On 26 July 2010 18:47, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
If there is a decision to be made (and I'm not sure there is), I would personally argue that we should take steps to make sure that authors are informed about the FSF position on the GPL, but not try to enforce it ourselves (except possibly for the extensions and skins actually deployed by Wikimedia). I don't see much benefit for Wikimedia in taking a hard line with third-party software contributors over the licensing of their extensions.
There isn't really.
One, it would probably take Automattic actually attempting to enforce their copyright on WordPress as they view it, and winning - or achieving a quick settlement and GPL release of the theme code the second a real lawyer reads the GPL, as has happened in every GPL enforcement case to date. Perhaps PHP will be treated differently to C. But until that occurs, if it occurs, no answer exists and one cannot be discussed into existence, or Slashdot would have solved all problems by now.
Two, each developer holds the copyright on their small piece of the code and can enforce it without asking anyone else - as has been reasonably well tested by every GPL enforcement case to date - and Tim's opinion or wikitech-l consensus doesn't actually stop them.
You could ostracise developers who go against the group interpretation of what the GPL should mean, of course, if you feel that's appropriate.
- d.