CForms II removed from Repository.

[Ryan]

Is the author charging for the plugin now?

Credit Line / Do I have to pay for your plugin now?
No. You can use it as is for free and it will always be at 0-costs, even in a commercial context.

Stupid vBulletin doesn't consider a quote to be text so I've had to add this line of text in to put me over the minimum character limit

[Len]

Methinks the GPL debate will rage on in the WP community for some time to come. There are too many different interpretations and I'll not touch this with a 10 ft pole. ;)

[conorp]

Sorry i missed this:

I actually got a nasty email from him some months back on a website for having removed the link.

Thats weird as he actually says that you can remove it:

Credit Line / Do I have to pay for your plugin now?
No. You can use it as is for free and it will always be at 0-costs, even in a commercial context. If you need/want to get rid of the credit line beneath the forms you can! See the link-love note that comes with cforms (____LINK_LOVE_CREDITS.txt) Even when you simply remove the link love without adding a key, you can still use 100% of the plugin's functionality in nonAjax mode. Still a good deal, I think.

Also itsananderson, this answers your question.

[Ryan]

Methinks the GPL debate will rage on in the WP community for some time to come. There are too many different interpretations and I'll not touch this with a 10 ft pole. ;)

This is a little different IMO. The main issue here (IMO) is that they've ignored the WordPress Plugins Repository rules and AFAIK haven't apologised for it. I don't think anyone could claim that isn't wrong, regardless of their opinion of the GPL.

[Kit]

Carp carp and double carp! I take the weekend off and look what I come back to. I sure as heck wish someone would fork it! If the developer isn't going to take care of the updates even on the website, we (wp community) need something to take its place after the "shelf life" has expired. Personally, I'm going to hang on as long as I possibly can and hope someone creates something with similar functions. Hint hint hint!

**deleted my personal thoughts about the customer service out of respect**

[hallsofmontezuma]

Of course I always do remove it. And you can certainly remove it without losing any functionality. He makes it a little more difficult to remove than it could be I suppose, but it's not overly complicated. I don't have a problem with that, it's certainly his right to write software however he wants. The software itself is completely compliant with the license.
It's his insistence that it not be considered GPL and his classless attitude that his lacking.

Sorry i missed this:

Thats weird as he actually says that you can remove it:

Credit Line / Do I have to pay for your plugin now?
No. You can use it as is for free and it will always be at 0-costs, even in a commercial context. If you need/want to get rid of the credit line beneath the forms you can! See the link-love note that comes with cforms (____LINK_LOVE_CREDITS.txt) Even when you simply remove the link love without adding a key, you can still use 100% of the plugin's functionality in nonAjax mode. Still a good deal, I think.

Also itsananderson, this answers your question.

[Kim]

@ conorp

At the risk of getting off topic I use Secure Form Mailer by Dagon Design. I've used it for a long time and have no complaints. It's not that hard to set up.

+10 for this plugin. I've used the stand-alone script on non-WordPress sites and use the plugin on all the WordPress sites that I develop. It isn't as "fancy" as cformsII, but it's easy to configure and gets the job done securely. ;)

It is a shame to lose a plugin like cformsII, but the author knew going in that it has to be licensed with a GPL-compatible license in order to be in the WP plugin repo. Why didn't anyone at wordpress.org catch this before now?

[brandingdavid]

GPL is scary because it is a complete lack of control. If I took every GPL theme, replaced the footer link, and redistributed them all on a popular site like BloggingPro, I would earn tens of thousands of back links.

If Darren Rowse wanted to make an Ultimate theme pack and sell it for $10 a pop, do you doubt that people would buy it, making him tons of money? Some would even defend it saying that he took the time to put the pack together.

The issue is a lack of control. People put time, energy and work into developing something, and others abuse that fact. Why should someone put continued development into something without being able to ask for something in return, be it money, or a link, or at least respect from the community.

I think it is horrible how the WordPress community treats its theme makers and plugin authors and all of you that just "expect" them to release their stuff under GPL are so full of "crap".

This is one of those cases where everyone expects to have their cake and eat it too, and the only person profiting is Automattic. Ridiculous.

[itsananderson]

Well, legally they are actually required to release under GPL because the themes/plugins are extensions of WordPress.

You have a valid concern about people being ripped off, but I think there are a couple things that will keep people with the original author. The biggest one is support, which only the original author can provide the best. The second is security. Who knows what else was done to a theme you might download besides changing the footer link.

[davecoveney]

Heh - this kind of thing will just keep on rearing its head. But the WP community is tending towards GPL zealotry at the moment.

If there was a cFormsII plugin that was GPL yet he offered a non-GPL theme then it would probably be pulled too. In other words, the ruling isn't that a plugin has to be GPL, if you link to your site then everything else you offer there has to be GPL.

That kind of attitude does suck. We've worked out a strategy now for Spectacu.la that allows us to make money from within a niche (because that's where we are) but having our freely given GPL contributions thrown back in our face did hurt.

This is going to happen with plugin authors too. Many plugins could be easily rewritten to work for other non GPL systems. No wonder developers are starting to get wary of the GPL.

Curiously the GPL really isn't well suited to mass market stuff. We're going to use the WTFPL for a lot of our free work soon, and probably the BSDFree license for paid for work. But ultimately the GPL is very good for the work we do for end clients on custom stuff. And really, for us, that's where the money is.

What we hoped was to get our cooler code developed for clients into the market more quickly by getting some money for it without losing too much control (we can't afford to defent the GPL so do need to be careful) but now we're going to be much slower in output. A lot of commercial themes are currently still too hard to use - things like image sizing should be done for you. Our new stuff does that, but if we give it away then our commercial rivals will have the facility too. We have to decide if we want that or not :-)