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I am furious about the new Joomla Extension Directory policy of no longer allowing commercial extensions from march 31.

My income comes from developing commercial extensions and building sites with other developers commercial extensions. Most of my own extensions are open source. The CMS I so lovingly embraced for years is turning against me? How will I be able to sell my extensions? How will I be able to find commercial extensions by other developers which I need for building sites for my clients? If all site builders are stuck with only the GPL-extensions in the directory, that is really limiting what you can do with Joomla. For larger commercial sites, you often need commercial extensions. THAT IS A FACT!

As a developer of larger Joomla sites (as well as a developer of commercial extensions) I shout: COMMERCIAL EXTENSIONS ARE CONTRIBUTING TO JOOMLA AS A CMS! Taking them out of the directory is a stupid move! Not only are you stealing my livelyhood but also that of many developers who are using Joomla for developing larger sites with commercial extensions. And why? Why am I being punished for my contributions to Joomla (commercial and open source)?

Before I started developing commercial extensions I needed clarification of Joomla as to what was allowed and what was not. I had huge discussions on this forum about this and the conclusion was: GPL says no, but Joomla allows it anyway (the post are already deleted, I just found out, is this a conspiracy?).

Developers of larger sites (which need commercial extensions) will have to choose an other CMS because it will be impossible to find commercial extensions which suit their clients needs. Would it be so difficult to just allow commercial extensions as a search option? When doing an advanced search for extensions just add a box "include commercial extensions". JED will have to rebuild the search-functionality anyway, because it is still broken. see this post: viewtopic.php?f=262&t=335718&p=1453410&hilit=open+source#p1453410
(my open source components can not be found because the extension-search does not work)

And why take all Joomla 1.0.x extensions out of the directory? Looking at my download-figures, about 1/4 to 1/3 of the downloads are for Joomla 1.0.x, so there does seem to still be quite a demand for extensions compatible with 1.0.x. PLEASE JOOMLA, DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON THOSE THOUSANDS OF COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHO ARE STUCK WITH OLD SITES. Some just can't upgrade to Joomla 1.5.x. Why take away they option to upgrade using extensions? (example: to not use mosimage in 1.0 you can use the GPL component Pages-and-Items, which has an image popup like 1.5). Please leave an option to find Joomla 1.0.x-extensions in the advanced search.

I must say I am really disappointed in the 'Joomla team' and getting this at christmass is not putting me in a feastive mood at all.

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Commercial Extensions are not being removed. Extensions can be commercial as well as GPL.. there are already many like this in JED.

Also, see: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/advsearch
The search returns commercial extensions just fine. I'm really now sure what you are talking about there...

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@carsten

I think you are confusing commercial and proprietary. The GPL allows and encourages commercial development. It would be a violation of the GPL to try to prohibit commercial extensions.


Update:

Also please correct your title so that it's accurate? You can just say "furious about new JED policy no 1.0"

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I sincerely hope that somebody would take non-GPL extension to the court an prove once and for all that notion of extensions being Joomla derivatives is simply wrong. Otherwise this kind fundamentalism will never end.

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I feel another 300 page forum topic coming along....

GPL means:
1).I can charge for my extension.
2.) I cannot have any encryption in my code.
3.)Other people are allowed to distribute my extension for free.
4.)Other people can make a fork of my extension and distribute it, as long as they leave my name in the commented header at the top of the PHP script.



I think this is pure theory, and not very true practically. I decided to release the first version of my extension (Ignite Gallery) under the GPL as I believed that GPL could be commercial. I released it for no charge as it was a beta release. I planned to charge for the stable release. Within 3 weeks Morfeoshow was released. Morfeoshow is a fork of Ignite Gallery that is much better, and is free.

How can a GPL extension be profitable, if within a month, another developer can take the extension, make it better, and give it away for free. This is why my current extension is not GPL, because from my past experience, I would only get income for 3 weeks.

Because of my current income, I can spend 30 hours a week developing and supporting the extension. I often write custom code for my users, and log in to their site to find and fix bugs. If I do not make income because of forked extensions, then I have to pay my rent another way, which means I only spend 3 hours a week on my extension, and it only develops 1/10th of the speed, and the support is bad.

Therefore it is the users that miss out. I also am a user of commercial extensions, and extensions like swmenupro and joomsuite member have saved me weeks of time. They have also given me good support. I question whether this will be the case half of year after July 2009.

Of course it may be argued that these extensions will continue to be developed amongst a community of gpl developers sharing their improvements. I think in some situations it may the the case and in some it may not. I think in any case, the extension directory is much better with non GPL and GPL extensions. My extension does not interfere with the development of gpl projects, it just adds another option.

My overall point is that if you really want to go down the GPL path because of open source values, I understand, but the whole "GPL can be commercial" doesn't seem true to me. It seems like saying, ok the original napster can be legal now, but iTunes can still be commercial if they want to. If after two months you can get a free fork of my extension, or just google it and download it from somewhere, then you will have successfully stifled the development of my extension, and Joomla users will be worse off because of it.

@matt

Well, let's not get into it. As you say, we can discuss forever how well various GPL business models work. It's a great topic for discussion, but not for the JED feedback forum.

@peter

Likewise, the JED feedback forum is not the place to discuss legal issues.

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I agree GPL business models are not a subject for this forum. However this forum topic is about JED's recent decision to unpublish non-GPL extensions. That decision has a huge effect on the Joomla extension developer and user community. My post is pimarilary about the effect on Joomla users/developers, I can not discuss this without some background info on gpl.

It seemed like the last reply was using the fact that I discussed GPL, as an excuse not to talk about the JED issue, and the effect it will have on Joomla users. I really hope this is not the beginning of an unwillingness to discuss the issue in general.

I agree with carsten and matt.

Booting non-GPL commercial extensions from JED is a huge mistake.

I write extensions for businesses. They require commercial quality and commercial support.
Joomla is finally making real inroads into business - don't shoot it in the foot.

Nothing in this policy will stop you from listing your commercial GPL products in the JED or marketing whatever you want outside of the JED. There's plenty of time for you to figure out what works for your business.

Although I don't want to talk about business models, I really don't think that major enterprises download from warez sites or even unsupported gpl repositories. But that's just my observation. In fact, if anything, I think enterprises often prefer to purchase because it makes sense with their other business practices.

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The decision to remove non-GPL extensions from the JED was made many months ago amid a huge and heated debate during which the Joomla team stated that they felt most if not all extensions constituted 'combined works' and therefore must be licensed under the GPL.

It could not be done before now because the JED itself used a non-GPL extension (thus exposing the hypocrisy and policy u-turn involved), and they have only just converted it to use a GPL extension instead. Despite the fact that it is blatantly obvious that this is a bad move and will disadvantage the user as well as many 3rd party developers, the nonsensical position taken by the Joomla team seems intractable.

If users want a complete list of extensions without this kind of discriminatory censorship, they will need to use another extension directory (there are a few alternatives out there already). This is a terrible shame, as it was great to have everything in one place on the JED, and the JED has always been superbly managed.

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There is one right now at http://www.extensionprofessionals.com. It lists extensions from professionals with no exclusion, and every developer is invited. There are plans to further expand it by the deadline set by JED.

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@brad

this would be from march 31st. So if you look right now, yes you can find commercial extensions, and after march 31st you might still find a few commercial extensions, but only the once which are GPL.

@brad & @mcsmom

yes, in theory. But not in practice. as matt_nz points out, this is what GPL is:



see point 2. Most commercial extensions are encrypted against piracy (copy-paste). So all encrypted extensions, can not be GPL. So most commercial extensions for Joomla can not be in the directory because as of March 31st only GPL extensions are allowed. So effectively that kills all commercial extensions for Joomla.

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Untrue. Please provide facts before making statements like that.



Not True. GPL software can be encrypted/compiled, but the source must be distributed on request, with or without a small fee for distribution.



Only Commercial GPL extensions can be in the JED. And you are right in "most commercial extensions" are NOT GPL and will be removed.



For Non-GPL Licensed extensions - Probably.



The decision was made by the board of OSM or the JED Team I believe - it was made with no public consultation at all, not with developers or end users - I'm sure that there is no room for discussion at all, about the decision or the issues surrounding the decision. "They" have made the decision and will stick to it. "We - the community of developers" and "We - the end users of Joomla" just have to put up with the decisions made by those in control of the Joomla Project.

Nothing said in this thread is going to reverse this decision, or the new hard line stance on "protecting the trademark" which effectively rules that anyone without specific written approval who uses OSMs trademarks in their domain, extension, product or service offerings are now in violation of the "rules" set by OSM on this - and must "apply" for "a revoke-able license" to do so. Oh, and in the process of applying OSM could say NO and FORCE YOU to change your established historic website, established SEO links, and established product/service offerings... (and it could take MONTHS to even get a decision back, hardly good for business....)

All in the name of "protecting" the project....

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100% agree with Phil.

I'd like to add this as well:
http://brian.teeman.net/mister-men/when ... world.html

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For everyone's information:

Last evening we sent out an email with information ahead of time to all developers for to inform them about the upcoming changes to the directory policy.

We have now blogged about the changes that will occur next spring/summer. You can find the blog here:
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leade ... -2009.html

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Wow....I seriously have a feeling of "here we go again". I know it's naive to think that this is the same discussion that took place a year or more ago...when I know it isn't. But from an end-user's point of view, it sure as heck feels like it.

From an end-users point of view, I think the decision is an amazingly disappointing one. Frankly, I don't give a damn if an extension listed as commercial is either GPL or not...it simply tells me that if I want that extension, there is to be a cost involved. Why can't it be as simple as that and leave the arguments over GPL licensing to those who have a far better understanding of the issue? (On a side note, I think removing 1.0 listings mid year is also very short-sited....sure, end of life J1.0, but retain listings for those that will still need them for some time).

As someone who uses both commercial and GPL extensions (and I'll leave it up to others to tell me what sort of commercial ones I use, as I don't care....I pay for things when I feel they deserve it and meet my needs...and I donate to GPL projects for the same reason), the decision to restrict the form of commercial listings on JED means one thing....it will no longer be seen as the reliable source of extension information that I see it as now.

I've bookmarked the alternative site mentioned in a previous post and would welcome suggestions of others sites also.

Cheers, Phil

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Phil_roy you seem to be confusing commercial with proprietary. We welcome commercial extensions in the JED. What we don't welcome are proprietary extensions that clash with the GPL values that Joomla is founded on.

I know of several extensions that have experienced excellent financial gain under the GPL.

We don't feel that a Joomla entity like the JED is best served by supporting extensions that don't follow the GPL ideals. Third party sites are welcome to support whatever they like within the bounds of trademark and license.

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I agree, and I think this forum topic would be much more useful if it moved in the direction of where to go now that this decision has been made. I think many commercial developers will not be happy with GPL because of the following reasoning:

GPL leads to free forks and free downloads from other sites.
This leads to significantly reduced income
This leads to significantly reduced development and support time, and the project may almost die.
Joomla users will be worse off.

So if some developers do not happy with GPL, it seems some possible options are:

Posting the extension here:
http://www.extensionprofessionals.com/

Having a free GPL extension on the JDE, and a pro version that is not listed on the JDE, but can be downloaded from the same site as the free version.

Any other ideas....

No, I'm not confused...I'm well aware that others are making that distinction. I'm saying that from and end user point of view either....

* I don't care about that distinction, or...
* Let me make up my own mind

In short, why have a directory that lists components and extensions where one of the criteria is now 'must meet certain ideals'. It's your comment....



...that worries me most. I don't think it considers the end user very much at all.

Cheers, Phil

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@matt

Actually history shows that GPL projects don't tend to fork often, and so so much less so than other free software licenses. The GPL encourages modularity and lets people make the changes they like without forking.

@phil_roy

End users benefit greatly by having software they can study, modify, and share. They aren't left high and dry when a developer stops supporting an application and they can solve problems that developers don't feel like solving and in general make software me their needs. Free and open source software tends to be of higher quality and bugs are solved more quickly thanks to many eyeballs and brains. So yes this is very much about meeting the needs of end users, whether or not they realize it at the moment.

Truth is, that's why Joomla is a great platform and one that all these developers like to build on. They can customize it, change it, study it, discover things about it. I doubt most of us would be here if Joomla (and Mambo) were proprietary or under any license but the GPL.

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That's a wonderful opinion and you're more than entitled to it. I'd respectfully disagree. I have a site with a variety of components and I'm more than happy. I have been supported ably by GPL and commercial developers alike. I have no interest in wanting to 'study' code as I'm lousy at it...but I have taken the time to contribute financially to commercial and GPL projects...even ones that I am not using.

The point I am making is that whilst you are more than welcome to your opinion....does that opinion stretch to banishing listings of those components that I can't "study, modify and share"? Once again....why not leave that determination up to the end user.

So far we've got....

http://community.joomla.org/blogs/commu ... n-jed.html

* Sites selling non-GPL extensions won't be allowed to use the Joomla name or (so it seems) abbreviations derived from the name


http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leade ... -2009.html

* JED listings to be GPL only


I would ask what is next?

* Discussions related to non-GPL extensions banned?
* Developers of non-GPL extensions excluded?
* Refusal of 'success stories' related to non-GPL products?


This to me is starting to sound very much like censorship, with GPL "ideals" used as the mechanism to achieve this.

Phil

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You think that the fact that you are saying that there might be censorship in the future is a sign of censorship?

And again please stop using the word commercial when you mean proprietary. Huge difference. Words matter.

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I don't understand your first comment at all sorry. I'm saying that the removal of proprietary (happy now?) listings in JED and the decision that enforcing a trademark will include not allowing sites developing proprietary extensions that work with Joomla, to use Joomla in their URL or on their site (or any abbreviation of it) is bordering on censorship....using GPL as the reason.

Take this page....

http://community.joomla.org/blogs/commu ... n-jed.html



Lovely...that's positive and important.



And that's for the courts! I'll be very interested in seeing how excluding listings of proprietary extensions or restricting the use of the term "Joomla" in a URL on a site that sells commercial propietary, well supported, well functioning extensions, can be deemed to be harming Joomla and its community.

I look forward to seeing how that plays out.

Phil

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Censorship is when someone--usually the government-- stops you from publishing content, not when they create an editorial policy for their sites or a set of policies for the use of their trademarks. People who live in places where there is censorship would be very happy if it meant either of these things.

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I said "bordering on censorship"....it's the easiest term to use to describe what you consider an "editorial decision". In fact I find your term quite telling, and conflicting with the notion of "collaboration, community, and freedom", as outlined in the announcement.

Phil

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move to a different CMS. Give up developing for Joomla, destroying all my open source extensions for Joomla. I feel stabbed in the back by Joomla.


true or not Joomla does exclude it. So I am [Mod Note LorenzoG: Removed bad language].
http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leade ... -2009.html
6th paragraph


That will be the end of commercial extensions for Joomla. If encryption is no more possible, why invest hundereds of hours developing-time, when anyone can copy-paste your work and fork it freely.

I published open source extensions, just for fun, and for the community, stuff I made for my own clients anyway, and did not mind sharing, like Pages-and-Items (thousands of hours work in that one). I enjoyed developing that, building it out, being the first itemtype and custom-itemtype-framework for Joomla etc. just having a laugh. I also need money to pay my bills, so I made a couple of commercial extensions. Of course I don't want to publish the code of those extensions otherwise I would not sell a thing, so I encrypt, the only way to earn something in programming extensions these days, where everyone on the internet, particulary Joomla users, expect everything to be for free. Now Joomla decides its goodbye commercial (encrypted) extensions. Feels like being fired with 3 months notice.

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Not all is lost, Joomla wish to keep their extension directory not as a resource, but as a tool to serve their values. This is the crux of the decision made, the rest is simply double speak.

Read below...


So it is a Community Resource as long as it fully supports the project's values. So essentially the resource is a tool to support the project's values. The project's values are shaped by those steering the project, the project itself is mere code and has no thought process. It is people who install their values upon the project, these people will also tell you that they do not speak on behalf of Joomla :-D ;-)

Either way I see this as a good decision, for two main reasons...

1st. It brings JED in line with Joomla's and those influencing Joomla's values inline. Both those inside Joomla and the project itself are on the same page.

2nd. It will lead to the creation of a new extensions directory by some 3rd party, or the bolstering and growth of existing directories.

For us as end users it's a win/win. Joomla pulls itself in line with its own values, and now we will see other 3rd party resources really have a crack at becoming a cornerstone as undoubtedly they will receive support from some popular commercial non-gpl based developers.

If Joomla wishes JED to continue to be the No.1 place for Joomla extensions then this will fuel competition and development. Perhaps not what J! wanted, however this decision is essentially going to lead to bolstering of other directories.

Understand something simple and clear, these decisions are made by those that officially make up Joomla. Those that hold positions to vote and influence the changes. Joomla is the largest opensource CMS project I know of, it is also one of the most restrictive CMS projects I know of. Just because it is GPL does not make Joomla any less business like or orientated, if anything Joomla practices itself as a business moreso then many other businesses.

Joomla's team is creating an environment where they are in complete control over Joomla, just like any other business would. If you were part of a project most likely you would like some sort of control over it as well and how your efforts are reflected.

This decision will lead to the strengthening of the Joomla brand, perhaps not the amount of available extensions however most definitely the brand itself.

@mcsmo: Words are cheap, actions speak louder. Please identify more Open Source developers for Joomla that are prospering financially than their proprietary developers. If you can't identify this then you're endless posts aren't worth the pixels they collectively accumulate character by character.

It would be great if you could show unity with Joomla and support for Joomla without the fictional, opinion based and factless comments you continually bring forward to these debates.

I do not disagree with Joomla's decision, however the way in which you seem to try and support the decision is nothing but damaging to the decision made and from an end user's point of view reflects badly on Joomla.

Regards,

.Joel

Which other CMS projects are you talking about?

Joomla is indeed the largest by many measures, but it also by far the least restrictive. Do you see non GPL resources in Drupal's CVS? What about in WordPress's directory? Do you see any unofficial domains with Drupal or WordPress in their names? (Or apache or mysql for that matter?) Do you see them giving two full years to allow their developer community to come into compliance with their licenses?

OSM has the absolute responsibility to protect the project and its assets for the public good as defined in our mission and other documents. Our organization is called Open Source Matters for a reason, and that is that the people who created Joomla! did so to make sure that the applications it produces are free and open source. You may not believe this or share those values, and that's your absolute right. By all means use Joomla because it is the best platform for web development not because you agree with its values. It's great that Joomla is such a good application that you will do that.

Incidently, you might be interested in looking at the licenses of the most popular extensions in JED, many of which are produced by commercial developers.

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/popular

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Believe it or not, but I understand and I can really feel your pain, indigniation and concerns. We are aware that many developers are making their living from their development and we feel a great responsibility. We feel also a great and profund responsibility for the project and all the millions of users that are using Joomla!

I understand that there must be differnet considerations you need to take. You mention one consideration can be to move to a different CMS - I suggest then you won't move to a GPL based CMS, since there then would be a risk that you sooner or later will get the same problem. Joomla isn't the only CMS that has the same stance towards non-GPL extensions. If you want to develop propiertary and encrypted extensions then you should probably look on propiertary CMS. There are plently of them around the wold, but none have the same userbase as the Open Source CMS's.


Yes, it's true. I'm also explaing why we exclude encrypted or encoded extensions.

We have choosen not to publish encrypted extensions of several reasons. Encrypted extensions can still be licenced GNU/GPL if the source code is available for the user. However, encrypted extensions work against our values and what GPL stands for.

We might find problems in encrypted GPL extensions like hidden behaviour, call home functions, code that can be vulnerable and code that restrict users to share and redesign. We would run into many frustaded users, something we already are doing today.

Encrypted/encoded extensions are very impopular amongst users, creating a lot of problems and cause uncertainity - for example what happens if you as developer dissapear one day? and then the users are standing there with the encoded extensions. Encrypted/encoded extensions are NOT open source. They belong more in a propiertary CMS enviorment than an Open Source Project.

I also believe that many users are hesitant to buy an encrypted/encoded extensions and if there are several alternatives, I'm certain that most will opt a non-encoded solution. I personally believe that you are saying no to many sales because of encrypted/encode extensions.

And this is a policy matter for the JED only, not legislation for compatibility with the Joomla (aka the GPL). You can still make encrypted GPL, or GPL compatibly licensed extensions for Joomla - you just can't list them on the JED.


No, this will definitely not to be the end of commercial extensions for Joomla. We have already now several hundreds of commercial GPL extensions listed in JED and we also have examples when developers have increased their sales when they have gone from propiertary to GPL and we are going to try to bring them forward in blogs for to show that there is possible to be a succesful commercial GPL developer.

What this project also can offer for the developers is a very succeful directory service with 70.000-75.000 daily users driving a lot of traffic to our 3rd party developers. We have also set up a series of rules and a forking policy in JED in order to protect our GPL developers. I believe that a majority of the users want to receive support, be certain that they can access the latest version of the extension and that they won't find any surprises in the code, which they risk if they are downloading the extensions from an uncontrolled repository somewhere.

I'm convienced that Joomla will continue to grow the next years and will get an even bigger userbase than the approximately 6 millions (what I belive) of web installations that exists today. Which other propiertary CMS can offer the same?


Yes, this is the spirit of Open Source - to learn, contribute, modify, help and share and I think most of our developers start in this way. Also I think most of the propiertary developers that many times have both propiertary and gpl extension have started that way and has a genuine interest and heart feels and experience the same.


We feel a big responsibility and we are very cautious not to make fast movements and if you have your extension already listed or submit it within this 3 months period. You get 6 months to make your mind up and consider the best alternatives for you.

We should also remember that this announcment is about to be listed in JED or not. It isn't all projects or companies (if we are talking about propieratry CMS's) that provides a such directory service or provide a such service for free to the 3rd party developers.

We are going to inform and show that is possible to be a commercial developer during the next 6 months and I hope this will help you to change your mind.

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