MyBB Community Forums

http://community.mybb.com/thread-70223-page-1.html

I'm not going to argue position I just want to know the changes in policy so I can adjust to them. I'll go along with whatever mybb decides but certainly authors and even subscribers of paid sites need to know what's going on.

For instance if paid plugins are going to be deemed "illegal" then will freely distributing download links at MyBB.com be allowed? Will paid authors get C&D's? How does MyBB interpret GNU/GPL in regards to plugins? If the plugin system is not considered an API then what is it?

Certainly these are vital questions for the comminity and for authors. Again I don't want to argue paid vs free but clearly this has to get resolved for current paid plugin authors.

And what about themes? Will paid themes be allowed to be posted here?

Will signature links be allowed to paid author sites?

What will be allowed and what will be disallowed?

What about custom plugins created for paying clients? If member X pays member Y $100 to make a custom plugin will this be allowed and will MyBB force that plugin to be released? Certainly that work may have to fall under the GPL v3 license under the new interrepretion of MyBB. This any paid work can be distributed by author or by customer. Example would be customer pays me $100 and wants it to be "exclusive". Legally under GPL v3 they can't enforce that and I can release it once it's completed.

I've currently closed MyBBCentral.com until these questions are answered. I'm not going to continue business when there is this air of illegality involved.

If I'm wrong in any of my assumptions or interpretations please correct me. I really just want clarification from Chris or the official team about this new move.

(2010-05-24, 04:31 PM)Ryan Gordon Wrote: [ -> ]

(2010-05-24, 04:10 PM)Pirata Nervo Wrote: [ -> ]

(2010-05-24, 01:18 PM)Ryan Loos Wrote: [ -> ]

(2010-05-24, 01:16 PM)Pirata Nervo Wrote: [ -> ]I believe you should remove all paid plugins from the releases sub forum if you're not allowing anymore paid plugins to submitted in the future.

The current releases forum will be archived when the new system begins.

I understand that but it's not archived yet and new users that read that information may find it confusing

A blog post will be put up in the new few days to clarify and show a more in-depth road map on this.

This was posted a few responses before yours

Yeah, a blog post will be up shortly

I've temporarily closed my website until MyBB officially announces the changes to their policies.
If they force me to end subscriptions, I'll close the paid plugins forum to everyone and keep free plugins and free support.

Would be nice to get some info on this soon.
Thank you

We are certainly not "eradicating" paid plugin or theme authors.

Again, I urge everyone to refrain from speculation until we have the blog post up. Right now we are not actively enforcing any changes until the blog post is up.

I also certainly want to make it clear that the changes we have right now will only affect the MyBB Community Forums. It will not affect any other part of MyBB.

These changes will be good for everyone. Just give us some time so we don't rush out an unpolished, incomplete blog post.

Don't fear it though. If you think it's the right decision for MyBB then go for it. Please don't appease the few at the expense of the many. It's only about 4-5 paid authors that would be effected. Heck I'd be the most effected and I'm sort of hoping you enforce a strong policy. There are always ways to make money so please don't do things just for the few paid authors.

I'm going to make this committment. If indeed you eradicate all paid plugins and decide they are against the license then I'm going to release all my work GPL. Future work will probably be greatly effected but my existing work would be released. I'm just unlikely to spend hours making something and releasing it. I'd keep my new work for myself for my own sites.

I think all this is very interesting. I'm just so glad this is happening before I started to upgrade it all for 1.6x. These changes might save me a few weeks of work.

I guess this also proves all those people wrong who believed that MyBB team had some conspiracy going on with paid authors. No such connection has ever existed. Today was the first I heard of these decisions and I still don't know exactly what's going on. I'm just as clueless as everyone else.

Has the Blog post been up? I've been trying to get more information on this for quite some time now but can't find anything related. The first time of heard that they where changing the policy was this morning when I went on to MybbCentral and saw what Labrocca had posted.

I see

I should read the policy before comment.
But, I hope this relationship will happy ending.
Labrocca and Pirata Nervo is one (of my favorite) programmer among many paid plugins programmers around there

(2010-05-26, 07:37 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Will paid authors get C&D's? How does MyBB interpret GNU/GPL in regards to plugins?

To address this specific concern, I don't believe MyBB should or will be responsible for policing licencing outside of our own site so I doubt there will be any C&D's or really much concern for what you do on your own sites.

We are just trying to change things on this site.

Also, at the end of the day you can still run a very successful commercial plugin operation under GPL, take a look at those available for Joomla for example. It's my hope that more people do adopt the GPL model for commercial plugins but its not something that we are specifically trying to force across the greater MyBB community.

I'm looking into various models including the Joomla one. No doubt there are changes coming. Just waiting on official mybb policy notification before I make a move.