Joomla! Discussion Forums

While I appreciate that Joomla is not a legal consulting project, isn't locking down the boards a little drastic? We have just recently stated making constructive progress on the issue and many members of the community who have, to now, not greatly contributed are now putting a great deal of time and effort into resolving the issues.

While it is an uncomfortable discussion to have open for so long, progress is being made. Nobody wants to harm the great marketing work that is taking place to promote Joomla!, but it is the nature of open source projects that discussions that we would prefer were done privately take place in public view.

We have found so far that most extensions are not derivative works of Joomla! and that the community in general would prefer proprietary extensions to be available, and have come to agreement that there are GPL licensing issues with proprietary extensions that even indirectly call Joomla code. This is great progress and there are a large number of members of the community, outside the core team, who are putting effort into resolving these issues.

Perhaps you could open up a single board focussed on outlining the issues and discussing solutions, with clear board rules to keep discussion constructive?

Check the Joomla LEGAL section...

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,434.0.html

There are a whole set of boards that have to do with extensions. I think they might be a good place to discuss technical issues.

For honest legal issues (not rants and personal attacks) around licensing this is probably the appropriate location.

Thanks mcsmom. It's good to know that we can still discuss and resolve the issues around extensions.

Obviously discussion will continue on two avenues :-

1. The legal aspects of working with or alongside the GPL, which should be discussed in here.
2. The talk on solutions for proprietary extensions - bridges, LGPL APIs for Joomla, practical discussion of bringing extensions into compliance (where necessary). This as a whole would seem to most naturally fit in the Custom Joomla! Development forum.

Would that be a fair guidance for where ongoing discussions should go? I know the "3rd party extensions" section has quite a few boards, so to avoid fragmented discussion and going over the same points over and over again, that looks the most productive place to discuss the issue.

Just my opinion here but I think discussion won't really solve much more at this point in time.

What is really needed is to test some of the theories that have been discussed to challenge and test the theories that have been brought up...

My data sharing and the LGPL bridging concepts should be tested by making some proof of concept and submitting them to the community.

Much like theoretical science. the Theory is nice but until you can prove the theory it isn't accepted as science.

We need to move onto the testing of the theortical points that have been brought up...If some new theories come to light then by all means we should discuss them but the discussion would be much better served if it was a discussion of the implementation of the theory that put that theory into practical use.

We have discussed the lines of contention long enough that we now have to start figuring out how to bridge (no pun intended) that gap. I think we narrowed it about as much as we can without going to a court. Which is truly the only entity that can make final say on what interpretation is right and what is allowed to do under copyright law.

I have a very specific question regarding a quote by Asphyx Quoted in a thread that is closed: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg922469

I believe it is a legitimate question but it's going to lose it's relevance to the overall discussion without being able to follow the thread of thought by those who had input. It's simply going to be a lost voice with no meaning and I don't want that to happen. So where do those that care about continuing that discussion pick it up or is it simply 'end of discussion in the Joomla! forums - period'? Sorry if I missed instructions of where this can occur because this is all a bit confusing. These types of discussions do have to do with the Joomla! community, not just the legal guys, because ultimately it affects everyone who comes into contact with Joomla!

I really want to see the bridge thing resolved. My viewpoint is from a client and end user point of view. From my many previous years of experience as a salesperson I can tell you that you should be concerned about a client and customer point of view. It's vital to everyone's best interests who create products and services.

Hi JoeJoomla - it sounds like the "developing a bridge" discussion belongs in the Custom Joomla! Development forum.

Thanks for the link BTW, I'd missed some of that discussion.

Asphyx has offered a workable approach - two different code bases that write to the same data tables. This is not a bridge as much as a clean-room re-implementation of some SMF functionality, but if approached right it could allow some ongoing integration. For me the key functions would be create/delete users and login/logout users, so the user could be pointed at the SMF url already logged in.

Nice idea Asphyx!

Just to reiterate what Eric said...

If we really want to discuss and develop a solution it has to be taken out of the GPL discussion and brought into it's own development discussion.

I'm happy to expand on the issue of a particular solution if anyone else is interested.
What I don't want to do is say this is a solution ok what else is a solution anymore...

Multiple solutions are fine but if we just talk about "What Is?" and never talk about the "HOW TO!" I don't think we will get anywhere...

And I think the "how to" would also demonstrate how and why GPL is the way it is.
If we came to a good proof of concept and made a GPL Bridge to SMF data for J! then that code could be used as a demonstration and inspire some derivative projects to bridge some other things that until now have not even been attempted because it was too close to a license vioation on one side or the other...

Perhaps a good proof of concept would be to create a generic component that could give Joomla the ability to read other databases (including login to seperate DBs not part of Joomla DB) that could serve as the central point for 3rd party modules to read and manipulate data in any database?

Sort of a $Custdatabase funtion that could be parameterized to collect data from any DB and return the values.

Parameters would include, DB Name, User:pass, Table, Row,

As an example of what I was suggesting:
There was a module (I forget the name right now) that had parameters to read from VBull DB. And display the Data (think it was a simple thread count script and last 5 posts module....)

In the module parameter section it had all the DB name, Login data and the query was hard coded into the module to read what it needed to read. IF we set the parameters at a central point the module would only have to hard code the queries it needs to do it's business.

I don't see why that is not possible to create in a central location so that not only will it help facilitate the ability to not only Bridge Joomla to SMF but just about any standalone application that saves data in a database.

Now you could do this for each module or component if you wanted individually but I also see benefits to making a central bridge component that would be GPLed and work with just about any stand alone application you could find without violating it's license.

But if we want to expand on it I think we should take it to a development forum and keep it away from all the GPL emotion.

Let me ask this one thing about the GPL, is it in itself untouchable/unchangeable/immovable? Doesn't the intent of what it is trying to do come into consideration? Otherwise you potentially have to do accomplish things in an unreasonable way to abide by it.

The legal team is not interested to discuss probable scenarios, what/if questions and other concept like ideas. The legal team's time is limited and we want to use it as constructive as possible. When assessing questions we will use the following rule of thumb :

If you have a legal problem/question concerning a Joomla! extension you have written or are planning to write and you cannot find an answer to your question in our legal FAQ's we welcome you to contact us privately using license AT opensourcematters DOT org. We are more then happy to look at your problem/code and work towards finding an answer.

For the specific issue of creating bridges between Joomla! and other (web)applications, we cannot provide any general information. Bridging two applications with incompatible licenses needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. If you are trying to create a bridge or have a bridge and have legal questions please contact us at license AT opensourcematters DOT org

For the specific case of the SMF Joomla! 1.0/1.5 bridge it has come to our attention that the decision from SMF to discontinue the Joomla! bridge was based on incorrect information from a former core team member. We have now initiated official communications with SMF to look at this issue in a construcitve way and hopefully find a solution that is compilant with both the Joomla! (GPL) and SMF license. More information on this will follow when it becomes available.

We hope that you can understand the reasons behind these actions as said previously it's time to put the past behind us and move forward in a positive way. This does not mean we want to shut people out, we just want to put things into a proper perspective and put the focus where it is needed, for Joomla! that means the development and release of Joomla! 1.5.

Joe I'll reply via PM so as to keep this legal section all about legal issues and legal help....