WordPress MU

Hi,

I wanted to report to the community that Instinct.co.nz has changed their license over the code they make available for download.

Actually there never was a license and there still not is one, but as you want to develop on their code, you are lost because you don't know where you will be.

Their License was:

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Commercial Use

You create e-Commerce sites as part of a commercial venture (for example a corporate blog or a blog network) and you want to roll out WP e-Commerce solutions. Commercial support queries have higher priority over free ones, and you will also sleep better knowing that you are helping make WP e-Commerce a better product.

Get an enterprise upgrade for your site now..

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License

WP e-commerce is certainly going to be GPL friendly. We are currently exploring what license will suit us best - we are likely to use the same model as Akismet where we offer a free version and a developer version.

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AND NOW THIS IS:

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Commercial Use
WP e-Commerce is free for commercial use. You only have to pay for the gold modules and support if required.

Get an enterprise upgrade for your site now..

Support
If you want free support then the community forums are the place for you.

If you want additional support outside of the free community forums then our charge out rate is $160/per hour - due to the busy nature of our business people whom have purchased a support token will always get i.

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This is actually strange that they release their code with every option open for a license to be attached to it.

So if someone here is developing his own code out of it for OWN usage in any way and no redistribution, Instinct can change their license in such a way that you will have a lot of disadvantage of it.

It's discussed here:

http://instinct.co.nz/blogshop/forums/topic.php?id=170

You can verify the old version of their site using Google Cache that was made on 7 march this year.

This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce as retrieved on 7 Mar 2008 19:11:43 GMT.

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:vhYRpJ5TpjYJ:www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce+instinct.co.nz/e-commerce&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

The problem is, I think, for people that changed their code to their needs for providing it with hosting of Wordpress in any way that they will have to pay a developer License. The question remains if this is legal over the released code as shown in the Google Cache page, so up to Beta 11, what was Beta 12 before they changed their "terms". (I have a print out of this)

If you want to you can share your opinion or thoughts.

I have some thoughts.

- not every plugin dev has to or should stick to the GNU license.

- this also means they are free to change the license at any time. for that matter, so can WP. (in theory)

- I don't mind paying a developer license for something if I'm using it on an MU install and offering it (free or paid) to users. If it does the job, I'm willing to pay extra.

- if you can't clarify the license before release, it's a slippery slope for both you adn customers

All that being said, I've been using this plugin on a couple different test installs, including trying it on an MU install, and I've been emailing the devs too (shoot, I need to reply...)

It's good, but I think it could be better. It's got loads extra in some spots that don't always need to be there (multiple currencies for a start, pardon my North American-centric-ness there). Also, I was not a fan of the ugly permalinks and the fact it used pages for products and not posts.

they have paved the way though, and given other devs loads to think about.

Like the Marketplace theme. It's just a theme, not a plugin and in fact the only plugin used with it is one for resizing the default thumbnail. also? It works on MU. Sure, you have to get the devloper license* - it was the first thing I asked about, but it's cheaper that wp-ecommerce, and IMO does the job better, at least for small shops. it relies on custom fields, the extra stuff at the bottom of the wirte post area.

* you DO need the developer license if you are charging your users to use it, even if they never see the theme code. I think that's fair. even if I was not charging users to access it, I'd still pay for the dev license as I can use it on whatever MU & regular WP sites I want.

I guess my short points are:
- licenses change
- new things come up to replace old ones, especially if you don't like how it's going.

And they did say they are working on it. We did look at the plugin and saw what needed to be done (near as we could tell) for it to work properly in MU, and it was indeed a huge job. If they can get it out there and have sucess, more power to them. Even if it's not quite what I wanted, I may use it in the future and I'm willing to to help them out.

I agree with you at some points, at the other side, making that plugin work on MU was really not 4 months of work, it took me much less.

And indeed, maybe you don't need all kind of code, neither do I.

But what I think is strange is that they "think" they can change the License up to the Beta 12 version, because they can.

This really depends on the license where it was under and if there was one, as said "GPL friendly" they couldn't change it on older code that has been released before they changed the License.

Actually it's not even legal to use the code when they just make it available and when it's not GPL based... you are not allowed to use it, not even when they say so.

It's all very vague.

Other example:

Even here it's said this year that it's free, an that on a WPMU plugun website:

http://wpmudevorg.wordpress.com/project/WP-e-Commerce

[quote]
Posted 2008-01-21 20:55:48 by danmilward.

Opps I just deleted the previous comment. Sorry about that!!!! You don't have to pay for our plugin although there are additional upgrades and modules for sale. WP e-Commerce is a little buggy in MU right now. We're working on it though...
[/quote]

I really don't get this.

"making that plugin work on MU was really not 4 months of work,"

Not in and of itself, but when you're working on a hundred other projects at once.... :D it just takes that long.

If it were me, and I was really worried about it, I would not use the plugin until it got straightened out.

True, but I have the idea that the community is not very exited to help them with such things if they are that "flexible" with license usage.

I think we also can see it the other way around, what are we able to do with the code up to BETA 12 now they changed it.

GPL is not reversable on old code, they didn't release it under GPL but they let people use it.

Actually that is not possible, it's GPL and usable or nothing at all with open source code.