Hello, is there any document or statement about DNN that guarantees it will be Open Source forever? The reason that it concerns me is that I and no doubt several others are building our business models on this key fact and any change in that regard would --- well, you get the picture.

Please don't treat the above comments as an excuse to start a discussion on capitalism or any other tangent!

Thanks in advance

The best guarantee you have is the BSD license attached to it.

DotNetNuke® - http://www.dotnetnuke.com
Copyright (c) 2002-2005
by Perpetual Motion Interactive Systems Inc. ( http://www.perpetualmotion.ca )

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

For the "guarantee" and "forever" part you will have to trust Perpetual Motion Interactive (Shaun Walker). 

Personally, I know he is very committed to keeping it free and has publicly stated this many, many times including publishing it in the book.

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/About/ProfessionalDotNetNuke/tabid/815/Default.aspx

I'm pretty sure there's an old post of Shaun's from back in early 2003 that says that very thing (but I could be wrong), and knowing him for the past 2+ years I can assure you he has NO intentions of ever charging for the code itself.  

That said, the DNN license itself is your best protection. It states in no uncertain terms that you can do whatever you want with the source (other than claim copyright on it).  Yes, a future version could, I suppose, come under a different license but I KNOW that Shaun is so committed to the BSD style license and keeping DNN itself free that it wouldn't happen. 

DNN tries to be very community centered, and I think think Shaun treasures that above almost everything else.  I've gained a lot of trust and respect for Shaun because of that concern which he has shown.  With everything he decides to do and ventures out on, he seems to examine the effects to all the stakeholders in the community and tries his best, utilizing some dedicated and some other very vaugue resources, to make it happen on some schedule... and it's always with the growing community's interest at heart.  Keeping DNN free and Open Source is almost a requirement to keep the DNN family (which goes far beyond these forums by the way) a growing and thriving community.

Edit: In case I wasn't clear, I'm not speaking for Shaun, but instead offering my impressions from working with him for the past 2 years.

without suggesting any future action and looking at it in a purely legal aspect you have no  guarantees - the license as it stands does give you basically total use of the code but it is a copyright license and (as such can and I am not suggesting that it would be) thus can be revoked. The trade mark relates only to the term DotNetNuke and I think DNN (in the USA) but you are currently protected by the trademark policy in the use of DotNetNuke within the code and DLL's .

Business wise however this is a simple policy of use and again can be ( and I am not suggesting that it would or may be) changed or revoked.

If DNN went commercial and I would not doubt that it may one day as most open source projects do then I would assume that the sale would have a provision to leave the existing core in use as open source. This has happened in a number of cases over the years were there has been open source and pre that public domain software sold to a commercial concern. The early examples in my time has been RCPM->DrDos and a number of graphic applications - the courts tend to uphold the existing open source use however but of course it does depend heavily on the sale contract terms.

One must consider such things if you are going to base your business on the core - if you have shareholders then you are legally required to consider it.

The other area that one must consider is that DNN copyright and Trade mark is held by a Company and now a days especially Companies are volatile assets. Although the Company might not think about it in this way DNN is a very valuable asset if one actually sits down and thinks about it.  I could be wrong but I think the Canadian Business model is based fairly similar to the British system and thus a simple take over is not possible but then there is more then one way to skin a cat for those that want to do it..

I am not suggesting in any way that DNN is going to be sold or that the Company is going to change hands but as far as any  guarantees  is concerned in light of the above it would be impossible to gain one of any true business value.

How do you overcome this then?

simply by customizing - this then puts your stamp over part of the application and makes it much harder if the worse came to the worse and you had to protect your use of the core in court.

One good thing about DNN as far as business use is concerned is the fact that Microsoft has an interest in it - this may only be a marketing interest(ASP.NET)  but it does seem to have some definite interest and no doubt would safe guard that interest. This may sound like an oxymoron to some purist open source people but I think that it is a good marketing ploy for those selling DNN into Large Companies and does give some degree of surety.

John

What I am hearing is that there is no guarantee today, at least nothing in writing except for a general community feeling based upon interactions with core team members. And therefore there is a risk that in the future, a future release of DNN core could have licensing dollars attached to it. Having said that, anyone using it or planning to use it today especially in a big way would have to factor that in their risk management plan. And as a consultant I would ethically have to point that out in any presentation. Great!!!....looks like the only safe business model today for DNN would be module development. Although I guess that if you use DNN purely for content management you could switch it out if in fact the future I dread comes true.

I hate to be this skeptical but as the days go by and DNN grows, its hard not to imagine the money making potential that exists and that somewhere there is not a greedy corporate raider salivating at the sight of this golden goose. Sigh!

AFAIK there's no Open Source project that gives such a guarantee. As you have read in the posts above, your business model should be based upon current policies, just like in the propietary software world.

If a guarantee is absolutely critical to your business plans, then I would suggest contacting Shaun/PMI and see if they would be willing to work out a contract that could guarantee the license for a particular period of time. 

Konk wrote:

What I am hearing is that there is no guarantee today, at least nothing in writing except for a general community feeling based upon interactions with core team members. And therefore there is a risk that in the future, a future release of DNN core could have licensing dollars attached to it. Having said that, anyone using it or planning to use it today especially in a big way would have to factor that in their risk management plan. And as a consultant I would ethically have to point that out in any presentation. Great!!!....looks like the only safe business model today for DNN would be module development. Although I guess that if you use DNN purely for content management you could switch it out if in fact the future I dread comes true.

I hate to be this skeptical but as the days go by and DNN grows, its hard not to imagine the money making potential that exists and that somewhere there is not a greedy corporate raider salivating at the sight of this golden goose. Sigh!

You need to live at your risk factor.  Given the above though, yours is extremely low.  Five years ago there was no DNN.  Ten years back, portals were a slight glimmer of an idea.  Go back two decades and nobody was on the internet.  No Windows, no ASP, no .NET, no concept of open source.

How the heck did you manage to plan your life out without the gurantee that none of that would ever exist.  The essence of the future is change.  The only guarantee is that if you want to plan a business model, it better change as well.

Jeff

I think "guarantee" would even be realistic since it would be impossible to grant. Have done a software contract or two in my day, you have to review the various scenarios.

a) Shawn may at some point start charing for DNN. The only viable way to do this would be to say something like version 5 and forward will be $$$. At that point you still have 4.x and below if free is important. Now since a lot of the potential income would be paired with 3rd party modules, closing it wouldn't really be an option, so worst case you pay a license fee to deploy DNN. Less worst case members of core team split off and maintain the 4.xx version.

b) Shawn get's hit by truck and his evil girlfriend now owns PMI, she flies worldwide and seduces the entire core team (even Nina) with her wiles.  Worst case you pay a huge license fee to deploy new DNN. Less worse case you maintain the 4.xx version version yourself.

c) Shawn get's tired of all of us making fun of his hairdo and stomps off in discust never to view DNN code again. Worst case, core team finds a new benevolent dictator and after a period of drifting in the wind, continues on. Best case, books with Shawn's picture become collectors items, we all make millions off eBay.

Often companies will have a "source escrow" clause that means if the company ceases operations they have the option of taking the code and maintaining it themselves. This isn't needed in the DNN case since you have it and can maintain it in perpetuity as long as you don't try to create sidelines and market them as DNN.

So in terms of risk, I don't think there's much of an issue. Let's also face the fact that in 5 years there'll be something totally different to learn and deploy. Even if you bet the farm on DNN, you certainly have to have a plan B around because even DNN will change because even a "guarentee" isn't worth the electrons it's magnatized.

JWhite wrote:

Yes, a future version could, I suppose, come under a different license but I KNOW that Shaun is so committed to the BSD style license and keeping DNN itself free that it wouldn't happen. 

According to a letter we recived from a clients lawyer here is the legal advise: [This is retyped form memory, so pardon my french]

From a legal point of view the Dnn source license can not be changed "backwardly". Perpetual motion can not change the rules for allready released source.  This means if the latest download you have keeps the same BSD license as previous you can use it as you please. However, within the license is no guarantee that future version will not be licensed differently. But as you allready have the source if the Dnn project one day goes charging for their new release, you can continue to use the source-code you have allready downloaded that came with the BSD.

So Perpetual Motion, aka Shawn Walker is the legal entity behind the source and trademark Dnn. If he one day would choose to go for the bucks, which I hardly doubt, he is free to do so. But as you will have you expertise, your modules and your experiance for the allready released source, not the future-release, or release to come I do not see this as a problem.

However, this is not releated to Dnn in particular, rather it is common for all free open-source software released under BSD.

I have no problems with Shawn deciding to commercialise a future version ( I actually expect it)  I have complete faith in the fact that any such agreement would leave the older versions open - any such commercialisation would I suspect completely formualise the PA market for that new version however again this would not impact on previous versions. What is a worry to a Company using the current DNN is an uncontrolled sale or unexpected change of ownership of DNN where such agreements may not be setup.

The possibility of this may be very rare but then I have no idea of the financial position of the Company concerned so for all I know it could happen tomorrow or it may never happen. But for those using DNN as a Company asset (shareholders asset) in their business it is a concern that must be considered in light of previous situations in open source sector. How you evaluate this depends on the risk position your company and shareholders  will be happy with. If you accept no risk then write your own software - if you accept what would be termed acceptable Commercial risk then the current situation may fall into that category. Under both copyright and trade mark law you can enter into agreement with the owners to obtain a legal registered contract to lower your risk. but by the time you get thro the legal paperwork there could be a new whiz bang portal engine produced by another group of whiz bang programmers out there as open source.

But the fact remains that there is a risk and no real warrenty in use for ever no matter which version you use.

One point that must be corrected in the current reply is "Perpetual motion can not change the rules for allready released source." Actually it legally can - it is the orginal owner of the application and can do what ever it wishes to with its property.

One other point "So Perpetual Motion, aka Shawn Walker is the legal entity behind the source and trademark Dnn"  - Perpetual Motion is the actual legal entity Shawn is just the current representative of the Company. Hopefully at least some of the core team members are shareholders.

>However, this is not releated to Dnn in particular, rather it is common for all free open-source software released under BSD.>

Actually it realtes to all software open source or not. Only the degree of risk in continued usage changes.

The problem is not PM's doing however it is the exceptional situation where a large number of Companies and Consultants are basing their total business on DNN which is really not the best approach to business now a days.

John