Feedback on potential Joomla! Framework LGPL license change

[NivF007]

Regardless of the license - I'm interested much more in how we can make it a success and how we can get more people involved.

N

Maybe a 'neutral' column to the unofficial count spreadsheet?

Others might feel like this too...

First with the exception of +1 GPL (which will be reflected) - not much to update

I agree, but I can't figure out how to do it - it's not always clear when somebody is neutral in the context of responses to this topic.

Paul has mentioned that one of the steps that OSM might take, before coming to a decision, is to do a poll, and I think a 'neutral' option should be made available if and when that happens.

[NivF007]

No, not quite - but appreciated, very compelling and informative nonetheless.

Okay - what do you feel is missing? I ask in all seriousness because this is marketing information we need to prepare regardless of the license we are using. Thanks in advance.

First of all, I think you guys have done an amazing job at http://framework.joomla.org/. I did not mean to put you through the trouble of expanding on that, but rather to point to the work you folks have done.

Andrew, it would be my pleasure to assist you if there is an area that you feel I can help.

I'll PM with my availability and we can discuss further.

Great job on this!

N

[Nick Savov]

Hi Amy,

I've been careful to link or quote the full text. I don't like to use the approach you used where a few words are quoted.

You might have been careful to link or quote the full text, however your commentary on the quotes misinterpreted the intention/plan. For example, in this reply:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 0#p3144113

You stated:

Now, this is something maybe others can help find, but in this forum is a discussion between Louis and Johan where it was disclosed the intention was to split off the framework (platform) and license it LGPL.

That's not correct. There was no intention by the project (or Johan) to split off the framework and license it LGPL, but simply exploring the possibility. This is clear from Johan's clarification in this thread:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 0#p3144247

Note, that it's a reply to a comment (which he quotes) of intention concerning the Framework being under the Joomla Banner, as well as grouping him with the "we would have moved mountains to make the Framework LGPL at that time." Note that it's also after the statement "Discussion where Louis and Johan talk about plans to uncouple the framework and release it LGPL" (on the same page), which is also incorrect for the same reasons.

In short, Johan was stating there was no such intention intended from his comments in 2007. In his own words he stated:

I'm not certain that if a relicense to the LGPL would have been possible we would have done it, or I would have supported it. All I can say that we investigated it. Personally I have always been a proponent of the everything is (inbound == outbound) GPL approach we used for Joomla 1.5. It's simple, clear, allows code to flow between extensions and core and back, without explicit consent and doesn't require any signing of documents.

Even after he wrote that, you still misunderstood the intention and wrote the following comment:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 0#p3145290

Which results in a broken telephone and someone giving the statement undue credibility:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 0#p3146338

I understand it was a misunderstanding (and that it can be easily misinterpreted) and no foul intended, so please don't mistake this as offensive. I was just hoping to correct it so that people can make an informed decision on the historical context of the testimonies we have.

One example where you quoted "We are trying, we are just not there yet." to suggest it is a concept, not a plan. Johan was discussing the decoupling effort. That's been an important goal of development for years.

That's a very poor example, since the words right before that are "that hopefully for Joomla! 2.0 could be licensed as LGPL.". Context is important. By the way, I agree that the concept is also in reference to the decoupling effort.

You could have used partial quotes to correctly state Louis used the phrase "a statement of intent and vision" and Johan said "goal" for the licensing effort. Curious those phrases are ignored. It really has been a part of the planning effort to get there.

Yes, I could have, but I figured those were self-evident. I was only clarifying the misunderstanding, not trying to do an exegetical thesis on decoupling the framework

In rereading the full thread you shared:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/joomla- ... ewb3j7e_sJ

I believe you mis-characterized both Andrew and Sam's points. Their statements seem consistent with the statements made by Louis and Johan, from my reading.

Andrew's point was that there was intention by some contributors. Sam's point was that it was discussed at the summit at 2007. I don't think I've mis-characterized either of their statements. In fact, they acknowledge (Andrew explicitly/implicitly and Sam implicitly) that it was not the intent of the project, which is what I'm trying to state. By the way, their personal intentions shouldn't translate into project intentions, so please don't confuse the two.

In summary, from the testimonies we have, we can say the project planned to keep it GPL and leave in the potential that some day later it could be LGPL'ed, as Elin stated, "that was included in the JCA to future proof it in case that became important in the future or if for some reason the GPL was thrown out in court".

Hope this helps!

Thanks for sharing that other thread. It's another good one I would encourage people to read.

Thanks for hearing me out!

Hi Andrew,

I don't think we need to labour this point, expect to clarify that it has always been the plan to explore the opportunity should circumstances arise to make it practical to do so ... Circumstances have arisen and the opportunity is now being explored. Can we leave it at that?

Agreed. I think that's best.

Cheers,
Nick

[masterchief]

I'll PM with my availability and we can discuss further.

Keep an eye out for a call-to-action on the Framework mailing list. I'm hoping to get it out in the next few days. Best we keep these discussions out in the open where anyone has a chance to participate.

[JacquesR]

+1 for changing the Joomla! Framework license to LGPL

- the contributor agreement specifically allows for this license to be used. (if OSM needed to get permission from each person who contributed code, then there would not be any point to having people sign such an agreement)
- the Joomla! Framework team requested this, and motivated well enough why this change is needed.
- the Production Leadership Team agreed with this request.
- the change to the Framework license does not affect the CMS license, and both remain Free and Open Source. Both use a FOSS GNU license.

[AmyStephen]

Nick -

I'm not going to go back and forth with you about what people meant. People can read for themselves and make up their own minds. Some have found this information enlightening since they were unaware of any of these discussions.

The point is this the separation of the Joomla Framework as it's own offering and it's re-licensing is not "out of the blue." It has had a great deal of discussion. All of the work that has been done putting in place the legal footings of the project were accomplished with this in mind.

That is *not* to say it's a forgone conclusion. It is rightfully getting discussion with the community. But it has been a part of the "plans" -- the "wild dreams of the Joomla developers" for quite some time now.

If you disagree on that point, I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'm okay with that and I hope you can be, too.

[Nick Savov]

Agreed, with the reservation that it's been the plan/dreams of some of the core developers, not all.

Not trying to be a pedantic, but grouping all of them into that category - when some of them don't want to be - isn't doing those people favors. There have been several founders and core developers that have stated they aren't in that category. We need to be respectful of their plans and wishes too and not lump them in the opposite camp.

Cheers,
Nick

Edited: typo correction.

[AmyStephen]

Nick -

I'll give you that. In fact, I can't think of one thing "all" of any group of Joomla leadership has agreed upon. ;-)

Definitely want to be respectful. Thanks!

[brian]

I'll give you that. In fact, I can't think of one thing "all" of any group of Joomla leadership has agreed upon. ;-)

I can and it happened in Sept 2005

[masterchief]

Agreed, with the reservation that it's been the plan/dreams of some of the core developers, not all.

Actually it might have been all because of the way leadership was structured back then (we had a closed development team remember and certainly during most of 1.1, er, 1.5's development, there were only 3, maybe 4, main contributors to what could be called "Platform" code), but I digress.

[Nick Savov]

Agreed, with the reservation that it's been the plan/dreams of some of the core developers, not all.

Actually it might have been all because of the way leadership was structured back then (we had a closed development team remember and certainly during most of 1.1, er, 1.5's development, there were only 3, maybe 4, main contributors to what could be called "Platform" code), but I digress.

I think you're talking about the framework being decoupled, rather than the framework being decoupled and LGPLed, correct?

[AmyStephen]

I'll give you that. In fact, I can't think of one thing "all" of any group of Joomla leadership has agreed upon. ;-)

I can and it happened in Sept 2005

Thanks for that.

[jodofin]

Having read most of the thread my conclusions...

• 1 - No to relicensing from GPL to Lesser GPL.
  
  2 - The Joomla contributers agreement should explain the implications of LGPL and require separate and specific assent. Possibly the same for Affero GPL.
  
  3 - Yes to including any compatible code in GPL.
  
  4 - OSM products should be proudly 'Joomla' and always open source.

Thanks to all contributors: Users, Developers and Leadership.

[NivF007]

Just updated the 'unofficial tally' of GPL v. LGPL at http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=837342

So far we are at
Supporting GPL: 65
Supporting LGPL: 26

[masterchief]

Just updated the 'unofficial tally' of GPL v. LGPL at http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=837342

So far we are at
Supporting GPL: 65
Supporting LGPL: 26

I had a lovely letter of support the other day from someone watching closely, but they said there weren't comfortable to enter for foray of debate. I suspect they are not the only one. While I think a running tally of participants in this thread is academically useful (the trend of the swing being the most important), it's by no means a reflection of the actual temperature of the community.

[masterchief]

Basically we are seeing a reversal of the overall result as compared to when we did an anonymous survey last year. Coincidence?

My gut feeling is that of the 26 in the LGPL camp, most of them (at least half eye-balling the list) would support the CMS with direct contribution in some shape or form. Of the 65 in the GPL camp, I suspect very few of them support the Framework in any capacity. I'd love to be able to test that hypothesis

[AmyStephen]

Patience, Andrew. The support will grow as people start to see that it's dramatically improving the code and how it can be useful to the CMS. We seldom support what we don't understand. It'll come together.

[NivF007]

3 statisticians went hunting for deer with bows and arrows.

The first statistician's arrow landed 10' in front of the deer.

The second statistician's arrow landed 10' behind.

The third jumped up in the air and shouted, "We got it!!!"

The benefit of the unofficial tally is that you don't have to count through over 1000 posts to get an idea of where those who've voiced their opinion (on this topic in this forum) stand.

To use this tally as a basis for rendering a decision is not recommended - I accept that it's deeply flawed for the reasons you state, and for those as stated by others (you can quote me on that).

---

OSM absolutely cares what the community thinks about this issue. We wouldn't have published a blog post and requested community feedback if we didn't.

As stated in the original blog, this discussion will remain open through March 6. After that OSM will follow up with SFLC on any new legal questions, and then OSM will have a discussion, make a decision, and announce that decision. I feel sure that the discussion will include the re-branding idea along with suggestions for more polls. Those points may or may not end up impacting what the scope of OSM's upcoming decision will amount to.

It raises the question, how would we as a community do effective polls? If we had registered participants (notice I did not use the word 'members'), it becomes very easy for this and for other issues - but I think this discussion is best left for another day and another thread.

Patience, Andrew. The support will grow as people start to see that it's dramatically improving the code and how it can be useful to the CMS. We seldom support what we don't understand. It'll come together.

[emphasis mine]

I agree with this 100% (not to suggest that GPL supporters do not understand) - but this has been a big learning curve for so many of us.

Consider, in order to make a decision, we need to understand various types of open-source licensing and their implications, what the Framework is and what the long term strategy is - that's a tall order!

I also believe that support will grow for the Framework as more people begin to understand it.

Here is an FB post from somebody in our local user group I'd like to share with you.

My curiosity got the better of me so I created this page to track online resources https://southlasalle.atlassian.net/wiki ... +Framework; and, created my first J!FW app.

Thanks to David Hurley's sample app. I installed it locally and got it to work -- yes, with Composer.

I am S-O-L-D on the J!FW.

Next up, we need to figure out how to do some workshops in our local user group. (Yikes, I'm doing one in 6 days and haven't even begun to prep!!!)

Hey man, we've thrown some lightning bolts around (what's a good debate without some of those?) but one thing you can count on is that I (and others) certainly support your efforts - and because of this debate, you are getting folks who never used Framework before using it now and loving it - and we have this wonderful opportunity because all the good work you folks have done!

Although I haven't written about it (I'm trying to determine the best venue and format for a discussion on that), I'm trying to develop a plan for your consideration as to how we as a community can provide better support for you - as mentioned, I will PM you on this.

N

[masterchief]

You're right Amy. And on that note we do need to be finding better and easier ways for developers to write extensions with less and more reliable code. We need a new router for the CMS that is faster, smarter and more flexible. We need better logging strategies so we can diagnose problems in the CMS better. We need more consistency in our event handling system. Heck, we need consistency across major versions as well (users are completely oblivious to the pain we go through to make an extension work in 2.5 and in 3.x). The Framework team is working on all of these things We are small but nimble, full of ideas and opportunity. And just remember most of us helped write the CMS in one capacity or another

[masterchief]

Next up, we need to figure out how to do some workshops in our local user group. (Yikes, I'm doing one in 6 days and haven't even begun to prep!!!)

I'm more than happy to work out remote options (via Skype or similar) with people if they want to. I come cheap to - cheesecake is my currency.

[masterchief]

It raises the question, how would we as a community do effective polls? If we had registered participants (notice I did not use the word 'members'), it becomes very easy for this and for other issues - but I think this discussion is best left for another day and another thread.

Good discussion topic to raise here -> https://github.com/joomla/joomla-surveys/issues

[wilsonge]

My gut feeling is that of the 26 in the LGPL camp, most of them (at least half eye-balling the list) would support the CMS with direct contribution in some shape or form. Of the 65 in the GPL camp, I suspect very few of them support the Framework in any capacity. I'd love to be able to test that hypothesis

I definitely support the CMS. But I'm sure the framework wouldn't be where it is today without my 3 line pull request into JFile

George

[Webdongle]

...I had a lovely letter of support the other day from someone watching closely, but they said there weren't comfortable to enter for foray of debate. I suspect they are not the only one. ....

That is a good point

Basically we are seeing a reversal of the overall result as compared to when we did an anonymous survey last year. Coincidence?

Perhaps because the percentage of people who contribute to the framework is less than the percentage of people who contribute to Joomla as a whole.

My gut feeling is that of the 26 in the LGPL camp, most of them (at least half eye-balling the list) would support the CMS with direct contribution in some shape or form. Of the 65 in the GPL camp, I suspect very few of them support the Framework in any capacity. I'd love to be able to test that hypothesis

Would '26 in the LGPL camp' that also contribute 'in some shape or form' be enough to be a community without all the others that have been and are helping make the Joomla project as it is as ? 'My gut feeling' is that the Joomla project would not have become what it is without ALL in the community.

[Webdongle]

I definitely support the CMS. But I'm sure the framework wouldn't be where it is today without my 3 line pull request into JFile
George

Yes, great that you contributed to the framework and support the cms. It's just a pity that your contributions are conditional on Joomla as a whole becoming either ... Joomla GPL and Joomla LGPL or Just Joomla cms.

Giving to Joomla which is a GPL project ... then asking for that Project to be divided into two licenses has upset a lot of people who have helped build up Joomla to where it is now.

[dilbert4life]

Giving to Joomla which is a GPL project ... then asking for that Project to be divided into two licenses has upset a lot of people who have helped build up Joomla to where it is now.

Can you please quantify "a lot"? I've seen maybe a dozen out of our million-member member community voice a negative opinion about it. I definitely wouldn't say that's "a lot".

[wilsonge]

Yes, great that you contributed to the framework and support the cms. It's just a pity that your contributions are conditional on Joomla as a whole becoming either ... Joomla GPL and Joomla LGPL or Just Joomla cms.

My contributions aren't conditional on anything. I never said that. I support the LGPL side because I think it will help Joomla progress. But I'll always contribute to Joomla whatever happens here because I'm far more interested in the CMS than the framework.

However I recognize that the CMS code is vastly out of date and one day will need updating. I also know the framework isn't ready for the CMS yet (and vice versa). So if I find bugs in code common to the CMS and framework sure I'll push stuff into the framework. But it probably won't be cause I'm interested in using the framework as a stand alone project. At least not yet anyhow. But to get people who are interested in making sure the framework is the best it can be for any standalone projects OR for the CMS (cause who knows maybe it never will power the CMS) I want to help get in a help out. Hence why I support the LPGL. But again it makes no difference to my contributions to the project thankyou

Giving to Joomla which is a GPL project ... then asking for that Project to be divided into two licenses has upset a lot of people who have helped build up Joomla to where it is now.

I never joined Joomla because it was a GPL project. I joined Joomla because my friend wanted to use it when we were building a site when we knew zilch about coding, it was free and there was a great selection of extensions available (I'm not a professional). Over less than a year I taught myself enough to code extensions and then when I had bugs I wanted to have them fixed. And the best way to make sure they were fixed was to do it yourself.

Finally I should just add to an extent I don't particularly care what others think whilst I'm not in any official leadership position - I'm not here to represent other people. I want to make sure I have the optimal code powering any website I choose to make. Also you keep going on about how much impact non-coders have and I should add count the number of non-coders testing our bug fixes regularly pretty much on one hand (yes I agree there are people that submit the odd PR here and there to fix/test a specific issue that's crucial to their project) - so I really don't think you can say these days non-coders contribute much more than as help on the forums to people getting into the project (not that is insignificant but it no longer has any code relevance at all - which is basically what the license is about).

Kind Regards,
George

P.S. Yes I understand that my views are provocative - but this is how I personally see it.

[BenTasker]

I should add count the number of non-coders testing our bug fixes regularly pretty much on one hand (yes I agree there are people that submit the odd PR here and there to fix/test a specific issue that's crucial to their project) - so I really don't think you can say these days non-coders contribute much more than as help on the forums to people getting into the project

Before it even starts down that route, given the number of previous testers who have posted their views and a "that's one less tester" on the bugsquad mailing list - could I please ask that we don't retread that ground.... Testers vs Devs vs Leadership isn't particularly productive or fun

[Webdongle]

Giving to Joomla which is a GPL project ... then asking for that Project to be divided into two licenses has upset a lot of people who have helped build up Joomla to where it is now.

Can you please quantify "a lot"? I've seen maybe a dozen out of our million-member member community voice a negative opinion about it. I definitely wouldn't say that's "a lot".

More than the handful of devs who will only contribute conditional on Joomla as a whole becoming either ... Joomla GPL and Joomla LGPL or Just Joomla cms.

[wilsonge]

More than the handful of devs who will only contribute conditional on Joomla as a whole becoming either ... Joomla GPL and Joomla LGPL or Just Joomla cms.

Sorry who has said they want Joomla to be LGPL - no one. The framework people want to be LGPL and the as was made clear even if the framework powers the CMS the CMS will STILL be GPL. You are someone who seems to only wish to contribute if Joomla stays GPL so actually you fall under this condition as well

George

[AmyStephen]

Either way, the Joomla community is much more than a license.