CForms II removed from Repository.

[hallsofmontezuma]

This is what kingrat had to say:
If you don’t agree with my thinking, take this example. Say for instance someone copies Wordpress, calls it Secure Wordpress, fixes a very complicated security bug and then makes his version available for 1 million dollars. Of course, once the first copy is sold, the new owner can then make his/her copy of the code freely available. In essence, one developer could put the open source community under hostage. I guarantee the GPL license was not intended to allow something like this example to occur.
Nothing in the GPL prevents this. I can sell GPL code all I want, so long as I meet the various terms. I can even sell it for $1 million. I can sell it and only release the source code to the people I sell it to. The people who buy can release it if they want.
Granted, this makes it kind of pointless to sell for a lot, or to release only to those who bought the binaries.
Selling GPL software is absolutely fine. Red Hat makes a business of it.

There is plenty of commercial GPL software out there. You always run the risk of someone repackaging it and profiting from it. Look at the Revolution themes. They understand that someone could easily buy their software, then just sell it as their own. I guess you just have to hope that people will come to you instead, since you'll have the updates, official support, etc. How do you think WordPress started? Matt didn't come up with it himself. It's a fork from B2. If B2 charged for their software, he could have still done it. If Matt starts charging for WordPress tomorrow, I can still take the code, make whatever changes to it I desire, and sell it for my own profit. The idea is that people will still get the "real thing" from WordPress. Unless mine is better. Which of course is what happened with WordPress itself.

[Ryan]

Do you think they realised the plugin had to be GPL to be in the plugins repository? That would be rather cheeky if they uploaded it there knowing that they were in breach of the plugin repository requirements.

The notices about GPL requirements are all over the place though. It would be hard not to know about it ...


I was intending to help promote the cForms plugin as I'd tried it out recently while trying to fix a bug in it for a client and was extemely impressed. But that won't be happening now :(

[hallsofmontezuma]

Of course Oliver knew that. It's on the plugin submissions page. There are all of maybe three rules on that page, and one of them is that it has to be GPL-compatible.

[Len]

I wonder why the author simply didn't go down the same road Brian Gardner did with his themes, make the code freely available but charge for support or some such thing?

[hallsofmontezuma]

Brian's code was already freely (as in speech) available. His themes have always been open source, he just recently started claiming them as GPL.

Who knows why it went down this way. Plenty of plugins, including one of mine, have links back to the author. Oliver seemed to take it to a whole new level though. I actually got a nasty email from him some months back on a website for having removed the link. Plenty of people remove the link in my plugin, but I would never send them emails about it, and I would never have this reaction that he's had today.
Maybe a fork is best for everyone after all. This is a great plugin and I would hate to see it go.

[Len]

His themes have always been open source, he just recently started claiming them as GPL.

Oh I realize that but until recently the only way to get your hands of one of his themes was to purchase it unless you went to one of those theme galleries which offered it. (of which there is no shortage)

[conorp]

@conorp Oh it's a great plugin. The next best thing is Contact 7, which doesn't even come close. Download a copy of CForms and play around with it and you'll see what I mean.

Alright I will have a play with the plugin tonight.

[Len]

@ conorp

At the risk of getting off topic I use Secure Form Mailer by Dagon Design. I've used it for a long time and have no complaints. It's not that hard to set up.

[itsananderson]

Is the author charging for the plugin now?

Also, remember that Brian Gardner IS releasing under GPL.

EDIT: Man, like 3 posts since the one I meant to respond to. Sorry about that :) Guess I'm too slow.

[Ryan]

http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin][/url]... chances are that support and further development will end with version 10.2 ... I've roughly spend 3000 hours on cforms ... What I do have an issue with are users taking the cforms code, modifying it, repackaging it and selling it as their effort to make profit. I do not approve of that and if that makes cforms non compliant to GPL and what not then that's what it is.

Looks like the plugin will be dissapearing from the WordPress community then. It's a pity since it was so good.



If they don't like the GPL and aren't willing to write their plugin in a way that circumvents it, then they shouldn't bother developing software for WordPress IMO.