Hi Lutz
On Dec 9, 2009, at 4:29 PM, Lutz Hühnken wrote:
Hi Boris,
thanks for your answers!
Now, beyond all legal considerations, you should try to look at it
from an
ecosystem perspective. You (and your clients) are using software
that you
did not pay cash for. It is generally expected that therefore, your
investment is in a different form - by contributing back to the
community.
I absolutely agree and have no problem with that. But building modules
of more or less general interest is only one scenario. Imagine this:
You have some very specialized, proprietary software, and a customer
that uses Magnolia CE. Now the customer would like some kind of
integration with that proprietary software, which you could provide in
form of a Magnolia module. But for some reason you don't want to
provide the source code for that module, or only under the terms of an
NDA.
As long as you don't distribute the module together with Magnolia (not
a "combined work"), there is no issue. Distribute it with your
proprietary software if you want; or an an extra disc / download/
whatever. Someone has to install the module in addition to Magnolia -
hence, GPL doesn't affect you. If on the other hand you sell a
solution, which includes Magnolia and some added modules that connect
to the rest of your system, you can probably consider this a combined
work. This is especially true as soon as you make this combined work
available to more than one client or the client makes this combined
work available to other off-site contractors.
BTW, here is a pretty good FAQ:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html
Then again, you would not distribute the module with Magnolia. Who
needs to haven an enterprise license in this case, the developer
developing the module, the customer using it, both, neither?
The typical scenario is that an agency or systems integrator builds a
site for a client. If the client has licensed Magnolia Enterprise
Edition, the service provider may use that same license for
development of the customizations to be run on the licensed servers.
All very complicated... I understand that this is not the place to get
legal advice, maybe I should try to find the answers with Magnolia
(the company) directly.
The simplest answer is: if the legal implications are not clear, buy
an Enterprise Edition / OEM. After all, Magnolia pricing is peanuts
compared to the likes of Vignette or OpenText, where you'd probably
pay more for the lawyers negotiating the contracts than you pay for a
complete OEM deal with Magnolia.
An after all, you *are* using an amazing product that provides
significant business value to you and your clients. Help maintain that.
Plus, a license subscription does provide value beyond the software.
Much like an insurance, you may not need it, but once you do need it,
you are ever so glad you have it.
- Boris
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