Confused by Software License

torotoro
12 years, 7 months ago
Hi, I downloaded MobileJoomla today and I am very confused by the license. The site reads:

www.mobilejoomla.com/license.html

Every and each Mobile Joomla! Product is released under GNU/GPL v2 license for the PHP Elements.
Every and each Mobile Joomla! Product is released under Mobile Joomla! Proprietary License for the Non-PHP Elements. The Non-PHP Elements are not compiled together with PHP, but instead sent independent of PHP code and combined in a client's browser, which is why they are not GNU/GPLv2 compliant as stated by the GNU/GPLv2 license.
Every and each Mobile Joomla! Product is licensed per one domain. You agree to provide a correct URL (where it's required).
We reserve the right to make changes to this agreement without any notice, however we commit to inform you for major changes

Looking at the plugins, I see that MobileJoomla is including the full version of Terawurfl from Scientiamobile:

wurfl.sourceforge.net/dbapi_index.php

this license seems very clearly to be AGPL version 3 (as included in every PHP file and README file):

/**
 * Copyright (c) 2011 ScientiaMobile, Inc.
 *
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as
 * published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
 * License, or (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * Refer to the COPYING file distributed with this package.
 *
 * @package    WURFL
 * @copyright  ScientiaMobile, Inc.
 * @author     Steve Kamerman <steve AT scientiamobile.com>
 * @license    GNU Affero General Public License
 * @version    $id$
 */

further evidence that the usage of AGPL is not a coincidence is provided here:

wurfl.sourceforge.net/license.php

ScientiaMobile is offering the API with a dual-license scheme. Can someone from the team please comment on what the situation with regard to licensing is?

while I have no problem installing GPL software on my customer's website, AGPL makes things more tricky.

Best Regards

Luke
torotoro
12 years, 7 months ago
apparently, the confusion increases. I just realized that there is no wurfl.xml file distributed with MobileJoomla, but there is a big (27M) file in packages\plugins\terawurfl\tera_dump.sql that appears to me like the SQL representation of the WURFL data (wurfl.xml file).

The WURFL XML file has the following license:

wurfl.sourceforge.net/wurfl_download.php

In particular, the following seems to exclude the possibility that changing the representation of the data is allowed and the redistribution is allowed:

"You are authorized to use the WURFL file AS IS, without modification and solely in
 connection with one of the standard WURFL APIs, starting from version 1.3, 
 released and supported by ScientiaMobile and available at
 the official WURFL website at wurfl.sourceforge.net.
 
 You are not authorized to create a derivative work of or otherwise modify
 this WURFL file, and you are further not authorized to use, copy, display,
 or distribute, in each case, any derivative work of this WURFL file,
 whether created by you or someone else."

What am I missing? can someone please comment?

Thank you
miikka
12 years, 7 months ago
Hi Luke,

thanks for highlighting this. It may be that our documentation is not fully up to date - we will check this and I'll get back to you with more thorough answer.

In any case, we have discussed this issue with Steve Kamerman from ScientiaMobile last year when they changed the licensing terms. In Mobile Joomla's case, it's not technically feasible to include the wurfl.xml file along with the install, so it was agreed with Steve that it's ok to use an unmodified SQL DB dump of the WURFL data, as produced by the official ScientiaMobile DB API. The works remain separate so when speaking of Mobile Joomla products specifically, our licensing goes as described by your excerpt. We might be missing the proper clarification in our documentation about TeraWurlf, though, that would prevent misunderstandings or confusions. As said, I'll check this and get back to you.
Overall, I don't see TeraWurlf's AGPL as a potential problem in this context, but we're actually releasing soon a professional version that would also mitigate any such concerns. 

Thanks,
Miikka

ps. feel free to also mail me if needed -> miikka at mobilejoomla dot com
miikka
12 years, 7 months ago
Hi Luke,

to follow-up, we're still looking into how we can make this clearer and are also in touch with ScientiaMobile in order to clarify the issues around licensing. We should have some updated info in a few days.

Best,
Miikka
torotoro
12 years, 7 months ago
excellent. Thank you for the update

Luke.

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