David Gerard <dgerard <at> gmail.com> writes:
What about extensions? Would they count as derivatives of MediaWiki
for license purposes? (I suspect they would, given Automattic regards
WordPress themes and plugins as derivatives and requires them to be
GPL.)
IANAL, but if there is some flexibility here, I would argue that extensions
should *not* be considered derivatives. Legally, because extensions do not
contain MediaWiki code (beyond using the programming API provided by core
classes); in practice, because we have many extensions licensed under
licenses that are incompatible with GPL,[1] and I don't think we should
require people to choose a GPL-compatible licence should they want to write
MediaWiki extensions.
I think switching to AGPL needs more careful consideration. Not everyone may
agree with its philosophy, and it'd probably significantly impact some of
the biggest users of MediaWiki (Wikia comes to mind).
wctaiwan
[1]
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:MIT_licensed_extensions