About creating packages with similar functionality with commertial ones
In the terms of service there is a sentence that says something like this:
Do not post packages that try to compete with those that are available on the commertial section (store)
What does this mean exactly?
Is this similar to the iPhone app store, where applications are not accepted if they offer the same functionality of a native iPhone app, even if they are done from scratch, or if it is not tolerated to repackage cut down packages with their functionality unlocked?
As it is sentenced it seems as the former.
But it is a lot more impacting since the umbraco store will get filled as time passes by (the iPhone OS doesn't).
This means that as time passes by we will have the death of the umbraco Projects section, because every new project will be contrastated by some commertial project. And good by open source project community...
If it is this kind of censorship, I foresee a dark future for umbraco...
With the latter interpretation (dont unlock packages) I would not have so much problem, as it is more unfriendly to package owners (even though it should not be since packages that have a MIT license should allow for this). I even had one package removed from my list because of this, but no hard feelings for that.
i think that this could be another really good discussion surrounding the concepts and principals of umbraco and package development and is well worth keeping going...as long as we all stay cordial..
my two cents goes thusly :)
i don't think it is entirely fair [from a community sense] to take the wind away from someone elses sails [using a ship metaphore here] by making a free version of something that already offers a free version.. surely the free version has some limitations, but that is a very viable model... free vs. pro version.
legally, sure... nothing was done that breaks the rules... but for a community to truly flourish, we need to have a level of trust between developers. If you play the scenario out of some valuable developers being undercut by people unlocking the features of their pay products and offering them as free.. we will lose develpors from the community -- which is not good... played out even further... it could be far worse for the project as a whole and the community.
I believe what umbraco is trying to foster is truly 'the friendly cms' and a damn cool community... we need to respect that we have fellow community members that GIVE A LOT to this project, we shoudl be more than happy to let them reap both karmic and cash rewards, if possible.
think of it as paying it forward... before you make the choice to re-release an open source pay project as free... ask yourself... how would you feel if the shoe were on the other foot.... if you decide you woudl be un-phased by such an action... perhaps this is not the community or project for you.
Marino, I think there is a big difference between creating your own package, which holds functionality that is similar to that of others (like Chris pointed out with Umbraco Forms vs. Axendo Forms vs. doc2forms) and simply coping someone elses work. If you think you can make a better Umbraco Importer then Richard then go for it, but if you are just going to use Reflector on the dlls and remove the limitation of a limited version that is a preview to a commercial product, then I would dare to say that that is a hack and not a very honourable nor friendly thing to do (even though it was published with an MTI license -> the project page for UmbFreeImport clearly states its a preview of an upcoming product).
I think that the different packages that exists with a similar functionality is the programmer/companies own intepretation of what a good forms module is. Certainly there are differences. Same thing with Google Analytics from Axendo (which is a commercial product) and my open source Google Analytics for Umbraco package - two totally different products with similar functionality. I would never dream of reflecting the package from Axendo... You could argue that this package was commercial from the get go, but I still think it would be a similar scenario. My package is open source with an MTI license so everyone is free to use the source code and I would not have a problem with other people/companies adapting the code into their product, be it uCommerce or Axendo Analytics or anything else for that matter (just an example of possible usages), but simply re-releasing it wouldn't make much sense to me unless it was improved in some way.
Other then that I totally agree with Bob! Respect your fellow community members :)
We don't censor what packages can be made at all. In fact over the past years we've made it easier, safer and more flexible for 3rd party package producers to base their works on Umbraco as we've changed the licensing of the central parts from GPL to MIT meaning that you can decide your flavor of license. There's no legal limitations on how you can make 3rd party add ons for Umbraco except that you're not allowed to use our trademarks in your name (ie. Umbraco).
Neither do we state that you're not allowed to add packages to the projects section if they compete with a commercial offering in general.
The only thing that we're stating is that if you for some reason wants to produce a commercial package that competes with the offerings made by us we don't want you to use the sites that we've created, maintains and pay to keep alive to promote it. Our offerings finance the development of the core as well as promoting the project and running sites like Our. It's expensive. Very expensive. But highly benefitial for all of you. In return we hope that you appreciate what we do by not taking away our business. And if you do want to take away our business, well isn't it very fair that we ask you to market it via channels that you create yourself instead of use the ones we've build?
One last thing - remember that this is not ToS of a store. We don't run a store and we (probably) never will. Our is not a marketplace, it's a community site.
We ask you to respect all the hard work we put into keeping our.umbraco.org and the umbraco core alive, and not promote any products that directly compete with our commercial offerings on our.umbraco.org
Since it was my package that got reverse engineered , hereby my thoughts on this topic. Legally Marino had all the rights to reverse engineer my package. Stupid of me not to really think about a license model for this free version, thank’s for that it’s on my top prio list now. The real issue I had with this was that the package was put on the our.umbraco.org site and the fact that Marino says this is the Free pro version. What’s in this DLL is only 10% of what’s in UmbImport PRO. I knew someone would reverse engineer the package someday and that’s why I have a separate project structure setup for the PRO version. So just to be clear the package that is reverse engineered is NOT umbImport PRO.
@Marino If you want to compete with me and make a better Import package for Umbraco, fine by me, I basically did the same thing with someone (don’t know his name anymore) that build import functionality for Umbraco which was not very user friendly. I do have a problem with just copy paste the code and publish it as your package. Mine or packages from others
It's still a little unclear, "directly compete with our commercial offerings on our.umbraco.org" implies it's products from UmbracoCorp and not from community members. Does this statement apply to all commercial projects promoted through umbraco.org? I can't see the justification for the removal of umbfreeimport if this is not the case.
That said, I agree that just taking a package, changing it slightly and republishing is bad form. If you want to contribute to better a package then you should contact the original developer and suggest collaboration. Personally I'd love that.
There's a difference between compete and copy. I am all for competition and I have no issues with using MIT licenced software as a basis for development work.
Two of my packages (xsltresult and autofolders) took inspiration from existing open source projects, forum posts, blog posts etc. However, it was at best, a combination of existing functionality with new functionality. I feel fine with this as I'm contributing something additional or at least bringing together information/ideas into a central package.
Is there any information or guidance on this site about licence models? Maybe within the projects section we could highlight the main advantages/restrictions to the popular licence models? This would help creators as well as users of projects.
Marinos package was removed because it was simply amoral. Taking another mans work, reflector it and remove the limitations, then taking credit and even call it umbFreeImport was just about as unfriendly as some one could be - dispite any license.
This is something that goes beyond law and something I could never imagine anyone do. It was fucked up. Period.
@Morten: "Marino, I think there is a big difference between creating your own
package, which holds functionality that is similar to that of others
(like Chris pointed out with Umbraco Forms vs. Axendo Forms vs.
doc2forms) and simply coping someone elses work."
Well this depends on the license the project was published.
Clearly there is no reason to make a cutdown version of a commertial product and publish it with an Open Source license, since it kinda defeats the purpose of commertialisation. It would be logical to remove the PRO functionality altoghether from the Free version first.
Licenses are made exactly for this reason. Probably in this scenarion the wrong license was used. And just republishing is a bit "evil".
Still this does not explain if forking the project and improving is allowed - since from any Open Source license this is perfectly legal and encouraging.
And if the fork is allowed then i don't know how should the unlockig functionality be treated...
@Niels: "It's expensive. Very expensive"
I'm perfectly aware of this as i have some experience with maintainance of webs. But in this scenario we are mixing the Open Source and the capitalistic way of making money. Open Source way to make money is by offering support for a product, while capitalistic way is the sole selling of the product + giving support. This is where all the problems start. An open source product comes in no ways limited in functionality, but it's commertial version comes with support. This is not the case here, so we are experiencing all this debate. Umbraco "Free" packages that have a commertial version should in no way be allowed to have an open source license, since they are by no means really "Free" and problems like this shall happen.
Probably would be good to create another license that pops up in the drop down list. A license specific for commertial "Free" packages. That does not allow DISTRIBUTION of derivative work.
@Chris: "It's still a little unclear, "directly compete with our commercial offerings on our.umbraco.org" implies"
After this debate I think they mean that we should not create commertial packages that compete with the umbraco core commertial packages. Please correct me if I am wrong.
@Niels: "Marinos package was removed because it was simply amoral"
With this explanation i could gladly agree. But only after Richard said it was a licensing issue. The only person that can make this immoral is Richard Soeteman after explaining what is going on. Before he stated it was about licensing from the open source perspective this is encouraging because it helped software advancement.
What should be correct development roadmap:
If you are doing a project with an Open Source license and at some point decide to go Commertial, by all means retain the Open Source version as it was, create a fork, and sell the additional functionality that is added in the commertial version. Do not simply cut down features from the free version and then sell the product (as previous licensing contrastates this method).
But if you know that the product could have a commertial version at some point, just stick with a more restrictive license at start.
That said I do not have a problem with what happened. If there was a reason for the removal then I'm perfectly happy with this.
So I want to make my apologies to Richard and will not promote the derivative of UmbImport here. But, Richard, I'd like you to state whether I'm allowed to use my package for personal use (more broadly what kind of license will you use on the package).
I did not take credit for the functionality of UmbImport, i clearly wrote that this is a free version of UmbImport, I retained the original credits and license info. It could be easily seen by installing the package. UmbImport was just an experimental target, and I wish to apologize for that.
Take my actions as a testament of the holes in the philosophy of (cross)licensing of our.umbraco.org and the umbraco store.
Terms of service that cross community boundaries and touch commertial chains of distribution are well known to be generally unclear (and mostly bad for future development).
I was kinda sure what will happen when I did what I did, but was wishing to be 100% sure before making this thread.
So now we should have a good debate on how to improve that, and make developers happy while retaining license scopes and an Open philosopy.
My first tip would be to not use the word "immoral" in the terms of service since it is a word that has different meanings in different cultures, but find another way to state that.
Thanks for your feedback. Glad that it is sorted out now. You can use the package for you personal and company use, no issues with that. I do have issues with distributing the package.
The terms of service doesn't mention anything about moral. It does ask you to treat other peoples work friendly. We wanted to keep the ToS simple and then rather take cases like the umbfreeimport from time to time. The great thing about the Umbraco community is that we're involved as well - we're not some giant corp not following whats going on :-)
About creating packages with similar functionality with commertial ones
In the terms of service there is a sentence that says something like this:
Do not post packages that try to compete with those that are available on the commertial section (store)
What does this mean exactly?
Is this similar to the iPhone app store, where applications are not accepted if they offer the same functionality of a native iPhone app, even if they are done from scratch, or if it is not tolerated to repackage cut down packages with their functionality unlocked?
As it is sentenced it seems as the former.
But it is a lot more impacting since the umbraco store will get filled as time passes by (the iPhone OS doesn't).
This means that as time passes by we will have the death of the umbraco Projects section, because every new project will be contrastated by some commertial project. And good by open source project community...
If it is this kind of censorship, I foresee a dark future for umbraco...
With the latter interpretation (dont unlock packages) I would not have so much problem, as it is more unfriendly to package owners (even though it should not be since packages that have a MIT license should allow for this). I even had one package removed from my list because of this, but no hard feelings for that.
Clarity on purpose from the core team would be good here.
If one user creates a commercial package can another not create a similar open source option? I know this won't be the case.
Example: Umbraco Forms vs Axendo Form vs doc2form
The question that remain unanswered is:
Can i reuse the source of some package that went commertial and create a fork, offering the same functionality?
Assuming the project was published with the MIT license.
I will explain what happened to UmbFreeImport:
UmbImport was repackaged with the removal of the limitation of 500 imported items.
Source code of UmbImport was used but was changed to unlock the limitations.
As far as the MIT license dictates nothing illegal has been done.
Nevertheless the package was removed from the Projects section.
Now what would have happened if UmbFreeImport was done from scratch?
i think that this could be another really good discussion surrounding the concepts and principals of umbraco and package development and is well worth keeping going...as long as we all stay cordial..
my two cents goes thusly :)
i don't think it is entirely fair [from a community sense] to take the wind away from someone elses sails [using a ship metaphore here] by making a free version of something that already offers a free version.. surely the free version has some limitations, but that is a very viable model... free vs. pro version.
legally, sure... nothing was done that breaks the rules... but for a community to truly flourish, we need to have a level of trust between developers. If you play the scenario out of some valuable developers being undercut by people unlocking the features of their pay products and offering them as free.. we will lose develpors from the community -- which is not good... played out even further... it could be far worse for the project as a whole and the community.
I believe what umbraco is trying to foster is truly 'the friendly cms' and a damn cool community... we need to respect that we have fellow community members that GIVE A LOT to this project, we shoudl be more than happy to let them reap both karmic and cash rewards, if possible.
think of it as paying it forward... before you make the choice to re-release an open source pay project as free... ask yourself... how would you feel if the shoe were on the other foot.... if you decide you woudl be un-phased by such an action... perhaps this is not the community or project for you.
once again, just my two cents on this topic.
FYI - Core Team != Umbraco Corp
The T&C's are determined by Umbraco Corp and are not something that I can comment on or anything.
Marino, I think there is a big difference between creating your own package, which holds functionality that is similar to that of others (like Chris pointed out with Umbraco Forms vs. Axendo Forms vs. doc2forms) and simply coping someone elses work.
If you think you can make a better Umbraco Importer then Richard then go for it, but if you are just going to use Reflector on the dlls and remove the limitation of a limited version that is a preview to a commercial product, then I would dare to say that that is a hack and not a very honourable nor friendly thing to do (even though it was published with an MTI license -> the project page for UmbFreeImport clearly states its a preview of an upcoming product).
I think that the different packages that exists with a similar functionality is the programmer/companies own intepretation of what a good forms module is. Certainly there are differences. Same thing with Google Analytics from Axendo (which is a commercial product) and my open source Google Analytics for Umbraco package - two totally different products with similar functionality. I would never dream of reflecting the package from Axendo... You could argue that this package was commercial from the get go, but I still think it would be a similar scenario.
My package is open source with an MTI license so everyone is free to use the source code and I would not have a problem with other people/companies adapting the code into their product, be it uCommerce or Axendo Analytics or anything else for that matter (just an example of possible usages), but simply re-releasing it wouldn't make much sense to me unless it was improved in some way.
Other then that I totally agree with Bob!
Respect your fellow community members :)
My two cents (2 øre)
- Morten
We don't censor what packages can be made at all. In fact over the past years we've made it easier, safer and more flexible for 3rd party package producers to base their works on Umbraco as we've changed the licensing of the central parts from GPL to MIT meaning that you can decide your flavor of license. There's no legal limitations on how you can make 3rd party add ons for Umbraco except that you're not allowed to use our trademarks in your name (ie. Umbraco).
Neither do we state that you're not allowed to add packages to the projects section if they compete with a commercial offering in general.
The only thing that we're stating is that if you for some reason wants to produce a commercial package that competes with the offerings made by us we don't want you to use the sites that we've created, maintains and pay to keep alive to promote it. Our offerings finance the development of the core as well as promoting the project and running sites like Our. It's expensive. Very expensive. But highly benefitial for all of you. In return we hope that you appreciate what we do by not taking away our business. And if you do want to take away our business, well isn't it very fair that we ask you to market it via channels that you create yourself instead of use the ones we've build?
One last thing - remember that this is not ToS of a store. We don't run a store and we (probably) never will. Our is not a marketplace, it's a community site.
And for info, the exact wording of the TOS is:
We ask you to respect all the hard work we put into keeping our.umbraco.org and the umbraco core alive, and not promote any products that directly compete with our commercial offerings on our.umbraco.org
http://our.umbraco.org/termsofservice
Hi All,
Since it was my package that got reverse engineered , hereby my thoughts on this topic. Legally Marino had all the rights to reverse engineer my package. Stupid of me not to really think about a license model for this free version, thank’s for that it’s on my top prio list now. The real issue I had with this was that the package was put on the our.umbraco.org site and the fact that Marino says this is the Free pro version. What’s in this DLL is only 10% of what’s in UmbImport PRO. I knew someone would reverse engineer the package someday and that’s why I have a separate project structure setup for the PRO version. So just to be clear the package that is reverse engineered is NOT umbImport PRO.
@Marino If you want to compete with me and make a better Import package for Umbraco, fine by me, I basically did the same thing with someone (don’t know his name anymore) that build import functionality for Umbraco which was not very user friendly. I do have a problem with just copy paste the code and publish it as your package. Mine or packages from others
Cheers,
Richard
It's still a little unclear, "directly compete with our commercial offerings on our.umbraco.org" implies it's products from UmbracoCorp and not from community members. Does this statement apply to all commercial projects promoted through umbraco.org? I can't see the justification for the removal of umbfreeimport if this is not the case.
That said, I agree that just taking a package, changing it slightly and republishing is bad form. If you want to contribute to better a package then you should contact the original developer and suggest collaboration. Personally I'd love that.
There's a difference between compete and copy. I am all for competition and I have no issues with using MIT licenced software as a basis for development work.
Two of my packages (xsltresult and autofolders) took inspiration from existing open source projects, forum posts, blog posts etc. However, it was at best, a combination of existing functionality with new functionality. I feel fine with this as I'm contributing something additional or at least bringing together information/ideas into a central package.
Is there any information or guidance on this site about licence models? Maybe within the projects section we could highlight the main advantages/restrictions to the popular licence models? This would help creators as well as users of projects.
Marinos package was removed because it was simply amoral. Taking another mans work, reflector it and remove the limitations, then taking credit and even call it umbFreeImport was just about as unfriendly as some one could be - dispite any license.
This is something that goes beyond law and something I could never imagine anyone do. It was fucked up. Period.
@Morten: "Marino, I think there is a big difference between creating your own package, which holds functionality that is similar to that of others (like Chris pointed out with Umbraco Forms vs. Axendo Forms vs. doc2forms) and simply coping someone elses work."
Well this depends on the license the project was published.
Clearly there is no reason to make a cutdown version of a commertial product and publish it with an Open Source license, since it kinda defeats the purpose of commertialisation. It would be logical to remove the PRO functionality altoghether from the Free version first.
Licenses are made exactly for this reason. Probably in this scenarion the wrong license was used. And just republishing is a bit "evil".
Still this does not explain if forking the project and improving is allowed - since from any Open Source license this is perfectly legal and encouraging.
And if the fork is allowed then i don't know how should the unlockig functionality be treated...
@Niels: "It's expensive. Very expensive"
I'm perfectly aware of this as i have some experience with maintainance of webs. But in this scenario we are mixing the Open Source and the capitalistic way of making money. Open Source way to make money is by offering support for a product, while capitalistic way is the sole selling of the product + giving support. This is where all the problems start. An open source product comes in no ways limited in functionality, but it's commertial version comes with support. This is not the case here, so we are experiencing all this debate. Umbraco "Free" packages that have a commertial version should in no way be allowed to have an open source license, since they are by no means really "Free" and problems like this shall happen.
Probably would be good to create another license that pops up in the drop down list. A license specific for commertial "Free" packages. That does not allow DISTRIBUTION of derivative work.
@Chris: "It's still a little unclear, "directly compete with our commercial offerings on our.umbraco.org" implies"
After this debate I think they mean that we should not create commertial packages that compete with the umbraco core commertial packages. Please correct me if I am wrong.
@Niels: "Marinos package was removed because it was simply amoral"
With this explanation i could gladly agree. But only after Richard said it was a licensing issue. The only person that can make this immoral is Richard Soeteman after explaining what is going on. Before he stated it was about licensing from the open source perspective this is encouraging because it helped software advancement.
What should be correct development roadmap:
If you are doing a project with an Open Source license and at some point decide to go Commertial, by all means retain the Open Source version as it was, create a fork, and sell the additional functionality that is added in the commertial version. Do not simply cut down features from the free version and then sell the product (as previous licensing contrastates this method).
But if you know that the product could have a commertial version at some point, just stick with a more restrictive license at start.
That said I do not have a problem with what happened. If there was a reason for the removal then I'm perfectly happy with this.
So I want to make my apologies to Richard and will not promote the derivative of UmbImport here.
But, Richard, I'd like you to state whether I'm allowed to use my package for personal use (more broadly what kind of license will you use on the package).
Cheers!
And just to explain:
I did not take credit for the functionality of UmbImport, i clearly wrote that this is a free version of UmbImport, I retained the original credits and license info. It could be easily seen by installing the package. UmbImport was just an experimental target, and I wish to apologize for that.
Take my actions as a testament of the holes in the philosophy of (cross)licensing of our.umbraco.org and the umbraco store.
Terms of service that cross community boundaries and touch commertial chains of distribution are well known to be generally unclear (and mostly bad for future development).
I was kinda sure what will happen when I did what I did, but was wishing to be 100% sure before making this thread.
So now we should have a good debate on how to improve that, and make developers happy while retaining license scopes and an Open philosopy.
My first tip would be to not use the word "immoral" in the terms of service since it is a word that has different meanings in different cultures, but find another way to state that.
Hi Marino,
Thanks for your feedback. Glad that it is sorted out now. You can use the package for you personal and company use, no issues with that. I do have issues with distributing the package.
Cheers,
Richard
The terms of service doesn't mention anything about moral. It does ask you to treat other peoples work friendly. We wanted to keep the ToS simple and then rather take cases like the umbfreeimport from time to time. The great thing about the Umbraco community is that we're involved as well - we're not some giant corp not following whats going on :-)
The terms of service can be read here: http://our.umbraco.org/termsofserivce
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