Comments on: Extending GPL Licensed Code

By: Andreas Nurbo

Andreas Nurbo — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:30:36 +0000

Pearson has become a victim of what all software companies dread. An alledged clueless employee that has copy pasted code from a GPL project into the companies own software. Its virtually impossible to know which code comes from another project or not. I don’t know of any tools for comparing public repos with code snippets.

I think next version of Thesis, 1.8, has the code removed.

By: Gil Rutkowski

Gil Rutkowski — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:49:19 +0000

Unfortunately, Pearson v. Mullenweg will not be the case that decides whether extensions are derivative works. By using GPL code from WP, it’s no longer a case of derivative works — it’s now a case about blatant copyright violations and I don’t think Pearson really has much of a legal defense.

Very saddened.

I’ll be pulling all Thesis affiliate advertisement from my sites.

By: Gil Rutkowski

Gil Rutkowski — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:42:22 +0000

Sadly — New information has come out that shows that Pearson has quite obviously violated the GPL. Although I’ve yet to put eyes on the violating code, it does seem there is a fair bit of code within Thesis that was lifted directly from the WordPress source. If this is true, then there is no derivative works case here.

If I were Pearson, I’d quickly announce that Thesis has, by his lack of understanding or straight-up defiance, inherited the GPL license and push forward.

Beyond that, I frankly choose not to debate who’s had the worse attitude about it, Matt or Chris. If the above statements are true, Chris has lost all the wind from his sails (sales?).

This post was clearly about defining derivative works as they apply to WordPress extension/integration and not about assuming why or how either side of the argument defends it’s position. I do have issue with BOTH sides of the argument, but that’s best saved for a different post.

That said, I’ll leave the comments open on this post, but please refrain from turning into a Pearson vs. Mullenweg soapbox.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:55:52 +0000

Well said

It would be interesting if this actually ends up in court, it’s a long long haul.

By: Ben Cook

Ben Cook — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:02:53 +0000

My biggest issue in all of today’s madness is Matt Mullenweg’s behavior. He leveled several severe accusations at Chris without a single shred of evidence to back them up.

After making these wild accusations he dodges a very good question from Chris about the responsibility of his actions and tries to take the moral high ground on the issue. He then proceeds to once again retweet irresponsible and inflammatory statements about Thesis.

I’m sorry, but how exactly does Matt think that’s helping the wOrdPRESS community? And how is that holding to the standard of behavior that he apparently holds others (myself included) to?

By: Ben Cook

Ben Cook — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:58:49 +0000

Andrew, you’ve hit the nail on the head. There’s no case law (that I’ve found or been referred to) here in the US. Matt seemed to suggest there were applicable cases and I would hope he’d share them with us.

However, I think you also pegged the reason Matt is so vehement in his opposition to Thesis… because it gets under his skin. He’s used to getting what he wants and having his word treated as law in the wOrdPRESS community. Chris has essentially told them to go shove their opinion on the GPL.

That bothers Matt more than I think most people realize. This stuff really gets under his skin.

I mean consider the kind of egomaniac you’d have to be to not only implement the capital P filter, but to stick by it in the face of such overwhelming and well reasoned opposition. All because he doesn’t like people misspelling the trademark he created.

So when Chris thumbs his nose at the idea of themes inheriting the GPL, and is vocal about it, I really think it becomes an emotional, almost religious issue for Matt.

And of course, as you mentioned Chris isn’t exactly lacking in the ego department (I suspect he’d admit as much) and thus you wind up with what you have today.

Unless Matt sues DIYthemes (a move that he threatened even before today’s interview but now is trying to play off like Chris wants it) there will likely be no resolution to the issue.

By: Dan Gayle

Dan Gayle — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:57:00 +0000

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:26:32 +0000

The court option is asinine. I have been a third party observer of an ongoing lawsuit in my family over a business I used to work in. The matter at hand is simple and should have been settled already. Yet, 5 years after the first suit was filed, the case just made it to the appeals court.

The point is this: there is no possible way that this issue can be resolved in a reasonable amount of time through the court. We will all be on to some other CMS or some other web design software by the time anything came about.

The only thing that I can imagine is Pearson following through with a libel suit on the public statements made by Matt where Matt alleges that DIY and Chris are criminals (breaking the law, as he puts it). That is something that could have an immediate and potentially devastating outcome for Matt, at least personally.

In the end, this horse shit has to stop. This reminds of high school and I am losing respect for all involved, myself included.

By: Jayvie Canono

Jayvie Canono — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:56:38 +0000

I think a lot of the “sue, or get out of the way already” talk is coming from people who are so absolutely fatigued over this entire subject. I’ve made my peace about the GPL-ness of any WordPress code I use in my themes. In order to prevent my clients from distributing a design across a network of sites, I license the images and css separately. I don’t distribute themes nor do I release the code to mine for distribution, mainly because I’d rather not have to answer any support questions from anyone who would be a total drag on my time.

I think it’s all GPL. I also think all the fighting is starting to get to me.

By: Gil Rutkowski

Gil Rutkowski — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:44:32 +0000

I can think of countless themes that work (ie: make a site look and feel a certain way) without anything but the HTML that they create. They’ll create the same look and feel on Drupal, Joomla and even static sites. That is what themes do.. Themes style content, they don’t make content, they don’t edit content, manage content, manage user, etc… They simply style content. WordPress doesn’t make the content, it produces the content for a theme to display. The themes do one job, WordPress does another.