In reply to Ted Clayton.

Well said,

However it should be noted that these deemed as Demi-Gods are responsible in large form albeit hundreds if not thousands of support people sat behind those names as these corporations grew and continue to grow. We remember the names but not often the deeds or work or support behind it.

The debate over GPL I had as well not with Wordpress but Joomla. The problem is quite evident. Neither Joomla or Wordpress are software engineering miracles for example. Similar applications such as DotNetNuke, Liferay are simply put superior, incomparable both in engineering and capabilities of the base engine if you will.

When Open Source Matters decided that everything in the extensions area need be GPL in one form or another I questioned it public like. All forms of web designers attacked me. Why? Because they want be able to fiddle and fuddle with code? Because they wish to simply download others work easily "nulled" (pirated) as PHP does not offer a non-human readable form such as java bytecode, flash or .NET assemblies?

Understand something... and I am not knocking Wordpress. What makes Wordpress great are all the themes, all the plugins. Without all of those themes and plugin's there are tons of lesser known CMS systems that do what they do at their core just as capable and some more so. Same with Joomla. Whilst the owners of Joomla or Wordpress benefit with the main application's broadband usage what CREATES that mass usage are those third party entities.

If the plugin repository went offline tomorrow and wordpress third party plugins ceased to exist does anyone here think it would stand as the leader in CMS/Blogware for very long? If all those plugins and theme's by wave of a magic wand appeared over at e107 CMS instantly in scant time e107 would be atop the pile.

This form of control over third party developers, theme designers etc. affords you the third party developer or designer several matters. Your work stolen, never see a dime from that theft. Type in "Wordpress Nulled into Google". The folks at Wordpress are not in the business of making you the designer or developer money for your work.

Joomla... Well, their administration jet sets around the globe doing seminars (PAID) on Joomla on a per head basis. They get to travel, see the globe, do speaking engagements getting paid. Yet, what makes Joomla viable is not Joomla but the themes, extensions provided by third parties. Those third parties are not allowed to protect their work so as its not stolen, yet, its their work that makes the platform do remarkable things.

For a developer someone tinkering in my code or your code may open up a security matter for example. So now there are a bunch of poor slobs who's websites get hacked or worse.

With all that said... in reality its now too late as I described in another post that I think the site deleted?

Microsoft's .NET has went pretty much open source. These Open Source projects where such control over developers has been executed has shown the "giants" in the Information Technology industries HUGE markets ready for them to snatch and snatch they will.

The most notable differences being the development environment is superior to anything in PHP, I mean not even comparable. Atop this the executable code produced is now considerably faster than PHP (on tune with Java) and has a lesser resource usage (ram etc) footprint. .NET is a full framework, any PHP or for that matter singular Java framework is of no comparison. Its comparing apples and oranges, more like rotted apples in fact. The end assemblies are managed compiled assemblies, not like PHP at all. Wordpress for example has been ported to MONO.net by Phalanger. They did not do so to go, "Oh here... production ready deal". They did so to display what the future will entail (http://www.wpdotnet.com/). Look at the performance benchmarks. That says it all and .NET has been open sourced. Mono is the Linux .NET.

.NET is enterprise ready, PHP, forget it. Now imagine that wordpress benchmark using multi-threading (multiple cores). PHP doesnt do threading well, PHP is written in C++. Sorta crazy.

A language written via a compiled language (C++) and said language (PHP) then compiles its human readable sourcecode into a compiled bytecode that runs through an interpreter library.

That concept of a web application language is basically now dead, it doesnt realize it yet but its dead.

In any event. NOW this Open Source market is under assault by entities that play to win and those entities know how to win. Yet the end products coming down the pike wont be the territory of the little lass designer or developer. Uh uh. Public could care less. They will go with whatever is easy and cheap preferably free. The models such as WiX, Web.com etc and there will be a hoard of them over the next two years due to what Microsoft has done.

It truly is "if you cant beat them join them" that is going to happen as if one doesnt join them one will need find new employment.

I've saw alpha results (friend of mine works for the place) of a CMS they are developing under MONO.NET and right now in its Alpha stage well... Every PHP CMS I have ever tried can pack it in and this is not a particularly glorious development firm. Its completely drag, drop, properties and associations. Anyone can use it, if one can use Microsoft Word one can use this and make websites that will easily rival anything you have ever saw in Joomla or Wordpress. The business model is similar to WiX, Web.com etc. Its all cloud based.

What the Wordpress core needs to realize is while GPL has worked great for them, good for designers, developers (not great as I can assure you for every one template or plugin you sold three have been stolen) its now in the hands of giants. Adobe is another. I just had this conversation with a group at a seminar. I asked why people think Adobe has went to Creative Cloud at such a reasonable price.

Responses were, "They will get tons more users of Adobe's products now as its affordable" (True), "That they will continue to be the leader in their market as more competition appears" (True) as well as some others. But not a single one hit the real reason. The real reason is the unification of smart technologies which is all cloud based, even Windows will be cloud based (client/server). Adobe will launch a "Create your own Web" that anyone from a beginner to very advanced studio can use and make effective sites via. Real workflows. Flexible workflows and all at quite minimal prices as its about the mass market, which happens to be the same market that open source taps. Oh my. Want more? Why are Microsoft and Amazon partners? Amazon enjoys the state of the art cloud architecture, nothing even close to it, not even Google. Microsoft enjoys the development environment to make unification of technology a reality. What are they targeting? The Internet as a whole.

Meanwhile nations and legislators patiently wait the "Fallout" of the billion hands and fingers into the net creating things that do things so regulatory measures can be instituted and the hardware/software architectures in place to make it reality. No surprise there, every mass communications mechanism mankind has known gets regulated. Same is on the horizon for the net.

The days of the privateer are on the wane even though many dont realize it. The cannonballs such as Creative Cloud, MONO, .Net open sourced most do not realize what this means, what the ramifications in fact are. They dont ask themselves questions or pay attention.

Why would Microsoft for example open source their absolute gem, .Net framework in support of a linux framework (Mono which is .net on linux) to make you all happy? To make all the wanna be coders happy? Not at all. None of that. It is because they have the best development environment on the planet (Visual Studio), free community editions of it, free for academic usage team editions etc and they know it. Heck, anyone who's coded in PHP or Java and even took an hour with Visual Studio knows it. They open sourced .net as it will kill PHP. Again, its like a FIAT .vs. a Ferrari, literally, both free. Which do you choose.

It is IMHO the largest cannonball to hit the net in 20 years.

Open source they are good with. Same reasons Wordpress is or Joomla is. Lots of developers making things, altering things etc. BUT one BIG BIG Difference. With .NET your not REQUIRED to go that route by nature of the code itself.

Take it a different way. Your a developer or theme designer. Right now for Wordpress. Over there is another product, "Noodle Press". Both enjoy a huge marketshare.

One is PHP based, the other .NET or Mono.Net based. Your a commercial theme developer or plugin developer. You dont do this because its fun, It pays the bills and preferably then some.

Are you going to develop for the one that says, "If you develop for our application you MUST GPL your code" it must be able to be altered by anyone buying it. Hence, now its pirated all over the Internet. Or will you develop for the one that says, "Look, your assemblies are compiled machine readable code". A ton harder to null and pirate and in addition that platform is faster, uses a smaller resource footprint, is more secure by its nature, enterprise ready, and due to its framework being so extensive can do alot (alot) more in as far as your themes and plugins go. That anything you make is cloud ready. Anything you make is easily integrated into other applications. Mobile ready, smart technology ready by nature?

Thats where we are all on a ride to.

Microsoft, Adobe and several others are making the moves they are making to capture as near to full marketshare as can be stated by that term. That happens to also be the same marketshare everyone reading this happens to take part in.

Thus the model that Wordpress and Joomla in Open Source had diligently enforced upon designers/developers which has "Made their product enjoy the success enjoyed" at the expense of developers/designers enduring theft ultimately has shown the "Big boys" how they can TAKE that market and ultimately result in the destruction of said success they enjoyed (past tense).

See... What privateer designers, developers etc. dont realize is when they are being benefited or used or both.

As I said, I dont knock wordpress or Joomla per se. The folks that created this stuff benefit from it. Joomla core jet sets the world making money hand over fist yet its folks like you all that make it what it is, making the cool theme's and plugins etc. Wordpress, I dont know if they seminar around the globe or the business model that they monetize from Wordpress. But, its the themes and plugin stuff that make it really do wonderful things and you all create that stuff.

Your told, whether you want protect your work or not... sorry, no you cant.

But, without you then they are nothing but a basic blog application.

See... they reach this watermark area of control. If 100 developers or designers leave based on saying, "Sorry if you protect your work you cant be part in this" there are 100 others ready to jump in. Thats the watermark.

The entire concept of GPL is sorta kinda this allow people to modify what they need or might need be able to modify. Not to say, "Welp... you cant do this or that to protect your work".

Yet, having code that is whatall, IonCube protected is a NOPE.

The big open source players enjoy success via the efforts of those using their stuff. PHP itself. Its not a great language, its a inconsistent mish mosh in fact. Inefficient, behind the times even in threading (multiple core CPU's) which have been around now a long long long time. But it enjoys its place because of developers. Not that it is "good", C#, Visual Basic, Go, plenty of other languages far far superior. You dont see Those folks going, "Nothing coded in PHP can be obfuscated, Ioncubed etc, in fact, Zend (who does PHP) has an obfuscator they produce to protect code.

Its your work. But your not allowed to protect it. If you protect it then for the 100 you sold the other 300 using it might not be using it as they wont pay for it. For free they will take it. They will steal it if its not free and they want it. But to the core application... well... thats 400. We're not making a cent directly on your sales. Instead we derive our success based on those 400.

Some consider it a fair exchange.

My personal opinion is the entire concept of GPL is choices. If you produce a theme and I can adjust or alter what I need to and there is code that protects your work from being stolen (Ioncube encrypted callbacks for example) whats so evil about that? Isnt the theft more evil?