Alex Shiels has announced that Textpattern 4.1 will use a BSD-style license instead of the GPL when it is released. Several reasons were provided which can be summarized as the GPL not being well-suited for scripting environments such as PHP, especially for programs which allow for plug-ins.
On one of my Firefox tabs there is a draft of a post on Wordpress vs. the GPL that I’d been meaning to finish since January. On the Wordpress support site and the mailing lists I’ve seen it said several times that Wordpress plug-ins and themes must be licensed under the GPL. Arguments in favor of such claims are highly technical — programming knowledge is required just to understand the argument and the result is more likely to be confusion than actual agreement or disagreement.
I believe that the GPL does not apply to Wordpress plug-ins. Or plug-ins written for programs in most scripted environments. My argument requires no understanding of the GPL or programming, just a basic understanding of copyright.
Copyright is the cornerstone of the GPL. To grossly over-simplify, if you’ve legally received a copyrighted work then you have the right to use it. If you want to make copies then you need the permission of the copyright holder(s). By licensing a work under the GPL, the copyright holders are offering that permission to you if you agree to accept the GPL’s terms. The actual terms of the GPL are irrelevant to this argument.
A Wordpress plug-in is simply a piece of PHP source code. For the plug-in to be useful it will access Wordpress functions and data structures, however, nothing from Wordpress has been copied into the plug-in’s source code.
Without copying there is no need to have the permission of the copyright holder(s), hence no need to accept the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Comments are open and I dare anyone to prove me wrong, but you’d better start by addressing how copying has taken place or I will call Bullshit and taunt you mercilessly.
IANAL. YMMV. CYA. Etc.
And I’ll actually be the first to comment on my own post. I wanted to keep my argument against the GPL applying to Wordpress plug-ins simple and brief so I avoided mentioning some things.
Commercial software licenses are significantly different than the GPL. Commercial software uses a “shrinkwrap” license — by breaking the seal on the software, or proceeding to install it, you are agreeing to the terms of the license. Typically the license says that you’ve only purchased a license to use the software, not a copy of it, and your use of the software is severely restricted by the license terms. Any rights you would have under copyright law are effectively waived.
The GPL is not a “shrinkwrap” license, you do not have to accept the GPL’s terms to receive the software or make use of it. Within the bounds of copyright law and “Fair Use” doctorine there is quite a bit that you could do with the program’s source code without breaking any laws. It’s only when you with to make copies for others that a copyright violation would occur, requiring the direct permission of the copyright holder or acceptance of the GPL’s terms.
The Free Software Foundation likes to confuse the issues — they have an agenda of promoting Free software and the GPL, they are not interested in helping developers of software that does not meet their definition of “free.” The FAQ entries on The GPL and Plug-ins is a nasty mess which attempts to fool developers into believing that they must license their code under the GPL. The only circumstance where a work must be GPL-licensed is when other GPL’d code (or things derived from GPL’d code such as header files) has been copied into the new work.
In this regard, the FSF sucks. Fooling people into releasing code under the GPL serves no one.
Some more supporting arguments.
1) The GPL itself, section 0 paragraph 2: “Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted […]”
The first sentence I’ve quoted goes directly to my contention that the GPL’s terms are irrelevant if nothing has been copied from a GPL-licensed work. The GPL itself backs me up!
I believe the second sentence belies the FSF’s contention in the GPL FAQ that plug-ins must be GPL-licensed. The FSF’s argument is effectively that a shared memory space creates a “derived work.” For environments where nothing is copied during the creation of a plug-in (including most scripted environments and certain dynamically-linked compiled environments), the act of running the program is what creates the supposed “derived work” and it only exists during execution. Right there, in plain English, the GPL exempts that which occurs at run-time.
Now, plug-ins for some environments could result a plug-in that is a derived work due to the inclusion of header files or other data derived from the original GPL-licensed work. My claims do not apply to such environments.
2) Slashcode announcement from way back in 2001: “In our opinion Plugins are independent and can be licensed under whatever the creator wants.” They didn’t say a whole lot, but I think it’s very important to consider what they didn’t do. The Slashcode license was not updated to include the GPL FAQ’s Linking Exception. The Slashcode FAQ makes no mention that non-GPL plug-ins are permissible. There’s nothing in the announcement granting explicit permission to create non-GPL plug-ins, just their stated opinion that such plug-ins are OK.
Your argument reminds me of this:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/monolith.html
Not that anything in that case applies to this case, I just saw an analogy.
Think about this: If plugins (no matter how they are linked or how they work) can be licenced in whichever way anyone chooses, then that creates a loophople in the GPL where an elephant can fit through. You simply minimally adapt the base-software to always call functions from plugins where ou want to add functionality, and then release every substancial enhancement you do in the form of plugins.
So, either the GPL acts as the FSF says it does, then it’s a pain. Or it acts as you say, in which case it doesn’t all that much in contrast to the BSD (at least in these circumstances). So in either case, going with BSD seems to be the clearest and most painless way.
As Bruce said, “technical hair splitting is not an effective way to get around the law.”
I am not splitting hairs or, as Alex suggested, ignoring the fine print. I didn’t use the GPL itself to support my claims because people have a difficult time understanding the GPL. However, the text of the GPL directly supports my claims that it does not apply without copying, and without copying the GPL’s terms need not be accepted. I quote Section 0 and Section 5, in their entirety, empasis mine: