It is not a donation, you are asking people to buy it, plain and simple

Here is the definition again:

Donation:
1. A voluntary gift (as of money or service or ideas) made to some worthwhile cause

2. Act of giving in common with others for a common purpose especially to a charity

Mithrandir wrote:
Quote:

It is not a donation, you are asking people to buy it, plain and simple

So what you are against is the word "donation"?

In the News comments, JDSeymour defined a "donation" like this:
Quote:

Here is the definition again:

Donation:
1. A voluntary gift (as of money or service or ideas) made to some worthwhile cause

2. Act of giving in common with others for a common purpose especially to a charity

Why do you need several threads on this matter, when you are not answering to the points made in them? I am perfectly willing to have a debate on this subject, and I'm sure Brash would say the same thing, but almost everything we hear from the critics of this approach is opinions. Opinions are hard to debate, so let's get the arguments on the table and have a healthy debate instead.

brash wrote:
My door is always open to suggestions for doing something better, so what would you suggest? I am quite happy to continue putting my time into XOOPS and AMS for free as it is a passion/hobby for me. On the otherhand Mith does this to earn a crust and pay his bills. If I changed the word donation to a term like "early access fee" or something, would this be more acceptable?

jdseymour wrote:
I have been hesitant to show this, but this is something the great vulnerability scanner of nessus is going through. Their solution was to keep the scanner itself GPL but produce plugins that are nonGPL that would be released to the general public after 7 days. GPL plugins developed by the community are released immediately.

The article is Here.
Not exactly what is happening here, and for different reasons. But maybe it would be food for thought.

Catzwolf wrote:

Brash, we already spoke about this and I gave you my suggestions on this matter but you choose not to go down that road.

The point I made is this, I CAN if I wanted give your module away and the current way XOOPS is licensed you would have lost everything. I know for a fact that people will pay for support and I am sure you will earn a hell of a lot more doing so. Companies will PAY for good first hand support for a worth while product. (I should know because I write support software).

Brash we have both been with XOOPS for a long time, I have total and utter respect for everything you are doing and trying to do. I agree with you 100% we should be able to sell modules if we do so, but currently our work is not protected and this is the point I am trying to make here.

I am also trying to state the double standards that have been shown within these forum regarding this matter, we have one clear policy on this matter and I am afraid the current way that the GPL is 'worded' this will never happen. I have always stated that we need to move AWAY from GPL to LGPL at least.

I think I have made myself clear on this matter many times Mith, I believe that it is you that is willing not to see my point

The point I made is this, I CAN if I wanted give your module away and the current way XOOPS is licenced you would have lost everything

The reason I have a PROBLEM with the way that the word 'Donation' is used is due to the misuse of the wording in this case

brash wrote:
I'm fully aware that under the GPL as soon as AMS is released in any capacity it can be hacked up and repackaged, or simply offered for download elsewhere without myself having any say in it. I do make it clear to all donators that IF they choose to take this route, then they will have their user account deleted from my site, and will get no opportunity for support or access to early releases as they do now. I am hoping this, common decency and the fairly simple fact that by undermining the funding used by myself to move AMS forward they are actually only hurting the XOOPS community.

I'm under no delusion that the development model I'm using is perfect, but I am simply not in a position financially or skill set wise to be able to provide AMS as a free to download, but pay for support style arrangement. I do agree that the lack of IP protection under the GPL can sometimes be a double edged sword, but I'm not really familiar enough with any of them to be able to give an informed opinion on which one would be better (although from what I've read LGPL seems to be targeted toward these issues). I personally am not out to make money off AMS, I would simply like it to keep going forward, and in order to do that I need money to pay for coding time. As you state with the current GPL licensing I don't have a lot of room to move as it offers no protection of the funds that have been invested, and as such an upfront payment is about the only way I can think of to do this without offering a pay for support style environment which as I stated am not in a position to do.

I have recently put together an AMS Partner and AMS Sponsor program to try and encourage direct sponsorship of feature implementation into AMS, and also to try and encourage businesses who are actually making money from selling AMS as a part of their XOOPS hosting services to contribute back. In doing this I am hoping that eventually I don't have to ask the XOOPS community for money at all, but this won't happen overnight.