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The thing that bothers me most about this ordeal is there’s now a “hidden license” for WordPress. If Mullenweg thinks you’re not giving back enough, then free s
by GavinAnderegg 2y ago
The thing that bothers me most about this ordeal is there’s now a “hidden license” for WordPress. If Mullenweg thinks you’re not giving back enough, then free software is no longer free. Rather than a specific term sheet and a list of meetings, I would like to better understand when this new license comes into effect. At the moment it seems like it’s only required when Mullenweg is upset with you. I wrote a bit more to this effect here: https://anderegg.ca/2024/09/28/the-hidden-wordpress-license https://anderegg.ca/2024/09/28/the-hidden-wordpress-license
- bad_user 2y agoThis has always been the case with all Open-Source products contributed by companies, due to the complexity of IP laws. Patents are the most problematic. It's why it's important, for instance, for the OSS license to also include a patents-grant that applies to derived works as well, something that (at least in the past) companies like Microsoft and Facebook failed to provide. Furthermore, even Open-Source foundations and non-profits have trademarks that they protect. Once upon a time, Debian had problems with patching Firefox, as Mozilla did not accept the modifications, leading to a Debian-specific rebranding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93Mozilla_trademark_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian%E2%80%93Mozilla_tradema... This issue is also about the free use of WordPress.org APIs. This is like expecting forks of Chromium or of Android to have continued (free) use of Google Play. Obviously, Google Play is not really included in the OSS deal, and it is only through the continued benevolence of Google that alternatives still have access to it.