Freedom not so free… The new Joomla! saga
With the coming of Joomla! 1.5 there is some serious ripples in the pond. Many believe the core Joomla! team has taken GPL and licencing too serious this time. The current Joomla! distribution (that is version 1.0.x) has a (and I quote) ‘rider’ which reads:
“10. I have written a Component, Module, Template for Joomla. Do I have to release it under the GPL?
No.
The GPL allows you to write your own extensions for Joomla and to
release those extensions under whatever license you chose.”
(see: http://jcd-a.org/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,28/topic,100.0/ if you have a issue with the ‘rider’)
With the coming of release 1.5, they are changing their tune. They are now saying:
“11. Encryption of Joomla! extensions is a violation of the GPL
This means that installing/adding a component/module/plugin to Joomla!
is creating a combined work, if the third party developer doesn’t want
to violate the GPL he will need to release the module/component/plugin
under the GPL or GPL-compatible license. It also means that a third
party developer cannot encrypt his extension, without also making the
code available when distributing the extension (hence the term open
source license).”
In other words, before Joomla! 1.5, you had the freedom to do pretty much anything with Joomla! If you wanted to develop commercial extensions for clients, you were allowed to do that. There are developers out there making a living of doing so.
By the looks of things, these developers are now standing a good chance to lose that rights and in effect their “livelyhood”. And according to the article on a forum, there are close to a thousand commercial extensions! This is quite serious. Most commercial extension developers has ceased further development until this issue gets resolved.
It would seem that in this case, freedom is jailing itself. Should freedom not be the freedom to do what you like? By the looks of it, freedom in this case means “freedom as long as you do like us”.
How would this impact on the Joomla! developer community? Would it constitute yet another split, like with Joomla! / Mambo? Are those commercial developers going to go elsewhere (take their components to a platform where thay have the freedom to develop commercially)?
An interesting dilema!
Read the forum discussion here.
You’ll find a nice summary of the debate over here.
technorati tags:joomla, gpl, license, extensions, commercial
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11 Comments to "Freedom not so free… The new Joomla! saga"
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Sounds to me like GPL 3.0 all over again. The balance is difficult. You can either go liberal like BSD and then end up that half the world (including Apple and Microsoft) is building on top of your code without you ever getting something back for it. You could go extreme nazi style “your code will be open” and piss off all your commercial users. Or you could simply find a happy medium and say “our code is open and will stay open - you modify our code and that’s also open - it’s only fair” but “your extensions are up to you”.
The use of “encryption” here is confusing though because you can compress your PHP code which makes it virtually unreadable but technically speaking it’s still plain PHP code. Why not just release that as GNU/GPL? They said the source code must be open but not how neat and readable it’s supposed to be.
Taking such a heavy hand is really the wrong approach. The power behind these open source CMS’s are that there are so many extensions on top of them, even if many are commericial. That doesn’t matter though, because it creates an incentive for people to build and expand. The same reason that Facebook allows application developers to serve ads on their own apps.
Dang, we were thinking of moving over to Joomla but this might make it a bit difficult.
The Joomla comment about the GPL allowing modules not to be under the GPL is inherited from Mambo - search for those words and “mambo” and you’ll see. The Mambo owners make that claim, but can’t, because they themselves include other GPL code. The GPL is explicit about this. I think everyone was just deluding themselves on purpose on this one.
This situation sounds like something I’ve seen often over the years. A developer or group of developers give freely of themselves for a time. Then, after a bad period, they begin to feel entitled to something despite having given freely. This doesn’t seem to happen often in the liberal license world - in the BSDs, the Apache projects, people working on Python, PHP, and Ruby and associated libraries, and so forth. While some people do drop out, it’s very rare to see people trying to “deliberalise” their own projects.
Alternatively, the Joomla developers finally gave voice to the true situation - that they don’t have control over the copyright ownership of the code they’re built on, and they’re built on pure GPL code, and that thus they have to live with the terms of the GPL.
THere was never any rider in any official release. For a while there was a rider in the pre-release versions of Joomla! 1.5, but that rider was never approved by all of the contributors as would have been required.
I think you are quoting a faq not the license or the rider. You might want to correct that.
About 15% of the extensions in the Joomla! Extensions directory are listed as having “Commerical” licenses. Since there are almost 1700 extensions listed, that would be about 250, not close to 1000.
Of course, there are extensions not listed in the directory, but I would say the majority are.
“The current Joomla! distribution has a rider which reads:” — Quote
This is factually incorrect. Read: Untrue.
The version of Joomla! that all of these freaked out 3pd are currently using as a business model: 1.0.x has NEVER, EVER had any rider in the GPL. The only rider that was added was done so in the subversion trunk of the not yet released 1.5 version in May of last year until April of this year. You should really get your facts straight before you post things like this, it only causes confusion and fear.
@ Elin and The Truth: If you are really all that concerned, why do you comment anonymously? If I have the facts all that wrong, help me set it straight. If anyone else think the facts are wrong for that matter, feel free to help set it straight, but for pete’s sake, tell us who you are?! At least these guys ( http://jcd-a.org/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,28/topic,100.0/ ) do not hide their identity! If you are at all involved with the Joomla! project and can help stem the fears, why don’t you? But please, you expect me to believe you over other sources anonymously?! Get serious.
This is a serious matter. I’ve developed lots of commercial components for Joomla! in which I used my own proprierty source code. So, excuse me while I “spread confusion and fear”, but it is a concern!
I don’t understand, if I post with my name and my email address is available to you how is that anonymous?
You are 100% right. I can email you and continue this discussion privately. Or you could tell everyone “I am a Joomla! core developer and I can assure you this is bullshit” or “I am a licensing expert and this is not true”. Surely this is a matter that concern lots of 3rd party users and developers. Just to state “Hi,I’m elin and my email address is whatever@whoever.com and this is crap” does not say a lot. If you’d like me to rather email you and get the facts straight, then by all means, I’ll do it.
I’m not saying anonimity as in spoofing or false email addresses. What I’m saying is why should we believe that what you say is true. I referred to a specific source, the Joomla! Commercial Developer’s Alliance. If you can refer me to more that is evidence to the contrary, then by all means, feel free to do it. If a person from the Joomla! Team can set our minds at ease, so much better!
Honestly, all you have to be is someone who spends 5 minutes reading the sites that you linked. By linking them, specifically the thread on the Joomla! forum and the statement by the core team, I assume that you have read them and are well aware of the facts. I assume you also read the forum post at j-cda that you linked to, which does not say what you say it does. I assume that in making your post you took adequate time to learn what GNU GPL is and you read the license that is included with Joomla!. If you are a developer who uses Joomla! and a responsible adult, I assume you read the license before you started doing and developing or modifying. As a hobbiest, I know I did.
If you don’t want to read the whole thread, you can read this post
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,163492.msg861334.html#msg861334
which itself links to the subversion logs.
Joomla’s an awesome platform, and I’m bummed about this development because it makes Joomla less appealing commercially: both to those who make commercial extensions, and those (especially non-hobbyists) who derive great benefit from commercial extensions.
It can’t help but negatively impact Joomla’s phenomenal growth.
There’s a petition here for any interested parties:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-freedom-of-choice-for-joomla.html