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Today, a third party developer (and potentially more than one) received some demands from Barrie North such as:

Barrie North writes: " Your license violates the GPL as defined by the recent Joomla core team decision. You must have a GPL compatible license."

Barrie North writes: " Additionally, please provide me with the source code of your extensions as is required by the GPL license and the Joomla core team."

The statements made in the email are utter nonsense, and carry an undercurrent of fear, uncertainty and doubt to new heights of ridiculousness. The Core Team urges anyone who may have received, or who receives in future, a similar message to take it for what it is ... a grain of salt from a misguided shaker.

Let's talk facts for a few moments.

To state that the GNU GPL is defined by the Joomla! Core Team is patently absurd. The GNU GPL is self-defined and for an understanding of how it may or may not affect you, you must take into account variances in copyright law for the jurisdiction in which you live.

The recent Joomla! Core Team decision was a decision about the licensing of Joomla! -- not third party developers. Is there a potential impact on third party developers? Absolutely there is. Is the sky falling down as some would have us believe? NO!

• Firstly, as an end user you cannot demand source code for a work. If a GNU GPL license violation occurs, only the upstream copyright holders (Developers with contributed code, etc.) can demand compliance with their license. What this means is that an upstream copyright holder can revoke the license granted and force them to either comply or stop distribution.
• Secondly, it seems the writer of the above email fails to understand the nuances of the situation. As the Joomla! team has previously stated and evidently the writer refuses to accept, just because an extension developer releases a work which may violate the Joomla! license does not automatically make it a GNU GPL released extension. What it means is that the extension developer has violated the Joomla! license. No one has the right or authority to make demands of the extension developer in this manner because his license has not been violated.
• Thirdly, remarks such as these assume that the work in question is in fact a derivative work of Joomla!. In the email above, the writer states, "You must have a GPL compatible license." which is true if the work in question is a derivative of Joomla!. The Joomla! Core Team has stated that we believe most extensions are derivative works and thus are subject to the terms of the Joomla! license, however we cannot make blanket statements on the matter. The writer seems to have done the research in this particular case to determine that the extension in question is in fact a derivative work which is particularly interesting given that Mr North is a listed member of the JCD-A which believes, "we assert that our extensions are not derivative of Joomla! and that they can be released under non-GPL compatible licenses".
• Lastly, the Joomla! Core Team would like to thank those of you out there who have managed to keep a level head and have endeavored to understand the situation instead of succumbing to the rumor mongering that some would have us believe. Joomla! is a wonderful project with a wonderful community. It is really sad that I am even forced to address this situation as the whole episode is tantamount to an insult to the intelligence of developers and users of Joomla! and all GPL licensed software.

There has been an enormous effort to vilify the Joomla! Core Team for attempting to inform the Joomla! community about the nuances and impacts of the license Joomla! is released under. This is the same license that all previous releases of Joomla! have been licensed under. It is really unfortunate that certain people want to attack a group of unpaid volunteers over something as basic as helping people understand our license.

Note:

I would be glad to post the entire text of the email sent if granted permission from the author. If any of you would like to see the email in its entirety I suggest you ask Mr. North himself.

Edit:

Those of you wondering about the title of this post I would direct you to my previous post title: Fighting the Stupids

Edit2:

Several people have asked for the email headers from the specific email and have questioned whether or not the mail was sent by Barrie. Here they are in all their glory (with the exception of the references to the receiving party as that is irrelevant).

Delivered-To: xxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx Received: by 10.142.116.8 with SMTP id o8cs130580wfc; Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:51:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.90.92.7 with SMTP id p7mr587508agb.1184255504424; Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:51:44 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: <barrie@joomlashack.com>; Received: from perth.directrouter.com (perth.directrouter.com [72.249.48.2]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id o29si22957061elf.2007.07.12.08.51.44; Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:51:44 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 72.249.48.2 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of barrie@joomlashack.com) Received: from xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ([xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] helo=[192.168.1.102]) by perth.directrouter.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from <barrie@joomlashack.com>) id 1I90xC-0003Pf-T9 for xxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx; Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:51:43 -0500 Message-ID: <46964E08.2020702@joomlashack.com>; Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:51:36 -0400 From: Barrie North <barrie@joomlashack.com>; Reply-To: barrie@joomlashack.com User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (Windows/20070509) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: xxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx Subject: Your license violates the GPL Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - perth.directrouter.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - xxxxxx.xxx X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - joomlashack.com X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir:

Not to mention that I have received personal communication from Barrie that he indeed composed and sent the email. I hope that can be put to rest.

As to the full contents of the email, I have asked Barrie for permission in the same email exchange for me to post the full contents and have yet to receive a response. I would love to be able to post it in its entirety but choose to not do so until he has stated he is alright with doing so.

I will go a step further in saying that there are good people at Joomlashack. No one should judge the company (or any group for that matter) by the actions or intentions of one member. I in no way believe or assume that the entirety of the JCD-A supports this action more than I believe or assume that the entirety of Joomlashack supports this action.

Also, I will take this opportunity to communicate clearly with the community yet again that, "It's a long, slow road. We're not going to make any sudden moves because we know that a lot of people are relying on us to maintain some stability and meet expectations. We are very much aware that a lot of people make their living around Joomla!, and we are sensitive to producing sudden disruptions in livelihoods."

I am truly sorry for having to do this, but I had no idea how many people had received this and if any third party developer had told me that a mail like this was received no matter who they were, I would have acted in the same way.

I want to make it extremely clear, no one has the legal right to demand source code of a work. The only demand that can be made is for license compliance and even then only by someone whose license you violate.