Legal framework for developing paid extensions and providing services

[RayCulp]

Hello,

I'm sorry if this has been asked and answered before, but I was unable to find it.

I'm part of a group of guys who would be interested in developing an extension for VirtueMart.

One of these people voiced concerns that it may not be permissible to commercialize extensions at all. However, I can see that many of the extensions available on your site are commercial

What is the legal framework for developing paid extensions and/or providing paid services centered on VirtueMart?

Best regards

Ray

[GJC Web Design]

I am not at all part of the VM Team etc but I can give you my 2 pennies worth.

I have a lot of commercial extensions for VM.

You can list them for free at Joomla Extensions (once you jumped thru their hoops and waited 3 months for approval     )
You can list for free on this forum on §rd Party Extensions Board - see http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=100785.0

You can list and sell on http://extensions.virtuemart.net/ but they take a cut of course
You need to contact them directly from the contact link on that site

That's it - you are expected to support your own extensions and if the support is poor it will be a very short time before your dissed on this forum

Other than that I have never come across any restrictions...

[RayCulp]

Thank you for the information! 

[reinhold]

Regarding the legals (I am not a lawyer, and I am not trying to offer legal advice with this posting!):

1) Source Code License: Joomla is GPL, but the Joomla team has in the past indicated that it does NOT think that all plugins also MUST be GPL (you can search the web for the threads on the Joomla developer forums). Of course, that's not proper proof from a legal standpoint if you were in court.  The JED will only list plugins that are licenced under the GPL, though.

2) Commercial or not commercial: You can release a plugin under the GPL and still distribute it commercially. Some plugin developers use a club structure: You have to join a club (for a membership fee) and all club members then have free access to the plugins. Other developers (me included) charge the user to first get access to a plugin. Once the user got the GPL'ed plugin, he of course has all the rights that the GPL grants, including the right to modify and distribute. In my experience, hardly anyone will realize this and even less will actually distribute your plugins as a fork.
If you use a commercial license, then of course you can use any clauses you like (provided they are not against the law).

Reinhold