[wp-hackers] 500 euros for WP + plugins

[Jonathan Leighton]

Scott Merrill wrote:

> Amit Gupta wrote:
>
>>  
>> On Sat, 9 Jul 2005 "Robert Deaton" <false.hopes at gmail.com
>> <mailto:false.hopes at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>  > WordPress can't really be relicensed under something non-GPL
>> compatible because it
>>  > uses various bits of code from other GPL projects. Sure.. take out
>> the IXR, Magpie,
>>  > the WPDB class, and maybe other bits of code, and then it could be
>> relicensed, but
>>  > where would we be without all that?
>>
>> No, I wasn't talking about taking out the GPLed components from WP, I
>> was merely asking that can WordPress be re-licensed under any other
>> license? Perhaps a GPL compatible license? I'm asking this because I
>> read somewhere(someplace else besides Matt's post) that when you
>> license something as GPL, you can't re-license it unless you do-away
>> with older code & write from scratch. Now I do think that this is not
>> quite right as some-one can write the next version of the software
>> and can make it GPL compatible, being a derivative work, but I'm not
>> sure on this!!
>
> The copyright owner is allowed to relicense his or her work whenever
> they feel like.
>
> If Matt suddenly licensed WordPress under an Apache license, for
> example, all future releases would be restricted under the Apache
> terms.  All _previous_ releases would still be GPL licensed.

Not entirely correct -- every single person responsible for code in
WordPress would have to agree. Matt only holds the copyright to the code
*he* has written, not all of it. As there have been various patches from
various people, it would be very very inpractical to even *contact*
everybody, let alone get them to agree.

-- 
Jonathan Leighton aka. Turnip
http://turnipspatch.com/ | http://digital-proof.org/