Posted by ggitsels on October 6, 2014 at 1:57pm
Hello,
I intend to ask a Vendor to develop, for my account, a website based on Drupal tools and modules.
Vendor will create the code and then transfer it to me in order to be hosted on my Plaforms.
Should we consider this transfer as "a distribution", and therefore will I have to make the source of the website accessible to Drupal Community?
Thanks and best,
Gregory
Comments
It would be really helpful if
It would be really helpful if people asking this question or questions like it would make their preference known in the question.
When someone asks "will I have to make the source of the website accessible to Drupal Community", I can't help but read that as implying that you would prefer to take advantage of everything the Drupal community has provided you, but not "have to" make your source available to benefit the community.
The short answer is that the transfer of GPLv2 or later and GPLv2 or later compatible code from a vendor to client that makes up a distribution is no different than the transfer of code that is a single module and is clearly answered in Drupal's Licensing FAQ.
The longer answer is that because a distribution is much larger than most modules or themes and often include 3rd party libraries. Vetting all these licenses is more complex. When a distribution is shared on Drupal.org, the licenses of the code is either GPLv2 or later (required for all code committed to Drupal's git repo) or is a 3rd party library hosted somewhere else (GitHub, SourceForge, Google Code, etc) with a license that has been vetted by the group who maintains Drupal.org's Packaging Whitelist.
When your goal is to create code that isn't contributed back to Drupal.org, you are on your own to review the licensing and security of what the vendor provides. It is possible that your custom distribution includes code that is licensed as GPLv3, APLv3, or Apache2 and as a result you will be bound by the terms of those licenses.
If your goal was to contribute this distribution to Drupa.org, it would make sense for members of the community to invest time helping you understand the licensing of the code you are using, but when you goal is to avoid triggering the distribution clause in the GPL that would require sharing the code, you should be working with a lawyer who is well versed in open source licensing who has your puts your interests first.
When someone asks "will I
At the risk of starting a flame war (and knowing that the comment probably hijacks the original discussion), I would like to expand the context of the above quotes to the Drupal community at large.
DISCLAIMER: I am invested into Drupal as a platform, deliver services around it, have contributed to Drupal core, modules etc., and support Drupal and Drupal Association. Let's not go into why I chose to post anonymously, I would like to concentrate on the bigger discussion at hand.
With full respect to Dries and the contributions he has made (and continues to make) to Drupal and its ecosystem, I wonder if there's any other popular open source CMS/platform out there where an individual has such authority over the platform, and almost anything related to it (please note, the context is not an individual, rather whether any individual should have such veto powers on anything related to such large a community).
For example, check the proposed draft for the Licensing Working Group posted recently:
https://groups.drupal.org/node/445098
Its pretty clear almost nothing can be done without the consent of one individual.
I might be wrong, but my understanding of Drupal Association and all Drupal related legal policies is Dries has the final word legally on everything related to Drupal. The community off-course can recommend things, but the decision whether to accept anything rests with him. Then if he makes a decision, he can drive it home whether or not the community agrees with it.
https://assoc.drupal.org/about/faq
https://assoc.drupal.org/about/copyright
http://drupal.com/trademark
I have to agree, I don't recall any example where the community or Dries have gone into conflicting opinions, and as far as I can recall, I don't have an incident to quote to justify why he shouldn't hold the copyright based on a specific incident.
But that's not the point. I can't help but read such a (maybe perceived) stranglehold over anything related to Drupal by a single individual as implying "that you would prefer to take advantage of everything the Drupal community has provided you, but not "have to" make your source available to benefit the community."
I do not intend to offend anyone, and I respect the contributions. If I were to summarize, I would put forward just one question:
Why shouldn't the legal ownership of Drupal not rest with a community-driven setup (e.g. Drupal Association, assuming Dries' rights over DA too rest with the community and not an individual).
And what are the legal remedies we have should there ever arise a conflict between the community and the license holder; or if the license holder is not available for some reason to discharge his duties (or is otherwise incapable for some reason to discharge them).