As you all know Posterita is going into the trunk of Adempiere, This is something that I must say all of our team is very excited about. During the process, the community has been very supportive and for that I am very grateful. I think we are also the first company to contribute a full vertical in Adempiere and we hope many more will come.
Being first is not always a good thing, specially when no branding policy has been established. There are quietly some disagreements about how a company should brand its products. I understand there are conflicting principles and I would like with your help to clear the issue out.
These are my assumptions, and should you disagree please voice out.
1) No one should misappropriate the work of others
2) Whenever possible contributors should be given credits for their work
3) A contributor has the right to name the product to its liking.
Now here is a concrete example but by no means is the only one. W
hile contributing Posterita POS into the trunk, there has been a request to create a new window that will allow to do some things in the Swing Client. I would like to know where are we suppose to create the windows.
Do we have a folder call Posterita POS where we put all the different windows?
Do we just create a window under the POS Swing Client.
Will everybody knows what Posterita is? that is a POS?
Should it be rename Web POS so that everybody knows what it is?
What will happen when there will be 10 verticals contributed in Adempiere?
Regards
Frederick Tsang
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from my point of view every contribution should look like just as additional functionality of Adempiere itself. If you decide to put it into trunk you should give up your one branding. Nevertheless there should be a way to put credits to the contributors.
It would be very confusing for everybody (users and customers) if there would be a different branding for every contribution. As well if you put your contribution into trunk, you get more attention from the community, so more people will contribute. After a certain time it's not your contribution anymore, but the contribution of many.
Not even the greatest contribution so far has it's one branding: Compiere
Regards
Toni
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Toni, has a good point:
>from my point of view every contribution should look like just as additional functionality of Adempiere itself. If you >decide to put it into trunk you should give up your one branding. Nevertheless there should be a way to put credits to >the contributors.
>
>It would be very confusing for everybody (users and customers) if there would be a different branding for every >contribution. As well if you put your contribution into trunk, you get more attention from the community, so more >people will contribute. After a certain time it's not your contribution anymore, but the contribution of many.
I think that more appropriate place for contributors to get credit is free advertisement in Adempiere site and paid advertisement for non contributors. For example www.adempierebusiness.com we have over 30 companies and not all of them have real contribution till now.
Functnioality in Adempiere should be named with appropriate names: 'Web POS' is good name while 'Posterita POS' is not clear what is the meaning of the window/process/....
also we can create window with names of all contributors in Adempiere.
Kind regards,
Trifon
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I just want to point out that there will be consequences to refusing the one thing that a company might be willing to contribute a whole module.
Everyone is in Adempiere for some selfish reasons. May be it financial success, fame and so on.
My main concern is by refusing to have I don't know Posterita extension or libero's extension as a brand. Adempiere will be erecting barriers to innovation. In the end, Adempiere will get less and less extensions. And this is normal. Adempiere should be ready to compromise, to find innovative solutions to ALIGN THE OBJECTIVES OF ALL.
The barriers are there.
This is encouraging non contribution of whole vertical. If this is the case so be it.
I am urging the community at large to voice out the opinion. I believe that by going this way, in he short term it might be ok but in the longer term, this type of policy will drive out companies that can contribute whole verticals.
Also, what can be in the interest of some contributors patching code and so on may not necessarily be in the interest of the community at large: getting more and more functionalities, more verticals. Ways should be found to resolve the conflict of interest of some developers spending a lot of time on debugging and patching code, not getting enough visibility and work with the interest of companies which, because of contributing a whole module, can be in the limelight and thus getting many jobs.
I believe just erasing company name so that individuals can be more visible is not the only way. We should be more clever and try to come to terms with aligning the objectives of the different type of contributors, lurkers, users...
Now that Posterita has agreed to contribute after let me remind you of many talks from the Adempiere council telling posterita it should for visibility motive. Now Adempiere is ready to go back on what it says. Now that Adempiere managed to convince to release some of Posterita major contribution as GPL, it is too late for us coming back. one cannot take back what is already given... But by doing so, one thing for sure, the incentives for companies to contribute whole module will be reduced. This is also sending a clear and loud message to potential contributors too.
I hope some people do not take that personally. On many occasions, where I have spoken to Red1 for example, I have expressed concerns about Adempiere not being able to align the objectives of some of the people volunteering for doing ungrateful and yet necessary jobs.
In Berlin, I was also suggesting to create a foundation, so that money could be given to an entity. The foundation would have acted like a governement where it would have financed public goods eg street lighting everyone wants it but no one wants to pay for it. In the end, I seriously hope that Adempiere is being able to find intelligent ways of reconciling the obejectives of each one of us. I believe if we are able to do so, Adempiere will be able to welcome many innovations and then we can all have a greater, and better project.
Alex
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Yes, Alex is right we are all here for selfish reason. But we agree to play a certain game with certain rules. Let's call it the gpl-game. And the rules are clear: My work is depending on the contribution of other, so my changes within Adempiere has to be a contribution, too. So even taking the Postarita code, removing the branding and put it in the trunk would be totally legal and IMHO ethical, too. These are just the rules of the game. There wouldn't be a Posterita if there hadn't been the contribution of all the other Adempiere code – mostly from Jörg Jahnke. Was there an ethical discussion about taking JJ code and rebrand it? No and it was not necessary. If you play the gpl-game you can't complain if someone is just using it's rules – you know them before you begin.
Here in Berlin we have a group they call themselves "gpl-violations.org project". And they sue companies who are violating the gpl. They stopped consumer products of companies like Siemens because they didn't public their contribution to the Linux Kernel and they didn't attached the gpl itself to the product. So not contributing your changes to a gpl product is illegal (and IMHO unethical). And exactly these rules make the gpl-game so successful. Actually I had bin in a presentation of the Siemens guys about this case. And they saw it as their fault. No complains about the rules.
If you play the gpl-game you have to accept, that there is a common ground that is totally different from the way we think usually about “property” (the roman way). You can't conquer or own this ground and if your ground touches this ground you are loosing the property of our own ground and it becomes common. But the good thing is: you could use the common ground for free.
But should we do it? Should we rebrand Posterita and just put it in the trunk? No, I would say we shouldn't. Not because it is unethical just because we need the contributors and we have to integrate them, for our selfish reasons. They are the best maintainer of their own code. And we should be thankful that they contributed. So Alex you are right. We should be creative in finding ways to “ALIGN THE OBJECTIVES OF ALL”. But I think there should be one taboo where we can't make compromise: The trunk. This is our holy grail. This is where everything is depending on. And we have to protect it to keep it clean. We just can't accept other brands there. This would lead in longterm to a mess. Look to the sourceforge startpage: The three most active projects are ERP-system. So the OS-ERP time is coming, but in a longterm we have competitors. But we are the only pure community projects without any traps and lock-ins. This is our capital and to keep this should be the first priority. The rest around the trunk is not so important. We could put other brands on our websides we could praise their names once a week in the forum. That's all fine, but we have to find the compromises around the trunk. And yes, perhaps sometimes we just should take the code.
And rejecting the contribution now is definitely a signal. But is it perhaps the right one? We are saying: Contributors are welcome, we praise them but only if they accept the holiness of our trunk.
-Kai
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Hi Kai, thanks for participating in this discussion.
Just for the record, I agree with all of your post except one phrase:
> They are the best maintainer of their own code.
We arrived to this situation because:
1 - The contributed web UI was non-working and unmaintained.
Last commit from posterita team on extension/posterita subdirectory is from november 23.
2 - Adempiere NEEDS a web UI, and I consider 3.4 deserves a webUI
Finally, my hurry is because we need to decide if we are going to release 3.4 with a webUI.
For me it's ok if Posterita don't agree with this - we can just drop it and simply support effort from other players (Victor is working on GWT webUI AFAIK).
What are the options that Posterita is giving us until now?
a) work on my branded extension - it's clear now that none of the core adempiere developers want to work there
b) fork on your branded extension - I really don't like this approach, forking to a "GlobalQSS webUI" to make it work in my opinion will be seen really bad for GlobalQSS
What are the options from Adempiere to Posterita?
Well, Adempiere is not a body? we just can imagein what this cloud called adempiere-community wants reading the forums, and until now ALL POSTS in this thread is calling to maintain trunk brand-free.
Maybe the discussion is:
- what with a "vertical" contributed but unmaintained?
- what with a "vertical" contributed but non-working?
And finally I'm wondering if this is really "ALIGNING THE OBJECTIVES OF ALL" ?
Sorry - many thoughts on just one post - I'm finishing now.
I feel more like "TRYING TO ALIGN OBJECTIVES OF ADEMPIERE TO AN OLD COMPIERE SCHOOL CONTRIBUTOR"
I mean, this thinking is totally compatible with old CPL (based on MPL), but not with GPL.
I keep thinking that we inherited a community from Compiere - tired from being unattended.
And we inherited also a partner-community from Compiere, what I see is some of them are not comfortable with GPL.
MANY of them (mostly all) are just hiding codes and maintaining private repositories, maybe from this group the most advanced are Posterita, those who dared to release some contributions to the GPL.
Prominent exceptions to this old-compiere-school thinking: e-evolution and idalica (I mean from the group of ex-compiere-partners)
I don't know if we can find creative ways to align a community GPL-based project with old-compiere-school - I really doubt it - but I know that "innovation happens elsewhere" - so, just waiting if somebody find the formula.
Maybe the right question is if old-compiere-schoolers can "ALIGN OBJECTIVES WITH COMMUNITY AND GPL".
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
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>Just for the record, I agree with all of your post except one phrase:
>> They are the best maintainer of their own code.
OK, let me correct it: Usually they are the best maintainer of their own code. Better now? :-)
>I don't know if we can find creative ways to align a community GPL-based project with >old-compiere-school
Maybe not. But we could find ways to honor a contribution beside the trunk. But in this particular case I totally agree with you: Either Posterita could go debranded into the trunk and is maintained there or it has to move to an own repository. There I see no other way, too. Of course that doesn't mean there is none, but if we don't know it we can't go it. :-)
-Kai
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I'm thinking still in draft - but this is my first approach to this:
PRODUCT NAMING
You know from the forking debate I was against naming this product linked with a company name. And I think that was a wise decision.
PRODUCT CONSISTENCY
-1 to include contributor names in menu/windows - the "product" must be clear of that
In my opinion this is just confusing users and make the product appears unprofessional - imagine having a window named "CarlosRuiz Year-End Closing process"
VERSION NAMING
I consider the naming of versions can promote top contributors or top verticals, like
Vertical names:
Adempiere POSterita -> I think it's ok
Adempiere Libero
-- and I would agree even with company names:
Adempiere Tamak
Adempiere e-Evolution
PACKAGE NAMING
This is a hard one. I suppose it must depend on the size and the isolation of the contribution.
If the contribution is big enough it can have his own package - org.posterita - org.eevolution
But I won't like to see a little single class named org.carlosruiz.LittleSingleClass
Also there is a naming convention for model classes - that it will be better to preserve. I mean a core model class must not be outside of org.compiere.model - that can confuse developers - and remember we need to avoid having two model classes for the same object.
WEB PROMOTION:
Definitely a good idea!!!
We must push differentiation of top contributors in adempiere.com, adempierebusiness.com, adempiere wiki, adempiere.org, etc.
The idea from Trifon sounds good for me - we could try to charge non-contributors to be promoted there (that will imply another big policy about the size of contribution, what a contribution is, etc).
Another way is to promote top contributors making explicit in those sites which companies are - i.e. positioning better top contributors - putting a medal besides his name i.e. "Top Contributor - Recommended" - etc.
LOGOS USAGE:
This is another point, i.e. POSterita has its own logo - and it's used in the web POS.
I'm not sure of this - I suppose it's ok - POSterita is a vertical - the logo was voted by community.
But I'm not sure if POSterita is a trademark - if the logo is also trademarked - I suppose I won't like to see trademarked logos in Adempiere.
And if we allow the usage of company logos (not this case) we can become quickly like a F1 car.
----------------------
COMMENT ASIDE:
> Not even the greatest contribution so far has
> it's one branding: Compiere
We decided to rebrand from Compiere because of policies on the license - they are a registered trademark and they protect his trademark - don't remember exactly where that was written but it was expressly forbidden to use the name Compiere in product. This can be read also in the forking debate.
We're proud and thankful of Compiere top contribution - and we tried to honour them with a close word (synonym Adempiere).
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
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>PRODUCT CONSISTENCY
>-1 to include contributor names in menu/windows - the "product" must be clear of that
>In my opinion this is just confusing users and make the product appears unprofessional - >imagine having a window named "CarlosRuiz Year-End Closing process"
I believe that the window with the names of the contributors that Trifon said isn't of that way. We would have a window, maybe in Help > About, and there we can display the contributors' names (through a button "Credits" ? - like Firefox or many others apps). I think this is a good option.
Best regards,
Alejandro
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PRODUCT NAMING, VERSION NAMING
- My take is both should be brand/company neutral. If we name a version using company name like Posterita, it could be confusing if another member of the community want to release a special package version of his own. Imaging a name like 'Adempiere Posterita EEvolution Edition'. Also, all version are the collective effect of many, it could be controversial to name it after any individual or company.
PACKAGE NAMING
- I'm ok with having company domain in it - for e.g org.posterita or com.eevolution as long as it is free of licensing and patent issue.
We should have a page in the application and also website to promote top contributor, I believe the Adempiere.org site is the right place for this. I seriously doubt adempierebusiness.com is doing what it is setup to do, IMHO it is a mistake to come up with so many site instead of concentrate on making one good one ( end result - none is good now ).
Regards,
Low
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>I suppose I won't like to see trademarked logos in Adempiere.
I have no problem with the use of trademarked logos in Adempiere as it would go some way to protect the Adempiere brand itself. The conditions on the use should be reasonable.
1) There should be no restrctions on removing the logo. i.e. someone could re-package Adempiere without the logo.
2) The logo must be used unmodified, or modifications must be approved by the trademark holder.
3) There should be no restrictions on its use within Adempiere.
In that way, the trademark could not be used on an unconnected product without the trademark holder's permission. This is not an unreasonable requirement.
The way IPCOP used was to credit major contributions in the UI so that the VPN package has a credit at the bottom of the page "the VPN packace was sponsored by the Seminole Gas Company"
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Since the issue here is branding then lets solve it as such, and try to maintain how it is named or presented in the ADempiere product so as to avoid the confusion and clutter stated above and before this in our discussions.
So the question as posed by Fred is an important one: How do we brand a contributing company? And his mentioning of the risk is true as we are doing things just in time, with no branding policy until we reach a bridge like this one.
I think there should be a Convention instead of a Policy as some possibly ugly thing calld legality can be the issue. We have been moving and progressing by conventions meaning looking at what works and avoiding bad law (for the good of the community).
We are trying to establish a convention where a contributing party get the full blast of the trumpets and beating of the drums and shouts of war-cries, so that both friend and enemy knows what we re all about.
Can we meanwhile just do as such? Go round and speak more of the good of our community. I go around always saying these things always to friends and propects:
1) The so happened skilled developer with strong ERP experience and perfect Swing i came across just lives 15 mins from my farm and his name is Hengsin and he is our Commit Head.
2) There is this Carlos Ruiz who seems to bend time and contribute so much ideas and material from the onset. He is our PMC Chief.
3) There is this Karsten who made a script to a script to migrate compiere/adempiere versions and contribute it freely. His company under Kai Schaeffer was so kind to pull off a great conference for many of us to meet.
4) There is this amazing Iranian caled Bahman who can really hack into Compiere/ADempiere and we keep from challenging him too much. I tried to be his good friend.
5) We have this Finnish named Kontro who quarrels with us over how rotten the source is. I learnt some tricks from him so far.
6) We have big former Compiere names such as Idalica proving and anchoring ADempiere in a big way in USA.
5) We have a Mauritian company that gives us the amazing Posterita and that Ashley solved a big scaling issue on DB connection pooling.
6) We have a shopfloor vertical developed by Mexican Victor Perez but heavily added by Tim from California.
7) We have all this in an amazing bazaar with much work from Romanian Teo, Indonesian Armen, accountants from UK, Mike Judd and many names keep flashing by. There are also those who dont wish their names to be mentioned here but contributed quietly and warmly.
and so on... of course when speaking to people on the streets we choose the right contextual words. I am not so sure what they really did in details as the Wiki changes and SVNLogs are always flashing too fast by my eyes. I just say "wow!" mostly. To put it out on our pages and packaging and campaigns we may have to put more tot to it to get the right effect out.
Whatever it is, we have to stretch our imagination and creativity abit to tackle this. And that comes from a joyful and happy community that always appreciate the best and show its best. So let us brainstorm to the max.
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Branding oneself in the Bazaar as i see it is more of a communal social thing and not a direct commercial and legal affair. For example we have only one company product name sat down here among the Files Download. But how well they fare is how well the community looks at their source.
One may argue that many business makers hardly look onto that page as mostly are DIYs who wanted things free. Even if we hardcopy print logos of companies onto our assets such as on the Splash Screen, it can still be taken off. We did take off reluctantly Compiere's logo (due to legal request) and replace it with just a bazaar one.
As ADempiere gets more and more branded, calls will go out for the makers behind it, and of course we know who they are. If they dont, ppl will seek them out. I remember some obscure not very commonly advertised names such as Unisys, I2, Corellian etc while working at a bank. What i learnt is that they are famous by firstly their niche branding and merit. They are mentioned by word of mouth among the stakeholders in the market. Well, those are commercial names. What about those communal ones?
Now i know Richard Stallman and Matt Assay for sure. I know Matt's tots well that i view his company Alfresco as a progressively thinking Open Source project. So is it with Rod Johnson's Spring Framework. Well, the later is more due to Colin Rooney ringing it in my ears. :-) Still, that is clear word of mouth.
A whisper in truth is more louder than cries of praise.
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Its me, agent Smith again... This contributing company approach by Fred here http://www.adempiere.com/wiki/index.php/Image:Brand0.jpg is worth appraising. IMHO we have to draw more companies to participate and enrich the app. Functional wise there is no issue as we can turn menu items on or off; also replace logo images. Its quite subjective to worry about possible cluttering concern. From that picture, it may still look more exciting and not cluttered. So what do others think?
Why i seem to spend more musing on this is i tot an AJAX UI is what the community wanted. Now some company contributed a big chunk on it warrants us to pay attention. It so happened that we couldnt have the ideal situation just yet that more developers collaborated on this AJAX.
There is now a choice between a clean uncluttered but possibly uninteresting interface or a noisy but full option of something wonderful as an AJAX UI option. That may lead another innovator to come along and give it more easier menu arrangement to solve that clutter worry. Some ppl told me that they tot this is how the bazaar happens. Break something, and many other smart guys comes along intriqued enough to rush in to fix it. As long as u keep smiling.
If not, I wonder how is this bazaar going to grow more devastatingly more powerful in the near future? If we reject Fred's effort in proposing the above, can someone come up with some AJAX we can use? And by when pls?
red1
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Also like to comment on Hengsin's remark in the IRC discussion when he brought this up that to tie to a company name may not seem proper as others have contributed directly and indirectly to our source code projects along the way.
This is certainly through with Libero and also with Posterita. The contributions cannot be measured or is not visible easily as for example some of the code edits i noticed particularly coming from Hengsin has quite a bit of convincing visible ERP and certain architectural grasp, and so a single line correction from him may mean alot in return. As i do not see further rebut on his codes submission mostly. So this is subjective but nevertheless his point sounds valid too.
While we at the same time wish to encourage entrepreneurial contribution from commercial entities for their source codes but we at the same time also wishes for like spirit from the techie community. This brings back to the age old argument of how to reconcile the two. Or just leave them be?
But Carlos has given a point that Posterita's logo is a result of community participation and should be considered for usage in the app interface. Still been a commercial company we have to look at whether Posterita or any other commercially-linked logo has legal implications in the future. For example (now that we touched on the legal area) lets say that in future Posterita is sold to another entity and that entity stipulate some restrictions on the logo usage. Lets say Microsoft buys over Posterita (i m no Nasdaq broker, so i m just speculating) and that may create brand delusion rite away. Now let us say that even though Posterita signs an oath that this contribution belongs to the community such that Microsoft (i m no attorney, so i m just speculating) cannot touch us, but this time brand poisoning happens as Microsoft can say it owns Posterita Ltd, Mauritius and it doesnt mind it remains free in ADempiere. That will be a backdoor takeover in the eyes of the community and another revolt can happen (i am no tarot card reader, so i m just speculating).
To give future-proof to this is that we ask the contributing company to provide a soft name that is not associated with legally aquirable names, i.e. such as "Victoria" was used in our last release. Can we have some names throwing into the hat here? I dont know,, maybe 'mauritius', 'ashley', 'tsang' (i m an evangelist, so i m just saying).
red1
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- - - - - - - IN COMPLIANCE WITH FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT THIS EMAIL THREAD IS PUBLISHED INTO THE OPEN FOR PEER APPRECIATION - - - - -
Carlos,
Thanks for clearing things out and explaining your thoughts in details. As red1 is saying, this is probably best put into the forum for all to see.
I will reply on the forum. Could you please post this email conversation so that I can reply on it on the branding policy thread.
Regards
Frederick Tsang
On 19/02/2008, carlos.ruiz@adempiere.org <carlos.ruiz@adempiere.org> wrote:
Hi Alex and all Posterita team, good to hear from you again.
Let me explain you the situation from my point of view:
2 - On the discussion on november about including or not including the webUI we agreed that Adempiere must not release any piece of code with trademarks within.
We agreed to have an extension directory to allow contributors to have trademarked contributions trying to ease the maintenance and get potential attention from developer community.
We explicitly said that trademarked extensions can't be released joined with Adempiere.
3 - In january 29th I asked Frederick about the status of webUI, and offered my help to create a possible branch for webUI
Same day Frederick answered me that you were revising your strategies towards Adempiere - and asked me to wait for an official position before helping you to open the branch.
4 - In january 30th I decided to determine the real status (alpha? beta? release candidate?) of webUI.
I received a lot of help from Heng Sin to understand how I could compile and debug webUI - in fact in january 30th we found that the extension didn't work and even didn't compile. Heng Sin helped me to fix the problems and finally I could test and started to do testings on the webUI.
Since that I reported 28 problems found in webUI and solved 9 of them.
5 - After the fixes I found that webUI can be used again - and personally I think it is usable but in beta status.
Also I confronted the situation - webUI won't be tested if we don't deploy it into www.testadempiere.com
And to deploy it with adempiere we need to make it trademark free.
So, in feb-1 I made the changes to make it trademark free and in feb-4 I made the changes in testadempiere to release it for community testings.
6 - There has been some proposals in forums about moving the webUI to trunk.
I didn't made the move mostly because I was expecting this reaction from you.
What we're confronting now is like a catch-22 situation.
The situation is:
* we have an Adempiere extension - not running - not compiling - not maintained
* we have developers in adempiere (like me) wanting to make it work
* most of the developers (and I understand them now and share their opinion) don't want to help to make work or maintain a trademarked extension
* I understand now this is exactly the same feeling why we don't want to contribute to Compiere or OpenBravo
- because we believe in community open source, and we don't believe in commercial "trademarked" open-source
- and we don't want to contribute for code "owned" by a company
- I mean contribute in extensions where we're not peers
- extensions where there is a "first among equals" (bringing some Linus words)
Now, I was reviewing some e-mails from the november discussion and found two important pieces from a Frederick's e-mail on nov-13:
Frederick said:
"The right to fork is a fundamental right in the open source project, and yes all our code will be submitted under the GPL license and thus can be forked if deemed appropriate. I won't see any problem having someone forking the WEB UI immediately and co-existing within Adempiere. Thus meaning we can have 2 WEB UI, and yes with different branding side by side within ADempiere. Obviously we would rather maintain our branded version rather than the other one."
...
"The only thing I wouldn't like is: to compete with Adempiere, I think this would be unfair. That is having a fork of the project called Adempiere WEB UI. Any other name is fine."
Well, we're learning - now I understand, this is a wrong situation, I'm an adempiere developer, and I'm an adempiere believer, I don't believe in trademarked extensions.
So I don't want to make a "GlobalQSS webUI" fork (what Fred was proposing).
I'm sure that "GlobalQSS webUI" will get the same developer attention than "Posterita webUI" - and I want to be sure that webUI evolves, with the help from Heng Sin and others.
If I'm going to help to evolve webUI - I just can work in "Adempiere webUI" - I didn't notice that in nov-13 - but in fact the condition to "not fork Adempiere webUI" is tying our hands.
- I don't to help to evolve a trademarked extension - "Posterita webUI"
- I don't like to fork it trademarking it with my own trademark - "GlobalQSS webUI"
- We just can get developer attention if it's named "Adempiere webUI" and trademark-free
- but the "condition" from Frederick is preventing to "fork" to be included in trunk
Well, I think those are enough facts, explanations and thinkings.
What can we do now?
[ Is just my opinion, totally un-consulted with others ]
- If Posterita agrees to move webUI to trunk trademark-free - I think we can get enough developer attention to make it work and maintain
- If Posterita refuses to move it into trunk trademark-free, well at least from my part I'll honor the nov-13 request from Fred - I'll revert the revision 4434 - and I'll revert all my work done to release webUI with adempiere and testadempiere
I'm not going to revert the bug fixing or enhancements - but I'll stop working on the extension
Sorrily Adempiere will miss an opportunity - but I'm ready to pay the cost - it's just a matter of time (costly time) as you know there are other webUI extensions coming.
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
red1-org wrote:
Hi Alex,
I very much like to engage in this discussion and brainstorm of assisting Posterita in branding itself as i have always do so. Moreover to engage with minds that has 'read all the books there is on Open Source' shall always be challenging, at least to me.
However, i must plead with you. "Go to the forums". This is nothing private. It is of public good and right and even so when there seems to be a conspiracy of betrayal. Its best things are resolved outside. I promised, i will hold the flames away. I m stronger now (thanks to lots of practice these last one.five years).
red1
----- Original Message -----
From: Alexandre Tsang
To: carlos.ruiz@adempiere.org ; red1@red1.org ; Joel Stangeland
Cc: posterita team
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 2:50 AM
Subject: Concerns
Dear Carlos Joel and Red1,
We just saw that there were some renaming. I think this is bad. Adempiere renamed the web ui as Adempiere.
I thought contributors were priceless.
I am getting concerned.
Do you find that normal?
Do you believe objectives are aligned?
Posterita is being undermined here. But be sure that if we are people that would come and contribute whole module will be put off.
It sounds like a betrayal. A misappropriatio of contribution.
Can you tell me what you think?
Regards,
Alex
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This is what was agreed, although not made official. These were the inoffical rules on branding policy.
1) Adempiere is to be trademark free
2) Posterita ZK Web UI is to be in a branch
3) Would have to issue the Web UI as a separate download for people to add it to their distribution.
4) If not maintained, others are free to branch out and create their own
5) Posterita NOT to be replaced by Adempiere.
Now I do get the points about others not wanting to contribute in the Posterita ZK Web UI. I personally feel, that if they do not want to contribute to the Posterita ZK Web UI project then as agreed they are free to do so, in their own branch and release their own extensions. No problem with that whatsoever.
I really do want to distinguish between community work, which is Adempiere and private branch. We want to be a private branch that is compatible with Adempiere. This allows us to show where our specialization are in some area and can thus claim some degree of expertise. This in turn can lead to sales and would bring further incentive for us to cover more areas. Meaning more freebies for community in the long run.
Adempiere can take the contributed code and put it in the trunk and remove our logo. This would be perfectly legal and there is nothing we can do about it. We may think that this would be great for the product. But I beg to differ: I believe there will be a real cost to that.
There is a strong message that will be sent:
* Hey guys! Adempiere is extension friendly, you can come and build your extension... it's a great place to be BUT... hey I think it would be better now if we nationalize the extension. It's better for the country. Hope you don't mind. I am sure you'll understand.
* The right of the few will not be respected, if it goes against the benefit of the many. This in my opinion is totally wrong.
Thanks for considering my opinion. I will let the debate carry on.
Regards
Frederick Tsang
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Well, we're learning every day - this intent to be "extension" friendly is bringing good lessons - at least for me.
I was the harder pusher to integrate webUI as an adempiere extension - and honestly I'm really disappointed, I feel I committed a mistake here.
If asked today - I'll be closer to Heng Sin position - prone to refuse completely to allow branded extensions - they can be kept in private (as I suspect most people are doing).
What's the need to have private work on public repository?
We need here 110% open source contributors, not 99.99%.
Every time I realize is more important "show me the maintainer" than "show me the code", and now "show me your openness".
And this is even worst - I feel a situation like:
- Show me the code -> yes, here it's a partial non-working code
- Show me the maintainer -> sorry, I can't maintain it, it's really hard to keep in sync with trunk
- I want to maintain it -> ok, but don't integrate it with Adempiere, you can work on our branded code, or fork to your branded code, but not integrate it within Adempiere
I see some inconsistencies in Fred's message:
> 4) If not maintained, others are free to branch out and create their own
In fact the "if not maintained" is not a condition to fork it.
Your condition was just to avoid "Adempiere" forking
And now I realized - too late - that your request was just to allow other branded forks and this is really bad for Adempiere - because of such condition the extensions is not maintained and we can't exploit it also.
And I'm wondering if "not maintained" why Adempiere developers can't take it and integrate it within trunk?
What's the meaning of releasing a branded extension, stop maintenance, and refuse that Adempiere developers can take it and integrate within trunk?
> 5) Posterita NOT to be replaced by Adempiere
These words can be easily misunderstood - so better to clarify them:
We can't talk about exclusivity here.
Adempiere at any moment can integrate or implement something that is covered by a branded extension.
> * Hey guys! Adempiere is extension friendly, you can come and build your
> extension...
> it's a great place to be BUT... hey I think it would be better now if we
> nationalize the extension. It's better for the country. Hope you don't
> mind. I am sure you'll understand.
Yes, if asked today, I would say it this way:
Hey guys! Adempiere is extension friendly, you can come and build your extension...
You can keep it private - ok - it's your decision.
Or you can release it publicly, and if the contribution is good you're likely to receive attention from expert developers that will help you to evolve your contribution.
But be careful!!! What is your school? community-open-source? proprietary-open-source? demo-open-source?
Well, to come here you MUST BE really community-open-source.
> * The right of the few will not be respected, if it goes against the
> benefit of the many. This in my opinion is totally wrong.
This is totally respecting the "right" of the few:
"- If Posterita refuses to move it into trunk trademark-free, well at least from my part I'll honor the nov-13 request from Fred - I'll revert the revision 4434
- and I'll revert all my work done to release webUI with adempiere and testadempiere
I'm not going to revert the bug fixing or enhancements - but I'll stop working on the extension
Sorrily Adempiere will miss an opportunity - but I'm ready to pay the cost - it's just a matter of time (costly time) as you know there are other webUI extensions coming."
I'm ready to honor the request from Fred, I'm ready to "respect the right of the few", I'm ready to revert this - please let me know if this is final position from Posterita - and I'll revert those steps immediately, and move extensions/posterita/webui to a branch.
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
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My memory of the original discussion on this topic was I stopped discussing after Ramiro rightly pointed out that since the code was being released as GPL the terms under which is was released to the project and what the project could do with it were defined in detail in the GPL... so why rehash.
Can I ask one generic point with regard to the GPL & private modules... it was always my understanding of GPL that any enhancement that is distributed (to anyone) must be released also as GPL. And that release must be made to any 3rd parties tha requests it at a cost not more that the cost of packaging & shipping the code. I understood it is this principal that requires RedHat to release their code to Centos to compile. If this is so, how can there be any proprietary modules under GPL Adempiere? Under the original CPL this was possible but I don't think so under GPL! or am I missing something?
colin
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Yes, the claim is not about legality, is most about "ethics" (at least I understand "betrayal" and "misappropriation" as an ethic interrogation)
The question is Posterita agreed to release the webUI code with some conditions - one of them was a *request* from Frederick to avoid integrating the code within Adempiere.
I emphasize *request* because is that - a *request* not enforced by GPL.
Now, I'm an honorable person - I'll honor such request and drop the integration with Adempiere if Posterita think this is betrayal or misappropriation.
That's all, I think is not a tragedy, we just learnt a lesson about branded extensions.
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
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yes Carlos,
I understood that, perhaps I should have explicitly said; I agree with your suggestion & offer to revert... that is the fair and ethical thing to do.
I just question the idea that Posterita or anybody else can release an extension that is not GPL and hence must not be made available to everyone including the Adempiere project itself. But I'm ready to be corrected on my understanding as to the impact of GPL.
colin
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Here's a radical idea. It's based on two principles:
1. The more the merrier, we need contributers
2. Red1 has often said, "Come here and brand yourself"
What if we added a system configuration setting for branding? The options could be:
A. Adempiere Only (would only display adempiere logo)
B. Contributor (would display the logo of the contributor)
C. My Brand (could display whatever logo the user picked)
Then if a contributor puts in a nice functionality, and wants to brand, they can include a logo and build the code to check the setting. If the setting is = B, then the contributor logo would appear. This could be default. But if it bothers any user or developer, they can switch the setting and only the ADempiere branding will appear.
The idea has the collateral benefit of easing universal re-branding for in-house systems.
Everybody can be happy. Contributors can plant their flag, but if branding bugs you, you can make it go away.
What do you think?
Regards,
Joel S
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Hi All,
As you all know Posterita is going into the trunk of Adempiere, This is something that I must say all of our team is very excited about. During the process, the community has been very supportive and for that I am very grateful. I think we are also the first company to contribute a full vertical in Adempiere and we hope many more will come.
Being first is not always a good thing, specially when no branding policy has been established. There are quietly some disagreements about how a company should brand its products. I understand there are conflicting principles and I would like with your help to clear the issue out.
These are my assumptions, and should you disagree please voice out.
1) No one should misappropriate the work of others
2) Whenever possible contributors should be given credits for their work
3) A contributor has the right to name the product to its liking.
Now here is a concrete example but by no means is the only one. W
hile contributing Posterita POS into the trunk, there has been a request to create a new window that will allow to do some things in the Swing Client. I would like to know where are we suppose to create the windows.
Do we have a folder call Posterita POS where we put all the different windows?
Do we just create a window under the POS Swing Client.
Will everybody knows what Posterita is? that is a POS?
Should it be rename Web POS so that everybody knows what it is?
What will happen when there will be 10 verticals contributed in Adempiere?
Regards
Frederick Tsang
Hi,
from my point of view every contribution should look like just as additional functionality of Adempiere itself. If you decide to put it into trunk you should give up your one branding. Nevertheless there should be a way to put credits to the contributors.
It would be very confusing for everybody (users and customers) if there would be a different branding for every contribution. As well if you put your contribution into trunk, you get more attention from the community, so more people will contribute. After a certain time it's not your contribution anymore, but the contribution of many.
Not even the greatest contribution so far has it's one branding: Compiere
Regards
Toni
Hi,
Toni, has a good point:
>from my point of view every contribution should look like just as additional functionality of Adempiere itself. If you >decide to put it into trunk you should give up your one branding. Nevertheless there should be a way to put credits to >the contributors.
>
>It would be very confusing for everybody (users and customers) if there would be a different branding for every >contribution. As well if you put your contribution into trunk, you get more attention from the community, so more >people will contribute. After a certain time it's not your contribution anymore, but the contribution of many.
I think that more appropriate place for contributors to get credit is free advertisement in Adempiere site and paid advertisement for non contributors. For example www.adempierebusiness.com we have over 30 companies and not all of them have real contribution till now.
Functnioality in Adempiere should be named with appropriate names: 'Web POS' is good name while 'Posterita POS' is not clear what is the meaning of the window/process/....
also we can create window with names of all contributors in Adempiere.
Kind regards,
Trifon
Hi all,
I just want to point out that there will be consequences to refusing the one thing that a company might be willing to contribute a whole module.
Everyone is in Adempiere for some selfish reasons. May be it financial success, fame and so on.
My main concern is by refusing to have I don't know Posterita extension or libero's extension as a brand. Adempiere will be erecting barriers to innovation. In the end, Adempiere will get less and less extensions. And this is normal. Adempiere should be ready to compromise, to find innovative solutions to ALIGN THE OBJECTIVES OF ALL.
The barriers are there.
This is encouraging non contribution of whole vertical. If this is the case so be it.
I am urging the community at large to voice out the opinion. I believe that by going this way, in he short term it might be ok but in the longer term, this type of policy will drive out companies that can contribute whole verticals.
Also, what can be in the interest of some contributors patching code and so on may not necessarily be in the interest of the community at large: getting more and more functionalities, more verticals. Ways should be found to resolve the conflict of interest of some developers spending a lot of time on debugging and patching code, not getting enough visibility and work with the interest of companies which, because of contributing a whole module, can be in the limelight and thus getting many jobs.
I believe just erasing company name so that individuals can be more visible is not the only way. We should be more clever and try to come to terms with aligning the objectives of the different type of contributors, lurkers, users...
Now that Posterita has agreed to contribute after let me remind you of many talks from the Adempiere council telling posterita it should for visibility motive. Now Adempiere is ready to go back on what it says. Now that Adempiere managed to convince to release some of Posterita major contribution as GPL, it is too late for us coming back. one cannot take back what is already given... But by doing so, one thing for sure, the incentives for companies to contribute whole module will be reduced. This is also sending a clear and loud message to potential contributors too.
I hope some people do not take that personally. On many occasions, where I have spoken to Red1 for example, I have expressed concerns about Adempiere not being able to align the objectives of some of the people volunteering for doing ungrateful and yet necessary jobs.
In Berlin, I was also suggesting to create a foundation, so that money could be given to an entity. The foundation would have acted like a governement where it would have financed public goods eg street lighting everyone wants it but no one wants to pay for it. In the end, I seriously hope that Adempiere is being able to find intelligent ways of reconciling the obejectives of each one of us. I believe if we are able to do so, Adempiere will be able to welcome many innovations and then we can all have a greater, and better project.
Alex
Hi all,
Yes, Alex is right we are all here for selfish reason. But we agree to play a certain game with certain rules. Let's call it the gpl-game. And the rules are clear: My work is depending on the contribution of other, so my changes within Adempiere has to be a contribution, too. So even taking the Postarita code, removing the branding and put it in the trunk would be totally legal and IMHO ethical, too. These are just the rules of the game. There wouldn't be a Posterita if there hadn't been the contribution of all the other Adempiere code – mostly from Jörg Jahnke. Was there an ethical discussion about taking JJ code and rebrand it? No and it was not necessary. If you play the gpl-game you can't complain if someone is just using it's rules – you know them before you begin.
Here in Berlin we have a group they call themselves "gpl-violations.org project". And they sue companies who are violating the gpl. They stopped consumer products of companies like Siemens because they didn't public their contribution to the Linux Kernel and they didn't attached the gpl itself to the product. So not contributing your changes to a gpl product is illegal (and IMHO unethical). And exactly these rules make the gpl-game so successful. Actually I had bin in a presentation of the Siemens guys about this case. And they saw it as their fault. No complains about the rules.
If you play the gpl-game you have to accept, that there is a common ground that is totally different from the way we think usually about “property” (the roman way). You can't conquer or own this ground and if your ground touches this ground you are loosing the property of our own ground and it becomes common. But the good thing is: you could use the common ground for free.
But should we do it? Should we rebrand Posterita and just put it in the trunk? No, I would say we shouldn't. Not because it is unethical just because we need the contributors and we have to integrate them, for our selfish reasons. They are the best maintainer of their own code. And we should be thankful that they contributed. So Alex you are right. We should be creative in finding ways to “ALIGN THE OBJECTIVES OF ALL”. But I think there should be one taboo where we can't make compromise: The trunk. This is our holy grail. This is where everything is depending on. And we have to protect it to keep it clean. We just can't accept other brands there. This would lead in longterm to a mess. Look to the sourceforge startpage: The three most active projects are ERP-system. So the OS-ERP time is coming, but in a longterm we have competitors. But we are the only pure community projects without any traps and lock-ins. This is our capital and to keep this should be the first priority. The rest around the trunk is not so important. We could put other brands on our websides we could praise their names once a week in the forum. That's all fine, but we have to find the compromises around the trunk. And yes, perhaps sometimes we just should take the code.
And rejecting the contribution now is definitely a signal. But is it perhaps the right one? We are saying: Contributors are welcome, we praise them but only if they accept the holiness of our trunk.
-Kai
Hi Kai, thanks for participating in this discussion.
Just for the record, I agree with all of your post except one phrase:
> They are the best maintainer of their own code.
We arrived to this situation because:
1 - The contributed web UI was non-working and unmaintained.
Last commit from posterita team on extension/posterita subdirectory is from november 23.
2 - Adempiere NEEDS a web UI, and I consider 3.4 deserves a webUI
Finally, my hurry is because we need to decide if we are going to release 3.4 with a webUI.
For me it's ok if Posterita don't agree with this - we can just drop it and simply support effort from other players (Victor is working on GWT webUI AFAIK).
What are the options that Posterita is giving us until now?
a) work on my branded extension - it's clear now that none of the core adempiere developers want to work there
b) fork on your branded extension - I really don't like this approach, forking to a "GlobalQSS webUI" to make it work in my opinion will be seen really bad for GlobalQSS
What are the options from Adempiere to Posterita?
Well, Adempiere is not a body? we just can imagein what this cloud called adempiere-community wants reading the forums, and until now ALL POSTS in this thread is calling to maintain trunk brand-free.
Maybe the discussion is:
- what with a "vertical" contributed but unmaintained?
- what with a "vertical" contributed but non-working?
And finally I'm wondering if this is really "ALIGNING THE OBJECTIVES OF ALL" ?
Sorry - many thoughts on just one post - I'm finishing now.
I feel more like "TRYING TO ALIGN OBJECTIVES OF ADEMPIERE TO AN OLD COMPIERE SCHOOL CONTRIBUTOR"
I mean, this thinking is totally compatible with old CPL (based on MPL), but not with GPL.
I keep thinking that we inherited a community from Compiere - tired from being unattended.
And we inherited also a partner-community from Compiere, what I see is some of them are not comfortable with GPL.
MANY of them (mostly all) are just hiding codes and maintaining private repositories, maybe from this group the most advanced are Posterita, those who dared to release some contributions to the GPL.
Prominent exceptions to this old-compiere-school thinking: e-evolution and idalica (I mean from the group of ex-compiere-partners)
I don't know if we can find creative ways to align a community GPL-based project with old-compiere-school - I really doubt it - but I know that "innovation happens elsewhere" - so, just waiting if somebody find the formula.
Maybe the right question is if old-compiere-schoolers can "ALIGN OBJECTIVES WITH COMMUNITY AND GPL".
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
Hi Carlos,
>Just for the record, I agree with all of your post except one phrase:
>> They are the best maintainer of their own code.
OK, let me correct it: Usually they are the best maintainer of their own code. Better now? :-)
>I don't know if we can find creative ways to align a community GPL-based project with >old-compiere-school
Maybe not. But we could find ways to honor a contribution beside the trunk. But in this particular case I totally agree with you: Either Posterita could go debranded into the trunk and is maintained there or it has to move to an own repository. There I see no other way, too. Of course that doesn't mean there is none, but if we don't know it we can't go it. :-)
-Kai
Thanks for raising this here Fred.
I'm thinking still in draft - but this is my first approach to this:
PRODUCT NAMING
You know from the forking debate I was against naming this product linked with a company name. And I think that was a wise decision.
PRODUCT CONSISTENCY
-1 to include contributor names in menu/windows - the "product" must be clear of that
In my opinion this is just confusing users and make the product appears unprofessional - imagine having a window named "CarlosRuiz Year-End Closing process"
VERSION NAMING
I consider the naming of versions can promote top contributors or top verticals, like
Vertical names:
Adempiere POSterita -> I think it's ok
Adempiere Libero
-- and I would agree even with company names:
Adempiere Tamak
Adempiere e-Evolution
PACKAGE NAMING
This is a hard one. I suppose it must depend on the size and the isolation of the contribution.
If the contribution is big enough it can have his own package - org.posterita - org.eevolution
But I won't like to see a little single class named org.carlosruiz.LittleSingleClass
Also there is a naming convention for model classes - that it will be better to preserve. I mean a core model class must not be outside of org.compiere.model - that can confuse developers - and remember we need to avoid having two model classes for the same object.
WEB PROMOTION:
Definitely a good idea!!!
We must push differentiation of top contributors in adempiere.com, adempierebusiness.com, adempiere wiki, adempiere.org, etc.
The idea from Trifon sounds good for me - we could try to charge non-contributors to be promoted there (that will imply another big policy about the size of contribution, what a contribution is, etc).
Another way is to promote top contributors making explicit in those sites which companies are - i.e. positioning better top contributors - putting a medal besides his name i.e. "Top Contributor - Recommended" - etc.
LOGOS USAGE:
This is another point, i.e. POSterita has its own logo - and it's used in the web POS.
I'm not sure of this - I suppose it's ok - POSterita is a vertical - the logo was voted by community.
But I'm not sure if POSterita is a trademark - if the logo is also trademarked - I suppose I won't like to see trademarked logos in Adempiere.
And if we allow the usage of company logos (not this case) we can become quickly like a F1 car.
----------------------
COMMENT ASIDE:
> Not even the greatest contribution so far has
> it's one branding: Compiere
We decided to rebrand from Compiere because of policies on the license - they are a registered trademark and they protect his trademark - don't remember exactly where that was written but it was expressly forbidden to use the name Compiere in product. This can be read also in the forking debate.
We're proud and thankful of Compiere top contribution - and we tried to honour them with a close word (synonym Adempiere).
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
Hi Carlos,
>PRODUCT CONSISTENCY
>-1 to include contributor names in menu/windows - the "product" must be clear of that
>In my opinion this is just confusing users and make the product appears unprofessional - >imagine having a window named "CarlosRuiz Year-End Closing process"
I believe that the window with the names of the contributors that Trifon said isn't of that way. We would have a window, maybe in Help > About, and there we can display the contributors' names (through a button "Credits" ? - like Firefox or many others apps). I think this is a good option.
Best regards,
Alejandro
Hi Alejandro,
My post was not intending about the Credits window (what I think is a good and necessary addition).
What I meant is about naming menus, windows or processes with contributor prefix or suffix.
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
Hi all,
PRODUCT NAMING, VERSION NAMING
- My take is both should be brand/company neutral. If we name a version using company name like Posterita, it could be confusing if another member of the community want to release a special package version of his own. Imaging a name like 'Adempiere Posterita EEvolution Edition'. Also, all version are the collective effect of many, it could be controversial to name it after any individual or company.
PACKAGE NAMING
- I'm ok with having company domain in it - for e.g org.posterita or com.eevolution as long as it is free of licensing and patent issue.
We should have a page in the application and also website to promote top contributor, I believe the Adempiere.org site is the right place for this. I seriously doubt adempierebusiness.com is doing what it is setup to do, IMHO it is a mistake to come up with so many site instead of concentrate on making one good one ( end result - none is good now ).
Regards,
Low
>I suppose I won't like to see trademarked logos in Adempiere.
I have no problem with the use of trademarked logos in Adempiere as it would go some way to protect the Adempiere brand itself. The conditions on the use should be reasonable.
1) There should be no restrctions on removing the logo. i.e. someone could re-package Adempiere without the logo.
2) The logo must be used unmodified, or modifications must be approved by the trademark holder.
3) There should be no restrictions on its use within Adempiere.
In that way, the trademark could not be used on an unconnected product without the trademark holder's permission. This is not an unreasonable requirement.
The way IPCOP used was to credit major contributions in the UI so that the VPN package has a credit at the bottom of the page "the VPN packace was sponsored by the Seminole Gas Company"
Hi All,
Thanks for your comments so far on the topic, I have created a wiki page on Adempiere and posted a couple of pictures.
http://www.adempiere.com/wiki/index.php/Branding_Policy
Regards
Frederick Tsang
Since the issue here is branding then lets solve it as such, and try to maintain how it is named or presented in the ADempiere product so as to avoid the confusion and clutter stated above and before this in our discussions.
So the question as posed by Fred is an important one: How do we brand a contributing company? And his mentioning of the risk is true as we are doing things just in time, with no branding policy until we reach a bridge like this one.
I think there should be a Convention instead of a Policy as some possibly ugly thing calld legality can be the issue. We have been moving and progressing by conventions meaning looking at what works and avoiding bad law (for the good of the community).
We are trying to establish a convention where a contributing party get the full blast of the trumpets and beating of the drums and shouts of war-cries, so that both friend and enemy knows what we re all about.
Can we meanwhile just do as such? Go round and speak more of the good of our community. I go around always saying these things always to friends and propects:
1) The so happened skilled developer with strong ERP experience and perfect Swing i came across just lives 15 mins from my farm and his name is Hengsin and he is our Commit Head.
2) There is this Carlos Ruiz who seems to bend time and contribute so much ideas and material from the onset. He is our PMC Chief.
3) There is this Karsten who made a script to a script to migrate compiere/adempiere versions and contribute it freely. His company under Kai Schaeffer was so kind to pull off a great conference for many of us to meet.
4) There is this amazing Iranian caled Bahman who can really hack into Compiere/ADempiere and we keep from challenging him too much. I tried to be his good friend.
5) We have this Finnish named Kontro who quarrels with us over how rotten the source is. I learnt some tricks from him so far.
6) We have big former Compiere names such as Idalica proving and anchoring ADempiere in a big way in USA.
5) We have a Mauritian company that gives us the amazing Posterita and that Ashley solved a big scaling issue on DB connection pooling.
6) We have a shopfloor vertical developed by Mexican Victor Perez but heavily added by Tim from California.
7) We have all this in an amazing bazaar with much work from Romanian Teo, Indonesian Armen, accountants from UK, Mike Judd and many names keep flashing by. There are also those who dont wish their names to be mentioned here but contributed quietly and warmly.
and so on... of course when speaking to people on the streets we choose the right contextual words. I am not so sure what they really did in details as the Wiki changes and SVNLogs are always flashing too fast by my eyes. I just say "wow!" mostly. To put it out on our pages and packaging and campaigns we may have to put more tot to it to get the right effect out.
Whatever it is, we have to stretch our imagination and creativity abit to tackle this. And that comes from a joyful and happy community that always appreciate the best and show its best. So let us brainstorm to the max.
Branding oneself in the Bazaar as i see it is more of a communal social thing and not a direct commercial and legal affair. For example we have only one company product name sat down here among the Files Download. But how well they fare is how well the community looks at their source.
One may argue that many business makers hardly look onto that page as mostly are DIYs who wanted things free. Even if we hardcopy print logos of companies onto our assets such as on the Splash Screen, it can still be taken off. We did take off reluctantly Compiere's logo (due to legal request) and replace it with just a bazaar one.
As ADempiere gets more and more branded, calls will go out for the makers behind it, and of course we know who they are. If they dont, ppl will seek them out. I remember some obscure not very commonly advertised names such as Unisys, I2, Corellian etc while working at a bank. What i learnt is that they are famous by firstly their niche branding and merit. They are mentioned by word of mouth among the stakeholders in the market. Well, those are commercial names. What about those communal ones?
Now i know Richard Stallman and Matt Assay for sure. I know Matt's tots well that i view his company Alfresco as a progressively thinking Open Source project. So is it with Rod Johnson's Spring Framework. Well, the later is more due to Colin Rooney ringing it in my ears. :-) Still, that is clear word of mouth.
A whisper in truth is more louder than cries of praise.
Its me, agent Smith again... This contributing company approach by Fred here http://www.adempiere.com/wiki/index.php/Image:Brand0.jpg is worth appraising. IMHO we have to draw more companies to participate and enrich the app. Functional wise there is no issue as we can turn menu items on or off; also replace logo images. Its quite subjective to worry about possible cluttering concern. From that picture, it may still look more exciting and not cluttered. So what do others think?
Why i seem to spend more musing on this is i tot an AJAX UI is what the community wanted. Now some company contributed a big chunk on it warrants us to pay attention. It so happened that we couldnt have the ideal situation just yet that more developers collaborated on this AJAX.
There is now a choice between a clean uncluttered but possibly uninteresting interface or a noisy but full option of something wonderful as an AJAX UI option. That may lead another innovator to come along and give it more easier menu arrangement to solve that clutter worry. Some ppl told me that they tot this is how the bazaar happens. Break something, and many other smart guys comes along intriqued enough to rush in to fix it. As long as u keep smiling.
If not, I wonder how is this bazaar going to grow more devastatingly more powerful in the near future? If we reject Fred's effort in proposing the above, can someone come up with some AJAX we can use? And by when pls?
red1
Also like to comment on Hengsin's remark in the IRC discussion when he brought this up that to tie to a company name may not seem proper as others have contributed directly and indirectly to our source code projects along the way.
This is certainly through with Libero and also with Posterita. The contributions cannot be measured or is not visible easily as for example some of the code edits i noticed particularly coming from Hengsin has quite a bit of convincing visible ERP and certain architectural grasp, and so a single line correction from him may mean alot in return. As i do not see further rebut on his codes submission mostly. So this is subjective but nevertheless his point sounds valid too.
While we at the same time wish to encourage entrepreneurial contribution from commercial entities for their source codes but we at the same time also wishes for like spirit from the techie community. This brings back to the age old argument of how to reconcile the two. Or just leave them be?
But Carlos has given a point that Posterita's logo is a result of community participation and should be considered for usage in the app interface. Still been a commercial company we have to look at whether Posterita or any other commercially-linked logo has legal implications in the future. For example (now that we touched on the legal area) lets say that in future Posterita is sold to another entity and that entity stipulate some restrictions on the logo usage. Lets say Microsoft buys over Posterita (i m no Nasdaq broker, so i m just speculating) and that may create brand delusion rite away. Now let us say that even though Posterita signs an oath that this contribution belongs to the community such that Microsoft (i m no attorney, so i m just speculating) cannot touch us, but this time brand poisoning happens as Microsoft can say it owns Posterita Ltd, Mauritius and it doesnt mind it remains free in ADempiere. That will be a backdoor takeover in the eyes of the community and another revolt can happen (i am no tarot card reader, so i m just speculating).
To give future-proof to this is that we ask the contributing company to provide a soft name that is not associated with legally aquirable names, i.e. such as "Victoria" was used in our last release. Can we have some names throwing into the hat here? I dont know,, maybe 'mauritius', 'ashley', 'tsang' (i m an evangelist, so i m just saying).
red1
- - - - - - - IN COMPLIANCE WITH FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT THIS EMAIL THREAD IS PUBLISHED INTO THE OPEN FOR PEER APPRECIATION - - - - -
Carlos,
Thanks for clearing things out and explaining your thoughts in details. As red1 is saying, this is probably best put into the forum for all to see.
I will reply on the forum. Could you please post this email conversation so that I can reply on it on the branding policy thread.
Regards
Frederick Tsang
On 19/02/2008, carlos.ruiz@adempiere.org <carlos.ruiz@adempiere.org> wrote:
Hi Alex and all Posterita team, good to hear from you again.
Let me explain you the situation from my point of view:
First some facts:
1 - I was the one who moved the code in posterita to make it configurable
I opened the tracker [ 1884762 ] FR - Make main logo and link for Home configurable
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1884762&group_id=176962&atid=955896
and with revision 4434 I made the changes to allow to configure HOMEURL and LOGOURL in system configurator variables:
http://adempiere.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/adempiere?view=rev&revision=4434
2 - On the discussion on november about including or not including the webUI we agreed that Adempiere must not release any piece of code with trademarks within.
We agreed to have an extension directory to allow contributors to have trademarked contributions trying to ease the maintenance and get potential attention from developer community.
We explicitly said that trademarked extensions can't be released joined with Adempiere.
3 - In january 29th I asked Frederick about the status of webUI, and offered my help to create a possible branch for webUI
Same day Frederick answered me that you were revising your strategies towards Adempiere - and asked me to wait for an official position before helping you to open the branch.
4 - In january 30th I decided to determine the real status (alpha? beta? release candidate?) of webUI.
I received a lot of help from Heng Sin to understand how I could compile and debug webUI - in fact in january 30th we found that the extension didn't work and even didn't compile. Heng Sin helped me to fix the problems and finally I could test and started to do testings on the webUI.
Since that I reported 28 problems found in webUI and solved 9 of them.
5 - After the fixes I found that webUI can be used again - and personally I think it is usable but in beta status.
Also I confronted the situation - webUI won't be tested if we don't deploy it into www.testadempiere.com
And to deploy it with adempiere we need to make it trademark free.
So, in feb-1 I made the changes to make it trademark free and in feb-4 I made the changes in testadempiere to release it for community testings.
6 - There has been some proposals in forums about moving the webUI to trunk.
I didn't made the move mostly because I was expecting this reaction from you.
What we're confronting now is like a catch-22 situation.
The situation is:
* we have an Adempiere extension - not running - not compiling - not maintained
* we have developers in adempiere (like me) wanting to make it work
* most of the developers (and I understand them now and share their opinion) don't want to help to make work or maintain a trademarked extension
* I understand now this is exactly the same feeling why we don't want to contribute to Compiere or OpenBravo
- because we believe in community open source, and we don't believe in commercial "trademarked" open-source
- and we don't want to contribute for code "owned" by a company
- I mean contribute in extensions where we're not peers
- extensions where there is a "first among equals" (bringing some Linus words)
Now, I was reviewing some e-mails from the november discussion and found two important pieces from a Frederick's e-mail on nov-13:
Frederick said:
"The right to fork is a fundamental right in the open source project, and yes all our code will be submitted under the GPL license and thus can be forked if deemed appropriate. I won't see any problem having someone forking the WEB UI immediately and co-existing within Adempiere. Thus meaning we can have 2 WEB UI, and yes with different branding side by side within ADempiere. Obviously we would rather maintain our branded version rather than the other one."
...
"The only thing I wouldn't like is: to compete with Adempiere, I think this would be unfair. That is having a fork of the project called Adempiere WEB UI. Any other name is fine."
Well, we're learning - now I understand, this is a wrong situation, I'm an adempiere developer, and I'm an adempiere believer, I don't believe in trademarked extensions.
So I don't want to make a "GlobalQSS webUI" fork (what Fred was proposing).
I'm sure that "GlobalQSS webUI" will get the same developer attention than "Posterita webUI" - and I want to be sure that webUI evolves, with the help from Heng Sin and others.
If I'm going to help to evolve webUI - I just can work in "Adempiere webUI" - I didn't notice that in nov-13 - but in fact the condition to "not fork Adempiere webUI" is tying our hands.
- I don't to help to evolve a trademarked extension - "Posterita webUI"
- I don't like to fork it trademarking it with my own trademark - "GlobalQSS webUI"
- We just can get developer attention if it's named "Adempiere webUI" and trademark-free
- but the "condition" from Frederick is preventing to "fork" to be included in trunk
Well, I think those are enough facts, explanations and thinkings.
What can we do now?
[ Is just my opinion, totally un-consulted with others ]
- If Posterita agrees to move webUI to trunk trademark-free - I think we can get enough developer attention to make it work and maintain
- If Posterita refuses to move it into trunk trademark-free, well at least from my part I'll honor the nov-13 request from Fred - I'll revert the revision 4434 - and I'll revert all my work done to release webUI with adempiere and testadempiere
I'm not going to revert the bug fixing or enhancements - but I'll stop working on the extension
Sorrily Adempiere will miss an opportunity - but I'm ready to pay the cost - it's just a matter of time (costly time) as you know there are other webUI extensions coming.
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
red1-org wrote:
Hi Alex,
I very much like to engage in this discussion and brainstorm of assisting Posterita in branding itself as i have always do so. Moreover to engage with minds that has 'read all the books there is on Open Source' shall always be challenging, at least to me.
However, i must plead with you. "Go to the forums". This is nothing private. It is of public good and right and even so when there seems to be a conspiracy of betrayal. Its best things are resolved outside. I promised, i will hold the flames away. I m stronger now (thanks to lots of practice these last one.five years).
red1
----- Original Message -----
From: Alexandre Tsang
To: carlos.ruiz@adempiere.org ; red1@red1.org ; Joel Stangeland
Cc: posterita team
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 2:50 AM
Subject: Concerns
Dear Carlos Joel and Red1,
We just saw that there were some renaming. I think this is bad. Adempiere renamed the web ui as Adempiere.
I thought contributors were priceless.
I am getting concerned.
Do you find that normal?
Do you believe objectives are aligned?
Posterita is being undermined here. But be sure that if we are people that would come and contribute whole module will be put off.
It sounds like a betrayal. A misappropriatio of contribution.
Can you tell me what you think?
Regards,
Alex
If use of posterita vs. adempiere name is the only issue, why not compromise with a neutral technical name like ZK web ui?
Hi All,
This is what was agreed, although not made official. These were the inoffical rules on branding policy.
1) Adempiere is to be trademark free
2) Posterita ZK Web UI is to be in a branch
3) Would have to issue the Web UI as a separate download for people to add it to their distribution.
4) If not maintained, others are free to branch out and create their own
5) Posterita NOT to be replaced by Adempiere.
Now I do get the points about others not wanting to contribute in the Posterita ZK Web UI. I personally feel, that if they do not want to contribute to the Posterita ZK Web UI project then as agreed they are free to do so, in their own branch and release their own extensions. No problem with that whatsoever.
I really do want to distinguish between community work, which is Adempiere and private branch. We want to be a private branch that is compatible with Adempiere. This allows us to show where our specialization are in some area and can thus claim some degree of expertise. This in turn can lead to sales and would bring further incentive for us to cover more areas. Meaning more freebies for community in the long run.
Adempiere can take the contributed code and put it in the trunk and remove our logo. This would be perfectly legal and there is nothing we can do about it. We may think that this would be great for the product. But I beg to differ: I believe there will be a real cost to that.
There is a strong message that will be sent:
* Hey guys! Adempiere is extension friendly, you can come and build your extension... it's a great place to be BUT... hey I think it would be better now if we nationalize the extension. It's better for the country. Hope you don't mind. I am sure you'll understand.
* The right of the few will not be respected, if it goes against the benefit of the many. This in my opinion is totally wrong.
Thanks for considering my opinion. I will let the debate carry on.
Regards
Frederick Tsang
Well, we're learning every day - this intent to be "extension" friendly is bringing good lessons - at least for me.
I was the harder pusher to integrate webUI as an adempiere extension - and honestly I'm really disappointed, I feel I committed a mistake here.
If asked today - I'll be closer to Heng Sin position - prone to refuse completely to allow branded extensions - they can be kept in private (as I suspect most people are doing).
What's the need to have private work on public repository?
We need here 110% open source contributors, not 99.99%.
Every time I realize is more important "show me the maintainer" than "show me the code", and now "show me your openness".
And this is even worst - I feel a situation like:
- Show me the code -> yes, here it's a partial non-working code
- Show me the maintainer -> sorry, I can't maintain it, it's really hard to keep in sync with trunk
- I want to maintain it -> ok, but don't integrate it with Adempiere, you can work on our branded code, or fork to your branded code, but not integrate it within Adempiere
I see some inconsistencies in Fred's message:
> 4) If not maintained, others are free to branch out and create their own
In fact the "if not maintained" is not a condition to fork it.
Your condition was just to avoid "Adempiere" forking
And now I realized - too late - that your request was just to allow other branded forks and this is really bad for Adempiere - because of such condition the extensions is not maintained and we can't exploit it also.
And I'm wondering if "not maintained" why Adempiere developers can't take it and integrate it within trunk?
What's the meaning of releasing a branded extension, stop maintenance, and refuse that Adempiere developers can take it and integrate within trunk?
> 5) Posterita NOT to be replaced by Adempiere
These words can be easily misunderstood - so better to clarify them:
We can't talk about exclusivity here.
Adempiere at any moment can integrate or implement something that is covered by a branded extension.
> * Hey guys! Adempiere is extension friendly, you can come and build your
> extension...
> it's a great place to be BUT... hey I think it would be better now if we
> nationalize the extension. It's better for the country. Hope you don't
> mind. I am sure you'll understand.
Yes, if asked today, I would say it this way:
Hey guys! Adempiere is extension friendly, you can come and build your extension...
You can keep it private - ok - it's your decision.
Or you can release it publicly, and if the contribution is good you're likely to receive attention from expert developers that will help you to evolve your contribution.
But be careful!!! What is your school? community-open-source? proprietary-open-source? demo-open-source?
Well, to come here you MUST BE really community-open-source.
> * The right of the few will not be respected, if it goes against the
> benefit of the many. This in my opinion is totally wrong.
This is totally respecting the "right" of the few:
"- If Posterita refuses to move it into trunk trademark-free, well at least from my part I'll honor the nov-13 request from Fred - I'll revert the revision 4434
- and I'll revert all my work done to release webUI with adempiere and testadempiere
I'm not going to revert the bug fixing or enhancements - but I'll stop working on the extension
Sorrily Adempiere will miss an opportunity - but I'm ready to pay the cost - it's just a matter of time (costly time) as you know there are other webUI extensions coming."
I'm ready to honor the request from Fred, I'm ready to "respect the right of the few", I'm ready to revert this - please let me know if this is final position from Posterita - and I'll revert those steps immediately, and move extensions/posterita/webui to a branch.
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
My memory of the original discussion on this topic was I stopped discussing after Ramiro rightly pointed out that since the code was being released as GPL the terms under which is was released to the project and what the project could do with it were defined in detail in the GPL... so why rehash.
Can I ask one generic point with regard to the GPL & private modules... it was always my understanding of GPL that any enhancement that is distributed (to anyone) must be released also as GPL. And that release must be made to any 3rd parties tha requests it at a cost not more that the cost of packaging & shipping the code. I understood it is this principal that requires RedHat to release their code to Centos to compile. If this is so, how can there be any proprietary modules under GPL Adempiere? Under the original CPL this was possible but I don't think so under GPL! or am I missing something?
colin
Hi Colin,
> or am I missing something?
Yes, the claim is not about legality, is most about "ethics" (at least I understand "betrayal" and "misappropriation" as an ethic interrogation)
The question is Posterita agreed to release the webUI code with some conditions - one of them was a *request* from Frederick to avoid integrating the code within Adempiere.
I emphasize *request* because is that - a *request* not enforced by GPL.
Now, I'm an honorable person - I'll honor such request and drop the integration with Adempiere if Posterita think this is betrayal or misappropriation.
That's all, I think is not a tragedy, we just learnt a lesson about branded extensions.
Regards,
Carlos Ruiz
yes Carlos,
I understood that, perhaps I should have explicitly said; I agree with your suggestion & offer to revert... that is the fair and ethical thing to do.
I just question the idea that Posterita or anybody else can release an extension that is not GPL and hence must not be made available to everyone including the Adempiere project itself. But I'm ready to be corrected on my understanding as to the impact of GPL.
colin
Hello,
Here's a radical idea. It's based on two principles:
1. The more the merrier, we need contributers
2. Red1 has often said, "Come here and brand yourself"
What if we added a system configuration setting for branding? The options could be:
A. Adempiere Only (would only display adempiere logo)
B. Contributor (would display the logo of the contributor)
C. My Brand (could display whatever logo the user picked)
Then if a contributor puts in a nice functionality, and wants to brand, they can include a logo and build the code to check the setting. If the setting is = B, then the contributor logo would appear. This could be default. But if it bothers any user or developer, they can switch the setting and only the ADempiere branding will appear.
The idea has the collateral benefit of easing universal re-branding for in-house systems.
Everybody can be happy. Contributors can plant their flag, but if branding bugs you, you can make it go away.
What do you think?
Regards,
Joel S