11
Rhomal
Re: Double Standards, incubators & donation releases
  • 2005/2/13 5:02

  • Rhomal

  • Quite a regular

  • Posts: 274

  • Since: 2004/10/5


Mith -

> Actually, the correct statement would be "If you do not donate, you won't have access to this or that until such time I release it for free"

I think either could apply depending on intent. But I understand your point.

> Shareware? You mean make a crippled version of a module and charge for the full version? Or make a full version that is free for 30 days? I can't see the GPL allowing you to do the latter. Once you have obtained the source code, you are free to do with it what you want, free of charge.

Not all shareware is crippleware or trialware. Some shareware are full versions in their own right, but just not with every bell and whistle included unless you purchase the pay version. That was what I was thinking of when I said shareware. I certainly am not a fan of trial or crippleware.

But that aside, so its ok for someone to buy the new ver of AMS and put it up on their site for d/l to all then?

> Wysiwyg editor integration, a completely new spotlight management, a new look for the ByTopic view, that is "bugfixing"? I call it new features.

Those are new features. But if I recall in the news article about it there were 2 or 3 items posted under bugs/fixes. I dont see those released to the current public version is my issue.

> Some of the amount mentioned comes from donations, but what I am astounded by is the fact that you think Brash pays me for my hobby. I develop XOOPS in my spare time and if that is what constitutes "a hobby" then developing XOOPS is my hobby.
However, developing AMS was a professional job to enable me to pay my bills.
I now have a full-time job working with developing XOOPS for a Danish media company - is that also "a hobby" because it has to do with XOOPS? I don't think my employer would like it very much if I considered it that.

To be honest I am totally confused by this. LOL You start to say im wrong in thinking your getting paid for AMS, its a hobby, then say its a business your getting paid for. Perhaps I am not understanding what your trying to say, if so my bad. :(

Tho Didnt he say in the comments he paid for your help with AMS? I am just confused.. no need to get into it, as in the end I dont think its overly important to get into your personal finances.

My only issue on this level is he said hr paid $1,100 or so on AMS development. No one forced him to do that is my bottom line. And it just feels this buy AMS deal is his way of sticking us for his bills we (at least I) never asked him to take on.

I more or less agree with the orginial poster. I also think perhaps if XOOPS continues down this road a split would be a good thing. Perhaps a fork where XOOPS is moved over to a true 'free' licence which I think is the spirit of open source.

My 2 coppers

12
Tabasco
Re: Double Standards, incubators & donation releases
  • 2005/2/13 5:12

  • Tabasco

  • Quite a regular

  • Posts: 203

  • Since: 2003/12/26


Why argue about it?

If XOOPS goes to a pay for type site, we'll just move on. It's been a fun ride.

If not, we'll stay here.

13
brash
Re: Double Standards, incubators & donation releases
  • 2005/2/13 6:40

  • brash

  • Friend of XOOPS

  • Posts: 2206

  • Since: 2003/4/10


I think I should point out that Mith should not be taking ANY of the heat regarding the development model used by AMS. Mith is simply the developer in all of this, and it was 100% my idea (as Mith's client) to try and launch a community funded module development project. I am by no means a a guru with the GNU GPL license, but from what I have read it seems that the GNU GPL actually encourages people to charge money for their work. A quote from the GNU GPL;

Quote:

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.


Instead of relying on secondhand information why don't people actually just spend 15 minutes reading over the GNU GPL FAQ's and it will become plainly evident that under the GNU GPL license you are allowed to charge for software released under it. Just take a look at the FAQ linked above.

So with this in mind the real issue ISN'T the GPL as it clearly states that a fee can be put on software. The issue here is should the XOOPS community go this way, and it appears my use of the word donation. I apologies if my use of the word donation has really caused this much of a stir. The reason I didn't use something like the word fee is because apart from a minimum of $10USD I have no set amount that a user should give, and users are free to make a contribution at any time without getting anything directly in return. Most give the $10 minimum, but a lot also give $15, $20 and even more.

As for the way in which AMS has gone forward I make NO apologies. For every actively developed XOOPS module out there, it seems like there are another dozen lying on the scrap head with no development future or support available. Although I have a HUGE amount of gratitude toward those devs that have put in their time, I was sick of this style of development holding back the development of my own websites. At best I would describe myself as an advanced XOOPS user, and I do not posses the skills to code myself up a module to my needs, and this is a point I believe a few developers are totally overlooking. As XOOPS users we don't have the ability to just code it ourselves if nothing exists to suit our needs, so our options are limited.

I admit AMS started off as a private venture, but having being an active XOOPS member for several years I could see that a lot of what we were accomplishing with AMS had the potential for broad appeal to the XOOPS community. From the very start when I announced AMS to the XOOPS community 6 months ago I made it clear that AMS was going to be a community funded effort, and with 3000 downloads in the 2 months since the public releases of AMS 2.2 and over 50 separate donations I think there IS a lot of support for such a development model out there. I'm not saying ALL modules should use such a module, what I am saying is that where there is obvious community support for such a project that it should be allowed to proceed (under the guidelines of the GPL) without being consistently picked at by a handful of users.

I also must say I really don't understand where a lot of the opposition to this is coming from. NOBODY is forced to contribute if they don't want to, and I DO make a public release available a month or so after I release to those who help met the development costs. I would really appreciate it if someone who is opposed to the way AMS is developed would explain to me why it is such an issue, I just fully do NOT understand it. I also ask you to consider these points;

(1) Having a fee for GPL sofware is allowed via the license terms.

(2) Without financial community contribution AMS would have stayed as a private module, and THOUSANDS of XOOPS users would never have been able to use it. Would you rather it just never see the light of day, and if so explain how this is for the greater good of the XOOPS community?

(3) Considering that AMS violates no part of the GPL, why can't you simply allow development to proceed? Surely with over 26,000 members and god knows how many other non registered users of XOOPS out there, there is enough room for both paid and voluntary development models?

14
Mithrandir
Re: Double Standards, incubators & donation releases

Quote:
You start to say im wrong in thinking your getting paid for AMS, its a hobby, then say its a business your getting paid for

Sorry, English is not my mother tongue and there were some emphasis missing in my sentence.

The sentence
Quote:
you think Brash pays me for my hobby

SHOULD be perceived something like

"you think Brash pays me for my hobby? He doesn't, he pays me for my work", emphasising that I don't get paid just to fiddle around with things that can be learnt with a $25 "teach yourself PHP in 14 days" book

Quote:
if I recall in the news article about it there were 2 or 3 items posted under bugs/fixes. I dont see those released to the current public version is my issue.

It would be quite resource-demanding to develop both a bugfix version and a feature version. The public version is out in about a month, is that too long to wait?

15
jegelstaff
Re: Double Standards

Quote:

Catzwolf wrote:

Either that some people should read their XOOPS history book from start to finish.


I agree that there is a lack of knowledge of the history of the project among newcommers, but as a relative newcommer myself, I have to say that it's very hard to discover this information. There is no history of XOOPS on the site, you have to dig through the really old news postings and forum archives.

I think there would be tremendous value in a section in the 'All about XOOPS' part of this site, which discussed:

--the original creation of XOOPS

--the development of XOOPS 2

--the formation of the 'new XOOPS community':
https://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=992

--bios about some of the major figures.

While such things were being prepared, some material about the current directions, such as 2.1, would be good to put up there. Is there even a design document for 2.1?

Quote:

The fact is that GPL clearly states that you CANNOT actually charge for the development of the software but you can charge for the postage and package or support.


This is not true. The GPL is silent on the issue of charging for development. What the GPL says is that you cannot impose restrictions on other people's rights to examine and modify the software source code, nor on their rights to redistribute the software. How you choose to fund the development of GPL software you write is entirely up to you. But if you release it as GPL, then the above restrictions apply.

This effectively pulls the rug out from under standard closed source business models, where the revenue stream is built on restricting the supply of the software because only the author is legally allowed to distribute it. The GPL allows everyone who has a copy to be a distributor, which simply creates a disincentive to build a business around charging for your own distribution, because potential buyers could probably get the software from somewhere else.

Basically, to use closed source terminology, the GPL legalizes piracy; making and distributing copies for free is allowed, so that's a severe disincentive to use a closed source business model.

Quote:

I think some people have actually forgot what the term donation actually means and under the current version of the GPL charging for GPL software is breaking the GPL.


I agree that the term 'donation' as used in the distribution of AMS seems odd. It is a fee, since they are not allowing you to download the current version without paying. If you could download and then choose to pay a fee or not pay, then that would be a donation.

However, I do not believe that charging a fee or donation or whatever you want to call it breaks the GPL in any way (see above). The GPL simply means that anyone who has downloaded a copy could put it up for download themselves if they chose to.

Quote:

I personally have given a lot of my free time because I believed in Xoops, I spent many many hours unpaid to give something back to the community as the way many other people did for me and if we didn't have that then we wouldn't have an XOOPS the way we do today.


If I read between the lines, I think I'm hearing you say something like this: "and it's bad that other people are only giving to the community in as much as they are getting paid for their efforts." I appologize if that's not what you are saying, but if it is, then I would say: "isn't it only a good thing for the community to have more contributions from more people, no matter how they get made?"

It's up to the community and the core team whether contributions get accepted into the official core, or get stamped as official modules in the new 2.1 world when we get there. So more people doing more and giving more is only a good thing, no? I mean, since the community is still the arbitrator of what gets accepted or not, business interests aren't going to hijack the project.

In fact, it's against the interests of businesses that would be involved in XOOPS to try and hijack the project or fork it. The value of an open source project for a business is simply that other people are helping out by contributing to the project, so the business doesn't have to do all the work itself. It's a cost effective way to develop software for a business. If a business were to hijack the project and make its focus more narrow and related only to whatever uses of XOOPS that business were interested in, that would make the project far less useful and interesting for everyone else, so a lot of contributors would leave the project, and all of a sudden, the whole point the business is involved in the project -- the fact that other people are contributing -- disappears.

I will fall back on an example I seem to always bring up in these kind of discussions: IBM and Linux. IBM does not give work and effort to the Linux community out of altruism, and you can bet the IBM programmers who contribute code are being paid for their time, and IBM is building a fee for Linux into the price of their computers that come with Linux. And is this bad for Linux? Absolutely not, it's been good to get more code and more professional code into the project.

JMorris's post about Red Hat and Linux in another thread seems apt to point out here too:

https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31535&forum=11&post_id=137966#forumpost137966

--Julian

16
Catzwolf
Re: Double Standards
  • 2005/2/13 18:17

  • Catzwolf

  • Home away from home

  • Posts: 1392

  • Since: 2007/9/30


Quote:

jegelstaff wrote:
Quote:

Catzwolf wrote:

Either that some people should read their XOOPS history book from start to finish.


I agree that there is a lack of knowledge of the history of the project among newcommers, but as a relative newcommer myself, I have to say that it's very hard to discover this information. There is no history of XOOPS on the site, you have to dig through the really old news postings and forum archives.

I think there would be tremendous value in a section in the 'All about XOOPS' part of this site, which discussed:

--the original creation of XOOPS

--the development of XOOPS 2

--the formation of the 'new XOOPS community':
https://xoops.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=992

--bios about some of the major figures.

While such things were being prepared, some material about the current directions, such as 2.1, would be good to put up there. Is there even a design document for 2.1?

Quote:

The fact is that GPL clearly states that you CANNOT actually charge for the development of the software but you can charge for the postage and package or support.


This is not true. The GPL is silent on the issue of charging for development. What the GPL says is that you cannot impose restrictions on other people's rights to examine and modify the software source code, nor on their rights to redistribute the software. How you choose to fund the development of GPL software you write is entirely up to you. But if you release it as GPL, then the above restrictions apply.

This effectively pulls the rug out from under standard closed source business models, where the revenue stream is built on restricting the supply of the software because only the author is legally allowed to distribute it. The GPL allows everyone who has a copy to be a distributor, which simply creates a disincentive to build a business around charging for your own distribution, because potential buyers could probably get the software from somewhere else.

Basically, to use closed source terminology, the GPL legalizes piracy; making and distributing copies for free is allowed, so that's a severe disincentive to use a closed source business model.

Quote:

I think some people have actually forgot what the term donation actually means and under the current version of the GPL charging for GPL software is breaking the GPL.


I agree that the term 'donation' as used in the distribution of AMS seems odd. It is a fee, since they are not allowing you to download the current version without paying. If you could download and then choose to pay a fee or not pay, then that would be a donation.

However, I do not believe that charging a fee or donation or whatever you want to call it breaks the GPL in any way (see above). The GPL simply means that anyone who has downloaded a copy could put it up for download themselves if they chose to.

Quote:

I personally have given a lot of my free time because I believed in Xoops, I spent many many hours unpaid to give something back to the community as the way many other people did for me and if we didn't have that then we wouldn't have an XOOPS the way we do today.


If I read between the lines, I think I'm hearing you say something like this: "and it's bad that other people are only giving to the community in as much as they are getting paid for their efforts." I appologize if that's not what you are saying, but if it is, then I would say: "isn't it only a good thing for the community to have more contributions from more people, no matter how they get made?"

It's up to the community and the core team whether contributions get accepted into the official core, or get stamped as official modules in the new 2.1 world when we get there. So more people doing more and giving more is only a good thing, no? I mean, since the community is still the arbitrator of what gets accepted or not, business interests aren't going to hijack the project.

In fact, it's against the interests of businesses that would be involved in XOOPS to try and hijack the project or fork it. The value of an open source project for a business is simply that other people are helping out by contributing to the project, so the business doesn't have to do all the work itself. It's a cost effective way to develop software for a business. If a business were to hijack the project and make its focus more narrow and related only to whatever uses of XOOPS that business were interested in, that would make the project far less useful and interesting for everyone else, so a lot of contributors would leave the project, and all of a sudden, the whole point the business is involved in the project -- the fact that other people are contributing -- disappears.

I will fall back on an example I seem to always bring up in these kind of discussions: IBM and Linux. IBM does not give work and effort to the Linux community out of altruism, and you can bet the IBM programmers who contribute code are being paid for their time, and IBM is building a fee for Linux into the price of their computers that come with Linux. And is this bad for Linux? Absolutely not, it's been good to get more code and more professional code into the project.

JMorris's post about Red Hat and Linux in another thread seems apt to point out here too:

https://xoops.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31535&forum=11&post_id=137966#forumpost137966

--Julian


Actuallt the GPL is clear on this issue and clearly states the following:

Quote:

The bargain created by the GPL can be paraphrased simply as follows: You may have this free software on condition that any derivative works that you create from it and distribute must be licensed to all under the same license.

Here's how the GPL actually says it:

You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. (GPL, Section 2.)

This is the most powerful idea in the GPL and the one that has aroused the most passion in its adherents and its detractors.

Adherents of the GPL suggest that this provision protects free software. It guarantees that all derivative works of GPL-licensed software will also be GPL-licensed software. Licensees cannot selfishly remove their improvements from the public commons. Derivative work software will always be free and open. The result is a dynamic and ever growing collection of GPL-licensed software that can be reused and improved.


The fact is AMS is a derivative work of the news module and it thus clearly falls under this.

Reciprocity and the GPL

GPL Legal Battle Coming? http://weblog.siliconvalley.com

Catz

17
Mithrandir
Re: Double Standards

Quote:
You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. (GPL, Section 2.)
There are no license fees in AMS (which is how I read that exerpt - that you cannot put license fees on work derived from a GPL program)

I understand your interpretation, but do not think it is very clear.

18
Marco
Re: Double Standards
  • 2005/2/13 19:29

  • Marco

  • Home away from home

  • Posts: 1256

  • Since: 2004/3/15


we can discuss hours without any conclusion, if we analyse this very interesting thread under legal aspects.
The question is :
- How do you want XOOPS projets to be ?
- What is XOOPS spirit ?

I personaly think that we should not make money considerations enter XOOPS community.
Should I ask for fees for time I spend debugging, testing, helping programmers in improving their modules, translating modules ?
Should I charge for my ideas, or posts in forums ?

Quote:

If a business were to hijack the project and make its focus more narrow and related only to whatever uses of XOOPS that business were interested in, that would make the project far less useful and interesting for everyone else, so a lot of contributors would leave the project, and all of a sudden, the whole point the business is involved in the project -- the fact that other people are contributing -- disappears.


If only all developpers could respect devs credits...

I know your're using XOOPS for your personal projets.
But should personal considerations enter XOOPS or be public ?

I hope that this will occur less in the future. Let's speak less about money.Money (donation, fee or whatever you want) should be used only for community efforts, like communication, organizing events like fosdem, encouraging people to help and participating, not helping personal projets.

I hope some coders will join their efforts on module developpements. We can notice several projets being developped with same functionalities or on same subjects, that's bad.
If we were mature, working more together would be an evidence...

I think we have to write our internal rules, despite or with GPL or WhatyourwantL.
What do we want XOOPS to be ? A community or not ?

marco

19
Catzwolf
Re: Double Standards
  • 2005/2/13 19:29

  • Catzwolf

  • Home away from home

  • Posts: 1392

  • Since: 2007/9/30


Quote:

Mithrandir wrote:
Quote:
You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. (GPL, Section 2.)
There are no license fees in AMS (which is how I read that exerpt - that you cannot put license fees on work derived from a GPL program)

I understand your interpretation, but do not think it is very clear.


Licensees cannot selfishly remove their improvements from the public commons. Derivative work software will always be free and open.

I think this part is very clear!

ATB

Catz

20
Mithrandir
Re: Double Standards

Quote:
Derivative work software will always be free and open.
No argument from me there - All my modules are free to use in whatever way you want. However, they are not all free of charge. The GPL VERY clearly states that "free" is not a monetary term, but in the meaning of "freedom"

As I also argued Earlier in this thread

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