Opensource can only benefit a community. It increases new mods and features, and may lead to an incredibly awesome piece of software that drives the pay boards out of business.
(2008-10-14, 12:44 AM)Paradox460 Wrote: [ -> ]incredibly awesome piece of software that drives the pay boards out of business.
Impossible to happen. Never can it be a Monopoly.
(2008-10-14, 12:17 AM)rcpalace Wrote: [ -> ] (2008-10-13, 10:41 PM)Chris Boulton Wrote: [ -> ] (2008-10-13, 10:02 PM)rcpalace Wrote: [ -> ]I'm disappointed. 
It should have stayed under the previous license. What exactly was the real reason for releasing it under the GPL? Where you afraid that competition might take a lot of MyBB users away, so you released it under the GPL? (If you can't beet them, join them!?)
Best Regards.
No, the real reason is because we believe in developing free software.
What is the exact problem with the GPL?
Here's the problem. When you have one great software out there, it will always be special. Now with the GPL, you'll have a load of new forum software's of what are MyBB forks. If you have a plethora of great forum software's, non will be. By releasing it under the GPL the forum market is now prone to a lot of software forks. We will than never have anything original anymore if this occurs. New forum software companies would just change a little and distribute it. It will be the exact same way the CMS market is following. Theirs also a risk out their now; if a big company comes over and buy's MyBB (now that it's under the GPL), they'll most likely change the licensing and charge for it; as Yahoo! did to Zimbra. They kept the opensource one in development, but they now charge for a "Pro" version.
Best Regards.
I think they know if they did such a thing a good percentage of the users of MYBB would simply walk away. Unless ofcourse they are too stupid to look into the MYBB base of users. Sorry if that sounds rude but no better way i can think of to get the point across.
Not too mention someone else would be able to fork it and thus continue what MYBB has done. Serious it would be a very stupid move for anyone to try such a thing. JMHO
HarryWx,
With my personal experience, I've seen this happen multiple times before. This situation is no different.
Quote:Here's the problem. When you have one great software out there, it will always be special. Now with the GPL, you'll have a load of new forum software's of what are MyBB forks. If you have a plethora of great forum software's, non will be. By releasing it under the GPL the forum market is now prone to a lot of software forks.
Our existing license already allowed this. You just had to leave our powered by, but could place your own next to/above it.
Quote:We will than never have anything original anymore if this occurs. New forum software companies would just change a little and distribute it. It will be the exact same way the CMS market is following.
I don't really see this happening with WordPress, Joomla (It's GPL isn't it?) or many of the other CMS scripts.
Quote:Theirs also a risk out their now; if a big company comes over and buy's MyBB (now that it's under the GPL), they'll most likely change the licensing and charge for it; as Yahoo! did to Zimbra. They kept the opensource one in development, but they now charge for a "Pro" version.
MyBB is not being sold, if it were, there would be very strict conditions for purchase in regards to the licensing of the application.
Zimbra always had a commercial version of the application, way before Yahoo! purchased them.
(2008-10-14, 02:37 AM)rcpalace Wrote: [ -> ]HarryWx,
With my personal experience, I've seen this happen multiple times before. This situation is no different.
Have they succeeded though? If i am not mistaken this is sorta what happend with that PunBB if i recall correctly and look at the shambles that community remains in.
Last time one worked was IPB but times were alot different then ( Not many decent alternatives ) and not too mention they were never opensource/GPL to begin with and thus it couldnt be forked.
(2008-10-13, 11:57 PM)Paradox460 Wrote: [ -> ]Where is the SVN/CVS, and how can i check out a copy of the source?
Will the source contain the images used?
There is no publicly accessible SVN/CVS. You can download the source by downloading the package; it's PHP, so the software
is the source. So yes, the source contains the images.
(GPL doesn't automatically grant you the right to access the development repository; it grants you the right to access the source code of the software you use, which are the releases.)
Rob
(2008-10-14, 05:28 AM)OhReally Wrote: [ -> ] (2008-10-13, 11:57 PM)Paradox460 Wrote: [ -> ]Where is the SVN/CVS, and how can i check out a copy of the source?
Will the source contain the images used?
There is no publicly accessible SVN/CVS. You can download the source by downloading the package; it's PHP, so the software is the source. So yes, the source contains the images.
(GPL doesn't automatically grant you the right to access the development repository; it grants you the right to access the source code of the software you use, which are the releases.)
Rob
But to be truly open source, the development flow should be open.
(2008-10-14, 12:17 AM)rcpalace Wrote: [ -> ]Theirs also a risk out their now; if a big company comes over and buy's MyBB (now that it's under the GPL), they'll most likely change the licensing and charge for it; as Yahoo! did to Zimbra. They kept the opensource one in development, but they now charge for a "Pro" version.
If a big company would come along, buy MyBB and change the license (and the risk for this to happen is not bigger now that it's GPL licensed), the MyBB community would have the right to take the last version that was released under the GPL, and continue development from there, releasing it under GPL still. And the big company would not have the right to include changes made to the community version in their version, because that would make the
big company version a derivative work, meaning they would have to release it under GPL again.
So, what the MyBB development team have effectively said to the community is "Here is our version 1.4.2, it's yours now and whatever happens, it will always be yours.". And they can sell whatever they want to sell, but we will still have at least version 1.4.2 to continue development.
So if your afraid of big companies coming along buying up everything, then the GPL should be a comfort to you, not a threat.
(2008-10-14, 05:31 AM)Jeff Wrote: [ -> ]But to be truly open source, the development flow should be open.
That's not true; that's emotion speaking, not the license. The license doesn't say we have a right to see all experiments developers are doing with the code before releasing it.
YAY!!! Absolutely brilliant
