Summary of Feb 11th 2010 Dev Chat
First of all Jane gave us a quick update on the progress of the menu management and the news that we will be integrating the Woo Menus
Next we had a discussion about the best way for plugins to be explicit about the licence they are released under. The general conclusion was to recommend that people are explicit and follow the recommendations in the codex (http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_a_Plugin#Standard_Plugin_Information) which will be updated to include a specific plugin header for a licence slug. For old plugins the assumption is if they are in Extend and have no explicit licence then they are GPL2.
Then we had a quick discussion about progress against the schedule and it is looking like we will not have all features in before the Feb 15th date and so this will likely slip a little which we get the menu management code in.
Finally we had a quick update on the improvements that will be happen to WordPress Extend to make it a better community collaboration environment.
Chip Bennett 9:38 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink |
Regarding change to plugin repository guidelines:
Should read:
EXPLICIT means that it is defined in the plugin.
IMPLICIT means that it is assumed from the repository guidelines
Peter Westwood 10:30 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink |
Personally I would feel that the explicit action is you checking the code in.
i.e. By doing the check-in you are explicitly saying the code is GPL2
Chip Bennett 10:55 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
But that’s not what the word explicit means.
Legally speaking, since the plugin author owns the copyright, you cannot explicitly state the license of his plugin for him; only the author can do so.
You can, however, claim that a plugin that is uploaded to the repository without an explicit license declaration assumes GPLv2 implicitly.
(And, I think that’s a good solution, btw – semantic issues with use of explicitly aside.)
Mark Jaquith 11:12 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
We are explicitly saying that your license is implicitly GPLv2 when it is not explicitly otherwise.
Chip Bennett 11:28 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink
But that’s just it: you can’t do that. Only the copyright holder can explicitly state the license for a plugin.
Words mean things.
(I’m not trying to split hairs. I can forsee some plugin authors in the future complaining about the repository not respecting their copyright, by claiming an explicit license that the author hasn’t.)
Chip Bennett 6:33 pm on February 12, 2010 Permalink |
May I propose the following wording for Guideline #5:
Chip Bennett 6:42 pm on February 12, 2010 Permalink
Or perhaps the following:
vanderzanden1 11:40 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink |
According to legal advice I’ve received, you can’t assume something is released under a certain license unless it is explicitly stated by the author. So legally speaking I’d have thought that assuming all plugins in the repository are GPLv2 is grossly incorrect. They may be required to be GPLv2, but that’s a totally different kettle of fish from them actually BEING GPLv2.
miqrogroove 11:52 pm on February 11, 2010 Permalink |
I agree with Chip and vanderzanden1 both. It sounds like magical licensing of someone else’s copyright. If the author didn’t specify a license then the work is not licensed.
Robert 5:24 am on February 12, 2010 Permalink
True. Assumptions about the plugin authors past intentions won’t help with the licensing issue at all, both what’s left besides this pragmatic solution? Purging the whole plugin repo?
Ryan 9:32 am on February 12, 2010 Permalink |
Woops! That was actually me who commented under the name vanderzanden1. A friend logged into their WordPress.com account on my computer and mustn’t have logged out.
This license situation worries me a little as it could get really messy if someone decided to take legal action against WordPress.org for releasing their code as GPLv2 when they had not intended to release it as GPL at all. This may not be likely, but I’d hate to see something like that happen.
The legal advice I received may be incorrect for all I know, but it seems fairly sound to me. I assume you can’t just go retrospectively changing other people’s software licenses without their permission regardless of whether they are or aren’t required to be using a particular license.
Ryan 1:25 am on February 13, 2010 Permalink |
Sorry, it appears I jumped the gun a little. Most of what I said above is incorrect.
More information is available here:
http://www.wptavern.com/forum/plugins-hacks/1306-right-idea-wrong-implementation-9.html#post12611
miqrogroove 1:19 am on February 14, 2010 Permalink
It’s a matter of how you frame the issue. I have a 2000-line plugin that contains a copyright notice, is not publicly available, and has no license attached to it. If someone were to leak that code and upload it to the repository as is, you can bet WordPress.org risks liability for claiming GPL on that copyright. Semantics can be debated forever, but the code is not licensed.