Removing CMSMS Branding from Admin section? Illegal or awesome?

[nate22]

Just wondering if it's possible to remove the CMS Made Simple branding from the Admin section. It wasn't clear to me on the licensing page if this is illegal or not.

On that page it says that the General Public License allows:

"You can use it on a commercial project. You can make the site look and feel how you want. You can even change the theme in the admin panel. Really, the only thing you can't do is remove copyright notices in the codebase.*

I have no idea how to access the 'codebase' so I don't plan on removing copyright notices there. What I would like to do is remove the "CMS Made Simple" from the header and footer. Does this fall under "changing the theme" of the admin panel, which is allowed? Or is this illegal?

Also, if I do have to buy a licence, how difficult is it to remove this branding? I've been looking at the header.php file for a while now and I can't figure out how I would even go about removing it, so it is possible that $299 would be a complete waste of money because I'm too dumb to figure out how to remove it anyway! 

[calguy1000]

You could simply create a new admin theme and set it up any way you want.... but not giving credit where credit is due... considering this is a GPL project is kinda low.

I'm going to write a new admin theme for my company and all the sites we produce, and although it will be somewhat de-emphasized, credit to CMS Made simple will still be on every page in the admin section.

[Nullig]

You can change the admin panel and login page titles in the language file "admin.inc.php" in the admin/lang/en_US directory.
Look for:

$lang['admin']['adminpaneltitle'] = 'CMS Made Simple Admin Panel';
$lang['admin']['logintitle'] = 'CMS Made Simple Admin Login';

Nullig

[nate22]

Calguy, I agree with your assessment, but if CMSMS allows it and it is not illegal, then I don't feel bad about it. The only reason I don't is that I am just 1 paycheck from being homeless all the time and have been that way for quite a while now. And, believe me, it ain't at all like people say from their high horse, "oh those poor people are just lazy."

The thing is, I've invested years into learning this stuff and clients always demand more and more for less and less money. So, if the client discovers CMSMS is free, it gives them good reason to complain. They always expect too much for too little and don't appreciate the value of good design, anyway.

Nullig, thank  you so much!

PS - If I ever do make some money, I will definitely be buying licenses and donating to the many GPL authors out there who've helped me. I always see those "donate" buttons and it bugs me that I can't afford to.

[GraemeS]

i have seen other sites that have removed the cmsms branding from the admin section such as on the logiins etc

i personally going to keep it on my sites but also putting cmsms in my partners area on my designing site as i proud of the fact i use this software, also always playing with skins and hope to realese a lot that i ported to the database as soon as i keep enough time as like many i also on the paycheck=bed for month syndrome lol

[calguy1000]

The thing is, I've invested years into learning this stuff and clients always demand more and more for less and less money. So, if the client discovers CMSMS is free, it gives them good reason to complain. They always expect too much for too little and don't appreciate the value of good design, anyway.

yep... that's what clients do, demand more and more, for less and less.... you have to charge a reasonable amount for the amount of time you put it.... If your clients won't allow this, let them find service providers in india or wherever ad move on. 

You also have to give reasonable credit for the time others have put in.  Particularly when using a product developed by others that you are able to download for free.  In the case of CMS's admin theme it simply involves not removing references to CMS made simple, or ensuring that at least one notation is there.  IMHO removing all of the CMS credits from the admin theme is akin to claiming somebody else's work as your own.

And personally, if I find that anybody is doing that (intentionally removing any reference to cms made simple, particularly in the admin theme), I will not support them, do any development or support work for them, or give them a good name if I am ever asked for a reference or about their standing,  In other words, I'll blacklist them.

Just a few issues to consider.

[nate22]

So, I see that you're on the developer list for CMSMS... I understand your attitude about this, but in that case I wonder why the GPL doesn't just make this illegal.

The reason in particular I would like to do this is simply because we've given a client a rather large estimate to figure out a difficult problem and we would LIKE to not outsource the back end this time. This means  I will have to figure it out myself. This means it's a lot of time and risk for me and also would be my first time using CMSMS.

Since it is the first time and it is a difficult project, this is why I would like to remove the branding-- because we're probably overcharging.  ADDITIONALLY, I asked if I PAY FOR A LICENSE if it is easy to do. I'm trying to do the right thing here and get all my duckies in order so I can proceed. If it looks like I can change the CMSMS branding easily, then I will simply pay the licensing fee. This should mean no hard feelings for anyone since this is the exact purpose of the licencing fee.

Once I get used to CMSMS, I would bring the cost down and give full credit. Why pay extra for a license when I can just bring the overall cost down? This is what we do with WordPress sites. We don't try to take credit for WordPress.

But, as I said, this is our first attempt to do the back end "on our own" and it is a weird and difficult layout. I have chosen CMSMS because it seems so simple and fully-functional. But, it might be difficult to explain that I used a free CMS and charged a lot because I didn't know what the hell I was doing and had to figure it out first!

[calguy1000]

So you want to remove the credit for other people's work because you over quoted, and/or don't understand how to do things?

Does that seem fair?

[nate22]

It seems fair if I pay the Licensing Fee, which is the whole purpose of a Licencing Fee.

[calguy1000]

In these cases, often a corporation will outsource the work to somebody else with more experience in that area.

Sometimes they'll even take a loss on the project if they want to keep the client for future work.

[nate22]

Been over all this already, calguy. What's the licensing fee for if not this exact situation?

[nate22]

Well, okay, in summary then: Nullig explained how to do it and the Commercial Licencing page makes it clear:

What you CAN do with this License Exclusion?

    * Remove any copyright messages belonging to or pertaining to Ted Kulp, cmsmadesimple.org or CMS Made Simple from the core system (all files that do not reside in the modules directory) and the following modules:
          o News
          o Menu Manager
          o Module Manager
          o Search
          o
          o Theme Manager
          o CMSMailer (nothing inside the phpmailer directory)
          o nuSOAP (nothing inside the classes directory)
          o FCKeditorX (nothing inside the FCKeditor directory)
    * Remove any branding or references to CMS Made Simple
    * Remove the COPYING.txt file distributed in the doc directory of the download

What CAN'T I do with this License Exclusion?

    * Remove any copyrights not belonging to or pertaining to Ted Kulp, cmsmadesimple.org or CMS Made Simple. We do include code from other open source projects in our system. Removal of those other copyrights is STRICTLY prohibited

So, I'll just pay the Licensing Free once I've determined on my LOCAL machine that I can actually remove the branding easily enough. Then, everyone's happy. Thanks again for your help.

[calguy1000]

Do your solutions involve any modules, plugins, script, or text written by anybody else?

[nate22]

I haven't figured out how I'm going to even do it yet, but if so, that stuff is usually copyrighted in the code. Otherwise, every AJAX widget and module on the planet would have a copyright line beneath it, which is obviously not the case.

[calguy1000]

copyright law is implicit, not explicit (at least in North America).

i.e: the second an author writes something (that is original) it is copyrighted.  It doesn't have to be explicitly stated.