I was pointing out that developing a business partnership with a company selling custom themes – the source of which is not open until you pay for them – the way Acquia is, is only a short step away from developing a business partnership selling custom modules – the source of which is not open until you pay for them.

@Dries & Larry: You are both misrepresenting my point about “closed source until you pay for it”. What that means is the source is not OPEN, it’s closed until you pay for it and I’m very clued in to the nuances of GPL, thanks Larry.

@Jeff: If all these zines have ‘got it wrong’ as you claim…is the Acquia team doing anything to remedy the situation? Such as requesting that all these professional journalists, who ‘got it wrong’, to admit as such and amend their articles or publish retractions?

@Dries: I never suggested that Acquia would be selling Carbon. If you read my comments, you would realise that my core point is that Acquia could, just as easily, have released an “Acquia installation profile” for Drupal, rather than launching a new product and a new brand.

A new installation profile would have been great for Drupal and the Drupal community. A new brand and product is not so good for the Drupal community, because it will inevitably split the Drupal development community, even more than it has already.

I also think it’s totally not cool the way Acquia is presenting Carbon as a ‘hardened’ and a ‘commercial grade’ version of Drupal…as if to suggest that Drupal isn’t of commercial grade status or isn’t tough enough for commercial enterprise applications.

CN, you imply that selling a module or theme for money is “closed sourcing it”. That is not true. Drupal is distributed under the GPL, and therefore it and any derivative works of it must also be distributed under the GPL… *if they are distributed*. There is no requirement that the code be distributed or who it is distributed to, provided that when it is distributed it is distributed under the GPL.

If someone wanted to write a Drupal module and charge $10,000 a copy for it, they are absolutely legally entitled to do so. However, everyone who receives a copy that way must receive it under the terms of the GPL, meaning they are entitled to modify it however they want and redistribute it however and to whomever they want. The same applies to a theme company. There is nothing un-open source or un-Free Software (Free as in speech) about selling code commercially, provided that it is licensed under an open source/Free Software license (in this case, the GPL).

Thus your claim that “they are closed source themes until you pay for them” is disingenuous. Open source / close source does not apply until the code is distributed, and the GPL requires that if the code is distributed that it be distributed under the GPL. As long as when you receive the code you receive it under the GPL and get the rights therein, there is no problem.

–Larry Garfield, Director of Legal Affairs for the Drupal Project

“Like all components of the forthcoming distribution, the themes will be released under a GPL license and will be completely free of charge.”

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/09/prweb1305344.htm

Dana is a good guy, and meant well, but we all make mistakes and that day, he did.

It’s clear that you don’t approve of the Top Notch Themes business model. That’s fine. Honest people disagree on that point. It will be interesting to see where the industry consensus settles on that. But Acquia is trying to steer clear of this controversy by GPLing the themes we provide so there is no question. Or at least, that was the plan, this thread notwithstanding ;-).

Acquia’s Drupal distribution does not introduce a new brand. As noted earlier, it will not be called Carbon, which is a code-name only. It will be branded in a very similar way to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu Linux, or Debian Linux, etc. If you disagree with the branding of these Linux distros, you won’t like ours either. We can live with that. But, on the other hand, if you accept the standard branding approach in the Linux world, it would seem more than a little inconsistent to object to how we brand our Drupal distro.

With regard to the “hardened” word, I’ve already said that was a mistake. You (and others) were right. It was a poor choice of words. We did not intend to criticize Drupal or the Drupal community, for doing so would be counter-productive.

Please give us the benefit of the doubt here. If, six months from now, you can point to material ways that we’ve harmed Drupal software or the Drupal community, you can bet we’ll be listening for ways to make it right. We are doing our level best to engage in an honest dialogue here, providing facts and clarification in the full light of day, without hiding behind a cloak of anonymity.

1. Acquia is adding new themes, developed by Top Notch Themes, to Carbon and giving these away for free. These themes, along with the rest of Carbon, will be distributed under terms of the GPL, just like Drupal. By doing so, we help solve an important problem — the lack of good themes in Drupal. I fail to understand why you think that is not in line with the Open Source philosophy, or why you think that is bad for Drupal?

2. Acquia has no intentions to sell closed-source modules as you seem to suggest.

3. Acquia is not selling Carbon. We are making it available as GPL; it is free for everyone to download, use, modify and redistribute. Furthermore, Acquia’s engineers work with the module maintainers directly on drupal.org (i.e. you can find all our fixes in the drupal.org issue queue).

Top Notch Themes for Drupal are *NOT* Free.

The prices for top notch themes cost between $300 and $3,000 dollars. They are essentially closed source themes..until you pay for them! Not too sure what the copyright control of the themes or the code licensing agreements are like. I’m an open source fan, so, I don’t think I’ll be trying them.

Jeff’s claim that it’s just a theme for Carbon that they are going to give away for free doesn’t sound right to me. Acquia paying Top Notch Themes for a theme doesn’t warrant a “business deal” or an acquia press release and certainly not any press coverage around the web.

@ Jeff “I am having trouble seeing how this is a bad thing”

That really worries me.

Would you see it as a bad thing if someone launched Top Notch Modules…selling closed-source (closed until you pay for them) Drupal modules?

A five year old would be able point out that, in that environment, developers would be more likely to submit their modules to a “top notch modules” site rather than submit them for free to the Drupal community.

You see, Jeff, Drupal would be nowhere near as advanced as it is now, without the open source philosophy and the Drupal community. It would be a mistake to forget that.

Like I said earlier..nobody has a problem with Acquia making money building drupal sites for commercial/enterprise clients. It’s the approach that people have a problem with.

Acquia could have released an “acquia installation profile” for Drupal and continued to sell commercial support services etc.

Instead acquia chose to launch a completely new product and a completely new brand. A choice which is BAD for Drupal and the Drupal community…but GREAT for the acquia investors and venture capitalists.

There’s only so long you can carry on claiming “everyone else is getting it wrong”, Jeff. ZDNET journalists are professionals and I find it hard to believe they mis-interpretatd Acquia’s press releases about the business deal with Top Notch Themes.

I suppose you’ll now claim that everyone misinterpreted the “Carbon is a hardened version of Drupal” themed press releases.

And can I also say that the way you and Acquia are promoting carbon by making Drupal look bad…like a sub-standard, not worthy of commercial grade tool, is extremely insulting to the Drupal community.

Aaron: The themes are free and licensed under GPL, just like Drupal.

We are including the new gorgeous (and free and GPL) themes because we want users to have a great initial experience with Drupal. We cut a deal to get them developed and distributed for free (as in beer and as in speech). I am having trouble seeing how this is a bad thing.

Here’s one of the many sources promoting the Acquia business partnership with Top Notch Themes….

“That’s how Acquia, the commercial arm of Drupal, wants to do it, working with TopNotch Themes to add their support to Acquia’s paid version of the community software.

They’re not giving away the store here. They’re just creating some special themes for the commercial distribution, code-name Carbon, while continuing to sell their current product line and doing custom work.

One point that confused me was their “buy-out price,” about ten times the normal retail. Turns out if you pay the big bucks, they won’t sell that design to anyone else.”

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2874

Like I said earlier, Acquia’s business partnership pushing closed-source (closed until you pay for it) themes for Drupal/Carbon, will deter designers with great themes following the open source route….and it’s only a hairsbreath away from a “top notch modules” partnership deal along the same lines.

Nudging in this direction opens the doors wide open for companies to come along, pick up a module that has already been developed by the drupal community, test it, run security checks on it, tweak it a little, package it, come up with a new name for the module and sell it under the guise of a ‘hardened’ version of the non-commercial-grade module.