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GPL and the Wordpress x Thesis theme issue (Why Chris is right)

21–22 of 22 posts

Re: GPL and the Wordpress x Thesis theme issue (Why Chris is right)

#21

Post by sigzero » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 8:57 PM UTC

moxiemk1 wrote: post #2

Though I'm not familiar with Wordpress and it's theming system, this argument has indeed puzzled me. This article is spot on: why would a theme be beholden to the software's license? That said, maybe Wordpress themes are much different than normal themes, and are much more tightly coupled? That WP would pursue this if not puzzles me.

> Why would a theme be beholden to the software's license?

Well, because there is WP PHP code in it. Once you do that you become a "derivative" and you take the license.

Re: GPL and the Wordpress x Thesis theme issue (Why Chris is right)

#22

Post by neutronicus » Thu, Jul 15, 2010, 9:11 PM UTC

logic wrote: post #9

francoisdevlin wrote: post #8

Isn't this whole issue why the LGPL exists?

That depends entirely on the goals of the original author (Matt and the Wordpress team, in this case). Judging from Matt's reaction, I suspect the LGPL would have produced the opposite result they were looking for.

You miss the point. The LGPL was created to allow people to do what Chris wants to do. The GPL was created to prevent people from doing the same. If Chris is actually right, the GPL and LGPL are equivalent. In that case, damn! I should have used GSL instead of rolling my own numerical methods for a closed source project. And I should sell a GUI frontend that links against GNU Octave.

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