Fallout in the PHPNuke community over GPL and Open Source

WebShepherd writes, “The buzzing din for open development and version control for PHPNuke, the increasingly popular Slashdot-like content management system (CMS) has errupted into a full-blown religious war that demonstrate some of the potential problems related to the open source licensing model.

“Not long after the release of Version 5.0, its author, Francisco Burzi (a.k.a. NukeLite), posted a 5-point response to his critics where he admits to bending the terms of the GPL in releases of prior beta and release candidate versions. Moreover, he asserts that he’ll never open development nor submit it to CVS, and that he’s likely to release future versions under non-GPL licensing.

“In response to this response, John Cox, (a.k.a. NiceGuyEddie), the author of several How-To-Nuke tutorials has taken matters into his own hands and created Post-Nuke, the Fallout Version. In a 7-point manifesto, he claims this fork will offer all of the open source benefits not found with PHPNuke.

“Considering the length and breath of the code, and the nature of the PHPNuke community, only time will tell which side will prevail.” (Editor’s warning: Slow loading pages on some links.)