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Rahul's Notes

Rainbow Licensing.
Currently Rainbow 1.1 is released under the LGPL license. A question has come up now as far as what the new Rainbow 2.0 code base will be released under.

After Eric's 2.0 port of Rainbow, the code base has been under heavy development by a few of the developers and most of the work that's being done is to refactor the framework to utilize
the new technologies more effectively.

I see that in the near future, the FRAMEWORK will be separated from the PRODUCTS. The Framework will be a barebones system which other products can be created on top of. This Framework should be released under an open source license as it is derived from the original RB 1.1 code base. I do see the current Framework changing into something completely different, and when the time comes, we'll have to decide which license to release this under.

The Products will be distributions of modules that run on top of the Framework. Currently there is only one Product in development. Rainbow Lite is the first product that will be released by the team for public consumption. Currently the Framework and the Lite product haven't been separated.

I am calling upon an assembly of all active team members to voice their opinions on the development forums regarding their thoughts on this.

Rahul

Published lunedì 6 marzo 2006 0.04 by anantatman

Comments

# re: Rainbow Licensing. @ lunedì 6 marzo 2006 14.41

I don't see the need for a "Rainbow-Lite". What would you leave out of Rainbow to make it "Lite". And why?

As far as licensing, let's not shoot ourselves in the feet by complicating the licensing. It should be as open and unrestricte as possible for everything that is currently bundled, in my opinion.

yogi

# re: Rainbow Licensing. @ lunedì 6 marzo 2006 17.16

Rainbow is thick. Too thick in my opinion. Normal people who want to put up a website can't utlize it because it's too thick.

Normal people don't need 50 modules to build a 10 page content site. Normal people don't need the source code to put up a content site. Why go after these users? Because they are in the masses and if we get their loyalty for a Lite product, they'll respect a more full featured product for more serious uses.

That's why a "Lite" is necessary. The persona which is most likely to use a Blog to put up a personal site is the same persona that the "Lite" rainbow is geared towards. Thus, giving the normal user a little more power, but just enough to get the job done.

Rainbow Standard will have everything that the current Rainbow has, but with all the crappy modules stripped out, and still geared towards content.

As far as Licensing goes, that's the real issue. We currently already utlize some third party controls like Easy List Box and Zen (though we have the source code for that).

Even though the Framework is going to be open source, I would like to make it so that there can also be some closed source modules as well provided by third parties that we can include in our distributions.

anantatman

# re: Rainbow Licensing. @ lunedì 6 marzo 2006 19.02

I completly agree with your proposed licensing structure. Lite is going to be a precompiled auto installed sql express deployed version with 5-10 modules that gets the basic user working on the portal in minutes. This will also be good for hosts as they can deploy rainbow for personal customers with ease. I think the framework should be open source and the modules [ the bread n butta] should be licensed. I think users should be able to sell their own services using Rainbow but just give credit back to all the creators and rainbow devs over the years.

ramseur

# re: Rainbow Licensing. @ martedì 7 marzo 2006 3.54

A 'lite' version is almsot a necessity. Having the source removed allows users a quicker upload time to their site by not having to mess with the source that they will not use. Web hosting providers will find it useful for those who maintain pre-install scripts for their users to load software applciations with.

The 'non-lite' version will need the source code with it so that those who develop and maintain their own hosted site or Intranet type sites or developers who create/modify sites for clients can work with it.

I love the Framework idea because that opens things up greatly for many third party modules to be developed.

For licensing, my thoughts would be for the Framework to be Open Source. Third party modules would be more or less up to the developer. In dealing with other CMS systems that I use, some developers provide the binary form of their module as freely available and charge a nominal amount for the source code if you wish to obtain it. Others provide the module and source both at no charge with yet others charge for the whole thing.

Something to keep in mind about the Open Source licensing models is that usually if a work contains other Open Source works in it, then the entire thing must be released as Open Source. I believe this applies more to the GPL model than others, but I could be wrong because a lawyer I am not.

These are just my thoughts at this time. While I have not been active in the current development of Rainbow, that is due to lack of experience in comparison to the requested experience level outlined in the forum postings. I am currently working on learning my way around .NET so that later I can contribute in a meaningful way to the project. I also have a desire to create third party modules for Rainbow and am grateful for the work all of you are doing on this project.
Ira

irasmith

# re: Rainbow Licensing. @ martedì 7 marzo 2006 6.11

i think our goal is to set up a community where we can offer a large number of both free and commercial modules, as well as free and commercial themes.
The web project, and framework, must stay under the duemitri license, as promised by manu, unless he decides otherwise. since the origin is his code, no matter how much we change.
however, new extensions, can follow new models, perhaps to gain the core community funds. For example ai have a set of tools in mind, that only core developers could develop i think, and i think they could offer it to sell, more for business and larger modules that would want such tools. however the core framwork and web project, as always must stay under manu's licensing decisions.

Jonathan

# re: Rainbow Licensing. @ martedì 7 marzo 2006 13.56

To compete favorably with DNN, Drupal, eXo, Magnolia, and others, I think we have a ways to go to make our offering desirable enough when compared to others. Why not just use DNN if they have the modules you are looking for and they are free? Why use Rainbow if you have to pay to get the same level of functionality? And if you are interested in making money, why not develop DNN modules? There's a much larger user base. I'm interested in contributing to this because it is a worthwhile open source project. Not because it is part of some company's business plan.

Eric, Rahul, would you mind disclosing your business relationship and how Rainbow relates to your business plan?

yogi

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