pizzicar

It has been quite the drama within the forums at Joomla.org. With the beta 2 of Joomla 1.5, there was discussion around the GPL status of Joomla. This led the Joomla Core Team to meet with FSF legal folk - leading to a decision to make Joomla pure GPL and requiring third party commercial developers to comply with the GPL on their components. (note: Joomla was always GPL - the issue centers around component extensions)

While the developers were considering off line, this Huge thread at Joomla.org has grown to 60 pages as the community members speculated on the direction - good comments and flames abounded.

The developers response came in around page 58

Bottom line is that if you are using commercial components within your Joomla sites, there is some uncertainty regarding which commercial developers will comply and release GPL compliant components (some type of business model change required) - and which may abandon the project.

(note for the GPL impaired - there is no issue with commercial developers, the issue is around the license the component is released under and the inclusion of source code).

I'll be keeping my eye on this as I do use a couple of commercial components in one of my sites - and will update any feedback I see. Also, please don't debate GPL/not GPL in this thread - goodness knows I've seen enough of that the last couple of days. The thread is only intended to inform and discuss any impacts that may fall out of the decision.

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Kayla

pizzicar - thank you for keeping us on the Joomla scoopla! Much appreciated (and interesting!)

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Bigjohn

I have yet to deploy a commercial extension... but thanks for the update!

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pizzicar

Just a couple of quick updates:

SMF has pulled their SMF/Joomla bridge as the licenses are not compatible even though they are both "free" software. SMF is working on a new bridge that will be compatible but don't know how long it will take. In the interim, if you need a bridge for this popular forum software, you can go to http://www.joomlahacks.com where they have a GPL'd bridge.

Also, if you want to try a new forum board for Joomla, try Fireboard - it is the merging of the old Joomlaboard and some new developers - it looks quite promising for a forum that is fully integrated and needs no bridge. I am playing with it on a new site I am developing and will let you know what I think.

Clexus PM, makers of a popular forum PM software has pulled their component off for sale.

I'll try to keep this updated with any major changes that I see.

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"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours"

pizzicar

Joomla has made the stance that plugin's (extensions) are derivatives and therefore must be licensed GPL (in general). Commercial developers have created a site to discuss and figure out how to best respond. Some interesting posts there - JCD-A Site. The general consensus among the commercial developers is that there is too much uncertainty with Joomla and some number(?) of them are going back to Mambo for future development. Mambo, according to their license page, has the opinion that extensions are not derivatives and software developers can license them however they would like. (summary of Mambo status from a post on JCD-A)

A few high profile Joomla core and subcore developers have resigned from Joomla and are also migrating back to Mambo. The Joomla forums have cut off open debate and discussion on the topic - you can create a post in a special "lounge" forum but only the moderators can respond. All other threads on the topics have been locked.

If I read the tea leaves right - Joomla will continue to develop and grow (though at a slower pace IMHO) but this may be the tipping point for Mambo who will see new developer blood coming into the project as well as some users who use commercial components following the developers and migrating to Mambo as well.

News at 11:00

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"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours"