Donations

Carsten, I am not sure I fully understand your point : do you mean that if we don’t have paying modules, developpers will drop the ball and go play elsewhere (so to speak) ?

While I think Snippets and Plugins should remain GPLed (Because the end users will need them, and it wouldn’t make sense not to), for me Modules are a separate issue since more often than not they will require heavy resources and even more so in the case of business applications. Most end users won’t need them, as their purpose is to help run businesses. Thus my point.

I did not mean for MODx to have a definite rule about Modules. As I said, it depends on wether or not their development can be funded enough for the developper to get some return on investment on many hours of work. Sometimes clients agree to fund this kind of work AND agree to have it remain GPLed : it can be beneficial to have a community reporting bugs and help solving them, some people clearly understand that. They also can understand how having suppliers or clients running the same app can make life easier

GPL does not mean you can’t charge for your code; it just means the once the user purchases it he can do whatever he wants to with it, including re-distributing it for free! The main reason people would pay for a GPL’d module or whatever is for the support, as people buy RedHat or IBM distributions of Linux instead of just downloading it for free and configuring it themselves.

Having a non-GPL module would be highly problematic, unless the author managed to avoid using any of the (GPL’d) MODx functions, or only used LGPL libraries dynamically. I’m not sure exactly how modules work, but I don’t think that is possible as they are now. On the other hand, I’m not a copyright lawyer, and I may well be totally off base here. I wonder how other CMS systems handle this? I’ve seen a number of commercial modules for some of them.

According to my understanding of the GPL licensing (which is wholely separate issue from copyright law), it’s entirely possible to call the API with a non-GPL module and not have it become "infected" by the GPL license.

However, if you go and change the core, and you then turn around and distribute that change either freely or for profit, then you would be bound by the GPL to turn your core changes over, but not the plugin/module that uses them if it were written from scratch.

Have to agree with Ryan.

It’s true that GPL license only bounded to the current code being written originally for that software. When it comes third party user, who are able to add modules/addon to the system without having to copy the code and modify it, and later being included into the module/addon, then they can sell the module and license it on different way, but they still have to provide the GPL software for free, and on the same license, which is GPL.

That’s all I know about GPL, but I might look into this again.

GPL License

As far as I understand it, you can write additional modules, options for software that is under a GLP, and providing that you clearly state that this is separate, you can charge for this software. However, if its supplied under the GPL license or could be considered a part of the main code, it would have to be free and any user is also free to re-distribute it without cost and it should include source code.

If you write something that is linked to a GLP program, as an additional function, then this does not need to be part of (not infected as Ryan puts it) the GLP program.

Extract from GNU
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

One of the simplest formulas that is often used is to keep the program free and charge for updates (an annual license fee, which may include support or support is billed separately) but this will require the author to keep the program working and bug free under the terms of the ALF and support guarantee. In other respects the program would then remain free under GLP rules and also be classed as GLP licensed and have to include source code.

Further information can be read at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

I have begun making some inquiries to the GNU people over status of a GPL CMS. They have "officially" stated that if the code of a CMS produces a copyright statement and link, the end user is required to display that copyright notice and link on the Web pages that CMS generates.

, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program

That means that the pages generated by a CMS are considered a "derivative work", and so must themselves be licensed under the GPL. This means that you cannot restrict usage of your pages, their content, scripts, images, or anything else output by that CMS. I don’t think that this can stand.

I don’t think that a web page can be considered a "derivative work" any more than any document produced by a word processing program can be, or a program generated by a compiler can be. The GNU people have been very careful to be clear on that issue; you can use GCC or any other GPL compiler to compile your programs, without requiring that program to be released under the GPL.

Hi David,

sorry for the misunderstanding.

I was just thinking that if and when the main MODx foundation gets some sort of funding that they should consider donating some of MODx funds to folks who develop for MOD but yet are not part of the central group.

Just a way of saying thanks!

In regards to developers leaving. The ones I saw at oscommerce left for several reasons; most of these problems most likely won’t happen here unless the foundation members change or some kind of fundmental idelogy change occurs.

So, no. I don’t think that developers will just stop visiting because they don’t get money. I was referring to developers who hope to make lots of money through the donation system alone.

ugh, I blaberring ... it’s like 3am over here. I hope that I didn’t confuse you.

Cheers !

Carsten.

I don’t expect donations (monetary) to ever cover the actual out of pocket costs, much less the time investment. I’d honestly be surprised to see enough donations to cover a proper dedicated server with good bandwidth.

However, as has been touched on here, folks donating their time and energy to support the forums and end users is a wonderful thing which I’d honestly rather see happen first!

Unless some serious corporate sponsorship happens, I think grandiose ideas of making a living off MODx "as a business" is a hypothetical daydream at best ... a 1000 to 1 longshot. However, making a living off MODx "as a tool IN your business" is not only possible, but entirely doable.

A larger user community is going to require a larger support team for the forums. We desperately need a group of folks (whether they’re "core" team members or not) developing modules and plugins. Whether they’re GPL’d or not, matters not one whit to me!

2006 is going to be a great year, and I hope that the growth of the community likewise sees growth in a larger group of folks that can really continue offer the same level of responsiveness, enthusiasm and support we’ve had to date.

I think a Foundation is a long way off yet. In the short term it might be useful to set up a "bounty" system, where user’s can nominate functionality they’d like to sponsor. Sponsored functions would be be GPL’d, but the bounty would go to the development team. I understand this has been done in some other OS projects, but not sure how successful its been. Does anyone else have experience with bounties?

Richard

a bounty system does sound like a good idea.
Add into that a "group" system too and I think we’d have something good happening.

I’m thinking of a group as say -- several users are clamoring for a BBS then maybe the team would give them a quote and then let them gather the funds.

Could possibly move this up to where the team puts out a call for X amount of dollars to do something. Might work and might not.

Just an idea to throw in.