CMS Made Simple Forums

calguy1000 wrote: And who is going to take responsibility for those changes?

From the legal point of view nobody takes the responsibility:

"This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; "

calguy1000 wrote: Who's gonna get the emails if there is a problem because of the new code you've changed/introduced?  

If module does not work, the developer gets bug notification. He does not care about it. Why should he feel worried if something _still_ does not work?

calguy1000 wrote: That is not right, or fair,

It might be not fair from personal point of view. But is it fair to release a module and abandon it and not care about it and cause such discussions in boards?  ;)

calguy1000 wrote: because the original developer did not necessarily give you permission to have commit and/or release access, but still is owner of that code.  

According to GPL license new developer does not need permission to modify module.

"If I add a module to a GPL-covered program, do I have to use the GPL as the license for my module?
The GPL says that the whole combined program has to be released under the GPL. So your module has to be available for use under the GPL.

All modules are released under GPL and it implies that they can be modified and published without permission.

Of course, new developer is not allowed to delete the original copyright. The project admin is still copyright holder. But owner? Owner of what? Owner of some megabytes on _your_ forge system? Releasing modules on CMS Made Simple server does not mean that the module is untouchable. In this case you are even not allowed to delete if from _your_ server  ;) To be project admin in forge does not give somebody any rights, I think. Forge it is not a holy place where module code is safe from other developers and you can not guarantee the safety of the code as well.

I think we mess the "project admin" and "copyright holder" in this discussion.

calguy1000 wrote:
Also, is this project then 'live' again? or is it still 'stale'?

For me: modules that work with last or at least second last release of CMS Made Simple are live, even if their last release date is from 2006. Stale modules do not work with second last and last release of CMS Made Simple.

calguy1000 wrote:
It's better to let these projects die, and have somebody else fork them, and then take responsibility (while still giving the original author the credit that is due).

Even if somebody forks the module, he is _not allowed_ to delete the original copyright.

After a recent developer teem meeting we've decided on this policy about 'taking over projects'. or even contributing to 'stale' projects.

Summary: 
We won't support it.

Specifics:
In order to join a project you should visit the projects main page on the forge and, if the option is available "Request to Join".   If that is not available, try to contact the original project owner via email and ask him to add your forge username to the project, and give you administrator not just 'developer' permission.

If that process doesn't work for whatever reason, you are still welcome to fork the project and make your modifications.  You are still requested to obey the licensing, and respect the copyright of the original developer.

At no time will a dev team member or a forge administrator 'add you' to another persons project.   The only obvious exceptions to this are translation projects, which... the dev team own.

In a while, as time permits, an aging mechanism will be implemented in the forge, and in our module repository so that projects that have not been touched in a certain period of time (no commits, no file releases, etc).   will be automatically deprecated, and their files will no longer appear in the module manager.   As well, searching, and a few other niceties will be improved for helping with this.


I hope this answers the questions, and although it doesn't make everybody happy, at least puts this issue to bed.