Hi again,
... and what's your problem with making a living?
At 13:49 16/06/2004, you wrote:
Nothing cowardly about asking exactly who benefits most from this arrangement.
... so you suggest that we put all of our code out there for free... I wonder who will benefit from this arrangement... Certainly not the active developers of the Jahia community but certainly all the technical free-riders.
What it boils down to is that Jahia Ltd is like any other commercial company for the most part. It has resellers and distribution channels, it has a product that it owns, and it has a staff that it pays to improve/maintain the product.
Yes, Jahia Ltd is a commercial company because Jahia Ltd collects and redistributes money to all the key active developers. You seem to have been surprised by the fact that Jahia Ltd is a commercial company. What made you think it wasn't?
No it has no direct staff as the active developers are spread out among several IT companies or are just individuals working in our community.
The only difference is that people own the rights to the work they do for Jahia. However, since their work is usually deep within Jahia code, it is hard to separate it from the rest of the Jahia code as a stand-alone piece. So they can't resell it anyway (99.9% of the time) because it is not viable by itself without the rest of the Jahia framework.
Some partners have developed seperate extensions and are reselling them as stand-alone programs (e.g. Codeva Sense� Business Processing Server). Other customers have developed standalone web applications such as servlets or portlets. But most small developments are installation customizations and are never contributed back to Jahia because they are too specific. Most of the Jahia core changes are "sponsorized" by some users of the technology which is also a way to finance a license in kind.
So, effectively, they worked for free for a de-facto commercial corporation because they fell for the fluffy feel good 'collaborative' legalese.
For which company are you working for? We never had up to now some contributor that has felt cheated by the system. Most of them contacted us first to know the details of a contribution and to arrange a win-win deal. If they do not like it, they just walk away.
Thank you for the interesting discussion,
St�phane Croisier
