According to a post on the WordPress Development blog today, there are finally some concrete GPL related answers regarding some fuzziness in the communities (and WordPress’s) understanding of exactly how themes fit into the GPL framework.
Long story short, the php (or at least the parts related to hooking into WordPress) of themes ARE required to [...]
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According to a post on the WordPress Development blog today, there are finally some concrete GPL related answers regarding some fuzziness in the communities (and WordPress’s) understanding of exactly how themes fit into the GPL framework.
Long story short, the php (or at least the parts related to hooking into WordPress) of themes ARE required to be GPL compliant. The tricky bit is, the images and css are NOT. Meaning a theme could be partially GPL and still retain copyright of the artwork/design to some degree.
Here’s a snippet for you…
The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.
If you want more details, head over to the post on the Dev blog for the full situation, including some more fun legalese type stuff.
If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’ license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to [...]
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If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’ license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preëminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’ code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.
Matt,
You asked the Software Freedom Law Center to clarify the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, a content management software package written in PHP and licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.
We examined release candidate 1 of WordPress 2.8, which you provided to us at http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8-RC1.tar.gz. The “classic” and “default” themes included in that release candidate comprise various PHP and CSS files along with an optional directory of images. The PHP files contain a mix of HTML markup and PHP calls to
WordPress functions. There is some programmatic logic in the PHP code, including loops and conditionals.When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP’s include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client.
On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.
In the WordPress themes, CSS files and images exist purely as data to be served by a web server. WordPress itself ignores these files[1]. The CSS and image files are simply read by the server as data and delivered verbatim to the user, avoiding the WordPress instance altogether. The CSS and images could easily be used with a range of HTML documents and read and displayed by a variety of software having no relation to WordPress. As such, these files are separate works from the WordPress code itself.
The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.
HTML elements are intermingled with PHP in the two themes presented. These snippets of HTML interspersed with PHP throughout the theme PHP files together form a work whose form is highly dependent on the PHP and thus derivative of it.
In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress’s copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.
Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress’s copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.
Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center[1] There is one exception. WordPress does reads CSS and image files to create previews of templates for the template selection portion of the administrative interface. Even in that case, though, nothing in those files calls any WordPress functions, is treated as a command by PHP, or alters any other WordPress data structure. These files are read as data and used to create an image and display a miniaturized version of a webpage to the user.
Even though graphics and CSS aren’t required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.
Starting a business online may be an exciting idea but are you ready for the challenges ahead? Putting up a website is not the start and end of it because you have to ensure that you sustain your traffic and sales once you begin. Deciding on your own may not be sufficient but with a [...]
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Starting a business online may be an exciting idea but are you ready for the challenges ahead? Putting up a website is not the start and end of it because you have to ensure that you sustain your traffic and sales once you begin. Deciding on your own may not be sufficient but with a mentor to guide through every step of the way, you can be sure to build your confidence going forward.
The Winners Circle membership site is one training program you can count on. I strongly recommend this especially to start up entrepreneurs. It’s easy to use and requires only a small amount from your pocket but the wealth of knowledge you can gain is more than your money’s worth.
The training program provided by the Winners Circle is not like any other because it makes use of case studies and actual experiences of internet experts. No other mentoring site has shared real case studies of businesses that have achieved success in the field of ecommerce. SEO specialist Gyutae Park, the man behind this membership program, made sure to share vital materials with those who care to sign up and take their business to the next level. Park is no ordinary internet expert because he has had vast experience working as a consultant in the past assisting major international companies including Nokia in their SEO campaign.
For those who take part in the Winners Circle training program, great features await you. Signing up is quick and easy and once you’ve logged in, you’re ready to take advantage of the truly valuable information available exclusively to members.
- Case studies. Each week, a new case study is featured on the members area. But other than the new one, you can access all the previous case studies for your reference. These materials not only present the business models but go in depth in analyzing their strategies pertaining to market research and monetization of sites. With these detailed information, it’s easy to understand the ways that work to help push your business ahead than the others.
- Interviews. Two interviews are featured every month. These involve successful internet marketers, bloggers and business oriented people who earn a living online. Wouldn’t it be great to hear the experts share their stories and learn from their lessons? It’s one opportunity that should not be missed.
- Forum. What better way to connect and learn from other entrepreneurs but to interact on an online forum. Whether you have concerns or you want to share tips, the Winners Circle forum is the perfect avenue to exchange ideas and get the right support from like-minded people.
- Bonus. For every person who signs up, you get a bonus from Gyutae Park. It’s a free copy of his Guide to Finding the Perfect Niche for your Online Business. This is particularly helpful to the newbies in the online business because choosing the right category is crucial to being easily located by your target audience.
What all these means is that for every successful online business, learning the ropes from the experts on a consistent basis is the right step to take. Join the Winners Circle then if you want to be a winner yourself.
Beta 2 is here. Get it while it’s…still not quite out of Beta…or something.
From the WordPress.org Dev Blog…
Notable fixes in beta 2:
* Translation of role names fixed
* wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
* Upload [...]
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Beta 2 is here. Get it while it’s…still not quite out of Beta…or something.
From the WordPress.org Dev Blog…
Notable fixes in beta 2:
* Translation of role names fixed
* wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
* Upload error messages are now correctly reported
* Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
* Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
* SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
* Switched back to curl as the default transport
* Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload
I’ve been using 2.8.1 Beta 1 on a few sites, and liking it quite a bit. There are some issues with plugins, as there always are with any new version, but other than that it’s pretty solid.
If you don’t find using the default post editor in WordPress very efficient, or for whatever reason just want to be able to post to your WordPress blog without going to the admin panel, starting a new post, and going through the somewhat lengthy process of getting everything ready to go, then they are quite [...]
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If you don’t find using the default post editor in WordPress very efficient, or for whatever reason just want to be able to post to your WordPress blog without going to the admin panel, starting a new post, and going through the somewhat lengthy process of getting everything ready to go, then they are quite a few alternative methods to getting something posted.
Bloggerdesign.com currently has a great list describing many of them, including a fairly good list of desktop applications or browser addons.
Here’s a taste from one of the methods they discuss…
Press This is a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser. When you find something you want to blog about, select it and click the Press This bookmarklet. It’ll then open a small WordPress post window that is auto-populated with the selected text and allow you to put the finishing touches on the post.
Out of all the different ways I’ve tried in the past, that I like ScribeFire the best, but it really comes down to personal choice, and what you want to do with it. There are certainly enough other options that if you wanted to you could avoid the default editor forever and no one would be the wiser for it.
Are they any methods that people are using that weren’t included in the list? Let me know what you’re using in the comments. It’s always interesting to hear about how people are using the different tools available (or creating their own).




















