By redpineseed on

what if I fork eveything in Drupal and use it only for myself, without distribution? will I have to GPL it?

Comments

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org commented

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

redpineseed’s picture

redpineseed commented


Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?
The GPL does not require you to release your modified version. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them. This applies to organizations (including companies), too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally without ever releasing it outside the organization.

But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's users, under the GPL.

Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up to you.

thanks for the pointer, killes.

redpineseed’s picture

redpineseed commented

this is what i don't agree. once someone forks off, say, from Drupal and continue to develop for a period, this someone can totally change the code until there is no single line code similiar to the orginal.

hence, defeat the very objective of GPL.

eldarin’s picture

eldarin commented

... that someone better be a small team, because it's a lot of work. Derivative work is required to carry the original copyright and name of the owner along with the full GPL text.

Now, it's not impossible to create something similar or better than Drupal, but to keep up with it will be a big challenge. If you don't release it as free code, then what'll be the incentive for others to contribute ?
If you ultimately choose to GPL it, then what was all that work for ?

You can fork as much as you want - you are free to do so. It will however, be quite some work to "get ahead" or "be accepted" by a large number of people in direct competition to Drupal.

You got to ask yourself this: can you "out-program" the current team of Drupal contributors ? Can you offer substantial differences ?

If you fork, someone will just take the GPLed output from your work and re-incorporate it into Drupal - if it is worth the bother. You can't "un-GPL" things easily.
:-)

Gunny-1’s picture

Gunny-1 commented

Without a solid design framework, code can never be managed and welcomed by a wider community.
You can fork the code but not the design.

redpineseed’s picture

redpineseed commented

those guys are good and 5 dollars a dozen. you can fork the code and design, many examples of X win managers.

eldarin’s picture

eldarin commented

I know a guy who has been chairman for a company in Bangalore. It's not as easy as you think to administer such a team, still needing to put it together.

I have 1 year of japanese study from university. I thought that was hard - how will you handle mandarin ?

I think you're literally grasping at straws right now ..
:-D

dries’s picture

dries commented

Feel free to hire a dozen developers -- given the GPL's nature, we're allowed to take back derived work that is distributed. If you fork Drupal to the point no (Drupal) developer can identify your code as being a Drupal fork (contributed themes and modules will no longer work), you might as well write a CMS from scratch or fork a BSD-licensed CMS. Otherwise, license issues will overshadow your work and no company wants to buy software that has potential license issues.

redpineseed’s picture

redpineseed commented

if you fork with a different language, you wont have the problem of license issues.

great work, Dries.

dries’s picture

dries commented

That is not a 'fork' but a 'rewrite in a different language'. Depending on the language of choice, you might have to go with a completely different architecture; if you go with Perl you might be able to get close to the current architecture, if you go with Java there are a lot less concepts you can borrow.

Gunny-1’s picture

Gunny-1 commented

Redpineseed,
what is your objective by the way? i just went through your recent posts. It looks like you are looking for a suitable topic to create a flame war. Instead if you can invest your time in the most important issues like submitting bugs or fixing the same
( under top priority list), creating new feature requests, adding documentation support etc., it would benefit the community as a whole.

Finally, we welcome you to offer your thoughts and suggestions that are constructive to the growth of drupal and its supporting organizations.

robertdouglass’s picture

robertdouglass commented

Stop trying to start flame wars. I too looked at your history here and saw that you look like a genuine Drupal user and enthusiast, apart from the last two posts you made which were curiously out of place, to put it politely.

- Robert Douglass

-----
Rate the value of this post: http://rate.affero.net/robertDouglass/
I recommend CivicSpace: www.civicspacelabs.org
My sites: www.hornroller.com, www.robshouse.net

gravyface’s picture

gravyface commented

of the original author, he did state that he wanted to "use it only for (him)self" which he is free to do so. I've made modifications for our corporate portal that I have not contributed back to the community and probably won't. However, they're integration hacks that, as far as I can tell, nobody would want anyways. :)

Obviously, giving back to the community would be preferred but legally, he's free to do what he wants as long as he complies with the GPL.

Hopefully he'll reconsider; sometimes politics or strategic vision can clash and forking is really the only option (ala Mambo).

redpineseed’s picture

redpineseed commented

i am just saying some of the brilliant ideas in drupal can be just taken away.

i've looked at over 10 CMS of different licenses. Drupal makes most sense to me.

As well i don't agree with Dries, if you use Java Spring/JSTL/Reflection/Map etc, you can rewrite Drupal in Java.

robertdouglass’s picture

robertdouglass commented

Part of having the GPL is that there is no fear of things being taken away. If you write a better CMS, I'll drop Drupal and use yours. "Steal" everything you want; it's open source. Are you planning on writing Jrupal? I used to think that would be a good thing. Now I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be, but have fun.

- Robert Douglass

-----
Rate the value of this post: http://rate.affero.net/robertDouglass/
I recommend CivicSpace: www.civicspacelabs.org
My sites: www.hornroller.com, www.robshouse.net

redpineseed’s picture

redpineseed commented

stop flaming, robert. it is for discusion. please don't get personal. thanks.

this is not necessary:
Are you planning on writing Jrupal?

now you are out of place.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Robert was not flaming you. He was responding in a reasonable way to your 'discussion'. Quite frankly the intial question appears to have mystified a lot of people.

This is really GPL basics better covered under an FSF site forum. GPL'd stuff can be forked. CivicSpace did this, and discovered the hidden costs to it. GPL'd stuff can be developed for private internal non redistribtuted use without selling or sharing.

You can rewrite it in a different language (then it's a rewrite, not a fork) This seems to be what you are after. Go ahead and do so, have fun. Or continue to work within the Drupal community.

The intial question is ... just odd. I hope you got the answer you were looking for in the thread somewhere because none of us really got the question.

-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

allie micka’s picture

allie micka
she/her
commented

We encounter a similar question when we recommend a drupal-based solution to some of our clients.

The dialog goes something like this:

"We would like you to build our site with features a, b and c"

"Great! Drupal can do 90% of that already. We'll do your project for $x,xxx"

"What? No! These features define my strategic advantage! If you build my site using open source then my competitors can use the same tools!"

"OK, we can build a,b, and c from scratch but that means a 5-month time to market and $xx,xxx. Meanwhile, because these features can be implemented using Drupal, your competitors will use it to get their site up faster and cheaper. By the way, I know we're not talking about phase II yet, but features x,y, and z are also a cakewalk with Drupal and will cost another $xx,xxx to build from scratch"

"Where was that Drupal-based bid again?"

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the benefit of using open source lies in *using* it, not in *selling* it. Even at cheap labor rates, it's not practical to spend time and money on reimplementing a tool and then expecting to outpace the development community. It is practical to use Drupal to sell products, spread information, provide customer service, etc. better than your competitors.

I can convince clients to allow us to give some of the work we do for them back to the drupal project. This is not altruism: If our company vanishes, our clients have access to tens of thousands of developers who can support their project. Plus, if that additional feature attracts new users who also add features, our client's project can be partially funded by someone else's enhancements.

No proprietary vendor can offer these benefits.

eldarin’s picture

eldarin commented

If you stop developing or supporting a module or part of a Drupal system, you clients can take that module and distribute it freely - and someone else might pick up the developement. That way the former clients might even get further developement done for free.

There are both benefits and drawbacks to the GPL for everyone.