As many of you in the WordPress community know, this month’s GPL argument is about the cforms II plugin. A discussion has ensued on how it is not GPL-compatible and should be removed from the repository.
I was going to sit this song and dance out, but I felt compelled to join in after reading through the comments on this post. It sickens me that people in the WordPress community would behave the way they have in those comments. I would not have had the same self-restraint Philip (King Rat) has shown toward those leaving nasty comments.
The issue
Oliver Seidel released the cforms II plugin on the WordPress Plugin Repository. Plugins in this repository must be compatible with the GPL. His plugin was not licensed with a GPL-compatible license. Someone ratted him out (sorry, I simply had to use that word). The plugin was pulled, but I’m not sure if it was Oliver or the team at WordPress.org that pulled it.
From all indications, this is the most popular form mail plugin for WordPress (never used it myself).
Quite a few people were angry at King Rat for making this announcement on his blog and have behaved like uncivilized adolescents in his comments section.
Do all plugins for WordPress have to be GPL compatible?
That’s not really the issue here. Any argument made either way is trivial within the scope of this discussion.
I believe Oliver can do whatever he wants on his own site. Release the plugin in any form. But, as for WordPress.org, that’s an entirely different scenario.
Do all plugins at WordPress.org have to be GPL compatible?
Yes. Any argument otherwise is senseless. It is clearly stated in the rules, which is kind of hard to miss since it’s the first one:
1. Your plugin must be GPL Compatible.
No matter what license you throw on your plugin, by releasing it there, you’ve asserted that your plugin is compatible with the GPL. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a great purging of the plugin repository as we’ve recently seen with themes.
On Return True, the author of cForms II – The GPL Rat Strikes asks:
Should GPL compatibility [be] put before the popularity & usefulness of a plugin?
To answer this question quite simply — yes. As long as we’re talking about WordPress.org, the answer is yes. No one is above the system.
Why defend King Rat?
Well, I’m disappointed that people have behaved the way they have in his comments section, calling him a nobody, telling him that he will be shunned by the WordPress community. I’m here to say they’re wrong.
I’m not sure how many people his blog reach, but I know mine gets to a few people. So, I’m willing to put whatever popularity my blog has on the line here — call me a rat or whatever names you can come up with. I am part of the WordPress community and will back that community and any rules implemented on WordPress.org.
Whether King Rat should’ve openly posted what he did might be debatable to you, but think about this: It’s his blog. Does he go to your blog and tell you what you can post?
I’d also like to invite you to read his followup post, Truly Great Insults, in which he has openly asked people to come up with better insults in a contest.
Defending Oliver
I don’t want to say anything bad about Oliver or the plugin. That’s not the point of this post. The cforms II plugin seems to be a great plugin by most accounts. I don’t care how he releases his plugins.
If he (or anyone) wants them on WordPress.org, they must follow the rules. Oliver has announced that the plugin will be released under the GPL though:
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.
Be nice to people when you visit their blog
A little civility never hurt anyone.
If you don’t like what someone has to say on his or her blog, then at least be nice about the way you disagree. If you can’t do that, then take your uncivilized behavior to your own blog. Post what you want. Flame someone. You have permission to say what you want.
We do have these things called trackbacks and pingbacks nowadays.
The problem is, you have to add your plugin to the wordpress repository if you want to enjoy automatic updates.
(Yes, you could build that into your plugin yourself, but it’s quite difficult and not standard)
If wordpress.org could somehow find a way to allow automatic updates for plugins that aren’t in the repository, I’m sure alot of people would be satisfied.
Wesley — I’ve never much liked how the automatic update feature has been tied solely to WordPress.org. I’d like to see some functionality built into it to streamline the process of showing updates to users from our own sites, but I doubt we’ll see anything like that.
Curious – to what extent are you saying you will back “any” rules implemented there? I’m not sure there’s an organization/entity in the world I could say that about.
“Do all plugins at WordPress.org have to be GPL compatible?”
…talking about double-standards:
http://www.kingrat.us/2009/01/cforms-ii-not-gpl-compatible#comment-111
Darren Hoyt — Even I have my limits.
Where would I draw the line? I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I probably should’ve worded that differently, but I’ll just let it stand as is.
tim — The Akismet WordPress Plugin has a GPL license. Don’t confuse a service with a plugin.
My blog’s reach was ZERO before two days ago. I decided to consolidate much of the crap I have on various other hosted blogs into a nice self-hosted thing where I have no restrictions. Last night I imported one batch of posts from one of those sites, which is the only reason there are archives.
Anyway, thank you for the defense. I appreciate it. (I have a thick skin, so I can take all the insults thrown my way.)
King Rat — I’m sorry for the way some people behaved in your comments section. After reading through them, I just felt compelled to write something in response. It’s easy for people to go around bashing others, especially on new sites that haven’t built up a community. I just wanted you to know that there are other people that agree with you.
It’s good to hear you have thick skin.
Thanks for defending ‘King Rat’!
@Wesley,
If you checkout your WordPress plugins from SVN, you can automatically update your plugins using the comment “svn up”. I actually like it better than the WordPress automatic update feature because it is a lot more stable and it persists your local changes (if you made any).
@Justin
I agree that if you can’t say something in a nice way then don’t say it at all. It is quite shocking how people behave differently just because they are not posting on their own blog. I’ve had my own fare share of people who visit my Anti-AdBlock plugin page, skim through the description, then bash the plugin without even knowing what the plugin does. This post is a nice reminder to treat other people’s blogs the same way you would treat your own blog.
@King Rat
I like GPL, but I certainly feel that not all plugins should be licensed under it. Hats off to you for being one of the first to openly make a stance.
I’m not a huge GPL proponent actually. I think the license is confusing and I’m not a big fan of the terms that allow someone to redistribute. I do like the idea though that if I have a legal copy of the software, I get the right to modify to suit my own purposes.
It’s irritating to me though when someone wants to play in a GPL software technology sandbox (such as Wordpress) but not the GPL software licensing sandbox.
I don’t even have a problem with the guy’s link mongering. Put it in. Don’t tell me how to remove it if you want. As long as I have the right and ability to remove it, I’m fine with that. But I didn’t have that right according to him, and (at the time) he didn’t want to play by the rules established by Automattic, but wanted the benefits.
I agree with you Justin and you King Rat. I mean, let’s keep it simple, you want your plugin hosted on WordPress.org? follow the rules. I love cforms and I use it on my site without removing the linklove credit ’cause I think there’s a huge effort put in it. However, I don’t truly believe cforms is 100% GPL given what Oliver wrote on his forum on 7:49 am – January 26, 2009:
“(…)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.”
I think that 100% GPL would be either:
1) allow removal of linklove (I still wouldn’t remove it for my own sites, but certainly for customers’) and still retain ajax functionality, or,
2) remove linklove and ajax functionality
Again, I’ve no issue with the linklove thing (you can check my site and see it’s there) but we’re talking here about full GPL or not. I’m still using it even it’s not GPL ’cause I think it’s an awesome plugin.
Nice to see someone defending this King Rat guy. The comments in that post are indeed appalling. What Oliver did was just plain wrong and I don’t think anyone who knows the facts could argue otherwise. As you pointed out, it is difficult (near impossible) to not know that a plugin must be GPL to be in the repository before uploading it.
I’ve had my own fare share of people who visit my Anti-AdBlock plugin page, skim through the description, then bash the plugin without even knowing what the plugin does. This post is a nice reminder to treat other people’s blogs the same way you would treat your own blog.
Just a quick follow-up/observation:
Not the above mentioned GPL issue has driven me away from using cforms, but the rather aggressive update intervals of new releases. I simply couldn’t keep up.
Now more recently I’ve changed my horse again (after moving on the contact form 7) and gave “gravity forms” a shot, only to find out that it also doesn’t comply with GPL rules (someone mentioned it the forums). I then started googling for GPL / plugin issues, which brought me here.
Now I’m concerned, can I continue to use gravity forms or am I risking violating GPL rules when deploying it for customers?
As far as I can see, Gravity Forms is licensed under the GPL. So, you must extend that same license to your customers when using it.
Thanks for the reply!
Right, they say they’re GPL, but they’re not. The fact that a license key >>is required<< (against a payment) to fully run the plugin breaks GPL right there, it's 100% crystal clear in the GPL text. Weird.
I guess it doesn't matter what they claim or b/c WP demands it, they're simply not GPL because they don't comply with GPL rules.
I have a copy of Gravity Forms and see no reason it would be violating the GPL. It looks within the license to me.