[wp-hackers] GPL licensing.

[Carthik Sharma]

> I suspect that the best for WordPress would be to come up with a
> copyright notice which acknowledges Michel's copyright of those
> appropriate parts, the major solo contributions where appropriate or
> already existent and perhaps has a general "WordPress project team"
> (like the SquirrelMail Project Team from which project the
> class.POP3.php file comes) for the rest. Someone should check, though,
> whether that entity must 'exist' in some legal frame of reference.

The simplest (and probably unacceptable to some developers) solution
would be to assign copyrights to the FSF. (
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCAssignCopyright )


Another alternative, which I think everyone should be okay with one,
or all of the developers holding the copyright to WordPress. I, for
one, am all for it. I don't care who holds the copyright, as long as
the product is GPL'ed properly. As for major contributions, a mention
could be made in the header for that file (those files) that gained
from the contribution.

> Future contributions must be handled the same way too. That is, as has
> already been raised, contributions which want to be part of the
> WordPress 'product' must be either be GPL or compatible (including
> Creative Commons *without* the URL link).

I guess this has been discussed already, but any ways, I agree...
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#TOCGPLAndPlugins describes
the norms for Plug-ins, the long and short of which is that plugins,
at least the vast majority of them released now, should be GPL'ed or
compatible.

> Again, bear in mind that the license is separate from the copyright but
> that without a stated copyright notice (and copyright could, for
> example, be assigned to "The WordPress Project Team"), the GPL cannot be
> enforced.

As it is now, I can see many ways in which the WordPress
bundle/distribution is Not GPL'ed. I was about to write about it in my
blog or something, but thought it better not to bring unwanted
attention and scrutiny to what is, in essence and spirit an Open
Source project.

Thanks,
Carthik.

When nothing is done, nothing is left undone -- 老子 Lǎozi

University of Central Florida
Homepage: http://carthik.net