{"id":2882,"date":"2010-07-15T13:46:33","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T12:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2882-how-infectious-is-the-gpl-battle-of-words-between-wordpress-and-thesis.html"},"modified":"2010-07-15T13:46:33","modified_gmt":"2010-07-15T12:46:33","slug":"how-infectious-is-the-gpl-battle-of-words-between-wordpress-and-thesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/2882-how-infectious-is-the-gpl-battle-of-words-between-wordpress-and-thesis.html","title":{"rendered":"How infectious is the GPL? Battle of words between WordPress and Thesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress<\/a>, is engaged in a battle of words with the maker of one of its premium themes, Chris Pearson, who runs DIYthemes<\/a> and offers the Thesis theme on a paid-for basis. I listened to their discussion on Mixergy<\/a>; it is ill-tempered particularly on Pearson\u2019s side.<\/p>\n

The issue boils down to this. WordPress is licensed under the GPL<\/a>, which provides that if you derive a new work from an existing GPL-licensed work, the GPL applies to your new work as well.<\/p>\n

Pearson argues, I think, that his work is not so tightly linked to WordPress that the GPL applies. \u201cThesis does not inherit anything from WordPress\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Mullenweg says that the way themes interact with WordPress is such that all themes much be GPL. \u201cIf you build something on top of it, it should be GPL\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Pearson is refusing to license his theme under the GPL. What is to be done \u2013 would Mullenweg go to court to protect the GPL?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want us to sue you? That would break my heart.\u201d he says. Then later, \u201cI really hope it doesn\u2019t come to that.\u201d Then, \u201cIf people decide the GPL doesn\u2019t apply, it\u2019s a serious step for open source.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disclosure: this site runs on WordPress and I regard Mullenweg as one of the heroes of open source. Like the Apache<\/a> web server (also in action here), WordPress is among the greatest achievements of the open source community.<\/p>\n

I have no legal expertise; though I know a little about how WordPress works. Themes link very tightly with WordPress and in most cases are built by modifying an existing GPL theme; but I guess if you could show that Pearson\u2019s work does not do this but merely runs on WordPress, as opposed to modifying it, he may have a case. That\u2019s the argument Michael Wasylik makes here<\/a>. On the other hand, did Pearson really create his theme without including any tiny bit of GPL code?<\/p>\n

Another factor: if you choose to build an extension to a platform like WordPress, it is arguably unwise to do something counter to the strong wishes of its founder. There are ethical as well as legal aspects to this.<\/p>\n

It is an important discussion for the open source community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, is engaged in a battle of words with the maker of one of its premium themes, Chris Pearson, who runs DIYthemes and offers the Thesis theme on a paid-for basis. I listened to their discussion on Mixergy; it is ill-tempered particularly on Pearson\u2019s side. The issue boils down to … Continue reading How infectious is the GPL? Battle of words between WordPress and Thesis<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,62],"tags":[434,676,1036],"class_list":["post-2882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-licensing","category-open-source","tag-gpl","tag-open-source","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}