
WP org bans Envato members from WordCamp gatherings - tzaman
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/23/wordpress-org-bans-themeforest-authors-from-participating-in-official-wordcamp-gatherings/
======
wyck
The problem with this is that there is an actual legal GPL license but also
what is referred to as the "spirit" of GPL.

WTF "spirit" is comes down to whatever the founder wants it to be, in this
case Matt has decided to target developers instead of addressing the issue
with Envato or the community. It has created a confusing situation with good
people stuck in the middle.

Why was Jake Caputo singled out, several WordCamp speakers and even core
contributors have items on Envato. Are developers going to have to submit
under pseudonyms so they can make a living?

Envato itself sponsors the WordPress community summit (and past wordcamps). Do
they not see this as a mixed signal?

Who exactly is behind the elusive wordpress.org foundation, is it a private
foundation run only by Matt himself?

How are the foundation goals not polluted by having the same director of the
closed source wordpress.com (who also sell premium themes but in the context
of a "service").

Why does the "spirit" of GPL apply to a large company and not me, for example
I can copyright my images/graphics in a WordPress theme and still comply with
the license, but Envato can't?

Is the line drawn when only when a theme is distributed? What about all the
theme shops that have non GPL creative work in them?

Is Wordpress.com exempt because it is a service, what is preventing Envato or
anyone else from starting it's own split-license theme "service". What exactly
is the difference between a theme service and a theme distributor?

ps. The original article and discussion is here:
<http://www.designcrumbs.com/automatically-blackballed>

~~~
krogsgard
Your own client work, etc. doesn't have the same requirements for graphics and
CSS as WordPress themes because the work isn't distributed.

The foundation holds the keys to the WordPress logo, and it also does things
like support WordCamps that aren't profitable to keep those communities
strong. It's also a legal barrier to protect WordCamp organizers. See this
post: <http://wordpressfoundation.org/2012/wordcamps-and-such/> The foundation
is also starting to monetarily support local meetups (more frequent gatherings
than WordCamp). I think Matt is the only person in charge of the foundation,
but I'm not sure.

------
fencepost
Slightly inaccurate article - I've been following the discussion to some
extent, and it's _not_ that ThemeForest developers/sellers are banned from
_attending_ WordCamps, it's that they're banned from presenting, volunteering,
or sponsoring.

Basically it's a GPL dispute - ThemeForest themes are not fully GPL (they GPL
the PHP, but not CSS, etc.), and the WordPress.org folks are against that.

I'm not going to get into whether they think that this stance is legally wrong
or whether it's just that they don't want to offer a venue and what might be
perceived by some as endorsement or official sanction, because I don't know
and I'm not sure that everyone involved does either. I do think that (from
what I've heard) the way the WordPress Foundation has approached it is a bit
heavy-handed.

------
tedivm
This is the kind of stuff that makes commercial companies fearful of GPL
software. It's not the disagreement that is the serious issue, but the fact
that this legal document is completely unclear as to how it's supposed to work
(and the LGPL is even more frighteningly uninterpretable).

~~~
gpcz
id Software makes its game engines free when their technology gets dated, but
the artistic/creative content remains copyrighted. They do this by having a
copyright "airlock" interface between the executable and the game data
(WAD/PAK/PK3/whatever files). The lesson to learn from this conflict is that
if you run an open-source project that encourages creative or artistic content
add-ons that may remain proprietary, it's a good idea to establish a rigid
copyright airlock between the free stuff and the creative stuff.

~~~
homosaur
And how would one suggest this be implemented with WordPress?

~~~
potatolicious
Making the creative portion an entirely different codebase/downloadable that
is licensed under something else.

If, like WordPress, you want to enforce GPL compliance for derivative
projects, then spell out clear exceptions to your derivation clause - if they
even just spelled out themes it would have made this problem moot.

~~~
elehack
It doesn't seem that WordPress _wants_ to make an exception. That is, the
license without exceptions is functioning exactly as they intend, and they
think ThemeForest is doing something wrong, not should-be-right-but-is-
technically-wrong.

------
dsl
Why isn't the WordPress Foundation up in arms over WordPress.com? They sell
commercial themes[1] that I can't seem to find GPL copies of.

Are they turning a blind eye to the company that writes the checks for the
WordPress Foundation, or has a special exemption been carved out for them?

1\. <http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/sort/premium/>

~~~
ceejayoz
WordPress.com doesn't distribute the source code of those themes outside their
own organization.

~~~
homosaur
This doesn't make sense to me because the people who purchase these themes are
not in the WP organization. What's the difference between literally giving you
the source and allowing you to use the source?

~~~
jessevondoom
The source never gets distributed to the end user, so there's no violation of
the GPL. (This use case / loophole is the reason the AGPL was written.)

~~~
homosaur
So are we saying for a commercial developer to legally distribute themes and
not open the source code they'd have to basically build their own platform ala
wordpress.com? Seems like that would basically only be using the GPL as a tool
for monopoly. Does that mean Thesis and Genesis and these toolkits are also
violating GPL since they are not openly available?

~~~
fencepost
I believe all the Genesis stuff is actually GPL per Brian Gardner.

~~~
homosaur
Really, well where is the publicly available code for Genesis then? I'm not
saying it doesn't exist, just that I can't find it in Google. Isn't the most
basic premise of the GPL that source code should be publicly available? I
don't see anywhere on the StudioPress site where this code is posted. This
whole argument by WP is bringing up a lot of questions about whether or not I
want to continue to use WP as a development platform in the future.

~~~
filmgirlcw
If you want the source code from Genesis, you buy the theme. The GPL doesn't
mean you can't charge for a product. It does mean if you buy that product you
get the source code and you get the right to use, change and redistribute that
code.

At that point, you have the right to distribute it in any way you want --
provided you aren't restricting StudioPress's rights. That means you could
actually resell the same theme for a lower price if you wanted and StudioPress
would bitch and moan but couldn't legally do anything about it.

That happens with Linux. Red Hat sells their product to clients. They also
offer up the uncompiled source code. Others, CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc.,
take that code and compile it and distribute it for free. The advantage of
buying from Red Hat is support and fastest access to newest stuff.

There is absolutely nothing stopping me from buying a StudioPress theme and
putting a download link to it on my site, or even hosting that content on
Github. It might be poor taste, but there'd be nothing against StudioPress's
rights with me doing that.

My biggest issues with GPL was it was written in an age of traditionally
compiled languages. It wasn't written for the nuance of web language and the
context of what is distribution, what is complete, what is compiled is
different and to me, not as cut and dried.

Most of the commercial WordPress theme shops (outside of Envato) do run fully
GPL shops. They do this not because of altruism but because Matt and
WordPress.org strong armed them into making the decision to change around
2009/2010. Since then, it's become common.

The reason you don't see people bitching about giving up their redistribution
rights or the rights on their images and CSS is because most people who buy
WordPress themes aren't on HN, they buy a theme, customize it, use it. They
don't think about, "oh, I cold resell this same theme and undercut someone
else."

~~~
homosaur
Aha, thanks for the clarification everyone on this thread.

------
burke
I try to ignore these things because the GPL generally just infuriates me, but
do themes seriously count as derivative works for the purpose of GPL
licensing?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
For most software, a "theme" would look a lot like "top color: #ff00ff; font:
Helvetica". AIUI, for Wordpress, themes often involve quite a bit of PHP code
calling deep into Wordpress' guts to slice and dice the list of posts in
interesting ways. This makes it much more reasonable to claim that the GPL
extends to themes.

... of course, the GPL is all about "linking", and it's not at all clear what
this means if you're not programming something C-like.

------
homosaur
So I've read this and I'm unclear as to why Envato and not the other
marketplaces and commercial theme shops?

~~~
joelhaasnoot
They're probably the biggest

~~~
homosaur
I'd prefer it to be that they were doing something very improper and not just
that they are the easiest target... But that's also what I suspect.

------
mootothemax
What's the best license advice if you _do_ want commercial organisations to be
able to use your code without ambiguity?

I'm looking to open-source a few bits of code soon, and actively want
commercial entities to not have to worry about using them, but am not sure
what to go with.

~~~
tedivm
MIT or BSD are pretty permissive. The MIT one is arguably clearer because
there's only a single version, whereas the BSD has a few (three clause, four
clause, etc).

------
joelhaasnoot
So maybe either Wordpress.org needs to a) sell the next version of Wordpress
and see how many users are left or b) somehow disallow commercial themes by
tightening / changing licensing and then see how many users are left...

------
wpgrunt
The WordPress ecosystem is increasingly hostile to commercial developers.

~~~
pixelbath
What you call the "WordPress ecosystem" is really the "GPL ecosystem." If
license terms can be arbitrarily separated in derivative works, the argument
becomes far more important for enforcement of those terms as a whole.

As many are fond of saying in the open-source world, if you don't like the
license terms, you are free to make your own [software] under any license you
like, provided your code is your own, or licensed under terms compatible with
the license you choose.

Envato's stance enables them to enforce copyright terms, whereas a GPL license
is, by nature, far more open and encourages reuse by others. It's my opinion
that WordPress is in the right here (aside from the fact that it's their
convention to do with what they please) regarding license enforcement, but I
can certainly understand Envato's position.

~~~
mpyne
> What you call the "WordPress ecosystem" is really the "GPL ecosystem." If
> license terms can be arbitrarily separated in derivative works, the argument
> becomes far more important for enforcement of those terms as a whole.

Well, I'd be careful with that. The open source project I contribute to (KDE)
has quite a bit of GPL'ed code, but it also has quite a bit of other licenses
in use, so it is certainly possible to have arbitrary licenses that make up a
given single derivative work.

If I understand Envato's argument correctly, they make derivative themes (and
license the derivation under GPL), which has embedded hooks to allow for other
content to be read in later. This other content (normally art or CSS?) is not
necessarily licensed under GPL, because it is not considered by Envato to be
derivative of WordPress content.

To be honest I would side with Envato here. Linking khelpcenter (GPL) to
kdelibs (LGPL) does not make kdelibs suddenly GPL'ed software, and using
khelpcenter to display GFDL'ed documentation in an integrated fashion doesn't
make khelpcenter suddenly GFDL'ed.

The real question is whether the "additional content" is truly derivative or
whether it is originated by Envato and then linked in (since GPL has
provisions to allow linking in content with other licenses). Of course, maybe
WordPress used a modified license to forbid linking, but then that wouldn't
really be GPL, it would be something else.

~~~
elehack
> Well, I'd be careful with that. The open source project I contribute to
> (KDE) has quite a bit of GPL'ed code, but it also has quite a bit of other
> licenses in use, so it is certainly possible to have arbitrary licenses that
> make up a given single derivative work.

Yes, so long as those other license are GPL-compatible. 3-clause BSD, MIT,
ISC, etc. are all GPL-compatible. The license that Envato is allowing or using
for the non-PHP theme assets is not, so the question does become one of
whether the theme assets are a derivative work.

------
pan69
So WP.org says that all files of a theme or plugin need to be GPL since
they're building on top of a GPL'ed piece of software even though this theme
or plugin might not use any of the original GPL code.

Then how does this work for content you put in a WP website? You're using the
database, of which the layout can be considered an interface. Should all the
content be GPL'ed as well? And how does that work if your theme uses another
OS project, say Bootstrap (which is an Apache licence)?

~~~
streptomycin
_Then how does this work for content you put in a WP website?_

Before even getting to that question... viewing output on a website is
irrelevant as far as the GPL is concerned, only the AGPL deals with that. You
can take GPL code, make some changes to it, put it up on a web server, let
people use it... and you don't have to distribute your changes.

------
Supermighty
It sounds like they are following the letter of the GPL but not the spirit. By
licensing the PHP under GPL they are complying, but by licensing the CSS and
image assets under a restrictive license they are activity trying to hinder
the PHP from being useful if it were distributed. As the GPL is designed to
do.

Did they really understand the GPL when they built their business on it?

------
protomyth
I get the PHP side of things, but I am not sure how an original CSS file would
fall under the linking or derived provision of the GPL.

~~~
anu_gupta
It doesn't, and nor do any images created for a theme, but the WordPress
Foundation have taken a stance of insisting that anyone providing a theme that
contains any non GPL elements is not allowed to speak / help organise a
WordCamp conference.

So, this isn't strictly about what's legally required to fall under the GPL.

~~~
protomyth
Do you know what their policy is on images licensed under CC?

~~~
anu_gupta
No, but I'm assuming that as most CC licenses (CC0 being the exception
according to the GNU site [1]) aren't GPL compatible, the attitude would be
the same. However, I have no real domain expertise here, so I could be very
wrong.

[1] [http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html#GPLCompatibleL...](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-
list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses)

------
thekevan
The title is a little bit "link-baity".

People who are selling plugins or themes on Envato are banned from being a
speaker or even volunteering. Envato members can still attend the gathering.

------
nhangen
I had a brief discussion with Matt in the comments on the source
([http://www.designcrumbs.com/automatically-
blackballed#commen...](http://www.designcrumbs.com/automatically-
blackballed#comment-413)) and tried to get him to explain why a split-license
was bad. Here is a quote:

'While legally you can make a technical argument that in a theme the PHP, CSS,
JS, and images are separate things, from the point of view of a user they make
up a single unit of usefulness, one “thing.” Users intuitively understand
this, just like it’d be strange to have a car you could drive anywhere, but
you had to remove the wheels if you went outside a certain area (the so-called
“split license”). Most theme authors and businesses in the WP community also
understand this, in fact all of the theme shops on the commercial themes page
and many of the most successful including WooThemes and StudioPress sell 100%
GPL themes that protect all the rights of their users, and have been extremely
successful doing so.

It’s an author and developer’s choice to license all their code under the GPL,
and it’s our choice to only promote, accept sponsorship, and accept speaking
proposals from people who do so. It’s not a personal thing, and the guidelines
apply equally to everyone, and if someone who broke the guidelines in the past
stopped tomorrow there would be no hard feelings (it’s not a blackball, which
implies permanent exclusion, it’s just part of the social mores of our
community).'

Does this remind you of anything?

Greater good, comply and you'll be OK, free == freedom for everyone, etc.

I really want to give Matt and the foundation a benefit of the doubt here, but
they are making it very difficult.

I followed up with a question about the WP logo, which is bundled in the
WP.org download but protected.

'The GPL is a license granted under copyright law, which is separate from a
trademark, which WordPress and its logo are. It’s totally allowed by the
software license for someone to take the software and make a hosting service,
they just have to have their own name for it, like Edublogs. (Some OS
communities consider trademark restrictions too much as well, which is why
there’s a fork of Firefox called “Iceweasel” included in Debian.) In addition
to the guidelines on the Foundation site, having the trademark also gives us a
tool to take down phishing sites that target WordPress.org users, or people
who set up theme directories at similar-to-WordPress domains where every
download includes a malware backdoor. There are many hundreds of these per
year.'

It seems there are plenty of loopholes when they want them to exist. What I
want to know is - what can I do, as a plugin and theme author, to ensure I am
properly paid for my work?

~~~
pknight
Do theme authors without the dual license make less money? I don't have the
data on that, but it would be interesting to know. I don't think a split
license actually makes a positive difference on the bottom line over full GPL
on both php and js/css/etc.

I find Envato's licenses very limiting and authors have to play by their rules
to be in their market place. However, I'm not against the split licensing at
all, just wish authors could more freely choose under what terms to sell their
works, such as pricing and what the terms are for installing a design on
multiple sites.

~~~
nhangen
I don't know if they do or not, but I don't think a developer should feel bad
for doing what he can to ensure his work isn't stolen.

If I wanted to, I could raid the WP theme and plugin repo and re-sell all of
them. Since I'm a developer, I could offer support that exceeds the level most
get with free themes/plugins and provide value. I don't because I have ethical
boundaries, but there are plenty that do not.

~~~
pknight
I'm not against split licensing, I think it's a fair for an author to decide.
Envato makes that decision for its authors, I think that's unfair to authors.

Having said that, I don't buy into to the idea that Envato's licensing
protects author's works, at least not for WordPress themes & plugins - if
there's data to support the contrary, that would be interesting to find out.
The reason I think this it is not the case is that there are outfits excelling
with their business doing everything GPL. As far as I know there are no
companies that have regretted switching to pure GPL in the WP space.

Secondly, the reality of the fact is that even with restrictive licenses,
trademarks and lawyers in place it's impossible to prevent people from
copying/stealing/etc. What does work is having a community that cares about
principles and understands why they are important which is why I think the
foundation believes these kinds of positions are necessary even if they draw
harsh lines. (I do not agree with banning/excluding/or putting authors
needlessly in bad graces with the community as they are now though)

~~~
nhangen
The fact that it (authors making less via GPL) hasn't happened doesn't make it
a non-issue. It just means it hasn't happened yet.

I agree it's impossible to prevent, but any rational individual will try their
best to stop it until the work > return. I think the 'community' is a straw
man in this case.

