CForms II removed from Repository.

[Ryan]

The reason I stated that it might violate the GPL is from this FAQ question: Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF).

My brain hurts This stuff is far too comlicated for my poor little brain to comprehend

[Jacob Santos]

My brain hurts This stuff is far too comlicated for my poor little brain to comprehend

That is partly why I go with New-BSD. I want to keep my rights as the author, but still allow people to do whatever they want with the code. Sell it, modify it, take over the world, whatever. Just don't take it and say you wrote it.

[Len]

My brain hurts This stuff is far too complicated for my poor little brain to comprehend

No doubt. I'll stick to theoretical physics, it's easier to understand than the GPL.

[Ryan]

A friend of mine is a copyright specialist and a small scale WordPress developer who has contributed back to the community. I had an interesting conversation with him about the GPL a while back in which he basically slammed everyone who has commented on the GPL within the WordPress community. I don't have enough time, or knowledge to repeat everything here, but the guts of it is that he said the GPL and the ramifications of it are far more complex than what web developers realise.

FYI, his own content contributed back to the community has all been GPL'd. I'm pretty sure that's purely for ethical reasons rather than legal ones though. He didn't seem to think that creating non-GPL plugins or themes for WordPress was a problem as long as they meet certain criteria.

[aaronwaggs]

Looks like they have released cforms under the GPL

With version 10.2 cforms will be 100% GPL compliant, why the "change" in direction? Because of the few of you, who do respect the effort that went into this plugin.

cforms II delicious:days

[itsananderson]

Interesting. I wonder what caused the change of heart. (beyond the "few who respect the effort...")

Hopefully their choice to go GPL-compliant will strengthen their user base. As David said, every plugin and theme author should receive credit for the work they put into their software. I think people will be much more happy to do so now that they've chosen to go the Automattic "blessed" route.

[conorp]

I wonder if the WordPress guys can re-upload the stats then so it still has its ten thousand downloads (or something) and is still one of the most voted plugins.
It would be a shame if it had to start from the start again.

[Brad]

Great that cforms II will continue forward GPL or not.

For those of you that think all WP themes are automatically GPL, how do you reconcile that with this? Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Templates are minor enough that it is not worth using copyleft to protect them. It is normally harmless to use copyleft on minor works, but templates are a special case, because they are combined with data provided by users of the application and the combination is distributed. So, we recommend that you license your templates under simple permissive terms.

- and -

As a special exception to the GPL, any HTML file which merely makes function calls to this code, and for that purpose includes it by reference shall be deemed a separate work for copyright law purposes.

[Jacob Santos]

As a special exception to the GPL, any HTML file which merely makes function calls to this code, and for that purpose includes it by reference shall be deemed a separate work for copyright law purposes.

WordPress doesn't include the exception, nor does it include the words, "GPLv2 or any later version." So we are stuck with GPL for themes that have to move away from WordPress API, if they don't want to be GPL.

[Ryan]

Dangnabbit! That would have been a useful clause for them add in the original license. Is it possible to retrospectively add an exception?