and re-release it under my own license....

I gave Erick the solution to his problem but he did not appear interested in working on Joomla...

The way to get an LGPL API in Joomla is to volunteer to take that on as a project as part of the teams.
See what code is being used that is the stumbling block in LGPLing the API and writing a substitute that does as much if not more than the current library being used.

I don't know what amount of work he expects to do on his forked version but it is the same amount of work required he does it as a fork or does it as a contribution to the Joomla Project.
He sure would have an easier time getting the other Devs to go along with a LGPLing of the API if he did it as part of the Joomla project than he would have if he tried to get it for his fork.

Since you pretty much got the message I was trying to convey accross the Mods can kill this thread and/or any parts you feel are un-useful.

the message is what was important not who said it.

I think multiple people explaining the same thing is useful actually. It helps with different perspectives and with folks that don't quite understand the issue, they can realize these decisions are not made in a vacuum. But even folks who do not like them, understand that they are really the only option.

Sidenote: I would appreciate if this thread was not merged here as it is off topic, for the same reason aoirthoirs point is, which I'll address below. A link is sufficient, unless you want to swamp my thread in noise of course.

Aoirthoir, your arguments against a fork misses my point completely (perhaps it is relevant to the other discussions, I don't know). The purpose of a fork is to solve the issue of intractable attitudes. I have never suggested that the GPL will be undermined or circumvented, or that others copyrighted works will be improperly used. And as such any arguments based on that premise are completely irrelevant.

The question is:

Do you want non-GPL extensions or not?

This is an important point. If you don't think so, I don't think you've read anything I've written. I'll summarise:

• Until now, non-GPL extensions were wanted and welcome (the status quo)
• Currently extensions are seen as derivative works, and therefore must fall under the GPL
• The technical issue we are trying to solve is to adjust how the extensions connect to Joomla so that they are no longer considered derivative works of Joomla
• This will allow the proprietary extensions to remain under their current licenses (the status quo). If attitudes have not changed, this should be wanted and welcome
• If attitudes have changed, then it will be difficult to have the solution incorporated into the core code, or once there for it to be maintained.
• Therefore: A formal statement that this solution is wanted within the core team is necessary.
• If this attitude has changed within the community, it would be better to know now, rather than after the solution is made

I think it worth you skimming up and reading my list of "inconvenient facts". Those facts are not mutually exclusive, just difficult to live with. If you want to you can live with all of them without compromising any of them.