Continuing clarity issue on extension licensing.
Now previously I made a post regarding this which probably wasn't in the best of tack, and might of given the wrong impression I'm not about contributing, or I really wanted to impose licensing, which is not my desire at all.
I have always been under the impression, and I got this from the team, that extensions can be licensed (within reason) under different regimes. Unfortunately brought to light but recent lawsuits, implicitly at least this is not the GPL position.
I understand that if explicitly stated it should be fine to allow this. However I'm not a fan of the unwritten rule in cases like this, as wordpress for instance is highly selectively applying these rules. It would be good if we can get some official clarification if that is not too much trouble.
I think it would be sad to miss out on an economy of extensions. It is not about not releasing code, or being too restrictive. On the contrary.
If GPL didn't have these thorny issues that are little discussed, I wouldn't even have made the suggestion to switch, however it shouldn't have be necessary at all.
grep is your friend.
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One thing that is often not considered enough when choosing licenses, is idealism vs. the practical reality.
For instance many well known OS project like wordpress, and vanilla are part funded by SaaS.
Go to the GPL site and you will find pages dedicated to deriding SaaS, like it was the worst thing ever.
You could say there is no official position but in practice GPL3 is more restrictive, and GPL4 will likely be even more restrictive. It mimics exactly what they claim to be against, it is not a "free as in freedom" as they claim.
grep is your friend.
I also thought that GPL was not mandatory for plugins and themes. What lawsuits are you referring to?
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@businessdad I think he may be referring to the FAQ on GPL software. This states, as I interpret it in the context of Vanilla plugins, that plugins must be released with a GPL compatible license.
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I don't think that there should be any issue in using different licensing models, unless Vanilla Team has something against it. Put simply, if Vanilla Team is ok with different licences, I don't think that there would be any issue. In my opinion, if someone chooses GPL, it's up to them to enforce it.
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It was actually settled in the end (Chris Pearson, vs. Wordpress).
I'm not actually defending Chris Pearson behaviour (which was bad), it was actually the premise that was used.
That was wordpress considers all public theme to be part of the core, and therefore mush be GPL, the same thing for any extension. This is despite the fact there is a whole economy that ignore this, and wordpress are not cracking down on them.
The judge said the GPL licensing is testable, however this is based on limited to no cases, I suspect should more complicate relationships, the testability of GPL especially, with the newer versions would be called into question.
The relationship between different pieces of software is evermore complex. You could have a case where two different software groups are claiming GLP type mark on some middlewere, in contradiction.
Technically as far I understand, it would be possible as long as none of the method are not directly called by the GPL framework to release some code plugged into some GPL "go between" extension framework, using your own discretion as the originator.
Seems a shame to go to those lengths.
grep is your friend.
Exactly. However how are we to know unless explicitly stated? if you get it is writing at least everyone is clear where they stand.
grep is your friend.