Licence, GPL, LGPL

Quote from: vbrilon at Aug 23, 2006, 09:20 AM

And that’s exactly my previous point. Thanks for summing it up nicely Paul. In fact to extend the point further, you can write your snippets and modules under a BSD-style license or even a completely proprietary one if you so choose. The license of the framework that you use to create your content doesn’t matter.

lol, and so were my first post . Paul just confirmed and expressed my post in better words, that’s all, a sort of encouragement from him to me to effectively learn more modx, evaluate its flexibility and take a decision if i could challenge this game.

I didn’t ask anyone to release Modx in LGPL for example as i didn’t even hope Modx could take such change. Ryan just provided the information and it’s an awesome news.

Quote from: guizmo at Aug 23, 2006, 09:48 AM

Well, to discuss it in an advanced way, i think we have first to define the precise questions we are interested in and then invite a licence expert into the discussion. Licence issues are far from being obvious and even expert need sometimes to take some time to think and answers questions, even if they seem quite simple and innocent.

Agreed. I don’t know if I am a license expert, but I have spent a *LOT* of time in my professional life with very high-priced IPR lawyers discussing Open Source licensing, so I feel somewhat qualified to discuss this.

Quote from: guizmo at Aug 23, 2006, 09:48 AM

Quote from: vbrilon at Aug 23, 2006, 09:18 AM

There’s *nothing* that prevents you from making a commercial product based on GPL code, regardless of its nature.

That’s in contradiction in everyting i understand in the GPL but maybe you’re right after all
The only backdoor i know in GPL is that you can build commercial services based on GPL code, but that’s completly different

This is a common misunderstanding of the GPL license. The license itself is not anti-commercial or restrictive of what you can do with your product. The only thing that the GPL requires is that if you receive any code that’s licensed under the GPL that you cannot restrict the rights of others in regard to that code. I.E., if you download MODx (or Linux, or whatever GPL product), you cannot redistribute it without making that same source code (including any changes you made to that code -- not to your own application) available with your distribution.

As a perfect example, take a look at the TiVO boxes. They run Linux inside, yet TiVO managed to put their closed source application on the device as well -- the only thing they’re required to redistribute is the changes they made to the Linux kernel. That’s it.

Quote from: guizmo at Aug 23, 2006, 09:48 AM

Regarding php, we are just one link away to verify, but PHP is to my mind, licenced under the... php licence, not GPL.

You’re correct. I misspoke on that point -- but the point is still valid for any other GPL licensed framework.

Quote from: guizmo at Aug 23, 2006, 09:48 AM

Ok, i agree that it’s not soluble here as we simply have different opinions. In several situations, projects in GPL are not a problem for me except in one situation : the framework area. I’m not a fan of CMS to be GPL but i can understand it, but it’s also a CMF or if the product is just a framework, it becomes problematic. There’re people out there explaining this in a much better way than me. If you’re interested in, i will try to find again their talk. In the meantime, did you follow the two url links i provided and read the related articles ?

I think we agree more than you think here
Yes, I’ve read both of those articles and I am very familiar with the authors of both of them as well. I think that the anti-GPL link though (the one dealing with KDE) is not relevant to this discussion since we’re not building a library that someone links their code against. Thus the LGPL discussion is moot.
I am interested in your statement though: "In several situations, projects in GPL are not a problem for me except in one situation : the framework area. I’m not a fan of CMS to be GPL". I still don’t understand what part of the GPL is problematic for you in a CMS environment. Please explain.

I will come back to this, in the meantime, another opinion on licence purpose of Aymeric Moizard, main developer of oSIP. Try a google translate of http://www.framasoft.net/article3841.html from french to english and look at the part "Quelle est ta définition de la liberté ?" at the end. If problems, i can translate if you want. I share his point of view he just sumups.

Ok, so a quick come back as i finished my day and time to play with a non licenced life
In the context of a discussion that tries to make things constructive, i think the two first articles deserves at least debates as they provide some useful information.

They, with my last url link, answer by part to your last question and we have here a first person we could talk with as it confirms the information i gave and you are asking about : http://www.wutka.com/dtdparserlicense.html maybe you’re right and he’s wrong, whatever the only important thing is the true which allow us to be constructive so let’s start if you want.

There’s also a licence expert on the dokeos forum if we need. I forgot his name but can find it again.
Anyway, if we really take attention into the different orientations of the different articles, we could dive into deep discussions, not sure i will really take all that time. I think this will be interesting, discussing this way often allows to learn things and it’s a good behaviour step but i do not tell people to do what they have to do, if they don’t want to do some things, it’s clearly simple, they don’t do it. On my side, i have to go directly to my goals if i want to achieve them, as they also need a lot of time.

guizmo,

again, I am not so much disagreeing with you, as I am interested in your point of view. specifically, what is it about the GPL that makes is unsuitable for *you* for a CMS project?

We are now officially a viable open source project now that this discussion has ensued.

Quote from: vbrilon at Aug 23, 2006, 06:27 PM

again, I am not so much disagreeing with you, as I am interested in your point of view. specifically, what is it about the GPL that makes is unsuitable for *you* for a CMS project?

vbrilon,

I will try to suppress some of my thinking to have the quickest answer to your question :

- the general subject of CMS environments goes above my main interest as several CMS may present different specificities in the way they are built

- i like some CMS projects but not enough to be really interested in, so even less to dive into them

- in fact, i’m simply not interested in CMS only projects (except to advice some to friends eventually when they don’t want to go in holidays) but in CMS/CMF projects. If Modx were only a CMS, i wouldn’t have began this thread. The only exception that could change my mind would be a CMS with a script integration approach as one of the main interests, that is collaborating software (an example is subdreamer with forums). Whatever, that’s not the subject of our discussion, so move on.

- on a technical point of view, in terms of community and choice orientation made, the only CMS/CMF that really interest me is Modx. So if i don’t find a solution with Modx, there will be no use of a CMS/CMF for me (just a good framework instead), so that would clearly symplify some things . I tell this but i don’t know the future, some rumors talk about future Typo 5 as the easy, pleasant and flexible release but as it’s also in GPL, it may be the same conclusion (depending on the technical side subject i will come back on for Modx).

As a conclusion, i resume your question by "what is it about the GPL that makes is unsuitable for *you* for Modx ?" which is easier to answer for me as i can’t answer directly about the whole CMS projects family and there would be no use. Whatever, it may be for you the same question, if it is, it simplifies our discussion, so my answer.

To answer your question in few words about CMS environments : i can’t answer in a simple and brief way.
about Modx ? I don’t know yet, not sure, still undecided. More explanations below.

The only argument i remember, at least by now, that answers on a large scope, that is CMS environments, is one of my main interests : making use of a good CMS/CMF, not only as a single installation on a server for everyone which is a use we all practise but in the sense of one installation for one person (when there are not p2p capabilities involved which is a thing that interest me). The target is the end user in this scenario as all is about desktop application here so it’s more convenient to deliver an "easy package" (easy process installation, a product ready to be use straight and so on...). That were exactly the example i gave about my project more or less related to Lotus Notes inspiration. Anyway, i won’t develop here but the GPL is not, in this context, the best companion to meet on the road. Even commercial products are sometimes more adapted, its depends of your negociation with your contact in the company. For example, Bindows allowed me to embed freely their software in my free opensource project. At the end, i won’t do as i will rely on Dojo but again, it’s not the subject. It were just to tell that you can have commercial companions/partners (which is a thing LGPL can deals with) bringing a more adapted added value... than GPL so the commercial model is not always so "closed" as we think... and can be complementary.

Now, as we already discussed (so i won’t developed it again), the needed approach is to dive into Modx regarding the technical side and discover if future things in respect of the licence are possible or not. For me, that raises several questions such as : can i achieve goals in terms of modules and such things without touching the core code ? that is can i manage enough things with modules regarding some constraints ? Does it have enough GUI design flexibility ? ...

So here, i have the choice to :

- Dive into Modx so i will have my answer but this answer has a cost. No problem if the answer is positive, in the contrary i won’t reproduce the existential question of "this GPL is great, i should make some researchs to see if i can integrate it in my project composed of best of breed LGPL/BSD components" by spending much time on it and GPL will be the sign which will make me run away from anything that has the GPL gazol engine except for building customized online services kept private (as i would not contribute in GPL code). To talk about concrete things, the first thing i would try to plug with Modx is Prado. If i success, cool but i will have to take care in the future about the same licence implications for each additional component i want to bring into the whole solution (like Dojo for example, here i think Modx code has to be modified...)

The action of really taking care of what we do (in order to not dive into exception cases), the choice we make, the choices we will eventually make and all this kind of related things complexifies the way we could achieve goals. I would like to go off the road of trying as a blind man modx just to have the answer of the question, i prefer to spend this time on the road where i’m sure things will be ok, for now and for the future which is some kind of assurance of the day to day work. if complexity is a companion on the road (like some who have fun in this kind of way http://blog.joshuaeichorn.com/archives/2006/03/05/zend-framework-license/ or http://www.cheiron.org/misc/license/), if too much efforts are spent in architecture and coding because they have to be built in such a way there is no other solution to respect things, i lost a lot of the added value of some of the choosed components etc and it become easier to follow the way where there are the majority of best of breed products, in my cases, the ones that are in bsd and lgpl so there are no strict restrictions in terms of architecture or coding which are the main things i want to spend energy on, time or any other needed thing. That correspond to a path of simplicity, so for the users and the developers that rely on.

- Another option is to be a basic user of Modx to build some of my classical websites so a way where my Modx knowledge acquisition is streamed over time and one day, that be natural to answer the question

There are derivative advantages of licenses such as LGPL, one of them is that when a commercial product makes use of your product, that brings some publicity to it, which is one of the best proof of concept adopted in the industry. If you see only negative consequences, on my side, i see several good resulting news i don’t expose (yet ?) here as my post is already too long.

That was quite a long post, guizmo
But I can guess now where your issue is: GPL/LGPL are focused on "libraries" - you translate "library" to "framework" and "framework" to "MODx". Then you got aware of the fact, that the current MODx (0.9) is not yet a real (i.e. app-independent) framework or library, you probably will have to change the code to make it work as the client for your "dunnowhat-lotus-thing" (dlt), and, by doing so and then package it into one installer, you fear that ALL of your stuff might fall under the GPL. Right? And because some of "dlt" is LGPL or even commercial, you have a problem here.
If I’m guessing correctly I don’t know why the discussion here is running in circles, referring to strange URLs and is close to call in licensing-experts
And if I’m wrong: just ignore me.
EDIT: as far as I know, the "viral" characteristics do only apply to stuff that is either public domain or under no license restrictions at all. All stuff under other licensing-modes will stay in that mode. It merely CAN’T be otherwise, since the violation of the previously set restrictions and basic property-rights are so obvious.

silent,

That’s a pretty good guess of what he’s going on about -- I had basically the same thought.

But frankly I am tired of rhetoric and hypothetical discussions. If guizmo wants to discuss his specific issues and concerns, I’d be happy to help. But having to do telepathic interpretation of vague arguments doesn’t really interest me today.

silent, you also make a good point of "viral" characteristics. That’s a word that’s loaded with pejorative meaning in any sense -- and everyone uses it mean what they want.

So again, I’d love to have the discussion about the merits of various licenses for this project. But I refuse to participate in any more vapor discussions about hypothetical situations that don’t effect us at all.

http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/21/1659203