[wp-hackers] A question about donation link

[Ken Newman]

This is still an interpretation. Another, and likely popular, 
interpretation is that removal from a footer to a single separate page 
conforms exactly to your quoted argument, in that it is still a very 
"reasonable author attribution" and also "in the form of a web page". 
Also, a link to an external site might be considered a slightly more 
then a simple credit.

A credit on every page seems to be appropriate for a theme credit 
(especially since graphics and css are not necessarily GPL), though I 
*personally prefer* that the author make this to be optional.

Perhaps a Core Plugin with an API for a Colophon Page is in order? This 
way plugin and theme authors could register credits and links and have 
them displayed on a distinct page for that purpose. I would certainly 
use it, and recommend it to clients.

Tangentially related: I did come across a plugin (I believe one that 
integrated bbPress to WordPress) that inserted a credit and a link to 
the footer of every page in the site. I found this to be quite 
distasteful and quickly uninstalled it.

On 1/15/2010 4:44 PM, Jordi Canals wrote:
> I just asked this to the Free Source Foundation recently. You know them
> create and maintain the licenses and clarify any doubt about the licenses.
> For GPLv3, you can read :
>
> You may supplement the terms of this License with terms: [...]
> Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author
> attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed
> by works containing it;
>
> Them said that a small public credit on theme page footer is really a
> "reasonable author attribution".
> Also section 2c for GPLv2 states something similar.
>
> The license recommends to output a copyright notice to the normal program
> output, and this credits cannot be removed. For a desktop program, the
> normal output is the user screen, the same for a web program (in this case
> this goes to the user screen in form of a web page).
>
> In my case (for my themes) I don't mind as I explicitly allow to remove
> public theme credits and I allow to remove the author attribution from the
> page footer.
>
> Any way if GPL allows it or not, I think it's a nice practice to give credit
> to authors that work hard to give us a lot of free software. As most of
> those authors don't ask us to pay a cent for great software, the minimum we
> can do, is to credit them for their hard work.
>
> Jordi Canals
> _______________________________________________
> wp-hackers mailing list
> wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-hackers
>