Compassdesigns.net

The open source model
has, over the last 20 years, proven that collaborative development is
one of the best ways to incorporate the newest ideas and latest
concepts into design.

In fact, the open source model, which
began with programmers, has been so successful that it is currently
being applied in government, media, education and private business. But
despite these new applications, the unique combination of the open
source model with the universalism of web design remains one of the
ideal applications of open source. This pervasiveness of the open
source spirit in web design now means that you can use open source
software to design both graphics and your CSS and HTML, and you can
also use the dozens of reliable open source code resources or thousands
of web design templates to base your own designs on. In this article we
highlight 100 open source web design templates, resources, and tools.

Head on over to Design Vitality to check out their 100 Web Design Template Sources, Tools and Resources

A new set of forums have been created specially for 1.5.

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,428.0.html  General Questions
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,429.0.html Installation
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,430.0.html Migrating and upgrading
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,432.0.html Security
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,431.0.html Administration
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/board,433.0.html Performance

Keep a close eye on news from Compass, we have 3 great templates that we are preparing for 1.5, and two of them are free! 

Last week I came across the site of a developer (whom I believed to be an employee of one of the members of Joomla’s oversite organization, Open Source Matters) selling extensions that carry a non-GPL compatible license. I sent that developer (and only the developer) an email to make him aware of Joomla’s statement of its license and that he was, in fact, violating it.

For people to decide themselves the magnitude of what I did, the text of the email reads:

Hi XXXXX*,

"This license is for installing the component in ONE production server (non-public) and for ONE public site"

Your license violates the GPL as defined by the recent Joomla core team decision. You must have a GPL compatible license.

Additionally, please provide me with the source code of your extensions as is required by the GPL license and the Joomla core team.
—
Regards,
Barrie North

* I won’t potentially embarrass the developer by giving out their name. I consider that information private, which is why I sent the email only to them and nobody else.

I did not receive any response from the developer, who apparently forwarded it on to officials at Joomla. I did not receive any direct or personal communication from any Joomla official.

On Saturday, Louis Landry, a Joomla core team member and one of the three Project Managers made a very public blog post on the Developer’s Blog at Joomla.org commenting on my email. I assume the developer forwarded it to him.

The same day, there seemed to be an organized attempt by many of the core team digging his blog post.

Certainly, Louis and I disagree on many points about the wisdom (and legality) of the core’s decision regarding the GPL.

In my disagreement over the Joomla Core’s decisions expressed here at Compass, I have tried to remained objective and professional and have never used any language that has been directed personally at members of the core. People will rarely listen to your point of view if they can’t see past the words you are using. I’d encourage you to read my posts on the subject to see for yourself.

I view my email as being a private communication from one dev to another regarding Joomla’s license. I am also concerned about the potential for a double standard of enforcement. Developers with close ties to the Joomla Core are held to the same standards of "education" as those that have none.

Louis spends several words explaining why he thinks I’m "stupid" (the most generous phrase used) for my understanding and interpretation of the GPL, and for the words I used to express this understanding to the developer in my private email.

You all can decide for yourself if I’m "stupid." But, consider these two different sentences:

• "It is our opinion that most extensions are derivative works of Joomla! and must be licensed under the GNU GPL." –
  Core Team statement
• "You must have a GPL compatible license." –
  Quote from my email.

I see those two statements as expressing fundamentally the same thing. Mine was perhaps even more generous as I said GPL-compatible, rather than pure GPL.

Was it appropriate for me to send this personal email to another developer?

Since the debate over the GPL and Joomla began, I have discovered that many devs are not even aware of the Core Team’s decision. Many devs who have been clued in to the evolving status of Joomla’s license have acknowledged or commented about the change on their blogs and sites, whether they supported one opinion or another. This particular dev had not. I wanted to make sure he was aware of the issue.

I considered that my email, and any response, might reveal the limits of understanding and exposure of third party developers to the recent debates and licensing decisions by the Core Team. Had this dev, with his ties to the Joomla core team via his employer, been unaware of the changes, this would have told us much about the lack of communication and outreach.

I send my most sincere apologies for the dev involved here. Seeing as nothing seems private any longer, it will only be a matter of time before Louis’s blog post causes his name to be dragged into this.

SMF is one of the most popular forums used in Joomla websites, the official Joomla forums use it. Part of its adoption has been the hard (volunteer) work of an SMF developer Orstio who has developed a bridge between SMF and Joomla.

If you have followed the raging debate around the core team’s decision to re-interpret the GPL license for Joomla, you might have noticed a common theme that their belief seems to be that developer’s who wish to make non-GPL compliant [emphasis added, I believe this opinion to be legally inaccurate] extensions would be educated to become compliant, or just slip into the shadows, or people would duplicate their project, or their extension wasn’t very important anyway.

Well, it looks like the bridge for the most powerful and popular forum for Joomla is going to become unavailable for end users.

I’d note that the source is open for this bridge, its freely available, it just doesn’t have a GPL-compatible license because SMF requires a link in the footer.

It seems that the people who will really end up losing are the end users. Before the new license re-interpretation, they had free access to a powerful forum to use in their Joomla website. Now they don’t.

All because of a link in the footer….

 

 

I’ll leave you with a fascinating quote from some guy called Linus. I think he made some bit of code or other, Linux or something….

I’ve said that over and over again. It’s the "spirit of the GPLv2". It’s what has made it such a great license, that lots of people (and companies) can use, is very fundamentally that it’s fair.

The fact that the FSF sees *another* spirit to it is absolutely not a reason to say that I’m "confused". Quite frankly, apparently I’m _less_ confused than they are, since I saw the GPLv2 for what it was, and they did not – and as a result they felt they needed to extend upon it, because the license didn’t actually match what they thought it would do.

I respect peoples freedoms too. I just disagree with the FSF on what that slippery word means.

I’m damn fed up with the FSF being the "protector of freedoms", and also
feeling that they can define what those freedoms mean.

 
Celebrate your independence and freedom of speech with Joomla’s best blogging components!

Here in the U.S. where Joomlashack is based, today is the Fourth of July, the day Americans celebrate our nation’s independence.

While many remember the American Revolution as a war, the real struggle was one of ideas and words, not bullets and bayonets. The same is true in our modern world, except instead of just paper pamphlets and letters to the editor, we have a powerfully interactive medium for expressing oneself: blogging. Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence, posting “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” on his blog? Imagine the comments he’d receive!

Declare your own independence on your Joomla site using the newly released and brilliant Joomla blogging component, Myblog. For a limited time, you can buy Myblog and Jomcomment for 15% off their regular retail price. Hurry- offer ends July 11th.