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I'm sure there will be a few people here that are much more knowledgeable than me in all things licenses and GPL, so if I may: WordPress states the opinion [1]
by luckylion 5y ago
I'm sure there will be a few people here that are much more knowledgeable than me in all things licenses and GPL, so if I may:
WordPress states the opinion [1] (I'm not aware of changes on that claim) that the PHP code in themes and plugins are derivative works of WP and therefore must be GPL (or compatible) because the PHP parts of themes/plugins are "combined" with the rest of WP at run time.
Is that (still) a common opinion on the matter? Has it been tested in court?
[1] https://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/ https://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/
- sokoloff 5y agoThis seems analogous to the readline/editline issue (which I think has not been tested in court either, but I’d be fairly surprised if rms’s position [that optionally linking to readline means your work must be released under GPL] would be sustained.) If it mattered to me, I’d have a close look at the recent Java API case and see if that gave guidance in the direction that a generic (but functional) Wordpress theme that was engineered from the ground up without copying Wordpress GPL code would be in the clear legally. I’m not a lawyer, but I’d be betting in that direction.
- luckylion 5y agoThank you, the Java API case is a good hint.
- GoblinSlayer 5y agoThe combined ball of WP and a plugin might be GPL, but that's not how it's distributed, is it? A plugin separate from WP is unrelated to WP except for API.