[wp-hackers] A question about donation link

Jordi Canals jcanals at alkivia.net
Fri Jan 15 19:32:06 UTC 2010


One of the questions asked here is about removing the authoring attribution
on a theme page footer. Asked that to the Free Software Foundation and the
answer is that deleting the theme author attribution from the theme page
footer violates the GPL license. Exactly, violates the section 2c of GPLv2
and sections 5d and 7 for GPLv3.

So, the author attribution from theme's page footer cannot be removed as it
violates the GPL terms.

I asked this recently, but from long time ago, I have a copy of the same
question answered to Francisco Burzi (Author of PHP-Nuke) and I paste it
here:

<--- QUOTING ORIGINAL EMAIL dated 9/19/2002 reference [gnu.org #213080] --->

*I have a question about the GNU/GPL license. There is a program called
PHP-Nuke that has been released under this license. (This program can be
found at www.phpnuke.org) This program is a content management system that
provides the structure for a website along with the means to administer that
site.
What I would like to know is this: if I use this PHPNuke program to create
my website, must the copyright notice (that is included at the bottom of
each page that is created with PHPNuke) remain there in order to remain in
compliance with this license? There is also a copyright notice within the
source code files themselves.

---------->" Yes. See section 2c of the GPL for details."

This subject came up a while back at PHPNuke.org and no-one seemed to know
the real answer. I have spent quite sometime reading over your license and
can't definitively figure out this answer for myself. (I had questions such
as: is the output from a program like this truly considered interactive or
not?)
Please let me know. I don't want to remove the copyright footers on the
output pages if I am not legally allowed to do so.
Thanks in advance for your clarification on this matter.

--------> "I think a web-based message board clearly reads commands
interactively.
So, if there is such a notice, you can't remove it. But you could alter its
form, so long as it is still appropriate.
*
<--- END QUOTING --->

Jordi Canals


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