SMF/Fantastico Question...

[Noodles]

Hi

First of all, congrats on a great-looking Forum script!;-). I was actually hoping your script was licensed under the GPL because I am a web host and my customer's accounts all come with Fantastico Deluxe which now includes an auto-install of your script (SMF Forum).

However, as nice as the SMF Forum script is, I have unfortunately decided against installing it on my customer's accounts due to the fact that it is not licensed under the GPL and in the event that someday you decide to commercialize/proprietize it (ie; it no longer is freeware), I do not wish to end up involved in a licensing or legal conflict with you or your company. In short, I have decided to "play it safe".

I am assuming that hosts such as myself are permitted to provide hosting of your SMF Forum script on customer's accounts since it is already included with Fantastico Deluxe and yet, I have reservations about this because I feel that it could potentially lead to problems in the future. I do hope I'm mistaken here and that I can offer SMF Forum accounts or hosting for your SMF Forum script as apparently facillitated by Fantastico Deluxe. I look forward to your reply.

- Kind Regards

[Grudge]

There's quite a bit of information on this already. Firstly, SMF will NEVER become a commercial product, and will always be free. The reasons why it is not under GPL is in the past (With a previous project), certain people took the original software, and rebadged it as their own, removing any reference to the software (i.e they ripped it off).

Hence the license was changed to protect all the people who give their time to this project. Realistically the only things that we restrict in the license is:
1) People redistributing the software
2) People removing the copyright

You are of course perfectly fine to offer your customers the chance to install SMF for free. The only thing we would get annoyed at is if you gave them it for free and changed the copyright to say "Powered By Noodles Software, Copyright 2005 Noodles" etc - as it's very disrespectful to the effort people put in here (And this has indeed been done in the past)

I'm not really in a true position to comment on this, but I hope my comments are roughly right - but don't hold me to them all

[Noodles]

Thank's for the (amazingly) quick reply!.

Well, as a web host, I charge for my hosting services as I suppose most hosts do so when I install any script or provide a service that involves hosting, I charge a small, reasonable fee. Of course I never charge for the script itself per se...only the installatiion and hosting of it. Fantastico makes it possble to do this of course.

Now when I use Fantastico to install a script for a hosting customer, am I "redistributing" it?. I believe I would be so I guess I'm a little confused as to why the license forbids redistribution and yet allows this very same thing by making it widely available within Fantastico.

- Awaiting your response

[Grudge]

Well, again you may want to wait for someone more "In the know" to reply, but what I believe you say is fine. There are lots of people here who host SMF for people - and obviously charge for the service. Indeed boardnation does it through automated means (I believe). Also, Fantastico were given permission to redistribute it.

As I said before, the redistribution is really talking about "Offering it for download". By which I mean having a site where you distribute SMF for anyone to download (Free or otherwise), or offering it for download having altered it in some way. What you seem to be saying is you meerly want to install it for your customers to use - which is absolutely fine. Also, charging for installation is also fine - but charging for the product would obviously not be.

The basic idea is you can host it for people, install it for people, charge people for either of the two - but you could not have a "Downloads" page where people pay to download SMF, nor could you rebrand it as your own. This may not answer you fully, but I'm sure people will correct me if/where I am wrong!

Grudge

[Noodles]

I fully understand what you are saying; you cannot say "Click here to download Noodle v1.0 and if you like it, come back here and pay me $20.00 for the full version". No problem at all there as I am merely installing and hosting it and not even charging much to begin with.

I guess my main concern was if I were to end up with a number of SMF forum accounts down the road and one day I suddenly get a letter from someone here telling me that I have to close all of my customer's SMF accounts and disable the script because it is no longer free or licensed to be used in that manner, etc.

As you can imagine, that could cause all kinds of problems with not only my customers but the author's of the SMF forum as well and that is what I was concerned about. I'm a peaceful person. I try to get along. I'm not greedy and try to do what's fair/right so that is why I'm going the extra mile here to make sure everything is on the up-in-up before I even think about doing SMF installs/hosting.

Anyway, thank's again. I really appreciate your help and what the heck, I may just stick around a make a few friends while I'm here:-).

- Regards

[[Unknown]]

I suggest you read the full license.  It includes a provision for a copying fee, which is exactly what is meant by hosting costs, etc.

Lycos UK, Charlottezweb, etc. (among others) offer SMF installations with their hosting.  They charge for their services, but that doesn't mean they charge for SMF; and if the customer would rather install SMF themselves, these companies will allow them to do so.  Thus, the software is still free and no one is making money off of anyone else's work - you might gain from your own work of installing, but that's only for the better!

Technically, what was done in the past that we didn't like was illegal even under the GPL.  The problem is, people hear "GPL" and think "public domain".  It's also worlds more difficult to enforce.

It would be illegal, as far as I know in my limited expertise on the subject, for us to send you any such letter.  The license is a contract, indeed, and that would be us breaking it.  We can release new versions of the license, but the license SPECIFICALLY states that these changes are not retroactive; no matter what we do, the version of SMF you have is under the license you agreed to when you acquired it.... unless you upgrade, etc.

Remember, I'm not a lawyer.  I am not trying to give you legal advice, or give you any sort of official interpretation of the law.  For that, you need to ask a properly licensed lawyer.  And, as always, please read the license!  No one does, I know, but I tried to boldify the important clauses :

http://www.simplemachines.org/about/license.php

-[Unknown]