[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #15584: Importers Specify Specific GPL version, should they?

[WordPress Trac]

#15584: Importers Specify Specific GPL version, should they?
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 Reporter:  lloydbudd           |       Owner:                 
     Type:  defect (bug)        |      Status:  new            
 Priority:  low                 |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  WordPress.org site  |     Version:  3.1            
 Severity:  minor               |    Keywords:                 
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Comment(by hakre):

 No, I'm not on the GPL v1 run here, Denis. From best I can say,
 lloydbudd's suggestion looks valid to me to just remove the explicit
 version as it might be misleading and/or introduces compatibility
 constraints. As far as the license plugin header is anything that counts
 at all.

 The best suggestion I can give is to ask the orginal authors of the code
 how it was licensed, and then the plugin authors need to decide upon it
 then.

 Next to that, I always suggest to add a legal comment on top of the
 file(s) as the @license tags or an undocumented plugin header (license is
 not a defined plugin header) are adding some meta information only. Those
 might help for a guided guess, but are not solving the general problem
 that the license information and copyright is still missing.

 This form of argumentation might look a bit nit-picking, but compare the
 license tag to the author tag. As author wordpressorg is named which is
 not a valid author at all when it comes to licensing/copyright. So
 obviously, such information is used for some other than the legal
 purposes. For example to get the plugin listed under such an author who
 legally spoken most certainly is none.

 This is especially noteworthy in this case as the plugins code has been
 taken out of wordpress core code and a new work has been formed. So
 licensing applies to a new work in form of the plugin.

 So this is another good example why it is advisable to actually have the
 license information properly documented even [http://osdir.com/ml
 /wordpress-hackers/2010-08/msg00856.html in or for core (see On Submitting
 Code)]. It saves a lot of hassles and users who aquire the code to
 actually know about the license instead of best guessing only.

 As with this case, it's the burden of the ones who compiled the plugin and
 published it. I can't even say if this is of core scope any longer as this
 is a plugin on it's own now.

 Tag: FIXIPO

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/15584#comment:3>
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