Joomla! Discussion Forums

From the Mambo saga?

Where are we heading in the next few months? Jambo!

In my 30 years in IT and 16 years in the Internet where I have participated in countless developments, including a beta tester for Mosaic, the first ever web browser, I have seen numerous divisive situations such as this is turning in to, and it all ends in chaos and destruction.

Why because the participants make them religious issues with puritans and zealots on both sides stoking the flames.

Fact - Joomla is thebest CMS bar none
Fact - It is and always has been GPL
Fact - There will always be a wide range of positions as to direction, commercialism, team members etc.
Fact - Joomla has the opportunity, as yet unrealised, to go on to greater things and be accepted more widely
Fact - Joomla absolutely must provide for commercial extensions

Without commerial extensions Joomla will always be seen as a hobbyist toy and nothing more. If that is what everyone wants then fine.

I however, like many others choose to take my site very seriously, and have made Joomla by platform of choice. In the long-term therefore I need to know my extensions will be supported, migrated to 1.5 and beyond, enhanced and so on. Any serious site must have those assurances.

As it is I entrusted SEF to Open SEF, a GPL, non-commercial extension, and what happens - the developer, after a year of non-development and broken promises simply shuts up shop and leaves everyone in the lurch. I know of course about NuSEF and I look forward to supporting that initiative in the future.

That said, I always choose commercial extensions whenever I possibly can for the reasons stated. That does not mean I do not respect GPL extension providers because I absolutely do, and I mean that sincerely, but my first priority is a core platform supported by extensions that I can rely on for the forseeable future.  One again this looks threatened by politics and single-minded inflexibility by all sides.

So where to do from here?

For now commercial extension makers, for example, can offer their extensions for free under GPL as derivative Joomla products, but provide access to them on the condition that the purchaser pays a maintenance fee, equivalentto the current price of the extensions, to cover support, upgrades, maintenance etc..  Easy to do, meets all GPL requirements as far as I know, issue over.

In the longer term we need a formal structure within the Joomla.org entity to fully recognise and support commercial extensions. To that end I herewith propose two or even three separate extension directories:

1. GPL only
2. Non-commercial, non-GPL
3. Commercial, non-GPL

That way everyone can align themselves with which whatever model they deem appropriate.

Of course then there is the question of copyright viz a viz extensions being derivative works of Joomla.

In my view we cannot and should not change the past. We have arrived here with complete tacit acceptance of commercial extensions, regardless of GPL and copyright issues which absolutely cannot and should not be reversed. The only ethical solution is to offer an waiver  for all such commercial extensions and allow them to continue, given that 1.5 is just around the corner and let the current version, which is basically Mambo anyway, take its course.

Joomla 1.5 should be launched with a new set of provisions which set out exactly what can and cannot be done.

Joomla 1.5 should also fully provide for commercial extension developers upon which its future depends if it wishes to graduate from the ranks of "hobbyist" software, and enjoy wider commercial acceptance, thereby securing its future as a serious CMS option in future.

Anyone saying "but we don't want it used commercially, or by large corporate orgqanisations or whatever, is no better than the Linux, v Windows v Mac factions, or the Internet Explorer versus Firefox, or Joomla versus Drupal and all the other such divisive situations. Look what happened to Netscape and numerous other business I could mention - history always repeats itself.

In summary - if Joomla is to go from strength to strength and meet widespread acceptance there is no room for puritanical bickering and divisiveness. Let Joomla grow up and become the CMS of choice for everyone in the future.

Nice post, just two things: as long as there's no mission statement of where Joomla wants to go (if this really is known at the present time), asking for a stronger CMS big business can believe in and use might not be a very successful request...

And reg.
The issue wouldn't be over, as one of the things commercial non-GPL extensions developers (how about CNGED for this one? ) do not want is anyone being able to legally distribute their code. The question is here: if they go GPL, as soon as one single person signed up and got the extension, will this person either a/ protect his investment by keeping the code to himself, or b/ having signed up for not so ethical reasons, resell the code at a lower price or give it away, as is their right, thus cutting of the original dev's revenue stream? The other question is: would new users rather buy or get from this person at a lower price without support, or lower quality, as this person is not the original coder, or rather sign up for the commercial option to get all the advantages with the code?? No-one knows.

Agreed, and perhaps the Joomla team should make it clear. But at the same time the Joomla team should, in my opinion, poll the community as a whole and ask everyone who supports, uses and makes it what it is today.  Let us not forget that being GPL, there is nothing to stop a group taking 1.5 and forking that if the custodians of Joomla are not in synch with the community.



Yes, excellent points.

It goes to the fact that commercial providers should be provided for. If the core Joomla had all the functionality of the really useful extensions in the core code, then this sitiation would not arise, but lets face it, it will never happen - it hasn't even got fundamantal features like proper access control lists and SEF for example.

Given that GPL extensions are far from reliably supported, I have been bitten by a few as I am sure most have, have no upgrade route or even guarantees of being here for 1.5, how can Joomla itself be regarded as a viable CMS platform with its base functionality? It needs commercial grade extensions, support and road map in order for people to commit to Joomla and use it for serious long-term sites.  Right now, for many, 1.5 is academic, because they can't migrate their existing extensions and there are no guarantees of being able to do so.

Regarding people copying commercial code labelled as GPL, the solution is to restrict to a "per domain" basis as already happens, and codelock the code that enforces it. Or use some other mechanism such as is already used by iJoomla for example.

I just think that there are too many people making this more complicated than it should be, and the longer it goes on the more damage will be done in the long-term.

After being part of the computer industry for 30 years and Internet for 16 years, and after all I have witnessed in that time, as well as participated in, everything tells me that Joomla absolutely must facilitate commercial extensions, or face a very uncertain future, or at least one where it is never taken seriously outside of Joomla enthusiasts which would be a pity - or would be if it wasn't for the certainty it would be forked and made open to commercial developers one way or the other.

I for one want to see a strong Joomla supported by strong team, community and commercial and non-commercial extensions going in to the future.

I know I am going to be repeating myself, but here goes:  A path forward has been discussed and is actively being discussed by some very inspiring (at least to me) 3PDs.

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... 6590&nbsp; <--you should actually read the whole thread.  And maybe a few others too.

Forking wouldn't solve the issue of Joomla! being comprised of not only GPL Joomla! code, but the GPL code of a number of different GPL projects.  The license of those projects has to be respected and followed.  For people to keep insisting that a fork will change the fact that Joomla! is and always has been GPL is to spread misinformation.

Polling the community isn't going to change the fact that Joomla! is GPL and always has been GPL. 

Commercial Developers do not have to be "provided for".  Providing Joomla! for free as in liberty, and free as in beer is more than enough that more should not be demanded.  See the link above and the workings of a solution, it is going to take 3PDs hard work to do this, and the work should be their's.

Who said that

I would like to add that the direction taken was not based on ideological nor zealot reasoning's. As such it was an objective decision and not one left up to peoples perceptions on what GPL is or means.

That said the GPL is in my opinion the legal representation of the creators philosophy (they being Richard Stallman, GNU and the FSF). If any project, commercial or non commercial is deciding on a license and that license is to be open source, to do so with complete disregard for the philosophical intentions of the license is perhaps an ill advised move.

Likewise if a business intends to capitalise on an open source framework then it to should look at what the philosophy behind the candidate frameworks license is and more importantly whether it is complimentary to the licensing intentions of that business. Again this little bit of due diligence would go a long way to ensuring all is well for the future.

Its all very easy to provide legal arguments, problem being that until such time as they are tested in a real court(and nobody seems to wants that) they will remain legal arguments, nothing more and nothing less. Again... just my own opinion, but this really does raise the importance of the philosophical intentions as it's the one thing that is indisputable.

Cheers
Shayne

It wasn't said in as many words but has been implied - I won't say by who because they might not have meant it literally.

Again though - I am absolutely 100% behind Joomla and extensions under GPL as far as it goes.

At the same time, Joomla needs a thriving and motivated commercial third party extension community as well as GPL extension community - they are not and should not be mutually exclusive,

Since third party developers have no control over that process due to the current need to use derivative code, I would submit that before 1.5 is released it should have the "hooks" whether by API or other means by which to faciliate that, otherwise 1.5 is not going to get off to a very good start.

I also suggest that as this situation has only recently arisen, it would be inappropriate to penalise existing "non-compliant" extensions in any way, and a line should be drawn under it right there.

What I have found extremely interesting is the extent to which people put words in other people's mouths. People say that the core team has said all kinds of things, but what you see when you look is that mainly people say "stop calling me evil" when in fact they have not been called evil. It's really an unpleasant rhetorical tactic, because it forces the conversation to be about whether or not someone really has been called evil rather than on substance. It is usually, though not always. used by people whose arguments are not entirely coherent and who thus need to rely on emotional appeals.


As an example. results of a search of the word evil on the Joomla! forums (excluding discussions of Microsoft, tables, evil twins and mmmedia's signature)

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg882758
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg871884
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg874752
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg859693
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg840985
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg858299
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg821472

Please try the search yourself rather than believe me, though.
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