Is it legal to use Joomla! (and pluggins/extensions) to create a site to sell? If so what are your thoughts? Is it moral? Is it unprofessional? Also, If I was to do this, could I remove all copyright tags etc, so the client would think i created it all?
There's nothing unprofessional in doing so. Depends on how much you are charging the customer. If its just around $100 bucks, then its better if you use a CMS. Its illegal to remove all the copyrights though in any circumstance. You could call that an immoral act if you feel like it. Good luck
HI There, It is not against the GNU licence to remove the Copyright link (as far as I am aware and from what I have read), and there is no problem in building a site and selling it. I do a lot of work with Joomla sites and I never sell the CMS. I always tell my clients that the CMS is free, but they are paying for site customisation, templates and project management time! You might want to read the GNU licence if you are not sure - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.html
By specically stating that the CMS is free, wouldn't that make the client think "oh, in that case I can try to modify it myself and it won't cost me a thing" and therefore lose the client?
not really, most client dont want to waste their time to modify it themself. They rather pay some professional to do it
I Agree with Alvas. I personally would rather be upfront with the client then face the wrath of the Open Source community if they find out that you are selling something as your own when you have not written any of the code! I have seen it done on one of the open source forums before, where someone has posted a link to a designers site, where he had renamed the software and changed the logo, and was selling the CMS as his own, when it was clearly Joomla! If you are upfront with the client, they are more than willing to pay for you to customise the site for them! I have always told my clients that the CMS is open source, and I have over 40 clients..... Cheers
1) Is it moral? Yes, the Open Source community encourages these things. According to the GNU site: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html 2) Is it unprofessional? Not at all. Again the open source community encourages this... 3) could I remove all copyright tags etc... The removal of the copyright links is where it gets wrong. The whole point of opern source is to give credit where credit is due. I've charged as much as $5000 to install a Joomla site, train the users how to manage it, customize the templates etc. Left the copyright notices right where they were. I even explained what open source meant. Nobody blinked.
I always tell my clients that the CMS is free. It's unethical not to tell them about it!!! And if you are serious about your business you don't want to be unethical!!! Rather give them the option that they can install and maintain their site them self. Most of them would not bother to do that, because it takes time to learn Joomla.
The more you explain to them the better. Just reassure them that you still have to design the template yourself, the CMS is there to make their life easier. They can manage simple updates, change of contact details without having to contact you or be scared of receiving a whopping bill for a simple update. Surely they wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee for a paid subscription CMS, so you are only keeping their costs down. You will find your customer comes back to you anyway for simple updates, during the negotiation they always try get away with the cheapest option but months later they always request updates.