MODX, the GPL and me

I can do one in Gibberish..

Quote from: doze at Dec 29, 2006, 09:51 AM

I can do one in Gibberish..

I just sent my translation to netnoise.
I hope he’ll make a sticky topic in the German forum out of it.
[EDIT]As netnoise asked me to, I posted it to the German forum myself. Task accomplished [/EDIT]

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 18, 2006, 03:26 PM

Ethics (Spirit of the Law)
[*] If you make changes to MODx, please share them back with the community. If you choose not to do so, or try to hide the fact a site is running MODx behind an authenticated Manager login, we simply ask that you abstain from using the support forums for any reason whatsoever. In my personal view, the GPL is not about support, but about sharing.

With reference to this bullet point would you mind explaining (or giving an example of (or both)) the snippet "try to hide the fact a site is running MODx behind an authenticated Manager login".

I have to add that it is only with the last year that I have managed to get a basic understanding of how the GPL actually works (for several years I wondered how people could make a living giving their software away and then for several more years I ignored the issue) and that it is about being open and making source available and not anything to do with money.

I would just like to make sure that I am not breaking any laws (spiritually or legally) before going live with any sites

A perfect example of breaking the spirit of the law:

You’re a dev shop and remove all traces of MODx and where it came from from the manager. You present it to your clients as your own, proprietary application, giving no credit back to it’s original authors. Make sense?

Quote from: rthrash at May 04, 2007, 12:08 AM

You’re a dev shop and remove all traces of MODx and where it came from from the manager. You present it to your clients as your own, proprietary application, giving no credit back to it’s original authors. Make sense?

Oh right, yes. You’re talking about rebranding the backend not anything to do with the frontend.

Well I certainly don’t intend to do that, there is more than enough work to do getting the front end right without making more work for myself by re-writing a perfectly good (and tested) back end. Any way credit were credits due I say, I have only been working with MODx for 6 weeks now (and 4 of those were spent making mod_rewrite work) and I am very impressed. Of course the system is scarily powerful and configurable but I expect I’ll get used to that.

Thank You

Quote from: doze at Dec 29, 2006, 09:51 AM

I can do one in Gibberish..

I’ll start work on a 1337 translation

Have a few personal sites hosted with Dreamhost and they have something similar to Fantastico one click install.... building on that...

Under the license would it be possible for hosting companies to offer custom templates and automatic site creation/hosting Modx?

It seems like it is more LGPL, not GPL? Cause the snippets in case of GPL would be covered under a GPL license, no?

Years away from the beginning and now with Revolution in mind, I've come to a question about licensing that I couldn't really solve (I hope this thread is still open to questions and that this question hasn't been responded before...). Here we go, it's a two-part question:

First. Let's say that I've created a full portal using MODx. I've deployed a really agressive customization in the manager and I have changed all MODx logos from the manager because the client wants to see his very own logos, but I keep a Powered by MODx message in the footer or "About" area. Am I ok with MODx requierements?

Second. Even though I don't mind to spare my modifications, I've spent a lot of time customizing MODx for that single client. Given that I'm aware that I need to distribute my modifications' source code with the product itself, and that I cannot avoid the client to use MODx's core. Am I in my right to avoid the client to make money for the modifications that I made? I mean, Is the client allowed to re-sale (making money for it) or redistribute the site I made for him? Or can I avoid him to redistribute the whole product (assuming that he can still separate the MODx core from the product and do whatever he wants with it, but not redistribute it with my modifications not related with the core)?

Sorry for this long post. I tried to depict the scenarios as detailed as possible.

Regards!