[kwlug-disc] Wordpress themes must be GPL

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 5:14 AM, Chris Frey <cdfrey at foursquare.net> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 09:06:31PM -0400, Paul Nijjar wrote:
> > I know I am supposed to be cheering, but this story makes me kind of
> > sad. Releasing your code as open source when you do so voluntarily is
> > one thing. Being forced to release your code is something else
> > entirely.
>
> There are various options, as far as I know:
>
>        - stop selling your product, since it contains other people's
>                GPL'd code
>        - pay a lot of money to obtain the rights to sell under some
>                other license
>        - GPL your own code to comply with the license.
>

Yes, these are the options, but even some of those are not practical in many
cases.

For example, the 2nd option is feasible if one company owns the rights to
the normally dual licensed product (e.g. MySQL, Alfresco). But does not
apply to community lead projects, such as Drupal or even the Linux kernel.
Even if you wanted to buy rights to Drupal or Linux, the best you can do is
to buy the right to the trademark, not the codebase, since it is co-owned by
100s of developers around the world.
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
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