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GPL and Proprietary Plugins - Thoughts on Joomla's stance?


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Narcissus

Mon Jun 18 2007, 08:23AM

Registered Member #18251

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Hi all... I know this has been discussed before in relation to e107, but I was just wondering if anyone else has been following the Joomla 'change in stance' on this issue (that is, the GPL and proprietary plugins)? For those who are interested, the 'press release' or whatever you want to call it is at

. A number of threads have been merged and split and so on and so at the moment, there are the following threads:
'GPL Questions Continued, Developer related' at

'GPL Questions Continued, User related' at

'Can Joomla! extensions be released under non-GPL compatible licenses?' at

The basic argument is that extensions / plugins constitute a combined work as defined by the GPL. This isn't a problem per se for Joomla (they can always issue an amendment to the GPL) but the problem arises because the Joomla developers want to start including code from other GPL projects... and naturally those projects don't necessarily provide the required amendment. Add to the fact that each developer who has contributed code to Joomla would need to either give their blessing to the license amendment and / or assign their copyright privileges to the Joomla project and you have an interesting scenario playing out (one that was bound to happen eventually anyway).

For what it's worth, the developer of OpenSEF (the SEF URLs extension) has taken his bat-and-ball and gone home, so to speak. His statement is at

. I know it's totally his right to do so, though I would argue that his statement that "it would set me now in violation with the GPL" is incorrect as it was always in violation of the GPL, it was just not being encouraged / enforced.

Anyway... like i say, I was just wondering if anyone else was following this and wondering, too, what others' thoughts were.

streaky

Mon Jun 18 2007, 08:56AM

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Joined: Thu Jan 15 2004, 03:19PM
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Posts: 873

Firstly commercial and encoded are not the same thing. Something can very easily be open source and commercial, it's free as in freedom, not free as in beer - that said the Joomla core (at least at the moment) is free as in beer and freedom.

On top of that, technically speaking you have a right to take something like Joomla and extend it both commercialy and encoded. The legal issues start turnning up when you take the actual Joomla code and encode it. The SEF urls I suspect may have crossed that line - simply because if core-rewrite is needed you'd need to redistribute parts of the core and if you encode them you'll end up in a world of pain if somebody takes offence (which they would - hell I would).

The legal middle-ground if you're redistributing parts is to leave them unencoded and only encode your stuff.

Thing is with Joomla is that people will start spitting dummies - the whole thing has a big wedge of money floating round it, I can't see it ever being good for users, the Mambo / Joomla split is precisely evidence of the problems it causes.

[ Edited Mon Jun 18 2007, 08:59AM ]

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -- Winston Churchill

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Narcissus

Mon Jun 18 2007, 09:25AM

Registered Member #18251

Joined: Thu Jun 02 2005, 05:42PM
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wrote ...

Firstly commercial and encoded are not the same thing.

Agreed (and that's why I used the term proprietary as opposed to commercial). The point that the main developers are arguing is that when you make function calls to the Joomla API you are creating a combined work... the FSF argues it basically by saying "if we take you code and separate it from the underlying code and data, can it still work?". For most extensions, the answer is no (as it requires the Joomla functions to operate).

The OpenSEF code that I'm referring to is actually GPL (and operates just like any other plugin... upload it and it works). The guy who wrote it, though, is basically saying "if I can't make my own proprietary extensions then I won't bother developing the GPL ones, either".

Again, their argument is not about distributing the Joomla code base, it's about the use of the Joomla code base being a requirement to have your code working. According to them, it's like requiring any other GPL library of PHP functionality but then saying that your code is not GPL: as far as the FSF's argument is concerned, at least, this particular argument is not about distribution of GPL code but instead creating a combined work of your code and the GPL code and then not following the GPL with regards to these combined works. Not that the FSF has the final say on the interpretation of combined works: people find it hard enough to define 'combined work' when using the LGPL which was almost designed for that exact functionality.

One of those threads has some comments by a guy whose username is something like 'maxed'. He's a legal consult to the Mambo Foundation as well as the Debian group (who are really particular about licensing) and he has some interesting comments on it all... I'm just going to sit back and watch it all, but I can definitely see their point.

streaky

Mon Jun 18 2007, 11:28AM

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Well in that case it's BS, you take away the linux kernel does VMware work? No.

It's very simple, it's bullshit, and the FSF don't know what the shit they're talking, but that's nothing new.

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." -- Winston Churchill

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Narcissus

Mon Jun 18 2007, 12:00PM

Registered Member #18251

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Posts: 88

streaky wrote ...

Well in that case it's BS, you take away the linux kernel does VMware work? No.

Except when I write a Linux program, I would link it against the GLIBC libraries (written by FSF) and they are specifically licensed to allow proprietary applications. Even if that is not the case, the Linux copyright belongs to Linus Torvalds: code placed in the source tree is assigned to him as the copyright holder, and he specifically ALLOWS running proprietary applications under Linux by adding a 'rider' to the GPL (see

). The thing is, he is explicitly made the copyright holder for all of the source code and so he can make these decisions. Naturally, I am only talking about the Linux kernel 'proper' here: by the time you even get to things like kernel modules (closer to the kernel than end user applications) then they are still using the kernel which has already allowed it...

Now, with the Joomla example: the developers don't have the luxury of being the sole code copyright holders (especially when they want to start importing other GPL libraries) so they don't have the right to add riders like that. I know that it's all a load of crap on the surface, but there are many legal snares that are related. I don't even know if I want to mention the situation where one would explicitly import GPL code to work in those proprietary extensions (would you agree that that is a definite combined work?)

streaky wrote ...

It's very simple, it's bullshit, and the FSF don't know what the shit they're talking, but that's nothing new.

That's a judgment call I guess. I'm not a lawyer (and I assume you aren't either) but I have a sneaking suspicion that the FSF has a bit of an idea about the technical / legal nitty-gritty here... I mean, they obviously know a bit about what they're talking, seeing as they wrote the license in the first place. Like him or not (and I lean towards the latter), RMS has been working on free software and the like for longer than most of us have been working on computers in general. Like I say, judgment call: the FSF has been dealing with issues like linking (dynamic vs. static, pipes and sockets vs. direct function calls) and so on for years, and they don't always agree with a lot of GPL projects in different ways (FSF argues that copyright messages shown to the user in the form of a footer are NOT the same as copyright messages in code and therefore can be removed without breaking the licence).


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