Re: [webmin-l] Virtualmin Professional

[Barry <we...@i1...>]

Craig White wrote:

>
>----
>you should have at least looked at the license before you commented.
>It's not GPL, it's BSD
>
>http://www.webmin.com/intro.html
>  
>
Yeah, I thought this morning that it would work better if it was BSD 
instead of GPL - that would be fine. But before I looked, Joe Cooper 
wrote (and I trust he should know):

> Thanks for the encouragement!  We felt that way too.  It just became 
> apparent that it was the best way to answer the needs of commercial 
> hosting providers, without causing any pain to users of the GPL version. 



Hey wait , even though Joe wrote that, I followed your advice and 
checked - we are talking about virtual min, not webmin. And on 
http://www.swelltech.com/virtualmin/ it says:

"09/12/2005 Virtualmin had gone Pro! Visit Virtualmin.com to find out 
more. We're now providing two versions of Virtualmin, one GPL and one 
proprietary with additional features. The GPL version will trail 
development of the proprietary version by some amount."

and

"07/23/2003 Ransom for the first milestone has been raised. Tye Gaddis 
and Hosting4Less.com were the contributors today who pushed us over the 
top! The current module has been released under a GPL license today. 
Kudos to all of the sponsors."

So, the code base we are talking about has been GPL for 2+ years. I 
stand by my comments and questions. On what legal basis can GPL code be 
productized, released, and source code *not* made available?

Not trying to stir up trouble, but with such a high profile project as 
this, it is important to not make any missteps that will misguide the 
community in what GPL actually means, and not to put the code at risk.

This is interesting:

"What's the license?
Virtualmin is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Virtualmin is periodically ransomed off under a non-GPL license to fund 
major new developments. A $200, or higher, sponsorship is required for 
you to receive the module including the "ransom" features. You may then 
use the module in any way you see fit for commercial or non-commercial 
purposes. However, you cannot resell the module, relicense the module, 
or give away the module, without discussing it with us (and purchasing 
the rights to do so)."

Is there any other history of other projects doing this, and having the 
general community that guards the GPL approve? Maybe there is, I don't 
know for sure. But I think you guys should look very closely at this 
model before jumping and creating a legal mess and expense for yourselves.

And if you have it on some authority that it is fine, then can you 
please cite that authority so the rest of us can consider this method 
for promoting GPL code too?

Here is an opinion from folks at Swelltech: 
http://www.swelltech.com/virtualmin/ransomware.html that cites no legal 
basis at all, but is filled with warm goodhearted intentions I wholly 
agree with.

I would maintain that given otherwise, this "ransomware" concept is 
about as contrary to the spirit and the letter of GPL as you can get. It 
is quite simple really - you release the product to even one person, you 
must release the code under the GPL to them (and possibly to everyone?).

Now, if it was called "Virtualmin Beta" instead of "Virtualmin Pro" you 
might be able to make the rhetorical case that the product isn't yet 
really released per se, but you didn't hear that from me because I 
believe that any GPL project should have a public anonymous-read source 
code control system with all available code :)


>Furthermore, the sweat and the equity is to those that put it into it
>which as far as I know, has to be like at least 98% Jamie if not higher
>but only those who contributed code to it are entitled to question it
>and I doubt there are many who have earned that right.
>  
>

That is a nice warm fuzzy but simply not true.

The GPL is the GPL. You can read it at gnu.org.

It doesn't say "some people have rights that others don't have". It says 
what it says. You simply can not fork a non-GPL branch off of a GPL code 
base. That is precisely the point of GPL.

Otherwise, companies like JBOSS would do that in a second and they would 
have a completely different business model then they do.

If you think anyone in the user base can not question what goes on, and 
make a difference, review the fiasco at the 
as-popular-as-webmin-and-maybe-more Mambo/Joomla split last month. See 
mamboserver.com discussion forums, and then opensourcematters.com (or 
.org not sure which) where the developers moved to first, and then to 
joomla.com where the developers landed.

Try posting in those three places that the users have no say and no 
clout about the direction of the code and see what happens :)

Unless you are RMS, who sees only the GPL and "everything else", you 
will see that this is the reason why other licenses exist. so, if the 
product is not GPL then it doesn't matter because the other license will 
allow what I was asking about and that is fine.

Perhaps you think *I* have no standing in the matter, or that I am 
shooting in the breeze. You would be very wrong. I was one of the early 
development managers at Cobalt Networks deciding these issues every day. 
Cobalt was the first wildly successful company to blend open source 
(mostly but not all GPL) with proprietary code.  The code served 
essentially the same functions that webmin and usermin does now: 
managing hosted Linux servers. And yes, I had my hands in an awful lot 
of it at the code level. I can offer quite a bit of insight into what 
makes people spend money on a product like this, and yes, I have been 
paid for writing, testing, and marketing this type of code for worldwide 
installations.


>Lastly, if Jamie and Joe can prosper by taking their base and even
>devote more time and energy, then the code base would have to benefit so
>there's no reason to assume that it wouldn't be a winner all around.
>  
>

Agreed that they should be allowed to prosper if they can. But violating 
the license they chose would not be the right way to do it. I trust they 
are getting good advice on this matter from Open Country - I know folks 
there, and I hope they wouldn't blunder on this point.

>Clearly Jamie has the benefit of each and every doubt besides the
>gratitude for his generosity this far. If he decided to not develop it
>any further, I would presume that it could be forked under BSD
>restrictions.
>  
>
It is not an issue of benefit of the doubt. It is a matter of adhering 
to the license terms that were freely chosen. Maybe this is allowed, I 
am jsut asking for citations in the gnu community where they guard this 
kind of thing jealously, and have seen it all before.

I highly doubt the gnu community would ever accept a bsd fork from gpl 
code being acceptable. I have been in meetings with companies such as 
Yahoo, Apple, Hotmail/Microsoft where they all raised the issue of the 
ability to fork BSD *nix without sharing back as the reason why they 
chose BSD instead of Linux.

It could be forked within GPL though regardless of if Jamie or anyone 
else chooses to develop it or not. This is basically what happened with 
Mambo a few weeks ago, which you will recall I raised as an issue last 
week, before this Virtualmin announcement even occurred.

As I understood the response, we were told no forks would happen. Yet 
only days later, we are told there will be, for the first time, a 
"professional" branch, and a non-professional branch. It was this kind 
of sloppiness in making announcements that caused the otherwise 
unnecessary (IMHO) hard feelings in the Mambo community.

BTW, for potential developers of open source code: Consider the license 
you choose *very carefully*. What starts out as a hobby or jsut a few 
lines of code you give to the community may in fact be restricted form 
making you the kind of money that might be available to you later, 
sometimes much later, based on the early decision you made.

Seriously.

Best,

Barry