mauricius
Forum Replies Created
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To be honest, it is just a problem for you… This GPL debate regularly comes back on the table and is subject to endless discussions.
I believe the outcome of this round is that :
1/ Plugins hosted here have to be 100% GPL, everybody agrees on that.2/ Outside of here, it is the plugin author decision to define the license he wants to apply and then it is up to you to decide if you want to use it or not based on that.
So you might not be happy with this conclusion but still I think you need to respect the work of plugin authors, regardless of their license. The situation you had claimed as being unacceptable is indeed acceptable so be it… Nobody forces you to use the plugins that you don’t like. I believe there are enough plugins available for you to find one that suits your needs without having to shout on the ones that don’t. Respect the work of contributors and praise the ones you prefer rather than shouting the ones you don’t like. Just accept that some people could have multiple reasons for thinking differently than you, still it isn’t a valid reason for accusing them of doing illegal things…
I am quite happy that these great plugins like user messages will continue to be there. Don’t want to see my freedom to use it here restricted to peace your mind…
Wish you a good week end, learnt a lot about GPL today, thanks!
Otto who is a core contributor just made it clear in another post that premium plugins outside of this site don’t need to be GPL… End of the story. I believe you can give a bit more credit to him than you give to me.
http://ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/plugin-user-messages-this-plugin-is-dead-please-remove-it
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [User Messages] [Plugin: User Messages] This plugin is dead, please remove itDon’t remove user messages, I am using it and it is working fine. People having problems with the most recent release can use an older one or another plugin…
Then it is also valuable piece of code as an original use of WP so worth keeping it.
I was talking about the plugin code, not WP code. The contamination aspect is a different topic which you might not want to mix up with the distribution aspect in order to keep discussion simple 🙂
But basically, a plugin author can release his PHP code under GPL to be compliant with WP requirements and the interpretation made here of the GPL but nothing forces the plugin author to release the javascript, images and CSS under GPL. So plugins can be released under a split GPL license without harming anybody. Here the requirement is for pure GPL plugins so that’s fine, plugin authors have to comply with this. But outside of this repository, they are free to do what they want…
No, this isn’t true, I am sorry for that. Read the GPL and you’ll see that it isn’t mentionned anywhere that the copyrights on the original code are given away forever. It is even clearly stated in their FAQ :
“would like to release a program I wrote under the GNU GPL, but I would like to use the same code in non-free programs. (#ReleaseUnderGPLAndNF)
To release a non-free program is always ethically tainted, but legally there is no obstacle to your doing this. If you are the copyright holder for the code, you can release it under various different non-exclusive licenses at various times.”
I agree that it is kind of complex to understand how it works… But it is quite clear that distributing under GPL doesn’t mean that you can’t distribute under any other license. This remains the copyright holder decision and has nothing to do with the code similarities. A plugin author could distribute some code as release 1 under GPL and then just change the name and release it under another license.
People usually mix up copyrights and licensing. GPL just gives to users the rights to modify and redistribute a GPL distribution of the code under the GPL. But the original copyrights remain the property of the contributors, this is why they have to be credited.
Nothing in GPL claims that because original release is GPL, then all subsequents release needs to be GPL. GPL just claims that if someone that isn’t the original code owner wants to modify or redistribute the code of a GPL release, then it needs to keep a GPL compatible license as he would have modified GPL code. But obviously, the original code owner keeps the right to modify the license whenever he wants for new releases, he can even distribute the same code under a GPL license for some users and a non GPL license for other users.
Again, GPL is tied to distribution. So it is really up to the code author to decide under which license he wants to distribute a release and this can change along the time. It is just about changing the distribution. As long as all the code contributors agree on that, there is nothing in GPL preventing that. GPL just prevent that for the GPL release.
We shouldn’t mix up the situation of the original code owner and the situation of the people who obtainer the GPL release. Deciding to release some code under GPL at a point doesn’t mean you have to do that forever and you can’t do anything else with it. Just take the dual license example for plupload, I think it is a clear one.
@Pawnshop :
Glad to see that you understand what I am saying.Indeed, a plugin author can set a GPL release for release 1 and then later on decide to set another license for release 2. The only person he needs the agreement from are the people who contributed to the code since the first GPL release. So if only the plugin author wrote the code and he hadn’t integrated any external contribution, he is free to just modify the license for the release 2. He just can’t modify it for the release 1 as it has been distributed and so that’s too late.
But for later releases, he can do what he wants to do as long as he has the agreement from the code contributors (ie himself if he is the only one who wrote some code). A code contribution is a code contribution meaning that someone that gives the advise to add this or that feature isn’t a code contributor. When you suggest to Microsoft a Windows enhancement, you don’t become a copyright holder. You understand what I mean, the contribution needs to be concrete and clear.
And if an another hand, if he wants to originally deliver the plugin under two different licenses, he can also do that. If the code delivered under each release is similar, then it is probably not a good idea, except if he grants special rights with the other license that the GPL doesn’t include.
To give you a concrete example, see here :
http://www.plupload.com/license.phpPlupload is the library included in WP core for the media uploader. It is available in GPL but there is also a commercial license available which provides additionnal capabilities. I believe it is fair in this situation, what is your opinion on that?
Personnally, I believe that plupload is a good addition to WP core and I am also happy to have them selling commercial licenses of their library to allow them to maintain this library at the right level.
So it is exactly the same story here. Some will ask you to pay money for support, some others for additionnal features, etc… They are free to license their code the way they want to as long as they respect the copyrights holders and they don’t put a non GPL release on ww.wp.xz.cn. If you pay, it is because it meets your needs, so why are you unhappy with a different license for a premium plugin? I don’t see your point, please clarify, it is interesting.
The problem I see with the report feature is that it can be easily abused and I believe moderators have more positive things to do than to investigate false reports… User assistance, feature development and community expansion are better targets for me.
@Pawnshop :
It is simply the copyright… The plugin author is the code owner. The GPL license just gives to anybody the right to modify, resell and redistribute it as long as they credit the original author.But then the original code author keeps the right to write a new release with the specific license he wants to. It is the code owner that decides on the license. The GPL doesn’t mention anywhere that if the original developper sets version 1 as GPL, then he can’t set version 2 as MIT or anything else.
GPL is tied to distribution. When a piece of code is distributed, it comes with a license, this is a kind of stamp. Nobody has the right to remove or modify that stamp for this specific release without author consent. But adopting GPL one day for a specific piece of code doesn’t mean that you need to keep it forever for any release as long as you own the original copyrights.
So when a plugin author decides to put release 1 in GPL, he doesn’t have the right to go to people at a point and tell them “stop using release 1, it isn’t GPL anymore”. But he could deliver release 2 under a different license as it is a new original distribution and not a redistribution.
There was some debates in the WordPress community few years ago about the GPL license and the ability to modify it for WordPress code. It turned out that it wasn’t possible because it would have required consent of every WordPress contributor (everyone that wrote a patch). But in theory, if everybody had accepted, then it would have been feasible to switch to MIT or something else. Obviously, you understand that it is easier for an isolated plugin author to agree with himself than for a hundred of thousand of contributors 🙂
So from my point of view :
1/ Plugins here need to stay free and GPL, no discussion about it. I believe we are in agreement here (yes we can!).2/ Then, it is the interest of the community to have premium plugins developped because when you have an issue with a plugin, it is good if you can get prompt support by paying something. I really dislike to see a plugin crashing my site and then having nowhere to get prompt support because it is free and maintained on a best effort basis (which is natural for a free plugin). So I would rather push to have all the services and premium releases advertised heavily on the free plugin pages. This would allow to exactly understand what level you can expect if you run into trouble.
3/ ww.wp.xz.cn is a unique place. I usually put more trust on plugins I find here than elsewhere, whether free or free with a premium release available. So I’d prefer to see all staying here.
4/ I believe plugin authors will put more efforts to maintain the free releases if they have a reward from the community. A good reward is to allow advertisements of premium releases. It doesn’t cost anything to us, the plugin users and it allows the plugins authors to get some benefits out of their work. Nobody can work hard for free on the long term, I am sure you understand it. So why would plugin authors write very complex free plugins if they have no way to recover their time? So things need to be balanced…
And I am against your “report” button. We aren’t in a pornographic forum. There is no point having this kind of button here.
@esmi :
WordPress couldn’t host plugins with a non GPL license, this would be somehow redistributing freely proprietary software which isn’t possible. This is the point I was making by saying that. I agree with you that this isn’t the only reason why the plugins need to be GPL here, the derivative work aspect is another.@webtechglobal :
Agree with you, it should be a community decision rather than Chuck Norris going around and claiming that this one or this one is bad and should be removed just because he doesn’t like it.So it needs to be part of a WordPress survey sent out to regular users of the repository to ask them what is acceptable or not.
Then we should keep in mind that if all free plugins where a premium release is available are removed from ww.wp.xz.cn, it is likely that remaining plugins will be very limited in terms of features (except for the TOP 20) because plugin authors won’t maintain plugins on the long term if they have no way to get a retribution for it, especially when it requires a lot of support attention.
I believe it is the community interest to reward better plugins authors. The more we give to them, the more they will contribute back. If we are just here to restrict the ways they could recover from their efforts, then they will switch to another CMS where community is more “friendly”. I don’t care to see some ads for premium plugins here, it is targeted advertisement which is way better than all the ads that you see on the other websites which are usually not targeted to visitor needs. And if it can help a bit the author, it doesn’t hurt me. In life, you need to give a bit if you want to get in return. Suffering from having features description or premium advertisement is not so painfull…
@pawn Shop :
You got it completely wrong…Plugins hosted in ww.wp.xz.cn have to be GPL, just because if they weren’t, how could ww.wp.xz.cn host and distribute these freely? Then it is also a community decision that the plugins hosted here are FREE and GPL. And on that front, all the plugins you have mentionned are GPL here so this is just noise you are making here!
Now, for everything that is outside of ww.wp.xz.cn, it is outside of your control and WordPress community control.
It is good for you if these plugins are licensed under the GPL but you have no way to enforce it and more than that the plugin authors don’t have any legal obligation to release these plugins under a full GPL license. This is the difference between our ww.wp.xz.cn site and what is happening elsewhere.
If the plugins authors want to release it under another license, then it is their decision. You can sue them if you believe this is violating the GPL but I wish you good luck because you’ll have hard times to prove this. Basically, if a plugin is compatible with the GPL, then there is absolutely no issue. And it is quite easy to make a plugin compatible with the GPL while not making it freely distribuable. Authors just need to state that the PHP code is GPL and the rest isn’t (images, javascript and CSS), this isn’t a violation of GPL as the GPL “contamination” is limited to code interfacing with it.
What I am telling you is that you aren’t taking the discussion on the right angle. These plugins don’t cause any problem to anybody and more than that, they are heavily contributing to the WordPress ecosystem.
You aren’t Chuck Norris so no need to transform yourself into the web cherif. Just use the plugins you like and ignore the ones you don’t like.
Be positive man, it is friday and sunny weather! 🙂
Forum: Installing WordPress
In reply to: Dashboard is gone with 3.4.2 upgradeHave you turned on a maintenance mode plugin? Maybe change the name of the folder in wp-content/plugins to enforce plugin deactivation.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [User Messages] [Plugin: User Messages] This plugin is dead, please remove it@webtechglobal : are you aware of this?
http://www.csv2post.com/about/terms-conditions
“You are not allowed to resale or redistribute on the basis you made changes and modifications. You cannot release WebTechGlobal products with GPL included or similar licenses.”
Are you aware that this goes against the GPL?
The terms and conditions for the CSV2Post plugins seems to be completely against the spirit of GPL. Don’t you think that we should remove it from WordPress repository? Oh now, we should keep it because this is a great project and you did a great job!
http://ww.wp.xz.cn/extend/plugins/csv-2-post/
This was just to show you that reality isn’t black or white but usually grey… “Do what I say, not what I do”…
To give you my personnal opinion, I believe user messages plugin and csv 2 posts have the right to be here because they contribute to a need. What they do elsewhere isn’t an issue, it allows to sustain the maintenance of the free release so fine!
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [User Messages] [Plugin: User Messages] This plugin is dead, please remove itDisagree, keep this great plugin! There are hundred of users running it including me so I don’t want it to be removed!!!
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: Nav bar problem in IE when navigating siteHave you tried to disable it in the admin side as a start to see if it shows up or not? This can be set under the profile I think.