WURFL data is no longer open source

I always saw a shift towards monetization of the WURFL module ... Very subtle move :).

To be honest, my interest in WURFL got lost at a certain point because of complexity, performance and a lowering need for a full featured device detection algorithm. I think it still has a place in some situations where exact device detection is very important or detection of specific low end devices is needed ... However most Drupal sites these days can work fine without the elaborated detection of devices and only target modern mobile browsers that are easily detectable using regular expressions. Also the integration of WURFL with Akamai, Varnish and Apache is not always easy to setup.

On the other hand following tools are getting more and more useful:

• Regular expressions to detect browsers (can be integrated with Akamai, varnish, apache), Browser manufactures try to help you in detecting versions too.
• Media queries to get specific characteristics of the browser (screen size, orientiation, ...)
• Javascript to detect capabilities such as geolocation, accelerator, offline storage

There will always be a project with the need to detect the exact device type and capabilities, but maybe it is not the task of an open source community to keep supporting commercial tools.

From what I can tell, WURFL is still open source under the AGPL license. The major difference between AGPL and the GPL is that if you create a derivative work of GPL'd code and deploy it only on your own server, you don't have to release the source code. But with the AGPL you do have to release your source code.

This means that WURLF can still be used commercially, as long as whatever implementation is used is open sourced.

At least, that's how I read it. I've emailed ScientiaMobile (the guys who look after WURFL) for more info.

Seems they are splitting the code & the data here. The AGPL isn't compatible with the GPL:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License

However, do think that there's some additional confusion about how this is presented & reason for concern. I don't think they are asking people to pay for the code, unless it's under a dual license, but for the data that they maintain. I don't know that any of my clients are keen to pay the $1500 for an updated list of the data.

We're likely to use tools like this & find better ways to integrate these simpler tools with our sites.
https://github.com/sebarmeli/JS-Redirection-Mobile-Site

For reference, I reached out to the developer on this. The data is NOT open source anymore. For the case of a small site (say a store that sells cheese) to use it on their website they would need to pay for the base license. I've discussed developers, situations, license schemes, etc with the guys behind this. For the time being you need a license to use the data.

I would recommend starting a separate open source project (apart from d.o) where others can contribute and use. One that does some form of basic feature/device detection. For much of what we do on the web we don't need to know loads of details about a device. It would be nice to know screen size/resolution (for image handling), maybe if the device is an iphone or an ipad.

It's unfortunate there is not open source project to do basic server side detection. I imagine a new project/simple project could be started from the last piece of open source WURFL code though.

To be clear, GPLv3 and AGPLv3 at totally, explicitly compatible. Drupal is licensed under GPLv2 *or later*, so it is inherently valid as GPLv3 as well, therefore it is indeed compatible with AGPL code.

Your references were in respect to mismatched versions, like GPLv2 <=> AGPLv3 or GPLv3 <=> AGPLv1.

kamermans and Roger, this issue is with the database of information used for the detection. That database is not GPL, AGPL, or any other open source license. New releases of that has moved to a proprietary license. If you want to use the last snapshot of the open source version you can. But, that is quickly becoming out of date.

JohnAlbin, thanks for the clarification between the API and the data file, and which is licensed under what license. I wasn't making the distinction between the two.

I emailed Luca Passani, the maintainer of WURFL, and his response was that any commercial use of the WURFL data would require licensing fees - even if just using mobile detection on a single site. I don't know if this would apply to non-profits as well, but it seems any use of the WURFL data needs $1500/site/year. The cloud service looks promising, but isn't yet available.

There's definitely scope for someone to pick up the last version of WURFL to fork into an open source project, but given the current maintainer's response, that sounds like a lot of hard work, and no-one has yet stepped up to do this.

The maintenance of the current drupal WURFL module would have to be judged on how many sites would be willing to shell out $1500...

So isn't WURFL data collected by user submissions? So they've been collecting user's submissions and now decided to license it? I'm steaming right now. It's a big hit for everyone.

Hi, Luca Passani of ScientiaMobile here. Someone told me about this party, so I figured I would join to provide ScientiaMobile's viewpoint.

here is a link that should address most questions:

http://www.scientiamobile.com/support

to make a long story short, WURFL has been a popular project, but while small and medium-sized companies never paid a dime for API licenses or support, large companies never paid a dime either, so the project was not very sustainable in its previous form.
That's why I, Steve Kamerman (Tera-WURFL) and another partner left our jobs, mortgaged our houses and created a commercial entity. ScientiaMobile. This has meant stricter licensing, or everyone would happily keep using (and even reselling!) our work without an economic return for us (I guess nobody here works for free, right?). We are trying to explore a third way between commercial software (and the legal licensing structure that necessarily comes with it) and the comfort of open code and data, which makes it so easy to integrate and tweak WURFL for its adopters. All at a great low price compared to other commercial solutions in the same space.
As far as the repository goes, we only claimed our sacrosanct copyright and licensing after we getting approval from all contributors. Contributions for which we did not get approval were placed in the public domain in the form of the last public version of the wurfl repository.

Now, after you have overcome the shock of seeing someone try a new approach to commercial open-source, if you find WURFL valuable, my suggestion is that you walk to your boss and say "Boss, I found this great tool. It's inexpensive, it does the job and they even give you access to the full source-code...."

Thanks

Luca

Hi Luca,

Great that you gave us some background on WURFL. I have always found it to be a very helpful library. I am sure that parts of the community will happily finds it way to your company and the licensing, while probably for a lot of Drupal projects other solutions will show to be sufficient and free.

In this discussion, probably the big question is if the members Drupal community will continue developing the wurfl wrapper for Drupal given the new commercial data licensing... Not because of the fact that it is commercial, but since the reach will decrease and we all know how we as open source developers try to find ways that benefit a large community and comes at low / no cost.

I think the module will have it's place here, and should be here ... But up to the new maintainer (JohnAlbin) to see if he wants to continue or somebody else should take up the mission (maybe scientiamobile?)

I am always open to share my thoughts on the current implementation of the module.

Thank you Tom,

I am tempted to use some time to argue that WURFL still comes at a low cost, but let me focus on more important aspects.

We in ScientiaMobile would be totally happy with Drupal still supporting a WURFL wrapper. After all, certain non-profit organizations and academic entities may still be OK with AGPL after all, and we even made space for use of the latest public snapshot that comes with it.

If the Drupal community decides that AGPL is not OK, we in ScientiaMobile can discuss whether we support the wrapper directly and make it available to developers under AGPL. In principle, we would be ok with it, as long as, following our lawyers' advice, we get a copyright assignment which would allow ScientiaMobile to double license it according to the same terms of the standard API.

If getting a copyright assignment is not possible, we may decide to develop our own wrapper at some point, but this would probably take more time to implement.

Not sure whether this is a discussion you want to see happen in public or whether taking it offline is a better option.

Luca

Hey Luca,

This is great information! I think you gave enough information for any developer to know where WURFL stands and that he can be in contact with you in case of problems/questions. There is nothing that I see (licensing wise) that stands in the way of providing a Drupal wrapper on drupal.org.

I am sure somebody will continue to work on this module (or recreate it from scratch), ... And maybe you find the time/resources to put in some effort too ... :)

Tom

(@JohnAlbin I hope we did not derail your initial intention of this post :) )

I think more to the point, a commercial license for the data, even if it's only for some clients, precludes WURFL being the standard go-to solution for Drupal server-side feature detection. It could still be useful for some clients in some situations, but it cannot become the de-facto solution.

I was definitely looking to the WURFL data/drupal project to handle a large amount of the custom work I need to do coming with new mobile and responsive clients, and the situation that calls for needing/wanting different content, alternate content/block placements and those types of varying needs that can't be solved (easily) via simple media queries or javascript.

The Omega project handles almost as much as possible that can be done on the CSS side for alternating layout sizes, and such with media queries and a few JS enhancements, but I've been looking for some time (for personal project & needs) of how to REALLY solve this issue of maybe wanting to rearrange the placement of blocks when the site was served in a mobile context lower than, say 480px window, but with this type of commercialization of the data for WURFL, I'm thinking myself (and probably the other 12K Omega users) will be waiting for something fully open sourced to come out of the woodwork.

makes me a sad panda...

mfer is probably on the right track that there is now a void in this vertical and its likely someone will step in to fill it, we should keep our eyes on that space.

FYI: It appears that ScientiaMobile has updated the pricing information on their website. It's now possible for an organization to download the WURFL data on a quarterly basis for free if it meets certain criteria.

As I understand it: In order to obtain free access to the WURFL data (for non-commercial use), an organization must meet the following requirements:

• Comply with the terms of the AGPL license.
• Release the source code of the application using the data to the open-source community (per the GPL v3 compatible license).
• NOTE: Data can only be downloaded from the WURFL repository on a quarterly basis -- plus, no automatic updates.

As you might imagine, commercial licensees have more options and can download the data more frequently. I believe there are discounts available for non-profit organizations.

That is the extent of my knowledge on the subject. :-) If I've posted something that's inaccurate, please correct me. Otherwise, additional questions should be directed to a representative at ScientiaMobile.

I hope that helps!

P.S. I've posted a patch (#1865180) so the WURFL module is compatible with the latest Drupal 6 release of Mobile Tools (the API has changed).