Can developers legally sell addons created for use with Nuke

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:08 pm

djmaze wrote:

BTW i've put the summary in a seperate topic Wink

Really... Ive been updating the Summary in this area as it has been changing, you should put a link to it here.

What I was talking above above and its already been clarified is that statutes from other types of licenses that are not GPL, cannot be put into these additional terms that a website owner has added, if the downloadable file is already GPL based.

pcn

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:10 pm

http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/postt8424.html Wink

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Tony, as always, thanks for chiming in Smile

And you're right about our age-old bantering Wink

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:26 pm

DjMaze

Maybe Raven could bump that final summary up to STICKY & Lock it down - since its an issue everyone should review.

pcn

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:57 pm

Interesting, in the context of standalone versus running with CMS's I just came across this on the sweetphp site: Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login!

Quote:

5/25/2005 - PHP Classes added to Downloads section
Two useful PHP classes have been added to our downloads section. There is a CSV import class which will allow you to easily import data from a CSV file into a MySQL table on your server. The other class is a CMS conversion class that allows you to more easily create modules for PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, and CPGNuke. It will take your existing code and format it to work with the CMS of your choice. This is the class that allows TotalCalendar to work with all these CMS's and be a standalone application at the same time. Very useful if you are new to writing your own modules.

I haven't downloaded it but assuming that it works right it might be a partial answer to some of the issues addressed in this thread.

registered · Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:22 pm

Quote:

If i released the theme.php and the images in a single archive then everyone may distribute it since the GPL states that anything in a archive is GPL'd. But that doesn't mean you may alter the copyrights as stated by the GPL.

I had a question concerning selling of phpNuke themes. There was a service that I saw sells the entire phpNuke theme, but they have some license where they make you pay for any changes to the theme. Under their terms, you can't even change the wording on the theme logos without their permission. Is this allowed under GPL?

Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:20 pm

evaders99 wrote:

Quote:

If i released the theme.php and the images in a single archive then everyone may distribute it since the GPL states that anything in a archive is GPL'd. But that doesn't mean you may alter the copyrights as stated by the GPL.

I had a question concerning selling of phpNuke themes. There was a service that I saw sells the entire phpNuke theme, but they have some license where they make you pay for any changes to the theme. Under their terms, you can't even change the wording on the theme logos without their permission. Is this allowed under GPL?

If the theme needs phpnuke to run then the theme and all parts of the theme are GPL. End of discussion Wink

New Member Joined: Aug 24, 2003 Posts: 11

I skimmed through this thread and noticed some folks said images in Nuke themes are automatically GPL too. I think you're incorrect because the license specifically refers to software.

I bet many here use the free version of MySQL. For those who distribute proprietary applications, the MySql developers require you to purchase a commercial license. Perhaps a way around this problem is by using a database extraction layer so your application can run on more than one database.

If you distribute a proprietary application in any way, and you are not licensing and distributing your source code under GPL, you need to purchase a commercial license of MySQL

http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/index.html

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 8:29 am

You mean for any non-OpenSource / non-free application must have a commercial MySQL license.

money wrote:

I skimmed through this thread and noticed some folks said images in Nuke themes are automatically GPL too. I think you're incorrect because the license specifically refers to software.

GPL wrote:

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

The "whole work" is GPL so this is also your graphics, flash and whatever else you put in there.
"software" and "program" are words that combine everything in the whole work so you interpretation is incorrect.

Regular Joined: Jun 15, 2005 Posts: 78 Location: AR

Ok So tell me how templatemonster gets away with selling phpnuke themes.....

Link to TM PHPNuke Themes:
http://www.templatemonster.com/phpnuke-themes.php

Link to thier terms:
http://www.templatemonster.com/terms.php

Section 2 of the terms

Quote:

LICENSE
Our website grants you non-exclusive limited license to use the web templates and other products sold through our web site by independent content providers (the "products") in accordance with these Terms and Conditions (the "license") issued by our company.

a) LIMITED USAGE GRANTED
You may use each individual product on a single website only, belonging to either you or your client. You have to purchase the same template once more in order to make another project with the same design.

b) IMAGERY, CLIPARTS AND FONTS
All imagery, clipart and fonts used in our templates are royalty-free and are the integral part of our products. Limited-usage License gives you the right to use images, clipart and fonts only as a part of the website you build using your template. You can use imagery, clipart and fonts to develop one project only. Any kind of separate usage or distribution is prohibited.

c) MODIFICATIONS
You are authorized to make any necessary modification(s) to our products to fit your purposes.

d) UNAUTHORIZED USE
You may not place any of our products, modified or unmodified, on a diskette, CD, website or any other medium and offer them for redistribution or resale of any kind without prior written consent from our company.

e) ASSIGNABILITY
You may not sub-license, assign, or transfer this license to anyone else without prior written consent from templatemonster.com.

f) OWNERSHIP
You may not claim intellectual or exclusive ownership to any of our products, modified or unmodified. All products are property of independent content providers. Our products are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. In no event shall our juridical person be liable for any damages including, but not limited to, direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages or other losses arising out of the use of or inability to use our products.

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 10:20 am

Xiode, that's what this whole discussion is about. I do think you raised a very good point about the license applying to "software" and that images are not "software". The same holds true for "fonts". As I was reading over the GPL and the FAQ, I saw where "fonts" were discussed but not "images". So, I shot off this email to the keepers of the flame. I will post back if/when I receive a response.

Gaylen to the FSF GPL Compliance Lab Office wrote:

If a theme is written for a GPL'd application and is of no use w/o that application, then the theme must be GPL also. That is clear. What about the images that are released with the theme? Are they GPL? Meaning, are you then free to use them outside of that particular theme? Are you free to use them outside of that application?

Thank you,

Regular Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 95 Location: NY

I've emailed FSF dozens of times regarding the legality of licensing my old Emporium add-on before it was 'mistakenly' released with GPL tags (although apparently it was always GPL according to the responses in this thread). Those dozen emails received different responses in which claimed that I was allowed to license the addon, and some specified that I couldn't.

Considering the different responses, I assumed it was ok to license my work however I wanted since about half of the responses said that it was legal under the license. Most of the responses claimed that as long as I didn't release the script WITH phpnuke in one single package, then everything was ok.

Fortunately, I am done with FSF and GPL. Too much time and effort spent debating the legality of this poorly written license, for the poorly written software in question.

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:31 pm

squiresmk wrote:

Fortunately, I am done with FSF and GPL. Too much time and effort spent debating the legality of this poorly written license, for the poorly written software in question.

I'm totally with you here, but we can't ignore it.

You and me are both designing a new CMS with our own license, but what if someone modifies/ports GPL'd code and puts that into our CMS (which are not GPL)?
The issue here is that the GPL crusadors (not the smart people) will try many ways to put something into GPL.
For example they create an add-on for our CMS and put it with the GPL. The GPL states that anything that is using this GPL code must be GPL as well. This would force us to create an application under the GPL and not our own license.
I covered this in my own license to explicitly state that any 3rd party software must have a license that doesn't interfere with my own. Thus you may use the LGPL, for example, but not the GPL.
Similar behavior can be found in PHP, Apache and the FreeBSD license which don't force you to use their license, so they give you freedom of choice.

Worker Joined: Oct 05, 2003 Posts: 107 Location: Illinois

Xiode wrote:

Ok So tell me how templatemonster gets away with selling phpnuke themes.....

Anyone can sell anything they want basically, but they have absolutely no legal right to attempt to sue anyone for distributing their work for free. That has been plainly established by the GPL. This includes anything, addons or themes. Yes this includes the images. That is what several theme designers have found out when attempting to take people to court for distributing their themes on their site. They lost. That is why several theme designers stopped designing Nuke themes.

If you want to make money and avoid people giving away your work then your only option is to create your own CMS.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 2:12 pm

OK... I have to get back into this conversation..... I did a little research and found somethig interesting. This conversation was found on the dupal site listed here. http://drupal.org/node/37504... Within this post I found this:

Quote:

I Just received this clarification from FSF
lekei - February 1, 2006 - 03:09
I just received the following clarification from FSF. Brett Smith asked that to allow discussion of this I post the entire email to this forum. The only edit I did for security was to change the representation of email addresses:

-----Original Message-----
From: www-data [mailto:www-data[nospam at]gnu.org] On Behalf Of Brett Smith via RT
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 3:13 PM
To: 37504[nospam at]lekei.ca
Cc: licensing[nospam at]gnu.org
Subject: [gnu.org #263707] Clarification or the interpretation for PHP

> 37504[nospam at]lekei.ca - Wed Dec 21 12:54:31 2005]:
>
> Is there some legal clarification on the application of GPL when it
effects
> systems written in PHP?
>
> There is some confusion because a literal interpretation of the FAQ
> with regards to a content management system such as Drupal, which uses
> an
API to
> implement page templates instead of a token interpreter.
>
> Does this mean that page templates cannot contain copyright, NDA
restricted,
> or other proprietary or restricted distribution information if the
design is
> done for a client?

Dear Don,

If Drupal is licensed under the GNU GPL, with no exceptions of any kind, and templates call functions in the code like you describe, then we believe those templates would constitute a derivative work of the code. In that case, they would need to be licensed under the GPL as well.

If this concerns you, I encourage you to contact the Drupal developers to ask for a clarification of the license, or special permission to develop proprietary templates. If they say they don't intend for the GPL to apply to templates, then that's all you need; the licensor's intent holds plenty of weight in determining what licensees may do, even in court. And if there are many developers who expect to be able to do this, I think you'll probably get this permission.

> Please also indicate if your reply can be forwarded to the community
> as a whole to allow them to make the appropriate decision as to
> whether the license needs to be amended.

You may reproduce this e-mail in its entirety, including the portions that quote your original question, without modification. Please note that this is not legal advice; developers who want legal advice should contact a lawyer.

Best regards,

--
Brett Smith
Free Software Foundation Licensing Team

If you go to here and look at the Commercial License You will see:

Quote:

What you CAN'T do with the Commercial License?

You can't remove third parties modules's copyrights (for example: phpBB, Privates Messages, Members List, WebMail, Journal...)

Transfer this license to anyone

Remove the copyright in a site which domain name is different than the authorized one

If you look at the logic behind the copyright file. Can't you gather that FB wanted developers to hold thier own copyrights to thier work? Is he not covering 3rd party anything here. In order for him to offer a commercial license he would have to give the commercial license holders rights to 3rd party addons and modules too right? Unless he is giving us the right to develop under our own licenses.....

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 3:20 pm

Copyrights and licenses are not necessarily related.

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 3:22 pm

But doesn't he provide an area within the copyright file to list a license other than GNU/GPL? Think about it. If the sole intent of everything was to be GPL wouldn't he have made it to where you couldn't do that. I guess the only thing to do is ask FB....

Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2006 7:15 pm

You either release an archive as GPL in whole or 2 archives, 1 gpl and other yours, or release the whole pack under a different license.

FB always release nuke under the GPL, even the Commercial version since he is bound to the GPL thanks to many developers and phpBB.
If he releases the commercial pack under a different license he must ask all developers their approval.

So instead the only thing the commercial license offers is the removal of the lines that says "copyright php-nuke", nothing more.
That's why his other license states that copyrights about phpBB and such may not be removed.

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 7:35 am

Well your so into getting everything for free... did you read the email? Have you asked FB? If no one else will ask him how do I get ahold of him?

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 7:53 am

Xiode - I think we are missing a valuable point that seems to have escaped the context of your post.
phpNuke was not 'invented' by FB, it is a derivative work of Thatware which is GPL.
So from what I have read so far even if FB wanted to change the license, he couldn't.

Regular Joined: Dec 29, 2005 Posts: 62

GNU/GPL License does not require 3PDs to release their application under the same terms unless derived works were taking from that application released under the GNU/GPL.

GNU/GPL License is a protection, a warranty, end-user license agreement made between merchant and client.

From what I have read, the majority of you believe that you can take anything developed or compatiable for PHP-Nuke and do as you please.

This is wrong and to those of us that have spent hundreds of hours to be ripped off isn't right.

I understand this is a very young and unexperienced audience that uses PHP-Nuke/PostNuke which is why many of us release baby copies of our software to protect ourselves from those dirty fingers...

I honestly would like to know what the users feel as that's the most important issue to me regardless of right and wrong as your going to do what's promoted, follow suit.

If this is the case, it's time to close up shop and move on...

Personally, I've out-grown PHP-Nuke and doubtful any real php programmers would consider using it however this is a great thread which should be discussed.

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:21 pm

WD-40, I'm not sure what you're saying in your first statement so please clarify. The GPL is very clear that if your application requires phpnuke to be started up in order to run and it can't run w/o it, it is GPL and can be modified and re-released with any version of php-nuke. As long as it is written for and depends on php-nuke, it is GPL.

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:32 pm

WD-40 wrote:

Stuff about things regarding other stuff about more things.

Did you even bother reading this thread and the responses posted by FSF themselves regarding this very issue?

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:53 pm

Raven wrote:

WD-40, I'm not sure what you're saying in your first statement so please clarify. The GPL is very clear that if your application requires phpnuke to be started up in order to run and it can't run w/o it, it is GPL and can be modified and re-released with any version of php-nuke. As long as it is written for and depends on php-nuke, it is GPL.

For example,

The new builds of NukeMatch 06 are pure scripts that do not require PHP-Nuke in order to run, however I have built integration functions in a seperate file to import user db into the players db.

All functions reside within their own files, making use of external template files that use PHP-Nuke/PostNuke's $bgcolor1,2,3,4 plus additional function addition to your account module to copy changes to players db plus a menu link to teams manager.

There is not one section within NukeMatch 06 that was derived from any other sources. There's an estimated proposed labor time exceeding 300+ hours.

I was planning on closing NukeMatch Systems prior to new source builds to hold exclusive copyrights, however if your stating these sources can be redistributed then I'd rather not support it and inform all users.

I'm not trying to debate, just want to know what will be promoted.

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2006 10:07 pm

It's not a derivation issue at this point. As I used in one of my examples to the FSF, my KISGB is a stand alone application and I can use whatever license I want. However, I also built code wrappers around the code so that it can be used in phpnuke. It is not a derivative work, per se, but as long as it is made to run as a nuke module, that version of KISGB must remain GPL according to the FSF because it cannot run w/o phpnuke. I don't know if that helps or not.

In my mind, about the only way to work around this, if it's even worth it, is to use iframes and not use any of phpnuke's code. Write all your own db interfaces, etc. Or just write your own CMS.

The whole purpose (agenda) of the FSF is to keep everything free for use. Either you're on the band wagon or not.