WordPress Creator GPL Says WP Template Must Be GPL'd

An anonymous reader writes "Matt Mullenweg (the creator of open source blog software WordPress), after review by various legal experts, is sticking to his guns that themes and plugins that 'extend' WordPress violate the GPL if they are not themselves distributed under the GPL. Matt has gone so far as to post this on Twitter. According to Matt, the premium template called Thesis should be under the GPL and the owner is not happy about it. WordPress is willing to sue the maker of Thesis theme for not following GPL licensing. The webmasters and Thesis owners are also confused with new development. Mark Jaquith wrote an excellent technical analysis of why WordPress themes inherit the GPL. This is why even if Thesis hadn't copy-and-pasted large swathes of code from WordPress (and GPL plugins) its PHP would still need to be under the GPL."

Comments

He has no case

[MikeRT]

If he's taken GPL code and put it in Thesis, game over. It's GPL. Period. Whatever he could have argued about API calls is now irrelevant.

At this point, the only thing I'm curious about is what would happen to WordPress users who start to distribute Thesis without his permission.

Re:He has no case

[shutdown -p now]

I apologize for posting incorrect information. Thesis does contain portions of GPL'd code directly copied from WordPress. So what you say is 100% true, regardless of the take on GPL vs dynamic linking and APIs. I somehow managed to read TFA without noticing that bit :( Also see this.

However, I still stand by my assertion that any other WordPress theme which did not directly copy WordPress code cannot be reasonably considered a derived work for copyright purposes (and therefore not subject to the GPL), contrary to what WordPress authors claim.

It's a pity that this case is a GPL violation so blatant that it will never get to the point of debating those (far more interesting) issues in court - in fact, I doubt there will even be a court.

Re:Implications for plugins

[Annirak]

It really doesn't, actually. The only time that a company would have a problem with this is when they distribute their plugin or theme. Any company which makes a WP template or theme is absolutely not required to open source it unless they distribute it. This means, obviously, that the majority of company-specific plugins and themes are not going to need to be opensourced.

The only companies which stand to be hurt by this are the ones which have a business model of making wordpress plugins/themes and selling them. Even then, they are not required to stop doing so. The requirement is just to license their software under the GPL and provide source if and only if someone requests it.

People act like the GPL will kill all software business as we know it, but those who do so clearly haven't even read the license.

Re:And this folks...

[DragonWriter]

What FUD? GPL is pretty clear.

In this particular case (as apparently there is large cut and paste of code), this seems to be a pretty clear issue; OTOH, the more expansive interpretations often offered of the GPL (including the interpretation that would hold that all templates, etc., for a GPL blogging platform needing to be GPL) is arguably untenable, as many of the things which proponents of this view would demand that the GPL must apply to are not what would otherwise be considered derivative works, and consequently require no license to produce in the first place.

Re:Can someone clear up a misconception of mine?

[PhrstBrn]

You're confusing LGPL and the GPL. The LGPL has a linking exception, the GPL does not. You cannot distribute code linking to GPL code without using a GPL compatible license. If you link to code distributed under the LGPL, you're fine. The only thing you need to distribute is the the actual library you linked to, if you made any changes, but not the rest of your codebase.

Wordpress is GPL, so linking to any of the Wordpress codebase requires distributing your code under the terms of the GPL. I don't see how you can make a useful Wordpress theme/template without making a Wordpress call somewhere. Printing out a post, or comment is going to require a function call to some GPLed code.

I believe the creator is correct, as long as Wordpress remains pure GPL, most non-GPL themes and plugins are going to break the license. It is entirely possible to create a non-GPL plugin, as long as you don't need to make any calls to Wordpress functions or internals.

Interpreted vs compiled, there is no difference in the interpretation of the license. Linking in an interpreted language is treated the same as linking in a compiled language.

Re:And this folks...

[B'Trey]

How is dropping a text file in the same folder as wordpress creating something that is "part of WP"?

It doesn't. I can take a copy of this post and drop it in a WP folder and it's not affected in any way.

What causes it to be "part of WP" is the fact that the contents of the file in question literally become part of WP. From the last linked article:

There is a tendency to think that there are two things: WordPress, and the active theme. But they do not run separately. They run as one cohesive unit. They don't even run in a sequential order. WordPress starts up, WordPress tells the theme to run its functions and register its hooks and filters, then WordPress runs some queries, then WordPress calls the appropriate theme PHP file, and then the theme hooks into the queried WordPress data and uses WordPress functions to display it, and then WordPress shuts down and finishes the request. On that simple view, it looks like a multi-layered sandwich. But the integration is even more amalgamated than the sandwich analogy suggests.

Here is one important takeaway: themes interact with WordPress (and WordPress with themes) the exact same way that WordPress interacts with itself. Give that a second read, and then we'll digest.