I never knew this about Magento!
I had searched for a week for an ecommerce solution, now I have to rethink…

One thing was very odd.
You can download Magento directly and examine its code if you wish, but YOU CANNOT DOWNLOAD THE MAGENTO EXTENSIONS!

you have to enter some “extensions code” in the Magento admin screen, and IT downloads and installs…dont like that at all, also it means I cant have a bunch of files that make up a magento site ready for use when I want it… oh well…. luckily there are other free products

I know a little about License and certainly NOT the expert in this area. I agree to some of the points mentioned by Fabrizio Balliano.

But, anyhow my concern totally different.
From the Page: http://www.magentocommerce.com/license/
Can I use the “Magento” trademark in one of my domain names or URLs?
No. You may not use the Magento trademark or any other mark associated with the Magento offering from our company in your domain name or URL. (For instance “www.magentohosting.com” is not allowed. See more on this topic below.)

I think, this is very strange. Suppose If i am a web developer or blogger, how can i avoid magento name from my URL ? Nowadays almost all the CMS comes with SEO friendly build-in engine, then how can I avoid Magento in my URL ?
Why cant I have the Magento in my URL or domain name ?
Does this License speaks anything about it ? or it is condition from the author of Magento ?
one more qns: Is there any open source which has similar conditions ?

sorry, I am wrong. Just i am writing this comments to clarify.
Magento is one of the BEST available ecom solun now.
Thanks for that Great Work!!!

GNU, said:

“The Open Software License is a free software license. It is incompatible with the GNU GPL in several ways. Recent versions of the Open Software License have a term which requires distributors to try to obtain explicit assent to the license. This means that distributing OSL software on ordinary FTP sites, sending patches to ordinary mailing lists, or storing the software in an ordinary version control system, is arguably a violation of the license and would subject you to possible termination of the license. Thus, the Open Software License makes it very difficult to develop software using the ordinary tools of free software development. For this reason, and because it is incompatible with the GPL, we recommend that no version of the OSL be used for any software. We urge you not to use the Open Software License for software you write. However, there is no reason to avoid running programs that have been released under this license”.

And, you in your article establish that: “licenses And the Manifestation of Assent”…Perhaps the most obvious linguistic difference between OSL 3.0 and the GPL Licenses is that OSL 3.0 uses terms of art and expressions from contract law to say precisely what it means”…”There is nothing in OSL 3.0 itself, owever, that requires the formation of a contract in order to grant -or to revoke the grant- of the license to the copyrighted work”

And…”to encourage contract formation, OSL 3.0 requires that downstream licenses who in turn distribute must make a reasonable effort under the circunstances to obtain the express assent of recipients to ther terms of this License”

And in Clause 9 “Acceptance and Termination”. License OSL 3.0:”If, at any time, You expressly assented to this license, that assent indicates your clear and irrevocable acceptance of this License and all of its terms and conditions. If you distribute or communicate copies of the original work or Derivate work, you must make a reasonable effort under the circunstances to obtain the express asssent of recipients to ther terms of this License.”

From my view, and according with my interpretation of the License OSL 3.0, the sine qua non condition to exercise the rights granted by the Licensor are limited to fullfil 1.c) “with the proviso that copies of the original work or derivative works that you distribute or communicate shall be licensed under this OSL.”. That means you accepted the terms of the license at the moment you decide to create a derivative work based upon the original work. This is the moment that reflect the acceptance of the license by the licensee.

In the other hand, Clause 9, establish “If, at any time, you expressly assented to this license..”

The meaning of “IF” means only the possibility”, that is to say, you must make a reasonable effort to obtain the express assent of recipients to the terms of the license (in downstream licenses), but, you are not obligated to get it, just because only you have to prove “reasonable effort” to demostrate, in any case, that you intent to obtain the express assent, but in no way can someone understand that this act is a violation of the license.

Also, the License not establish the termination of the license under this circunstances.

The License only shall terminte when the licensee failure to honor the conditions in section 1.c.

Thanks, Gustavo.

Together with incorrect and not favourable one-way interpretation of the license I’ve got bit overprotective for Magento, as I love the fresh air it brings to ecommerce market, and get annoyed by non-sense opposition.

Please accept my appologies.

@Saharian: “other people could stop using magento” does not mean “I suggest you not to use magento”, it’s completely different and it’s a warning I wanted to raise to the magento’s team so they could take care of all the posts in their forums asking clarifications about liceses.

I do not imply anything, I just pointed out a situation, and anyway you can check my latest post about magento, and you would not say i’m not constructive.

This is totally wrong. You *always* retain the right to license your own work under as many licenses as you want. You can never violate your own license for your own software. Your patch is yours.

But you can *never* change the license of Magento without the permission of its copyright owners. That’s true of any open source license. It is not something special about OSL 3.0.

As the author of OSL 3.0, I can reassure you that your fears are mistaken. You’re misreading the license and the copyright law.

/Larry Rosen

hemmm where did I write not to use magento? you don’t see the real meaning of this post, I’m sorry.

Here’s where you write it:

We all know that many people do not pay serious attention to all the license implications, but all the others could stop using Magento because of all the problems above and I don’t think this is a good thing for the project.

Maybe the meaning behind this statement is different from how i understand it, in that case please clarify.

anyway GNU should not be considered one of the biggest player in the open source license game? are you kidding me? if they write those considerations about OSL then Mr. Rosen should contact them and clarify every aspect and (maybe) they could make both *GPL/OSL become compatible, if everyone keeps saying different things than no one could understand anything. We all need a clarification, it will be good for OSL too.

“one of the biggest player” – yes, not absolute authority that dictate eligibility of other licenses. And I do not think they by themselves take what they write as absolute truth, but as just their opinion. You take it as an established fact without digging into their statements and giving it benefit of a doubt.

it’s GNU saying that. read GNU considerations.

I know it is very convenient not to take responsibility over your aquired statements by relaying it on the source, but if you repeat them without understanding, be prepared to take a heat if they’re not correct.

Explain me this logic:
* GPLv2 is not compatible with GPLv3 – no problem
* OSL is not compatible with GPL – big problem, stop using OSL software.

another consideration, look at magento’s forum and you’ll find a bunch of posts asking “hey can I do this or that with this license?”, this should make you think that MAYBE the license is not as clear as you think, MAYBE.

If you read the posts carefully, you will see that most of the questions are about TRADEMARK, not LICENSE. Many people confuse these 2 terms, but it’s their problem and it’s being explained in one of the posts i think. The questions are about usage of “Magento” ™ word in their domain names.

Saharian, I’d like everyone of us (open source players) to be costructive, if an issue is raised let’s work together to solve it and make free software always better.

Do you imply by that that you’re being more constructive than me? The 2 suggestions you have made were using AGPL3, which you have retracted later, and to stop using Magento.

Very constructive.