[wp-hackers] Copyright violations by plugin in the WordPress plugin directory.

[Joost de Valk]

On Jun 27, 2008, at 11:52 PM, Andrew Ferguson wrote:

>> I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, just (apparently) ignorant:
>> which are the lines that forbid 1) copying without attribution and 2)
>> not notifying the original developer?
>
> With regard to your first point, based on GPLv3, Section 5 (a): "The  
> work
> must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and  
> giving a
> relevant date." This fact, in combination with the fact that the  
> original
> creator of the work retains the actual copyright leads me to believe  
> that
> the copying must include attribution.
>
> With regard to your second point, I do not believe the original  
> developer
> has to be notified.
>
>> It's also worth pointing out that there are no notices of copyright  
>> in
>> Joost de Valk's code available at
>> http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/robots-meta/, so even if your
>> interpretation is correct the ripoff has nothing to maintain.
>
> This may be a moot point. I don't know about the Netherlands, but in  
> the
> United States, copyright is automatically granted with or without a
> "copyright" sentence. In short, de Valk's claims of infringement could
> actually bolstered by the lack of GPL inclusion because he should  
> still
> retain all rights to his work.
>
> However, I think that since it's a requirement that all work posted  
> on on
> wp-plugins.org has to be licensed under GPL or GPL-compatable, de  
> Valk's
> code does have a de facto GPL license attached to it.
>
> de Valk's best bet might be to send a nice email to the  
> wordpress.org folk
> and state his case and if that doesn't work, send a DMCA takedown  
> notice
> (yea, ick I know).
>
> -Andrew, IANAL

Thanks Andrew,

now, might I propose making this into a page on the plugin directory  
immediately, with some more explanation, with the intent of trying to  
prevent Ozh from going mad when someone else has the same problem and  
starts emailing? We need him to code :)

Cheers,
Joost