Chris misinterprets GPL and fails to give valid argument. He even comes off as Sarah Palin of the WordPress community.
Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
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Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#22Guys, it's important for you to not frame your opinion solely on this interview. Take a look at Matt's tweets prior to this as well as his comments elsewhere. He's far from a gentleman or patient.
I looked at his tweet, what are you referring to?
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#23[deleted]
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#24From what I've seen of the portion of the GPL in question, the definition of "derivative work" is subject to interpretation, in my mind. Something for the lawyers to figure out.
My 2 cents: Myself, I'm not convinced that a theme is a derivative work. Isn't the API documentation public? Is it not -theoretically- (although impractical) possible to create a theme for Wordpress without having Wordpress itself? (Having said that, it would also be possible to write a non-GPL blogging engine that uses the same API without seeing the Wordpress code) Also, since the theme isn't distributed with Wordpress, I personally think it's harder to argue that it's a derivative piece of work, since none of the original Wordpress code is altered.
A better source of information from a legal perspective is the guy at perpetualbeta.com, who delved into this a few months ago with a couple of posts:
http://perpetualbeta.com/release/2009/11/why-the-gpl-does-no... http://perpetualbeta.com/release/2009/12/why-the-gplderivati...
From what I understand, he -is- a lawyer, and he has done intellectual property work, so his opinion, at least on the surface, would seem to have some weight. His position that "fair use" moots the GPL argument is quite interesting.
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#25Trying my best not to sound rude, but Chris Pearson sounds extremely obnoxious. His analogies are all over the place and very defensive; most likely because he realizes that he is on the wrong end of the debate. The license explicitly says it has to be GPL. End of discussion. He is making up his own rules!
Obnoxious or not, I think the point of contention is whether a theme can considered a derivative work or not. I think you can easily find lawyers who would have no trouble arguing either side of the case.
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#26I have not checked. Do other CMS projects force the GPL license on themes?
Yup. See Also: Drupal.
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#27Trying my best not to sound rude, but Chris Pearson sounds extremely obnoxious. His analogies are all over the place and very defensive; most likely because he realizes that he is on the wrong end of the debate. The license explicitly says it has to be GPL. End of discussion. He is making up his own rules!
Obnoxious or not, I think the point of contention is whether a theme can considered a derivative work or not. I think you can easily find lawyers who would have no trouble arguing either side of the case.
So find me a lawyer (more than just a blog post) who have successfully contented against such a case.
Did you watch the whole interview? His views has nothing to do with laws, nothing to do with grey areas within the license (from my understanding GPL is very explicit about this); he basically said "I don't wanna do this because, I don't wanna do this."
How can you rationalize with that?
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't every theme call WordPress methods in order to get posts, use widgets, etc?
Themes, most likely; Apps, not likely. I think confusion occurs when themes become web apps with their own internal codebase outside of Wordpress as a blog platform. The crux of this issue seems to be a philosophical debate.
Yes but. I personally think it sucks that you would force a "theme" maker to use a specific license. However, if Wordpress says they have to be GPL and you know they have to be GPL, then just release it as GPL because that is the right thing to do.
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't every theme call WordPress methods in order to get posts, use widgets, etc?
Themes, most likely; Apps, not likely. I think confusion occurs when themes become web apps with their own internal codebase outside of Wordpress as a blog platform. The crux of this issue seems to be a philosophical debate.
But wait. The theme documentation is public, and as far as I know, you don't have to agree to any license to read it.
IN THEORY, you could write a simple theme without even having Wordpress (albeit totally impractical). So if some mad scientist PHP programmer wrote a theme based totally on the documentation freely available on the website without ever installing Wordpress or looking at the Wordpress source, would that theme be subject to the GPL?
Re: Would WordPress Sue The Maker Of Thesis WordPress Theme? - Mixergy Interview
#30Wow, the amount of ignorance displayed here is significant. It's painful just listening to it, and the blatant double think -- I'm protecting my rights by disregarding your rights...
He seems to not understand the difference between lgpl and the gpl.