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WordPress Creator GPL Says WP Template Must Be GPL'd

Posted by timothy on from the several-sticky-wickets dept.

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."

3 of 571 comments (clear)

  1. He has no case by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:He has no case by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  2. Re:Implications for plugins by Annirak · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.