[wp-hackers] anyone looked at Chameleon closely?

[David Chait]

Actually, the whole plugins licensing thing was a topic I was trying to 
avoid. :)

The section you noted is really referring to 'the work' meaning 'the work 
that was originally GPL licensed and modified'.  Plugins can obviously be 
'works' of their own, separate from 'the work' that is WordPress (just my 
opinion -- there are opposing ones...).  However, a later section notes you 
could have GPL and non-GPL 'works' side by side, distributed together, and 
that's fine by the GPL, it doesn't 'taint' either set.  At what point are 
'two works' actually one is a gray area at best.  There are some black and 
white areas when it comes to compiled code, but even with binaries there are 
some grat areas... And the slightly gray goes completely blurry gray when 
talking of interpreted code, let alone 'plugins'.

Some will say plugins should all be GPL, some say they can be whatever 
licensing they want.  At the end of the day, there is little to no legal 
precedence covering GPL, let alone plugins + GPL, let alone 
scripted-language + plugins + GPL.  Again, this was the exact tangent I was 
trying to avoid.  Let's just leave it as: there are multiple opinions, and 
I'm not sure any can be 'proven correct'. ;)

Regardless, the overall answer should be: yes, Plugins can have licensing. 
Whether it is GPL or otherwise may be a matter of debate, but that there IS 
licensing and that it HAS rules to follow should be undeniable.  The end 
result being: whatever the original license was, that copyright and 
attribution should remain in any work, assuming that was a term of the 
original license.

-d

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Brazell" <emmensetech at gmail.com>
To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 4:25 PM
Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] anyone looked at Chameleon closely?


| On 6/6/06, Trevor Turk <trevorturk at gmail.com> wrote:
| >
| > Good point. I'm pretty sure that Plugins come with licenses and 
copyrights
| > of their own - which almost certainly require attribution.
| >
|
| Hmm. Not so sure. Sec 2(b) suggests that plugins too, if distributed as 
part
| of the product, would be under GPL:
|
| b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
|    whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
|    part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
|    parties under the terms of this License.
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