Can we have an official statement on non-GPL addons

I know this may seem silly. But in the wake of the recent Joomla stuff and the previous WordPress and postNuke crackdowns, can we have an official statement from MODx that you do not consider non-GPL addons accessing/interfacing the API as a breach of the GPL license or your copyright?

I know it seems kind of silly right now, but I feel a lot of dev’s and companies are getting wary of the FSF interpretation of the GPL.

Thanks,
Chuck

Hi ProWebscape,

I am interested in hearing your specific concerns. I think we all agree that the other events you mentioned are not desirable for this community. But what specifically are you concerned with in regards to add-ons, API access, and the GPL?

<disclaimer> I am not in any way implying anything about MODx and where it is/is not going. I just want to hear what community members are thinking in regards to these issues </disclaimer>

Just looking for assurances and something concrete. The Joomla mess is a real fiasco. Here is something Jason said below. If there could be anything in an FAQ, license, something concrete somewhere (short and sweet) just so people can have something to ’hang their hats on’ so to speak.

Quote from: OpenGeek at May 01, 2007, 07:34 AM

No, this isn’t something MODx should worry about; and has been exhaustively covered already in these forums. There are always split opinions on things people don’t take the time to understand fully; like the GPL. Discussions like this are meaningless and a waste of time IMHO. There is no dynamic linking in PHP, so as far as I am concerned, whatever add-ons you author, you decide how to license and distribute it like you want to. The whole purpose of a framework or platform is to attract developers to it. I’d like to see a gaming platform or cell-phone platform that has a successful market while telling 3rd-party developers they are not allowed to make money on the software they built for it. That’s the whole point...developing a community that shares the benefits of and burdens of the commodity it produces.

Edit: It has been really frustrating being told for 5 years by the Mambo/Joomla crew you can license your addons however you see fit. Now they ridicule developers for their business decisions and say "You should have seen it coming. You should have hired a lawyer. It’s not our fault your business plan is faulty. This is GPL- deal with it."

I hear what you’re saying -- but I guess I don’t really understand what you’re trying to clear up.

Are you looking to protect existing GPL efforts? Are you wanting to create a module for MODx that’s not GPL’ed? Something else altogether?

Please help us understand your specific concerns so that the community can benefit from the clarification. I can assure you, if you have a question, chances are someone else has the same one, they just haven’t posted yet.

Yes, it would be nice to have this stated clearly somewhere. Coming (maybe) from Joomla, which has always been GPL but has also allowed third party extensions under a non-compatible license to be sold untill recently, I guess our questions are more or less similar. Joomla core have now decided they will start to enforce the license even upon extensions, driving away many third party devs who are not prepared to GPL their code and efforts. The forums, for the last two months, have been filled with references to legal consultants, lawyers etc, nothing productive is been done, just the same discussions over and over. End users are fearing extensions which many sites rely on will be discontinued - it would take quite some time to rewrite some of the most used ones under the GPL, if someone is prepared to do so.
Let’s get to the point: what is the position here towards devs selling non-GPL add-ons for modx?
Hi chuck

In my opinion, GPL is GPL. It’s in black and white and clearly stipulates what you can and cannot do with the code. So..it boils down to this: If you create an addon for MODx that includes non-GPL code then you cannot redistribute it as non-GPL if it contains significant portions of MODx code.

Let’s take TinyMCE for example. Now, I’ve been redistributing it in whole for a while now. If it was non-GPL app, I would not be able to redistribute anything but just the files necessary to allow it to interact with MODx. It would be a situation where I would tell the end-user to go download the app and place it in a specific directory. Even if I was to distribute just one single file from the TinyMCE distribution (say the main tinymce.js file) then I would be breaking their license and thus would put my own application in jeopardy. That’s the main problem with trying to write add-ons that use non-GPL applications.

Now...here’s the tricky part...what if you wanted to create an add-on that will be non-GPL for which you want to sell? Can you do that? Well...sure...but according to the GPL if you plan to incorporate any parts of the app for which you’re creating an add-on for you’ll need to get permission. I think the problem the Joomla guys were having was that there was alot of add-ons that were being sold that modified parts of the app. I don’t think they really liked that too much...and neither would I! It just results in a nightmare from a support standpoint. We clearly cannot be responsible for someone else’s code for which they are profiting from. So it’s better to just do away with any discrepancies that say that if you alter or bundle any parts of the GPL code in your add-on then your add-on will likely need to be GPL as well.

The Mambo/Joomla crew learned this the hard way. Even I saw that coming! Back when I was looking at different CMS apps, I was seriously looking at Mambo/Joomla. The problem of commercial add-ons was definitely something of a sore for me. I just couldn’t understand how so many can profit off of the curtails of a free product. Not only that but some of the best functionality was in the form of commercial add-ons for Mambo and it was clear that a good number of them were making liberal changes to certain parts of the core code. It was a problem initially...but I’m sure over time as more and more people were selling add-ons for it, it clearly became a bigger issue that needed to be addressed. Personally, I don’t blame them. Again, the GPL is pretty clear on this issue. I bet if you were to look at the ones that Mambo/Joomla, Wordpress, and others went after it was due to changes made to the core code and/or redistribution of all or parts of the code.

I’m sure others will chime in...but that’s my opinion.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff. I feel you.

If someone makes changes to any part of GPL’d app, that must be licensed GPL. I understand that.

I guess my question is: Can someone state, somewhat-concretely, that an addon that only uses the API (does not change any MODx code) is not a derivative. I do not plan on a non-GPL app, but it would be good to have a quick note similar to:

http://forum.mambo-foundation.org/showthread.php?t=5922

It is our opinion that use of Mambo interfaces does not make “derived works” per se. Function calls to the Mambo API do not, in themselves, create derived works. This is the Mambo Foundation’s position in relation to the use of Mambo code. Please note that other licensors may have a different position.

It looks like Jason agrees with this statement (and yours Jeff), and it would be good to have something somewhere stating this. A little note, and all is good. (I am not demanding anything at all. I was just asking for some official notice).

Thanks a bunch (and the new commercial support idea is fantastic!)
Chuck

PS - Nice to see you here Joe. PM me if you have any questions.

Hey Chuck,

Not really having heard a lot about what’s going on at Joomla and apparently others per your post above ... after a cursory overview: what a mess! I totally feel your pain, and definitely not remotely what we want to see here.

The reality is that we are a GPL project because of our inherited GPL legacy. In all seriousness, you might and probably should point someone that can offer a legal opinion at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html and see what they have to say. I’d be happy to have a conversation with any attorney needing to do background research on MODx.

In short, right now I don’t have an answer for you that you should remotely count on according to the letter of the law.

One thing I definitely DON’T want to see is a bunch of hypothetical meanderings by armchair attorneys, or a flame war full of innuendoes, conspiracy theories and conjecture—the stuff that seems to universally accompany most GPL discussion that arise in similar situations.

I will talk about our intentions relating to MODx as a project though. The project’s leaders and core team very much smile thinking about people making a great living with MODx. Our intention from day one has always been to develop an ecosystem that exceeds what we as the project founders could ever accomplish ourselves. I love the stories of how people are diving into new professions in whole or in part anchored by MODx, and don’t want those to ever stop.

We likewise don’t want to own other folk’s IP. We don’t want to demand that everyone give away the code they’ve created and are selling to clients. We do expect a "reciprocal karma exchange", but I’m also not so naive as to believe that there won’t be lots of individuals who’ll always take and never give back. It’s a reality in a situation like this.

And finally, I’m also not going to waste my time fighting for some utopian idealism that would take way too much time and way more brains/dollars than I’ve got with which to fight. It’s not my mission in life like it is for others (and that’s a very honorable mission). Selfishly, I’ve got a family to feed, and I could really use some sleep!

I’m not a lawyer either. Err...my wife is in law school....but I don’t think she can really comment on this. She doesn’t know a whole lot about this kind of thing.

However, I will mention one last thing and say that I think the safest approach that anyone can do when it comes to selling something that is related to MODx or any other GPL project is to do it as a service rather than a product. That way you can offer your application as a GPL product and wrap services around it to meet the needs of those who wish to use it. I’ve seen similar instances where a product was GPL...but in order to get support for it you had to sign up for a forum-based support subscription. This is perfectly legit in my opinion and wouldn’t break any GPL license agreement simply because you’re not charging for the use of the software...just for the support of it.

The sale of add-ons for any online application is pretty ludicrous to begin with. I just don’t see how it’s that profitable of an endeavor. What we have here with the MODx community is a bit of a give and take sort of relationship. We give you a great app and, in return, you give us feedback and (even better) some code and ideas for some great snippets, modules, and the like. The time and energy that an individual spends on an add-on for MODx is rewarded in a variety of ways up to and including a monetary reward.

We write add-ons for MODx simply because we have a particular problem we wish to solve. It usually ends up being due to a piece of functionality we need to have exist in our own projects. As such, rather than charging for it we simply give back to the community that spent so much time and work creating the very thing we use to build our sites with. It’s a win-win situation that doesn’t really need any monetary reward associated with it other than the money we receive from clients we build sites for.

That’s a philosophy that a lot of open-source developers share and probably the primary reason why the problems with Joomla became an issue in the first place. We all want to profit from the time and energy we spend. And although we’d like to get paid for the work we do, we still want to feel like we’re contributing to the community that gave us the tools we wanted to do our jobs. In the end, we still need to make a living, put food on the table, and live our lives comfortably. Thats where the issue gets complicated. Everyone’s idea on how they earn a living is a bit different. So we all need to make money somehow...but it doesn’t always have to entail selling a product. Sometimes the sale of services alone will get you where you need to be.

Jeff

Well said Jeff !!!

It sums things up quite well... but as Ryan says when the idealistic open source model that we love so much meets the reality of needing to pay the bills and earn a living, it needs some reality check and ingenious solutions to mix the ideal with some business skills and build a viable business model (how we invent this is another story entirely... but it’s a fascinating adventure might I say...).

I truly feel that’s where really lies the future of economics but that’s a dreamer speaking
Ah but I’ve watched to much Star Trek that must be it

Sorry for getting off topic, french wine helped me a bit tonight