[wp-hackers] Fwd: Re: Putting the P in WordPress

[Peter Westwood]

On 7 Jul 2010, at 16:05, Mark E wrote:

> The obfuscation of the easter egg blatantly violates GPL v2. So all the
> stuff you say about GPL boils down to this: "Do as I as say, not as I
> do". And here I was thinking that you followed GPL to the letter, as you imply other people should do.


In what way?

I believe the specific wording from the GPL2 you are interpreting is:

"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. "

In my reading in no way does this preclude the distribution of obfuscated code - what it is trying to prevent is the distribution of compiled object files without the corresponding source code to allow modifications to be made.

As JS and PHP are always distributed in source form as part of the WordPress download I don't see how we are violating the licence.

Would you consider it a licence violation if we were to ship WordPress without the include .dev.js files so as to decrease the download size and make automatic upgrades use less memory?

Cheers
-- 
Peter Westwood
http://blog.ftwr.co.uk | http://westi.wordpress.com
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