Flarum clone?

Franz

Ditchmonkey I agree that the tone of some of the reviews is far from perfect.

I believe that most of the anger comes from the fact that originally there was no notice of having taken Flarum's source code, which was clearly not legal.

Webinsane

Got some ripple effect. Free marketing 🙂

SolidOrphan

In http://flarum.org/features/, the WordPress Integration is planned.

ameo

SolidOrphan well, i guess there's no need for that anymore 🙂 🙂

¯_(ツ)_/¯

spasi

Haha... pretty brutal reviews there.

henrywright

Forking a project can be done legally if the license is MIT and in most cases forking is encouraged. But, in this particular case, I very much doubt the authors of Flarum (@Toby and @Franz) appreciate it.

Webinsane

I wonder why MIT license instead of GPL? With GPL license you can avoid problems like these. Correct me if I am wrong.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

erlend_sh

The GPL license would not have prevented this. The QDiscuss plugin is distributed for free (and, I'm assuming, with an MIT or GPL license), which is all the GPL could have enforced anyhow.

Kulga

erlend_sh Ah.. GPL doesn't stipulate it has to be distributed for free.. you can charge for it. Just that when you do, you must include the (modified) source with it and not prevent the new user from making changes / distributing it on their own.
That's kinda the point of this free software. If Flarum goes bad and Toby goes on a warpath to ensure everyones usernames start with a prefix of toby-is-awesome_, someone could fork it - thus preventing everyone's invested time in the software from being wasted.
Toby could actually (if I interpret it right) sell flarum for $5 a copy without violating MIT since it's the permission that is free of charge, not the actual software itself. You're also allowed to sell copies of that software once you get it to anyone as well, provided toby is provided credit per the license.

It also doesn't say there toby has to distribute the source either. Interestingly, MIT looks looser then GPL - I don't think you have to provide the modified source if you distribute the software. Interesting. So Qdiscus wouldn't have to share their modified contributions back to the devs and if toby does go on a warpath, you should hope he doesn't discontinue access to the repo - since that wouldn't violate MIT license.

All in all, you can be angry at them, frustrated, but toby chose the MIT over other licenses and assuming he read through them carefully, knew what he was doing. So if he knew what he was doing, why be mad at someone who's following the license (at least now - by giving toby credit)

Webinsane

Nicely said Kulga

Still GPL is bit more strict and to some level helps the open source community to be even larger.

Dominion

I've taken off my mod hat for this post, so I'm not speaking officially, but as Just Another Flarum Fan...

Kulga All in all, you can be angry at them, frustrated, but toby chose the MIT over other licenses and assuming he read through them carefully, knew what he was doing. So if he knew what he was doing, why be mad at someone who's following the license (at least now - by giving toby credit)

I agree, in principle ... but I can also understand why some Flarum fans might harbour lingering bad feelings.) He may be following the license now, but it appears that was only because he was called on it. His first move was to suppress all mention of Flarum on his site; and even after his hand was forced, he continued to emphasize his efforts and downplay his reliance on Flarum code. From his support site:

Third, I had to say that, qdiscuss is not another Flarum. Flarum is a standalone php forum script based on Laravel Framework, while QDiscuss is a native WordPress plugin, the purpose is to become a part of WordPress, not a bridge ... we re-constructed nearly all the backend codes of Flarum, replaced with WordPress native functions, to make it completely compatible with WP.

It's telling that in the very next paragraph he announces that development will be discontinued. Why should that be necessary, if QDiscuss is not another Flarum? Wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Toby decided to stop making updates of the code public at that point, would it? 😉

I admire the generosity Franz has shown in this thread, and I understand if Toby wants to let the past remain in the past and focus on the future instead. But I do think there's a lesson to be learned here, and it's important to talk about these things so that people who haven't learned that lesson will have a chance to absorb it.

I'm not a huge proponent of the open source movement. I can see the flaws in the idea as well as the benefits. But I do believe that if you're a developer and want to reap the benefits of an open-source project, there's a right way to go about it. And that consists in more than just toeing the line when it comes to licensing terms.

Heck, I could have done something very similar to QDiscuss. Wait till Flarum's ready (or not), throw some Japanese resources and some new CSS on it, give it a catchy new name, and presto! I've got a neat product I can use to draw Japanese users to my business or site or whatever. Right? But instead I've chosen to contribute what little time and expertise I have to offer, in the hope that I can help make Flarum better.

I wouldn't say that everyone has to go quite that far, but it's important to make a positive contribution. It doesn't even have to be a huge contribution. Giving credit where credit is due would be a good place to start.

Kulga I should note that we should actually try to welcome qdiscus in.

Again, I'm with you in principle. I'm generally big on second chances, because without them, people can't learn and grow. But I'm less inclined to offer them where a person's motives are in question. And it's not like developers who know WordPress are few and far between.

Still, if the opportunity presents itself and Franz and Toby decide that's what they want to do, then I'm fine with that. (Though I would suggest that he should consider losing the "QDiscuss" in favour of something with "Flarum" in it.)

Kulga

Webinsane It is more strict and does help cause more code to be available and since MIT is so free, it doesn't seem to prevent more restrictive licenses, which is exactly what qdiscuss did by licensing theirs at GPLV3+ But forcing people to provide modified code doesn't actually make a open source community be larger..

Basically it all comes down to community. We as the community seem to (by participating and contributing code / extensions) think Flarum as it is is worth something. The devs have (and are) creating a very powerful base because they have focused so much on extensibility and actually responding to what the community says. That'll grow a community much faster then having more restrictive requirements.

That community is absolutely essential here. 2 primary devs can only be expected to create a decent forum in a small period of time. Which as it stands right now - flarum is at. But get the community to easily develop a gazillion of plugins (like wordpress) and you suddenly have the most popular/powerful/amazing forum in the world (kinda like wordpress as blogger software)

That's why qdiscus (or any other fork) isn't a threat. They can clone the software, but they can't clone the community.

I should note that we should actually try to welcome qdiscus in. Let them develop a wordpress plugin compatible through api with the current flarum that gives adequate credit. I mean.. they want to develop a flarum wordpress plugin and users here want a wordpress plugin.. I dunno.

Toby

Kulga I should note that we should actually try to welcome qdiscus in.

Unfortunately he has no interest in this. Here's an excerpt from our email exchange, before we decided to develop privately:

Me: WordPress integration is definitely something on our own roadmap. Clearly you know some things about WordPress and we would love to have you on board to contribute your expertise in that area.

QDiscuss: Belive us, we'are not willing to become another Flarum, we focus on WordPress platform, it just is a plugin for WordPress, and one day it may complete different from Flarum.

As far as I'm concerned, developing openly under the MIT before we had anything remotely usable (by our standards) was a mistake. It was just asking for someone to come along and, rather than helping us improve the project, to make our broken code accessible.

Anyway, as Flarum is now established with a beta release and quite a bit of publicity, I have no problem with something like QDiscuss existing. At the very least, we might be able to borrow back some of their ideas re: WordPress integration 😉

henrywright

@Toby

I don't think you should credit them with the WordPress integration idea. I've listened to members here talk about it for months 😉

Webinsane

bbpress that looks like flarum:

http://www.oklop.me/forum/

BlackSheep

Webinsane SO SLOOOOW

Meow

Webinsane At least they took time to copy. 😼

Auk

SO SLOOOOW INDEED! Looking at the source code, you can see lots of references to wordpress/bbPress code.

Cheun

Most of those reviews are from people who've helped develop and progress flarum/esotalk. So yeah, it's quite a joy that they're throwing that bastard under the bus. Excuse my language.

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