Comments on: Defending King Rat and the GPL

By: Justin Tadlock

Justin Tadlock — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:00:14 +0000

I have a copy of Gravity Forms and see no reason it would be violating the GPL. It looks within the license to me.

By: nick

nick — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:07:54 +0000

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.

By: Justin Tadlock

Justin Tadlock — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:04:06 +0000

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.

By: nick

nick — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:08:15 +0000

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?

By: Jen Units

Jen Units — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:32:26 +0000

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.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:45:06 +0000

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.

By: Elliot

Elliot — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:45:43 +0000

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.

By: King Rat

King Rat — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:46:52 +0000

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.

By: Thaya Kareeson

Thaya Kareeson — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:28:04 +0000

@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.

By: Marcel

Marcel — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:26:43 +0000

Thanks for defending ‘King Rat’!