All add-ons become GNU GPL if they are un-maintained

[Steve F]

to say that add-on's/styles uploaded to the Resource Manager that are marked as unmaintained/deleted by the strict housekeeping process have their license changed to GNU GPL.

The unmaintained prefix and deleted resources can be done by the author, so with your idea a resource that I myself marked unmaintained would fall under that clause.

This I have marked unmaintained: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/xenfoogle-pixelexit-com.1515/

There are also deleted resources by authors, how does that work? Do they give up the copyright to their add-on because they deleted it?

Development in XenForo is already suffering.

It is? News to me...

 

[RobParker]

If XenForo Ltd. left XF 1 in an unsupported and abandoned state, sure why not? What's ridiculous about passing ownership to GPL if the owner/developer has abandoned the product?

Once VB hand you over the rights to VB3 let me know...

 

[Mouth]

so with your idea a resource that I myself marked unmaintained would fall under that clause.

I think you need to read the OP again ... I very clearly stipulate it's by the XenForo housekeeping process, undertaken as a result of a dev abandoning their add-on within the RM.

 

[Mouth]

Once VB hand you over the rights to VB3 let me know...

You may have meant that tongue in cheek, but to me it just pinpoints a closed mind. Has VB abandoned and no longer support Vb3? No, for a 12 year old product, it received only a point release upgrade just over 12 months ago and is still supported by the vendor. Now you're just being ridiculous and ignoring the very points of the discussion and it's premise. If you're only here to be ignorant, then you add no value - plenty of other mocking and denigrating threads out there for you to contribute too.

Regardless, XF is not trying to be like VB, it's evolved and thus does things differently, better, improved for the community and the longevity of the product. It's a fundamental reason why XF was morphed from VB, to do things better!

 

[Steve F]

I think you need to read the OP again ... I very clearly stipulate it's by the XenForo housekeeping process, undertaken as a result of a dev abandoning their add-on within the RM.

No I don't need to read it again, I clearly understood it. How do you differentiate between something applied by XenForo housekeeping and the author? That was my point...

 

[RobParker]

You may have meant that tongue in cheek, but to me it just pinpoints a closed mind. Has VB abandoned and no longer support Vb3? No, for a 12 year old product, it received only a point release upgrade just over 12 months ago and is still supported by the vendor. Now you're just being ridiculous and ignoring the very points of the discussion and it's premise. If you're only here to be ignorant, then you add no value - plenty of other mocking and denigrating threads out there for you to contribute too.

Regardless, XF is not trying to be like VB, it's evolved and thus does things differently, better, improved for the community and the longevity of the product. It's a fundamental reason why XF was morphed from VB, to do things better!

Vb3 was End Of Life in 2011 with the exception of security patches.

 

[Mouth]

Vb3 was End Of Life in 2011 with the exception of security patches.

I doubt current beta release for php7 compatibility would be considered security patches. Regardless, security patches still equals supported and not abandoned. Once again, irrelevant, not representatives of the discussion point and apples vs oranges.

 

[Mouth]

How do you differentiate between something applied by XenForo housekeeping and the author?

I cannot - it makes no sense that it needs differentiating to a reasonably logical mind. It should be commonsense, I would have thought. Why is the concept of a documented and guidelined action taken by an umbrella organisation against 3rd party author abandoned extension to their core product vs the purposeful action taken by a 3rd party author prior to the documented housekeeping being applicable seemingly a hard differentiator to understand?

 

[king8084]

this wont happen since 95% of the coders will not go for it, Xenforo does not need further decline in coders

 

[Davyc]

There is a solution, of sorts, to this issue. There needs to be housekeeping but at present, that implementation is somewhat ambiguous and lacks a degree of clarity.

To that end, good housekeeping should state whether an add-on is Unmaintained or Abandoned. To achieve this the housekeeping could follow a procedure of determination.

Unmaintained means just that, it doesn't mean that the add-on is flawed or fails to function as intended.

Abandoned means that the author is no longer interested in the add-on, period. If that is the case and the add-on is flawed or fails to function then in the interim, the author could be contacted and asked if they are willing to allow another developer take over the add-on; either for free or for a small fee - if they agree to neither or fail to respond the add-on is removed.

So to recap:

Unmaintained means the author is not applying future updates or supporting the add-on, it works and does what is says on the tin. The moment it stops working, through an update of XF, it should be marked abandoned with a warning that the add-on does not work with the current XF version and the author contacted with a view to passing it on, having it removed or taking the add-on to the next level. If the author cannot be contacted then the add-on should be removed.

No need to force GPL or any other method of removing an author's rights without their approval regardless of what terms are applied by XF as a company.

Just my two-penneth.

 

[Mouth]

since 95% of the coders will not go for it

Why do you think not? Thousands more 3rd party add-on authors (than XF has) provide extensions to (and charge $ for and support) GPL extensions to CMS such as Drupal and Joomla. It works for products much larger than XF. Are you suggesting that XF add-on coders just haven't reached that level of maturity/understanding of GPL?

 

[Jake B.]

Why do you think not? Thousands more 3rd party add-on authors (than XF has) provide extensions to (and charge $ for and support) GPL extensions to CMS such as Drupal and Joomla. It works for products much larger than XF. Are you suggesting that XF add-on coders just haven't reached that level of maturity/understanding of GPL?

Apples to oranges, really. A product that starts out and is released as GPL is entirely different from a product being forcibly converted to GPL by a third party that has essentially nothing to do with the product aside from having a link on their site to buy it.

Take a look in the resource manager at all of the free add-ons that are released under the GPL license.

 

[Robust]

It is? News to me...

It is. I'm guessing that's what prompted this thread, even.

@Mouth
Any idea suggesting telling individual developers how to run and taking control over their software is not only illegal (and if you make terms to make it legal, unacceptable and inevitable death of XenForo's add-on market) but also very illogical. I explained it over my previous few replies and despite alternative suggestions in this thread. Not to be rude here but I'm not sure if you're serious with this idea, even. It just seems a bit silly to me.

 

[Dad.]

When we took over too many add-ons, we open-sourced as a choice. Forcing devs, eh, it won't bode well, can't see anyone agreeing to that.

However, marking as unmaintained automatically makes sense to me (and I think that was recently introduced?) if it isn't updated in a certain time frame.

Wordpress does something kind of similar. If no one reviews the add-on for that release cycle, it lets you know.

 

[Robust]

When we took over too many add-ons, we open-sourced as a choice. Forcing devs, eh, it won't bode well, can't see anyone agreeing to that.

However, marking as unmaintained automatically makes sense to me (and I think that was recently introduced?) if it isn't updated in a certain time frame.

Wordpress does something kind of similar. If no one reviews the add-on for that release cycle, it lets you know.

What license are those OS add-ons under, actually? Your repositories have no license so I'm just curious.

 

[SneakyDave]

What license are those OS add-ons under, actually? Your repositories have no license so I'm just curious.

I think Jake mentioned that those GitHub respoitories were "MORE than free", so whatever license supports that ideology.

https://github.com/ThemeHouse-XF

 

[Jake B.]

What license are those OS add-ons under, actually? Your repositories have no license so I'm just curious.

They're all MIT license, pretty sure I had mentioned that somewhere, just a matter of uploading the LICENSE file to all 100+ repositories. Will probably make a script to quickly do it using the GitHub API at some point

 

[EQnoble]

Yet again I feel like people just have a hard time realizing that 'un-maintained' and 'not supported' are two completely different things and this needs to be differentiated before building a system around a prefix that is WAY to effing broad and forces people to prefix with something they don't mean because of lack of option.

I can deliver something for free and upfront say this will never have an update unless there is a security flaw and make it clear that I will not promise forward compatibility with another person's code that hasn't even been written yet. I can still support people with this version and not update the code base making this by definition unmaintained.

I could also make an addon for free again, state that it will be updated through version X.x.x but state that no free support is given by the author and honestly I shouldn't be punished for doing something for free because the higher powers, or people who don't care if I eat or have a place to sleep feel like I didn't do enough for them or other people. At any rate this would be maintained but unsupported.

Right now both of these scenarios are written off as un-maintained and that is just a dense way of making people think and act and it is making people who use free addons feel like addon authors owe them something instead of the other way around which is pretty sickening but typical.

Why the hell on this effing earth would I make something for free, not be appreciated, get trolled in a thread, talked to like I owe anyone anything and get sick of not being appreciated, and then for my troubles lose the rights to my property as a grand sendoff. Off the top of my head I can think of 5 people at this forum who I wouldn't have to even pay to kick me in the nads that hard if I gave them the chance and I wouldn't even have to write a single line of code.

 

[Mouth]

Any idea suggesting telling individual developers how to run and taking control over their software is not only illegal (and if you make terms to make it legal, unacceptable and inevitable death of XenForo's add-on market) but also very illogical.

XF Ltd are already doing that. They are telling dev's if they don't visit the XF community and/or don't support their add-on within the XF community, then housekeeping will take over and either remove their add-on or mark it unmaintained. If the dev has decided not to engage, and abandon their add-on rather than remove/un-maintain it themselves before the housekeeping process does it, then I see very little difference in stipulating a licensing change in the case of abandoned add-ons actioned by housekeeping.
Of course, some small modification/clarity to the housekeeping processes and perhaps prior prompting/reminder email to the dev might be needed to support this - but it's a compceptual idea, not a detailed implementation plan/schedule.

 

[Mouth]

A product that starts out and is released as GPL is entirely different from a product being forcibly converted to GPL by a third party that has essentially nothing to do with the product aside from having a link on their site to buy it.

Starting it out as GPL, and charging and supporting it, only enhances the case that being GPL doesn't hurt the revenue earnings of the add-on.
Most of the best add-ons on XF RM are only links to buying it on the dev's site too
The concept here is that XF Ltd would only be converting it to GPL if the dev abandoned the add-on, with XF Ltd already either forcibly removing it from RM or forcibly marking it unmaintained already! Stipulating a license change for an abandoned add-on is only a small difference in action, through a terms of use condition.