[wp-hackers] Plugin Licensing

William P. Davis will.davis at gmail.com
Sun Mar 13 17:50:17 UTC 2011


Example: Akismet. The plugin is open-source but the actual spam detection is done on Akismet servers, therefore it is a service and not required to be open source. (Also, it's not a derivative of WP that way). If you want to make money, you can build a plugin that connects to your api and then charge for access to the api. I'm building a plugin right now that does exactly that, although it also includes a library so you can fully self-host if you wish (and I think that is the absolute right way to do it). WP is supposed to be bigger than any one person — you can branch trunk or any plugin or theme to make necessary changes or make it better. I've done it with other peoples' plugins and I hope people do it with mine. Without that sort of culture WP will quickly fall behind and will see the lack of innovation most proprietary CMSes are known for. 
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: Blue Chives <info at bluechives.com>
Sender: wp-hackers-bounces at lists.automattic.com
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 13:41:16 
To: <wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com>
Reply-To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] Plugin Licensing


On 13 Mar 2011, at 13:28, Piyush Mishra wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 5:56 AM, Piyush Mishra <me at piyushmishra.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> I don't think you got the whole idea as I was trying to put it. The
>> source
>>> code remains open source and ready to contribute for people who already
>> do
>>> that and it will always be. Why would WordPress close its source anyway?
>>> Its about those people who write plugins and go all heights to make it
>> paid
>>> only. They will have to pay WordPress community back in cash.
>>> 
>>> A lot of us pay back to the community in one way or the other.
>>> But there are those who extend WordPress and sell their plugins.
>>> Check this out:-
>>> http://www.gravityforms.com/terms-and-conditions/
>>> try getting the latest version of gforms and this one
>>> http://www.gravityhelp.com/forums/topic/is-it-gpl (yes its true, css
>> files
>>> aren't covered).
>>> My point is as WordPress users get helpless in such situations. we should
>>> keep dual license to take care of that or take some action
>>> (copyright infringement / demand giving php files out for free)
>>> 
>>> The GPL does not preclude the selling of GPL-licensed code; in fact, it
>> explicitly permits it. You have no legal (or moral) right to "demand" that
>> they give their PHP files away for free.
>> 
>> There is absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with what the GravityForms
>> folks are doing.
>> 
>> 
> Nope there is. as plugins donot interact only as a fork process to
> WordPress, GPL sees it as a part of the software and thus, they are legally
> bound to release their source code in public making it equally easy to
> obtain as they have made the paid version (stripped off of the css n images)

They are required to distribute the code to those they supply and they are required to not restrict their freedoms.  If however it was a hosted service they won't need to supply the source code as it would be a service being supplied.

There is no requirement for them to distribute the code for free nor to make it easy for someone to obtain it for free.  However if I so choice they can not stop me giving away or charging for the GPL code.  That is the freedom the GPL gives me.    However I must also supply the source code and not restrict the freedoms of those I supply.

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