Recently, the most popular topic in the website building industry is the CMS charge of Zhimeng. And this old brand CMS official website also announced that except for individual non-profit websites, they need to purchase their commercial use authorization, and the authorization fee is 5800 yuan. For websites that have not been authorized within the time limit, we will reserve the right of civil claims. At that time, in addition to paying the commercial use license fee, you will also have to bear the corresponding reasonable rights maintenance fees.
At the same time, we have marked two charging modes on its official website in detail. Individual non-profit use is free, and enterprises and businesses need to pay 5800 yuan of licensing fees.
Why can it cause such a big stir?
The main reason is that after more than ten years of development, Zhimeng CMS has become a larger old brand open source CMS website building system in China. It is also a relatively complete CMS open source system, whose plug-ins and functional systems have met the needs of major websites. And there are no less than hundreds of thousands of websites built with this open source CMS system in the market. With such a large number of users, 70% or 80% of them have never purchased a license. The Zhimeng CMS system agreement also clearly states that individual non-profit use for learning is free, while for business activities, authorization fees need to be paid. Many websites are basically used for commercial purposes, so they naturally attract attention.
According to online news, Zhimeng CMS has officially collected evidence through technical means, and has now completed the collection of evidence, and has also formed a large team of lawyers. The Internet is not a place outside the law. Once practical actions are taken, many enterprises may face litigation risks because they use Zhimeng CMS to build their websites and use them for commercial purposes without purchasing authorization. As China continues to strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, the protection measures for copyright issues continue to improve. Therefore, enterprises that use Zhimeng CMS to build their stations, especially those with large traffic, should naturally pay attention to it.
Some people will ask why open source has commercial authorization. Isn't it contradictory?
In fact, the author personally believes that commercial licensing and free open source are not contradictory. First of all, the software developed with the labor achievements of others must be authorized by the other party. Most of the open source system agreements also clearly state that individuals can open source for free for non-profit and research and study purposes. If they want to use them for profit, they must pay licensing fees to them and obtain their legal authorization before they can use them.
Similarly, in order to create a healthy market environment, it is also necessary to help the market environment. If enterprises only want to enjoy the fruits of others' labor for free without paying a certain amount of money, then this open source system will not last long, and will collapse due to the lack of funds and income sources. Naturally, no one will do open source software, and open source CMS systems used for business also open source code to users, who can modify and re develop their code.
This time, the commercial charging of Zhimeng CMS will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the whole industry. Maybe you can think that it would be better if this company could not use other free open source systems for free? Although this can solve the temporary problem, it can't be free for a long time. From the beginning, Zhimeng didn't talk about free commerce, but it always needed authorization for commercial purposes. However, people misunderstood the word "open source", and naturally ignored it. They only saw free source, but did not see authorization for commercial purposes.
In the past, many enterprises found people to develop a website for hundreds of yuan or 1000 yuan or 2000 yuan, but those who charged high fees thought that others were profiteering. Don't most of those hundreds of dollars are built for you by free and open source? It is unknown that enterprises need to purchase licenses for commercial purposes, but who will buy you hundreds of dollars? Hundreds of servers are shared. When you think you can get a website at an affordable price, the risk is buried.
Therefore, there is no conflict between CMS open source and commercial licensing, and the existence of commercial licensing is just the necessity for the healthy development of the industry and the sustainable development of open source ecology. The announcement of business licensing fees of Dream Weaving CMS marks the end of individual webmasters, individual studios, and companies that advocate low-cost website building, and the gradual recovery of a more complete and healthy industry.
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