SMF bridge for Joomla discontinued

[AmyStephen]

There are lots of open source CMS options. Look at community involvement. Look at the forums - are they active? Do you feel energy and enthusiasm in there? Look at what others in the world are saying about them. Is there a buzz? When you Google or look at Technorati or Google Blogs, what are people saying about them? Look at the current functionality and also what the future might hold. Are there enough people involved to innovate it forward?

Good stuff, Livebox, thanks!
Amy

[dbauer]

I too will be bailing on Joomla. I wanted to use jReviews and they will not port to 1.5 because of this issue. Now I have to rebuild the whole site in Mambo, just so I can get that functionality.

I will think long and hard before I use Joomla again.

[brad]

Thanks for sharing your views with us. It's a free world, and open source has just so many options.

All the best to you.

[gsbe]

Thanks for sharing your views with us. It's a free world, and open source has just so many options.

Happy new year, Brad. Any thoughts on the migration of forum.joomla.org to phpBB?

[brad]

I've been doing a lot of thinking... and more..

[gsbe]

Congrats, that's the 2nd best piece of news I've gotten all day. lol

[FrankA2]

It was this announcement that deterred me from using SMF and I naively assumed that a forum built for Joomla! would be better so went with Joomlaboard and its switch to fireboard. Fireboard has proven a nightmare and with such negative attitude to non-tech users from their support team, has only one way to go and that is down. So, I came back here and got up to date with this bizarre problem. It is good to see that there is a desire to allow these two Open Source products to work together. I shall get going with SMF as a standalone and wait for the arguments to get resolved for future integration.

I must admit to being surprised to find out that there is more than one camp of Open Source it would be better for non-techy users if each Open Source standard was numbered, OS1, OS2, etc..., then we could be sure of getting things to work together by choosing at one level. But if the differentiation is hidden in obscure license legalese then the commercial producers must be very pleased. A paranoid might say that MS engineered such division through infiltration   

[dbauer]

... A paranoid might say that MS engineered such division through infiltration   

Well put. It seams that whenever an entity with any involvement in technology has a large amount iof success it goes straight to their head and they stop listineing to their users. Then when people start going away, they reevaluate their thinking. MS will experience this soon too.

[jahsymon]

What is the legal issues involved in forking SMF. It is a great software but the altitude sucks. a grat team can fork and make a success out of it. remember Mambo and joomla are doing okay.

Secondly most of the people complaining about the issue make money out of the software and develop tens of website. I therefore find the whining uncalled for. The issue is simple use the combination that works for you for the site you are building.

Thirdly most of the people who use SMF (assumption) on their website  use it for the forum which is usually the only place people need to log into. Log in for J is usually for admin and a small core of contributors.

Anybody needing to bridge the two as an absolute necessity is probably making money out of it. they should invest in solutions. Some of Forum software are weak because of lack of support.

[FrankA2]

I think it is an assumption that most people are building sites for money is not a fact. I don't know anyone doing so although I am sure they are not. It is also surely irrelevant if people are making money. There is value in using registration for anyone using Community Builder and for managing authors and editors etc. Two lots of registration is a huge discouragement to users.

In any case the argument is irrelevant as lamenting (in preference to whining) the loss of the bridge indicates what people want to do with Joomla! While license discussions are appropriate with commercial software, surely the concept of open source is openness. The commercial software world view OS as lost sales and it as has been amply shown between competing businesses, particularly airlines, that they are willing to use illegal methods to disadvantage competition. There have been many attempts to derail the Open Source movement - which in my view is the ultimate example of how people can co-operate unselfishly across national, social and religious borders. Co-operation does not mean that everyone has to behave in the same way, nor even driven by the same needs and inevitably their will be arguments.

But it is also clear that there are development people on both sides of this particular issue who want to resolve this, would this be the case if nobody complained about the situation?

SMF is a fairly mature and stable product as is Joomla! Both are extremely popular. Joomla! lacks a mature forum so the only solution is to use a non Joomla! compliant one.

For myself, Joomla is the perfect tool for knowledge sharing on a zero budget and I am very grateful to all the people that create it. I do moan if I cannot solve a problem and the amount of time I have lost due to forum problems is big. I am currently preparing to replace my forums with SMF and will just wait for the new bridge if I cannot get a working one.

[jahsymon]

Agreed. However my point is rather than bemoan SMF we look for alternatives. The difference btn joomla team and SMF are philosophical and policy ones ie fundamental,  A chance for a real break through is slim.

That is my view.

I think we can also continue using SMF by developing  bridge, but an official one! Never

[FrankA2]

I have over the past few days read through dozens of threads here about this issue and I had got the impression that there was still a desire by Joomla! to resolve this matter - from your response I suppose I have not read enough 

Sigh!

[jahsymon]

The problem is not with the joomla team. It is with the new joomla license issues. Some people dont like it.

This I said is a fundamental issue

As a result of this change of direction, only GPL-licensed software can legally be distributed and used inside the Joomla! software. While we regret and are saddened by this development, we respect Joomla!'s position on their software license. As neither SMF nor the SMF bridge for Joomla! are licensed under GPL or a compatible license, we have had to cease distribution of our bridge. Please note that running the software as separate standalone pieces is perfectly fine, the issue is in the integration/bridge.

Compromosing on this we negate the very essence of Joomla's new policy.

[FrankA2]

That sounds like Open Source is no longer open  Oh well it was too good to last I suppose.

[AmyStephen]

Guys -

The Open Source Institute maintains the Open Source Definition, which is a ten point test for whether or not a license qualifies as "open source." The very first test is free distribution. The SMF license prohibits distribution of code. Forking the SMF code would violate the SMF license and the copyright owners could certainly bring legal action. SMF is not an open source license as defined by the Open Source Institute. The SMF license also does not qualify as a GPL-compatiable license. 

Joomla! did not change their license, it has always been the GPL. Compliance with the GPL is now a focused goal. It is strongly believed by many intelligent people in this industry that one cannot protect their work if they do not enforce the terms of their license.

Thanks,
Amy

[jahsymon]

Bye bye SMF am sticking with Joomla. Let continue to look for alternatives.

[FrankA2]

Thanks Amy,

I had read a lot of your posts on this topic. Will read up on those links

[motokochan]

The Open Source Institute maintains the Open Source Definition, which is a ten point test for whether or not a license qualifies as "open source."

Not going to argue over this one much other than to say that the OSI's definition of "open source" isn't the only one, nor is it the traditional view of the term. They don't even hold a trademark on the term.

The SMF license prohibits distribution of code. Forking the SMF code would violate the SMF license and the copyright owners could certainly bring legal action.

Thank you for noting that. We haven't had to do anything like that, luckily. It seems most people are respectful of the wishes of the software developers.

Bye bye SMF am sticking with Joomla. Let continue to look for alternatives.

Sorry to hear that, but I guess that is the point of choice, no one thing will work for everyone. On that note, no one license will work for everything. Anyone who says the GPL is the best license for everything and pushes that view is too wrapped up in rhetoric to see clearly. The GPL is very restrictive in many respects on the developer in order to give the "freedoms" it does. This is often the reason other licenses are created and used by projects.

[FrankA2]

I respect the developers and am a strong supporter of copyright - although along with the worlds libraries, not the changes that are trying to prevent people migrating to new formats as is necessitated by the fast moving IT world.

The beauty of tools like Joomla! and SMF is that they allow non-technical users to create vehicles for their material, disagreements over licenses are a little unnerving and a lot of people are reacting aggressively when what is need is constructive discussion. Understandable when they may have put in a lot of work and are suddenly faced with being forced to use alternatives. Perhaps the discussion would be better directed towards achieving a single form of OS license so that these sort of situations do not need to arise.

I wonder why such divisions occur, the Open Source Definition is relatively straightforward and the rational of point 5 includes "Therefore we forbid any open-source license from locking anybody out of the process."

My original html website took 5 years to build contains hundreds of researched articles and thousands of images and from the start I protected it with Copyleft in preference to Copyright. The reason being to ensure credit for the research went where it belonged and for integrity and traceability, but that others were allowed to disseminate the information. The result of this approach has been the community shared images, time and effort. There were dissenters who said that they could do it better, but they were still regular users of the shared knowledge - to de-emphasise my own role I described myself as a facilitator for the site, not the owner. Web 2 would not be easily reached without a tool like Joomla! and a solid reliable forum is needed now. The four Joomla! sites, I am facilitating are starting to exceed what was done on the first site in terms of collaborative input and I am now running 4 related sites.

It is important to me that I carry the principle of sharing into the knowledge content as the OS movement has done for software, I just hope that people do not start arguing about differences in detail of the principle of sharing. So far there are two camps, those who freely share and those who do not share because they want a 'perceived' commercial advantage. The latter group certainly study the knowledge provided. The community are very good at alerting the sites if they spot the knowledge being misused without credit and so far copyright has been all that has been needed to stop them.

So I do understand the needs of control but my feeling is that extent of that control that makes the difference. This seems to be the root of the problem here.

Anyway, interesting discussion, but I have three switches to unbridged SMF to get on with - so bye for now 

[motokochan]

Well said, FrankA2.

[jahsymon]

Thank you for noting that. We haven't had to do anything like that, luckily. It seems most people are respectful of the wishes of the software developers.

Strictly speaking most of us respect the copyright issue out of the  respect. These copyright laws don't apply where we. are This is not a joke. Hope this doesnt start another argument please.

But I get you point but certainly don't understand why you people are going to such lengths.

[FrankA2]

But I get you point but certainly don't understand why you people are going to such lengths.

I suppose it is a consequence of the way information gets diluted by all the different viewpoints expressed in the issues many different discussions.

For me it was a case of trying to get to grips with the issue and certainly not an argument. I fully support the developers.

[FrankA3]

I wonder why I got a new reply notification today? Anyway it was interesting re-reading all this. I have now found the Agora forum and it is almost as good as SMF and growing fast - so there is happy end for Joomla users.

[Tonie]

A spammer posted in this thread, that's the reason you got a notification.