First of all, background reading...

community.joomla.org/blogs/leadership/63...ly-by-july-2009.html
forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=262&...8787187dd01c9914f82f
brian.teeman.net/mister-men/one-rule-for...another-for-you.html

As Aussie and NZ businesses create extensions for Joomla, and sell them online, those extensions need to have warranty and refunds as per the Australian Trade Practices Act 1974 and the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act 1993.

This means Australian and NZ businesses are unable to advertise in JED, and any business which does either has to follow their local business laws, or risk selling as a commercial GPL business model.

A commercial GPL business model is suicide since it does not follow the laws of the land. The best case scenario for an Australian or NZ business offering GPL extensions is to either allow payment for the download or for the support. The worst case scenario means that they expose themselves to undue risk because it is still GPL extensions that are still classified as trade to multiple businesses (In AU, this means the Trade Practices Act is invoked, not the Sale of Goods Act).

Potential outcomes:
1. Joomla expose itself to restraint of trade (you could get a class action by all AU and NZ businesses on this), as the direction on JED is US-centric and not reflective of Berne Convention rulings.

2. People list their extensions on JED as GPL, but since the direction from OSM has been that images, CSS and other functionality also needs to be GPL according to the (alleged) derivative nature, things fail. SMEs will get sued sooner or later by some stock media firm (e.g. Getty) for claiming an image used in a work is GPL when it aint. Getty is already targetting businesses in Australia for media stock being unfairly licenced, and this is a potential outcome due to the claims by OSM regarding derivative works.

3. Face off between Joomla's lawyers and SMEs (and/or governments) regarding warranties and refunds and other consumer protections for selling goods online.

Discuss it at your local user group.

Personally just means I probably never release any of my components I have made for other people to use.

That sounds selfish, but I find I have very limited time these days and the time to make them cleaned up enough for other people to use I am better off spending it doing other stuff. If I could build a business out of it, then it might be worth me looking at it. Forcing me to use GPL, not even going to try.

I mean I would consider doing some encrypted limited version for free and some open source model for the free one. But I do not want someone to just re-upload it for everyone to use. So I will probably just keep building my own web properties that use them.

The way I understand it, Andrew Eddie gets around this by being part of a US-based business that does not offer the same protections..

So in essence, he's claiming he's running a GPL-based business model, but it only works because he's not actually trading out of Australia or NZ with those creative works (through his affiliation with RocketWerx - note no consumer protections on the Rocketwerx site). Jxtended also does the same trick, although it does offer some consumer protections.

This counters the claims (including the interview with Steve Burge / Alledia) that Andrew is running a successful GPL-based business model with NewLifeInIt. In reality, NewLifeInIt is (as far as I can make out) developing Rok-branded and Jxt-branded materials which are then onsold through commercial GPL.

I'm more than happy for Andrew to pipe up inside this thread and prove my claims wrong, by the way.

Since Joomla originally came from Australia thanks to it being Mambo initially, how about a quiet revolution to make JED follow the Berne Convention (copyright and IP licencing is respected based on a nation's law) and not a US-based policy of GPL-only ?

Did I hear my name mentioned in vain? You still gnawing on that bone Lawrence

First steps to setting up business - talk to your accountant (he'll save you paying too much tax) - talk to your legal guy (he'll save you from everyone else). I did. If my guy is of a differing opinion than your guy - well, I'm sure "House" would have a very witty response to that but one escapes me at the moment.

I'll be in Melbourne in Feb at the J-Day so if anyone wants to chat about business or stuff like that during lunch, hunt me down near the plate of cheesecake (Mathias, you are having cheesecake aren't you?).

Also if anyone wants the name of my legal guy, let me know - I'll pass the details on.

Finally. Lawrence, it's not RocketWerx - it's JXtended. It's been that way for nearly a year now. Your assumptions about what New Life in IT is are also way off the mark.

Not gnawing. New Life in IT was paraded as the Australian GPL-based successful business model. You are the Australian Joomla poster boy for GPL-based commerce.

www.alledia.com/blog/interviews/intervie...rom-newlifeinit.com/

However, New Life doesn't do online sales. JXT does, and as such skips by the TPA because the business is incorporated within Louisiana, USA. That's why you were talking about subscription models with Steve, none of your Aussie based businesses actually offer online sales.

Why do Australian and NZ Joomla designers have to offshore their work in order to sell to Australia and NZ ? Why place an additional restriction upon designers who wish to protect their consumers in order for them to be listed on JED ?

Why should designers be punished, ostracised and considered 'non-compliant' merely because consumer protections for their local clientele has the backing of their national government ?

Oh Lawrence, you sound very confused.

It's actually Delaware, not Louisiana.

My other two business partners are in the USA, so it's just math as to why it's incorporated there (two-third is great than a half, you know how it goes).

New Life has done online sales, doesn't at the moment, but may again in the future. My contracts have a similar solution to what IBM does for software released under the GPL in different countries.

Regardless, all work for hire is GPL for Joomla work or an appropriate Open Source and copy-left license for non-Joomla work.

In my case being off-shore is a positive as I am an exporter thus doing my bit to equalise the balance of trade. Exchange rate isn't too bad at the moment either so that's a plus.

On the other points, I don't know. I don't have an answer that I think you'd be satisfied with and you never agree with me anyway Lawrence, I don't mind you asking questions, but at least do your homework and stop putting up straw-men to bolster your point of view. We get enough of that on the J forums. Surely we Aussies can be just fair dinkum about this stuff, eh?

Nah, just slightly bootstrapping. Thought JXT would at least retain it's HQ in the state it advertises its contact details from.



Mine don't; being primarily design-focused, not software focused. A few of my friends don't. Why penalise us at the JED ? Designers require different rules than coders - an artistic work, even if it includes software, is still an artistic work / commissioned work under the Copyright Act. We have to worry about usage rights and the provision of intellectual property more (sourcing from places like Getty).

The Trade Practices Act is not a strawman. As I and more than a few designers around me trade to Australians first and the rest of the world second (due to that lovely thing known as an ABN/ACN), why should our creative works be ostracised from JED?



So you don't have an answer to an effective GPL-based business model that sells online works within Australia from Australia, right ? A simple yes or no answer will satisfy me.

My answer is this (and you won't like it).

I support the choice of the GPL license. I like it and it affords me significant advantages over other licenses in both my consulting and my product development.

I respect Joomla's stance on the license and choose to work with it. Joomla's market share is significant enough to support an industry therefore I go with it. It would not be viable for me to write my own proprietary CMS (gosh, I've already written one, why would I make a rod for my back) that had virtually no market. 5 to 6 million sites and counting is a significant market driver.

I respect the JED not listing non-compatible licenses because I personally believe it dupes the consumer into a false sense of security. Consumers need to realise they don't have to put up specifically with closed source addons.

If you don't like the GPL, then either write your own CMS or hook onto another project.

However, consider this. Even if OSM *did* allow a dual license that was proprietary-friendly, it would be completely in order for them to charge a royalty on each sale of a proprietary extension, probably to give back to the committers of the project. A business wants a proprietary license to make more money (or so it thinks), for exclusivity. Why shouldn't they pay for that? It all balances out in the end.

Do the sums. Weigh up a GPL service model with a proprietary model PLUS the cost of enforcing the license PLUS possible royalty for the privilege of being able to do it. People just aren't thinking this through. I really feel that a minority in the community think that the project "owes" them the right to make it easier on them to make money (or so they think), and yet those same people have never even so much as submitted a bug patch. Where's the community spirit in that. Business is hard work - get over it.

And I'm not suggesting OSM can dual license Joomla - it can't.

I understand why you're approaching it this way, Andrew. My feelings have bugger all to do with this; this is about business models, GPL-only and what that means for Australian and NZ designers/devs on JED.

My business model currently supports open source licencing, but I do not provide online sales for GPL products (at best, I would offer pay for download), which keeps me in line with TPA. I prefer other open source licences when necessary since they allow me to work with more code architectures (Apache, BSD and Mozilla comes to mind) and less risk of GPL infection.



I don't respect Joomla's stance on the licence due to the way they went about it (censorship, hiding discussions away, permabanning, liability for DCMA on the stupids rant), nor the fact it's US-centric. Basically, they dug their own hole with this one..

If it was aimed at true international enforcement / voluntary compliance, both the FAQ and various edicts from Louis Landry (all extensions went to some extensions went to "case by case basis" extensions being derivative works, with template/plugins packs still being non-derivative) would correctly address how this is achievable. Nobody has. The wall of silence continues.

No international grounds for legality means there is bugger all OSM can do about commercial (non-GPL-only) designers and developers wanting to protect their local clientele through the TPA. It would look immature if OSM wanted to press a GPL suit against a business in Australia since contract law would recognise that the sale of goods between a business and a client is based on the contract, not on the copyright licence for the use of a specific application (Joomla) by that client.

Yes, Joomla has a significant industry grown out of it, but that's only because of the ability to plug in an XML file that then allows the core application to address and access a new function/library/module/plugin/template. Without that XML file, there is no link. CMS Report also recognised this; the strength of Joomla is not the core itself, but the ability to plug in new functions. I've also written a few proprietary CMS products myself, and so acknowledge the issues about viability.



Consumers also need to realise they have rights to protection in terms of sales online, and those protections are not afforded under a commercialised GPL online sales model.

All the big boys (IBM, Sun, Red Hat, Novell, Likewise, ZenOSS) provide commercial support models, but not sales models (unless it's an embedded appliance - something which would not be feasible as a business model for Joomla).

You personally believe the usage rights of a designer creating an artistic work which may end up running on Joomla dupes the consumer into a false sense of security ? How ? On what basis ?

Remember:
Closed source != limited usage rights.
GPL != open source



I do like the GPL. I use the GPL myself. I don't like the way it's being used in a US-centric fashion to prove a point about the way international designers and developers should treat their clientele, or even to have a voice on JED. Basically, it's use the GPL or GTFO, irrespective of consumer laws.

Joomla is an international project, right ? Why doesn't the JED's ruling reflect those international consumer laws? Well ?

This is the same problem that affected OSM's initial ruling of GPL-compatible stuff. No recognition of international laws means no protection for consumers, unless OSM demands businesses change their business model to accomodate their whims. And that's not gonna happen without a lawsuit or two (which I bet OSM will get pwned for).

I will use the GPL when necessary for my business. I will still continue to produce GPL-compatible licenced works. I just don't believe you, the JED team or OSM, can justify a claim that other designers and developers should GTFO / change the way we do business when OSM doesn't even have a proper internationalised understanding of voluntary compliance regarding GPL-only or GPL-compatible works.

Business is hard work, and the best way that I do business is providing a quality product that includes consumer protections. Why should I change when I'm protecting my clientele ? You want me to remove those protections merely so I can advertise ? Think about it..

(I've ignoring the stuff about dual licencing Joomla since you're talking about the core framework, not the extensions.. and I and more than a few I know are in the business of providing extensions)

I've submitted more than a few bug patches over the years I've been with the project.. but at the end of the day, a bug patch to the core is not my USP.

Lawrence, it's clear you have a beef with the project and a beef with the US. That's fine, but take it up with them. Write to OSM directly. I'm really not interested in responding to that sort of stuff.

I warned you that nothing I could say would appease you.

Nobody is forcing you to support Joomla. If you don't like them, go somewhere else. Mambo (if it's still alive) has a more liberal view of things, they might suit you better. Avoid Drupal and Typo3 and others of that ilk because they hold to the same values. If you want to play in the Joomla space but in deference to the license, trademarking, etc, that's fine, but you have to take responsibility for the impact of that decision. "Joomla made me do it" doesn't wash with me, sorry.

I'm happy to answer most questions, but I'm not getting tied up in endless rhetoric over what amounts to probably a dozen or more separate topics in your last post. I just can't keep up with your train of thought.

I respect your opinions and your right to have them, but I don't agree with them and I really have no interest in trying to justify why you, personally, should change your mind.

Writing won't solve anything. Even if I got my lawyers to do it. As you said on the Joomla forums in regards to the JED decision, all it does is detract from writing code (or in my case, designing shiny stuff). A better strategy is to leave signposts along the way for the gotchas. That way people will learn in their own way without threats, free to learn the paper trail themselves.



I like Joomla as a codebase. I will continue to develop Joomla solutions under varying licences including GPL. I disagree with the decisions made by the powers that be. I have to support my Joomla clientele, after all. I won't leave. I don't need to. I know the product pretty well, since I started with it over 6 years ago. Why lose a good thing?

You also expose what this is really about. Different values in regards to open source ideology and application of that through licencing and control. Yet these values are not enshrined in laws, and businesses, if they don't want to get audited by the ATO, need to follow certain business laws. Basically those values, as stated by the PMs of Joomla and in the FAQ, do not reflect law. There is no precedent that they will stand in a court of law, let alone in a legal argument facing off against the TPA.



I am taking responsibility - that's why I provide non-GPL works to my clientele in order to protect them. The real question is - is OSM since it claims Joomla is an international project yet the edits from it do not reflect international law ?



Joomla hasn't changed my business model one iota. The only things that have changed are the values by those powers that be regarding voluntary compliance of international developers such as yourself and myself.

This is why the only response I've ever seen from anyone even close to the powers that be is "If you don't like our decisions, leave" when confronted with these unique legal issues that Joomla hasn't addressed. Yet that means Joomla loses people who know the codebase intimately. That's great PR on their part, right??

Decisions != codebase
Decisions != project
Decisions != law
Decision != sane business

I just want to add the following to the discussion.

JED is a Free Directory Service. The decision to list GPL Extensions only from July 1, is an Editorial Policy decision from the project and not a legal enforcement. All talk that this should break several Australian and International laws are just ridiculous.

The push of voluntary compliance by OSM 1.5 years ago is what violates Australian law if businesses such as my own choose to provide online sales for Joomla and other FOSS CMS packages as creative works. The commercial GPL online sales model may well work overseas (though probably not by a Swedish design firm selling online, thanks to Sweden's own Marketing Act), but it don't work here.

JED gets in the firing line thanks to talk of 'non-compliant' applications being removed from JED. If it was simply an editorial policy, who determined 'compliance' was a factor ?

After all, Elin Waring goes as far as stating:

forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?p=1528329#p1528329

That existing policy is what was given 1.5 years ago, and and such, remains broken when taking into account Australian and NZ designers selling online.

Remember, Aussie and NZ designers need to follow the TPA first and foremost before taking into consideration the CMS they're deploying their creative works to. Locking 2 nations out of the JED to advertise does seem fairly US-centric. Tad unfair, as well.

There's also a risk sooner or later someone will have a Getty smackdown for infecting a GPL application on JED with Getty licenced images. It might have happened before, but the fact editorial licencing guidelines have changed only increases the risk as some might assume an image is GPL because it's been taken from somewhere.

Thanks for sharing Lawrence.