What copyright license is Last Edited plugin offered under?

virtualdavid

I would like to redistribute this very useful plugin as part of my theme with credit back to you of course, but there is no copyright information in your plugin, so I'm not sure what my redistribution rights are? Cheers! David Matson

vrijvlinder

Almost all plugins offered by the Dev Team use a GPL license

virtualdavid

I'm trying to be absolutely legal about this. Unless an open source license is selected then the default license is all rights reserved. I was thinking maybe Vanilla has a policy similar to SourceForge that any 3rd part plugins, themes, etc. uploaded to the Vanilla addon's area have to be offered with open source remix and share-alike rights to encourage innovation, etc., but I could not find anything that would insure open source use of plugins, themes, etc. Do you know of any such policy?

vrijvlinder

Every author has their own policy but in General it is a GPL license . However I discourage you to redistribute unless you fork the plugin from them and have their permission to do so.

You can always link to the plugin or their Github

Bundling plugins with theme is discouraged.

peregrine

Why are you distributing plugins as part of your. theme this is the third time you asked regarding plugin license. The reasonable thing to do is make your theme compatible with the plugin. Assuming you are not making some substantial changes in the plugin that greatly enhances it, it seems to be not a great way to go.

That is what everyone does, and that is what plugins are built in the first place. test the plugin with your theme and use it. kind of ridiculous in my opinion to go through every plugin in the add-ons (which this seems to invite other users to do).

In that way when the plugin gets updated, perople aren't stuck with your out of date code on a dead end street and the don't have to mess with wondering if your theme already does the plugin aspects, and it makes it complex for the user who switches themes to have a plugin do one thing and the theme another.

sounds like the wrong way to go.

No offense, but it sounds like you are going against the whole flavor of vanilla.

virtualdavid

vrijvlinder located licensed plugin copy at link below responding to request in this post:
https://github.com/vanilla/addons/tree/master/plugins

Thanks, vrijvlinder!

virtualdavid

Opps! My bad. Assumed the https://github.com/HelpGiveThanks/addons repository contained a GNU GPL2 license covering all the plugins. It does not. So officially there is no license attached this plugin. Made a pull request to add a GNU GPL2 to addons repository if that's kosher?

whu606

@virtualdavid‌

I hope you don't mind me asking, but are you producing a theme simply for your own use, or one that you want to distribute publicly?

I ask because, as others have suggested elsewhere, your method is pretty much counter to how Vanilla works.

Themes for public use are generally mostly edits of css, with perhaps some changes to the default.master file.

The choice of which plugins to use are left to the forum admin, except, perhaps, where a change to the default is best made via a new plugin.

If you are just adapting existing plugins so that they work how you want on your own forum, you can fire ahead without anyone minding what you do, afaIk.

However, if you intend to release a public theme with a range of modifications to general plugins, I feel you are letting yourself and your users in for a host of potential issues.

peregrine

the other issue is the fork above by the op is "out of date" and not properly forking the addons section.

a prelude to why forking installation for distribution (by softaculous, etc) will affect unwitting users of by increasing the possiblilty of using outdated knock-off installations that could introduce security flaws due to being not up to date, not maintained in timely basis, and maintained by one author who may or may not leave the scene. I shudder to think of the possible difficulties that may ensue with using knock-off distributions of vanilla, when a simple theme change is all that seems to be what is defined.in the original post.

there is indeed a license since the op commented here http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/208929/#Comment_208929 on May 29th.

the license was included several days ago (pre-May 28th).

https://github.com/vanilla/addons/tree/master/plugins/LastEdited

whu606 said: However, if you intend to release a public theme with a range of modifications to general plugins, I feel you are letting yourself and your users in for a host of potential issues.

amen

virtualdavid

@peregrine said:
the license was included several days ago (pre-May 28th).

https://github.com/vanilla/addons/tree/master/plugins/LastEdited

Thanks so much for this info!

virtualdavid

@whu606 said:
virtualdavid‌

I hope you don't mind me asking, but are you producing a theme simply for your own use, or one that you want to distribute publicly?

I am putting together a research project to test the positive effects of integrating forum, project management, etc. software into domestic relationships. I am currently in the process of fully documenting all changes to code, licenses (thus my question), to make it easier for research participants and colleagues to duplicate my setup, find flaws, suggest improvements, etc. The project is too complex to discuss without actually showing it to you. I appreciate your concerns, and ask you to trust in the open source process and legal framework to provide everyone rights to innovate and create with the responsibilities that come from choosing to use freely given code.

whu606

@‌virtualdavid

ask you to trust in the open source process and legal framework to provide everyone rights to innovate and create with the responsibilities that come from choosing to use freely given code.

I would, I guess, if I could work out what it means...

I was just giving you a heads up that, imo, including modified plugins as part of a distributed theme for production sites has a range of potential pitfalls.

Just to clarify, I'm not referring to legal issues, but possible issues regarding compatibility with Vanilla upgrades or security patches, or potential security flaws in the plugins.

virtualdavid

@whu606

Perhaps all these posts about the issue of plugin remixing and redistribution could be moved to their own discussion? I think some forking innovation in the addon area à la GitHub might be in order, to make it easier to keep track of all the great plugin contributions and their inevitable remixed spawn, but I really don't think this licensing post is the place to carry on such a discussion.

Perhaps a discussion of the "Vanilla Way" is also in order? I would enjoy a discussion about the open source process, licenses, and the user-be-ware job opportunities created in this bleeding edge software industry, with some of the highest hourly wages in the world paid out to deal with the many problems created by amateurs remixing code and sharing it (viruses, new plugins, etc.), but not here.

I would not mind discussing Charles Leadbeater's, "...deceptively casual talk [in which he] weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can’t,” but not here.

Leadbeater, Charles (2007). The rise of the amateur professional [video file]. TEDTalks. Time 0:18:58. TED. Copyright 2005 by the Publisher. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Retrieved 7/15/2013 from http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html

As a moderator, do you not have the ability to fork comments that go off topic?

This issue of remixing and redistributing plugins has now shown up on several different discussions that are not about remixing and redistributing plugins. Wouldn't it be much more useful if these comments where brought together under one discussion? For one thing, other users on this forum specifically interested in the plugin remixing/sharing issue would be alerted to the fact that such a discussion was going on, a discussion that right now is flying under the radar.

One last off topic topic in this mainly off topic discussion:

Clay Shirky's 2005 TED talk is worthy of a discussion related to "The Vanilla Way," which is feeling rather rigid and closed to outsiders. The talk is about how encouraging small contributors and fluid cooperation is essential to the health of future industries, but such a discussion really needs to be started by Vanilla staff or moderators.

Shirky, Clay (2005). Institutions vs. collaboration [video file]. TEDTalks. Time 0:20:46. TED. Copyright 2005 by the Publisher. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Retrieved 6/16/2012 from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html

From Clay's talk:

12:37 ... Steve Ballmer, now CEO of Microsoft, was criticizing Linux a couple of years ago, and he said, "Oh, this business of thousands of programmers contributing to Linux, this is a myth. We've looked at who's contributed to Linux, and most of the patches have been produced by programmers who've only done one thing." Right? You can hear this distribution under that complaint. And you can see why, from Ballmer's point of view, that's a bad idea, right? We hired this programmer, he came in, he drank our Cokes and played Foosball for three years and he had one idea. (Laughter) Right? Bad hire. Right? (Laughter)

13:25 The Psycho Milt question is, was it a good idea? What if it was a security patch? What if it was a security patch for a buffer overflow exploit, of which Windows has not some, [but] several? Do you want that patch, right? The fact that a single programmer can, without having to move into a professional relation to an institution, improve Linux once and never be seen from again, should terrify Ballmer. Because this kind of value is unreachable in classic institutional frameworks, but is part of cooperative systems of open-source software, of file sharing,

14:03 of the Wikipedia.

whu606

Seriously?

Whatever.

peregrine

I say we close this discussion since

the question is answered. there is a license clearly displayed on github for the plugin.

this is really beating a dead horse.